The Bloody Lords

[[Category:{{#switch:|File=Files|Template=Templates|articles}} in need of cleanup]]

<infobox>

 <title source="name">
   <default>The Bloody Lords</default>
 </title>

<image source="Image"></image> <image source="image"></image> <header>Information</header> <label>Organization Type</label> <label>Leader(s)</label> <label>Leader(s)</label> <label>Allies</label> <label>Allies</label> <label>Status</label> <label>Location</label> <label>First Appearance</label> <header>First Appearance</header> <label>Debut</label> </infobox> Are an alliance of others that owe much to the Carmine Exile, sometimes called the Carmine Lords.

Modus operandi

The Carmine Lords are meant to hold lordships while deferring things to the judges, effectively giving them back the power a lordship would steal from them.

They regularly hand off lordships to one another in rotation so that they're moving targets.<ref>“You’re on a collision course for settlements. Moving from Lordship to Lordship, trading with whoever you run into. Moving from A to B, give B’s lord A. Move from B to C, give C’s lord B, and so on. It’s messing with people, disrupting things. Causing a lot of mess. This works a lot better if you just go north.”

- Excerpt form Wild Abandon 18.z</ref> Withanotherr other recruited or created to take over if one is removed.<ref name=mp>“There is a group in position to take the lordship from the Multifaceted Pig.  When that happens, the Lord from this adjacent Lordship will move, taking that Lordship back, another will move into their place…”

Verona watched as shadows moved across the table, each stopping when they got to the center of a territory.  Leaving one territory not that far from Kennet, blank and unshadowed.

“With one left empty.  I have time to create an Other.  It may be the last proper Lord I create before Musser makes his initial move on Kennet, to soften it up further, and set up a Lord.  He’s probably going to pass through this territory on his way.”
[...]
“On your way.  You know where to go, what to do,” Charles said.  “A Lordship will be handed to you.”

“But the primary principle of administration will belong to the Judges,” the man replied, voice soft. - Excerpt from Crossed with Silver 19.12</ref>

Structure

On top of the Lords themselves there are various "guards" and similar creatures protecting territory.<ref>

Charles and his underlings had put guards in charge of areas.  They worked for him, he was connected to them, and they selectively targeted his enemies.  He had a great goblin in the Warrens, a deep Ruins creature near the surface, like a sea monster in a fishpond, and a corrupt umbral spirit in the spirit world.

The tradeoff was that the truce being in effect meant that obstacle was cleared away.  Take the Warrens, introduce a great goblin that scares away the riffraff, then remove the great goblin as a consideration?  The way was mostly clear.  Earring and some connection blockers helped with the rest.. - Excerpt from Let Slip 20.8</ref>

Members

Name	Description
Creator
The Carmine Exile	Created or facilitated all of the Lords here.
Rank and File
The Black Pitch Stalker<ref name=":0">Now let me call on forces.  Star-mother and the Black Pitch Stalker, the Urgaritic nether-ruins serpent. [...] “Three Carmine Lords worth of power have been invested in this. She wanted it to stick,” the Turtle Queen said. - Excerpt from Let Slip 20.e</ref>	Possibly a partner to the star mother as a Duo.<ref name="Du0"/><ref> - Excerpt from Let Slip 20.z</ref> Possibly the umbral spirit that obstructed travel in the Spirit World.
Black Scalpel<ref>Go for the Throat 23.4</ref>	A Cursed Item with a focus and ability to possess people.<ref>And another Lordship, a cursed item under a ward had gotten free. A cursed scalpel, it found an insecure host and let them become beautiful by scarring and cutting off people’s best features. It was allegedly heavily tied into the Abyss and much like a bogeyman, if the user was defeated, it would be dropped, lost, dip into the Abyss, and then resurface in short order. Except it had been supercharged or something because three different wielders had been defeated in the span of an hour, the scalpel slipping away each time, until finally a little boy with a craniofacial deformity he was probably insecure about had gotten to the practitioner, slicing the back of their ankles open as they’d been standing by their car, then cutting the skin off their heads, leaving them to bleed out. And the scalpel had been dropped, left to go back to one of the original wielders from earlier in the day, who had claimed the Lordship throne uncontested. Avery wondered what happened to the little boy after that. Could he go home? What would his parents say? What was the story? - Excerpt form Wild Abandon 18.2</ref>
The Beorgmann	A provisional member who was up for joining if not for the oath it had sworn beforehand. Was later bound.
Dropped Call	A technomancy other based on a pay phone. Possibly of the Abyss or Ruins.
Maricica	A newly ascended goddess, technically independent but with goals that align pretty well with the group.<ref>“Yes. It’s a huge ploy,” Verona told him. “But it’s not ours. They talked to Wye. Paid him a visit. Though I’d say they’re pulling shenanigans, because they’re insistent Maricica is not part of the Carmine Exile’s whole deal anymore. She got what she wanted, and is operating as an independent agent, apparently.” “An independent agent whose goals align surprisingly closely with the Carmine butthole’s?” Lucy asked. - Excerpt form Gone and Done It 17.z</ref>
Multifaceted Pig	An advanced Offbreed capable of taking down Lords.<ref>. - Excerpt form Wild Abandon 18.2</ref> It was eventually removed too.<ref name=mp/>
Ordinary Family‏‎	The Fostras are Others who can pass completely as human save for their odd Self, constantly expanding.<ref>“The Fostras, Timmins Ontario, escaped their warding?” “We never actually classified them,” Eugene said. “They looked and scanned like normal people, you know? Regular family, nice, nothing too unusual, fairly religious, but not weirdly so. Regular God, no strange gods. But they took a lot of people in, and one was a classmate of a practitioner over there. The practitioner said she was one person to his Sight one day, then a completely different Self the next day, while looking and acting mostly the same. Didn’t scan as Other. Then when we got called in and tried binding them as an experiment, they stayed put, inside the house. Didn’t starve despite never getting deliveries or leaving the property, either.” “According to Nicolette, they’re free and walking around town like nothing’s weird,” Avery said. “And the Lord of Timmins is living with them now.” “One of the Rowsomes,” Elizabeth said. “Okay, well… I wish I knew how bad that was,” Eugene said. - Excerpt form Wild Abandon 18.2</ref> They made use of human corpses.
Parity Test	Used to test if a recent altercation was truly between that of equals by switching the circumstances of the opponents to see if the same outcome would occur.<ref name=mp/> Possibly an Envoy.<ref>Let Slip 20.f</ref> Created with the assistance of Verona Hayward.
Placement Test	A Living Ritual that transforms along the Person→Place→Thing line,<ref>Second email, very in depth.  Zed was focused heavily on the big threat.  A ritual incarnate had arisen about halfway between Thunder Bay and Winnipeg.  Dryden was a town about the size Kennet had been, and a force around Dryden was turning people into places and objects into people.  Each of the five thousand residents were unspooled into hallways, roads, and other things, and the various things they wore and had with them became people. Practitioners, Zed wrote, were able to hold onto themselves, just a bit, but they unspooled easily if hurt or- Avery guessed it was coup.  Any insult, any setback, it’d be a knock against their ability to keep from unspooling and becoming more place.  Too much of a knock against their Selves and they’d become an ongoing fixture. But implements retained the connection, at least, with memories and limited abilities of the practitioner, Others were mostly unaffected, and a full outfit of complementary pieces of clothing would become a team of people who associated with each other but didn’t remember a life before the Ritual Incarnate.  Before what Zed was calling a Labyrinth. Oh, and the same dangerous Others that were out here were in there.  Mostly occupying themselves killing the Lord and his family members that had been camped out there, at the far west of Musser’s territory. Leaving Zed to theorize about how it might be tackled.  Summoned Others to give guidance, a very specific sort of outfit, for a goal-oriented, cohesive team- Zed theorized hyper-urban tactical clothing for a tactical squad.  Any practitioners with implements would be ideal.  All to get to what Zed was thinking was a core of power that was still vulnerable. Avery sat back, thinking. don’t go, she typed.  She sent that fast, so Zed wouldn’t commit to anything in the meantime. Then, while she was typing a follow up message, she got a reply: why not? “Telling Zed… Don’t go, because Charles Abrams created the Hungry Choir as a trap for Alexander and the other big practitioners.  It had a big juicy battery full of power at the center, basically,” Avery said out loud, as she typed.  For her parents’ benefit.  “And this thing Zed is telling me about might be Charles’ second try at that.  Hold off for now.  Maybe you should tackle the Others who took over the call center.  Whatever that’s about.” - Excerpt form Wild Abandon 18.2</ref> meant to be a multiday slog with a final game of capture the flag at the end.<ref>- Excerpt form Wild Abandon 18.z</ref> One is meant to avoid the various Others that have taken up residence in it.
Prather	A Folded Wraith<ref>“Folded wraith,” Elizabeth read. “Prather.” [...] Eugene said. “Strong wraith, spawned off a man who was a monster long before he was Other. Kept people in cages that would’ve been too small for people half their size. Like a sick experiment. The Wraith- it could more or less practice. Just not well, its practice ran into the practice of some other people, it went bad. Folded. Plicate, corrugated, whatever you want to call it. Horror-wraith. With the ability to twist people and places up into horrors. And then he just… carried on.” [...] “We bound it, because none of the Necromancers were willing to get anywhere close to it,” Eugene said. - Excerpt form Wild Abandon 18.2</ref>
Star-Mother<ref name=":0" />	A starparent, a creator of realms.<ref> serpent. - Excerpt from Let Slip 20.z</ref> Possible a partner with the black pitch stalker.<ref name="Du0">Then she saw. They’d left one region and passed into another. The area was slowly changing tint, in the same way everything around could look blue if the sun was shining directly onto a giant blue object. But the object wasn’t giant. The tinting drew her eye over, and she saw a distant figure on top of a water tower, dressed in blue, wearing a gold crown. A gargantuan shape, easily capable of standing taller than the water tower, even grazing the clouds above, was visible only as blue tint, see-through where there was none. It looked like a woman without arms, or a woman with a cloak or dress that draped down in a way that hid her arms from view. She walked so she stepped on rooftops, skipping when she needed to cross a street. The huge, translucent woman bent down by the water tower, as if bringing her ear close enough to hear something being said. She nodded. Both the huge woman and the little crowned figure on the water tower watched their car as it moved down the highway, cutting past a town smaller than Kennet. - Excerpt form Wild Abandon 18.8</ref>
Urgaritic nether-ruins serpent<ref name=":0" />	A typhlotic Other of the deeper Ruins, brought up to the shallows.
Teatime Bogeyman	A large group of Liminal rules based bogeymen, who targeted anyone that called them enemies.<ref>There was a Lordship that had been overtaken by a whole contingent of bogeymen. Thirty in all. All dressed nice, all with bags over their heads, fanged mouths drawn at random places on the bags. Thirty bogeymen against one Lord and the two people who’d been staying with the Lord. The Lord had been neatly butchered, then served as meat cupcakes, meat aperitif and skin sandwiches, with blood tea, for a big gathering, the two other local practitioners in attendance, tied to their chairs and made to eat and drink their friend. The belief was that they’d be the next two things served at teatime. The practitioners hadn’t even been awake when the bogeymen had come after them. - Excerpt form Wild Abandon 18.2</ref>Attacked the Blue Heron Institute but were stopped.<ref>“We would insist you join us for tea, Ms. Kelly, but I’ve been told to leave certain things alone. It would be such a shame for you to miss out. If you invited yourself, I’m sure it would be fine. Or would you like to host us? All you need to do is say the word.” [...] ““They’re technomancy Others?” Avery asked. “No. But they’re a big enough presence they’re bleeding into other spaces.” [...] “They’re rule-based, instanced bogeymen, they respond primarily to triggers, rituals spread around as urban legends, usually. Say the right words while sitting around a candle with your friends at a sleepover, get murdered, that sort of thing. Except here, based on what they were flowing from, it’s a bit different.” “Charles got crafty.” “If you call them an enemy, especially in text or- I’d believe it works with any hostile practices firmly aimed at them, they… respond. They have the right to invite you to tea first. And you don’t survive tea.” - Excerpt form Wild Abandon 18.3</ref>
White Rot	Technomancy Other focused on stirring up confusion and drinking in the resulting upset.<ref>Zed had been asked about some Technomancy Others that had taken a Lordship.  They’d taken over a call center.  He was pretty sure it was a bái làn, or ‘White Rot’, or a bái mù, or ‘White Eye’, both of which were related technomancy Others that focused on generating nonsense and stirring upset, then drinking in the confusion and upset to alter its proximate reality.  Having taken over the call center, it was infecting people with the white eyes or white rot, spamming the township with nonstop repeated calls and drinking in power. The Lord of that area had sealed themselves in their home, using protections to keep trouble out, but were unable to do anything except keep those wards up.  The power that was taken in by the incessant spam and nonsense calls was being channeled into and against the seals and wards, gradually wearing them down.  Either the practitioner would lose concentration and collapse, or their best efforts would stop being useful, and the White Rot would work its way inside and get them. - Excerpt form Wild Abandon 18.2</ref>

Chronology

Before the story

Several of these others were bound or dealt with by the legendre family before they came to the attention of a certain higher power.

Post-Summer Squabbles

Following the partial success of the Carmine Conspiracy, the newly seated Carmine Exile decided he needed to upend things to change the course of practice for the world.<ref> - Excerpt form Gone and Done It 17.z</ref>

He selected and crafted others that could topple the close to 60 lordships established by Mr. Musser.<ref>“[...] [the Driscoll family]have so much work available to us your aunt and I are talking about bringing on apprentices. We have sixty new Lords and many of them want to shape and grow the settlements in their domains in some fashion. We are experts in that.” - Excerpt form Gone and Done It 17.a</ref><ref>“We were worried about what might happen if a bunch of the key Legendres got gainsaid all at once. Might weaken the family,” Eugene said.

“That and-or power got pushed into the prisoners, and they broke out of their cages,” Lucy said.
[...]
“It’s not just that he made some strong Others. He let Others out of wherever they were being caged and warded in?” Elizabeth asked.

“Yeah,” Avery said. “Seems like.”

“That didn’t sound like a very good Other to be a Lord,” Sutton said.

“It’s not. Not really,” Lucy answered. “They aren’t there to be Lords. They’re there to be nightmares to deal with. They’re there to hold the throne while letting the Judges run things.” - Excerpt form Wild Abandon 18.2</ref>

The St. Victor's practitioners and their teachers draw power from them in exchange for various favors they could not perform themselves.<ref>“The Dropped Call will renew the contract at the end of the month, but you need to set up a ward.  So people can’t pass through as easily.  You should know what you need to do to set that up.  Teach the others while you do it.”

“Set up a ward for the Dropped Call?” Adrian asked, apparently for the benefit of the others listening in.

Kira-Lynn was nodding.

“Second, the White Rot.  Stop in at their second branch, pick up the package, drop it off at what will be their fourth branch.”

“Spreading the White Rot, sure.  Uh, I guess.  We don’t know where the branches are.”- Excerpt from Crossed with Silver 19.8</ref>

Trivia

• Members are included in this group that are not technically part of it but are placed here anyway for ease of reference.

References

<references/>