Into the Labyrinth: Musings on the Skairos

At the same time that I wrote up the Akashic Mysteries, I also wrote up the Skairos, the "Devils of Persephone."  Originally, I had intended them as a sort of "special option," a unique "possible" race meant for mainly my patrons and "insiders," as well as some possible hooks or monsters that they could use in a primarily Akashic game and a nice nod to one of the more creative Star Wars races: the Miraluka.

As with the rest of the Labyrinth, I've found interest in them has grown and, at least in my mind, they're becoming more of a "central" part of Psi-Wars, though I think they're exact nature and motivations should remain a mystery.  As I explore more of this idea of "Psi-Wars as Monster-Hunter game" the more i find myself revisiting works I had previousl created to provide interesting monsters to players, including the monsters of Broken Communion, the Gaunt, and now the Skairos.

(In particular, much of this was inspired by the moment I released the Skairos as a race, and one person commented on how they all had a "Secret," and asked how they kept it. "So, do they wear armor all the time or what?" It's a great question and one I've been pondering ever since.  It's increasingly obvious that the Psi-Wars setting has "secret races" like the Eldoth and the Skairos and whatever pulls the strings of the Scourge.  So, let's dive deeper into this particular race).

The Nature of the Skairos

When I first created the Skairos, I had created four possible interpretations for the "devils of persephone," the grotesque, gargoyle-esque artwork that decorated Akashic temples and "defended" the symbolic labyrinths, based on the real alien monsters the original settlers of Persephone faced.  The four results I came up with were:

• Actual monsters
• "Time Shadows," spirits of alternate timelines that dissolved the "reality" of those they came into contact with
• A corrupted bloodline of the Sabines
• An alien race

Of the four, the fourth by far seems to have the most traction and the third the least, which I find a bit of a shame, as it represents a unique set of customization options for Sabine players.  The first two don't get much discussion but provide interesting possible fodder for our design.

What we get if we look at the total collection of creatures are something not dissimilar from the fae, which fits the Skairos-as-ultra-terrestrials: we have the Skairos themselves as the seelie/unseelie lords and ladies, their monsters as their hounds, the corrupted bloodline as their changelings and the time shadows as an expression of their otherworldly nature.

Let's explore the ideas in more detail, but set aside the idea of a corrupted bloodline for now (our purpose here is to express new possible monster stat-blocks for the PCs to face, rather than nuanced player-character options).

The Hounds of the Skairos

This version of the Skairos space monster is a strange, dark-skinned creature, all long, lean limbs and an eyeless face dominated by a large, fanged maw that scuttles in the shadows of the caverns beneath Persephone.

The original Devil of Persephone is probably the most obvious: some sort of bestial hound-thing that raced through the labyrinthine caverns beneath Persephone, devouring colonists.  They were stealthy, preferred the shadows of the Labyrinth, had spectacular sensory abilities, and had a hallucinogenic venom that made the target "bright" to psychic senses (like their own).

Each interpretation of the Skairos was meant to be the possible interpretation for the beginning of the Akashic Order, and the venom of the Skairos, here, was meant to be that which gave the first oracles their first push into greater heights of temporal awareness.  I still like the idea of the venom, but at this point, I think the idea that the Skairos are intelligent agents is pretty central to their role in the setting.  They may have beasts, but they are not beasts.

The Shades of the Skairos

This version of the Skairos space monster is a hungry, dangerous, ghostly apparition that manifests as a dark haze of smokey shadows.  It represents either a manifestation of the dangerous astral energies the infuse the caverns of Persephone, or a dangerous fragment of a foreign timeline trying to draw people into it.  In this latter, improper use of temporal travel (see the “Secrets of the Skairos”) could result in someone “trapped outside of time” and becoming one of these time shadows.  At the GM’s discretion, should such a time shadow gather enough “temporal energy” by destroying enough people, it might manifest as a real being, a piece of lost time that has pushed itself into our universe.

 The Shades of the Skairos are were we first start to  get our idea of the Skairos-as-irruptors, beings who have "fallen outside of time" or who were never part of our timeline to begin with, seeking to find a away to force themselves in.  I find this a much more compelling idea, similar to the Ramices of Dungeon Fantasy or, of course, the Irruptors of the Madness Dossier.  Who doesn't like a fragment of a broken timeline trying to slip its way into ours as a monster?

I think these are definitely worth exploring, though we'll need to address the differences between a temporal shade, a hyperdimensional being, and a ghost and if that's a distinction worth making, but I find that intangible beings are becoming more common in Psi-Wars, as are the tools for defeating them, so it's less of a problem to more blatantly include them, especially if we allow the Akashic Order to have special means of protecting against their malign influence.

If we include all three at the same time, the Shades might not be "proper skairos," but represent their enemies, or their exiles, or their recruits, trying to wend their way in.  They could, in fact, represent all sorts of things pushing at the thin, temporal boundaries found within the labyrinths.

The Faces of the Skairos

Ancient, and often fallen, alien races clutter the galaxy.  While the arm of the galaxy where humanity developed has a paucity of aliens, that doesn’t mean no such aliens exist.  Aliens could certainly have colonized the stars, had their wars and then fallen long before humanity ever reached them.

The Skairos could be one such race.  In this version, the Skairos have innate, racial ESP and perfected its use centuries ago.  They predicted their own fall, the rise of humanity, and the one hope their people had of weathering the Coming Storm: teaching humanity their art of deep time and guiding them over the hurdles that it would cause.

If you ask a Psi-Wars die hard "who are the Skairos," this is the answer they would give.  They are a secret race of Espers who lurk within the labyrinth and pull the strings of the Akashic Order. They're the only option directly included on the blog, making them about as canonical as they can get.

The original idea behind them was that they were just a particularly psychic race, not especially different from the Ranathim or the Keleni.  They've grown in stature and importance to match the Eldoth and, like the Eldoth, deserve a bit of a buff from "50 point racial template" to "OMG RUN!"

In my mind, they have changed from "Miraluka expies" to "ultraterrestrial conspirators who may have once ruled a part of the galaxy and sought to manipulate mankind through the Akashic Order, and can still be found in the Labyrinth."  For example, what do you think my players expect to find in the Labyrinth beneath the botanical asteroids of the Orochi Belt?  Those asteroids, the Veridian Field, used to be a planet, Veridian, until something destroyed it.  Who do you think the players think lived on that world when it was destroyed? The answer to both is "The Skairos."  And do they expect them to be yet-another-race?  I doubt it.  "The Skairos" have become, in the minds of my players, a race, and a very powerful race at that.

But what is the character of this new race?  I think they meld the best of the previous two entries: they have a "temporal irruptor" quality of the time shades, and a venomous, predator quality of the Skairosian hounds.  They're dangerous and not be meddled with but you could negotiate with them.

I mention "Utraterrestrials" in conjuction with the Skairos a lot, mainly because they don't come from another world so much as another dimension, or seem to at least draw their power and nature from things beyond our cosmic boundaries.  But I think the "fae" aspects of Ultra-Terrestrials fit too.  I don't see the Skairos with ridiculously advanced technology.  Instead, I see them as wielding comparable technology to what the modern galaxy has, though it might seem anachronistically out of date, like they resemble the Maradonians of their height at the times of the Alexian Dynasty more than they do a modern noble, in the same way that we expect a "fae" to look medieval rather than modern.  We might expect them to be tricky and deceptive, which fits their motif as conspirators.  They are dark mirrors of humanity, possibly even projections of our own psyche, or the results of our ultimate evolution projecting back in time to help direct us towards their own creation (and are pissed that the Keleni and their True Communion managed to disrupt their preferred timeline).

One of my readers commented on how they keep their secret, and the obvious answer is a "Morphology Inducer" from GURPS Monster Hunters 5, some device that hides the Skairos' true form and allows them to blend in as humans.  Their penchant for veils might be because their morphology inducers don't hide their eyes (and perhaps their teeth and perhaps their shadows) especially well.  They might not even look human, and we only think they look like eyeless humans because that's what we see with the morphology inducer which leaves open all sorts of interesting options for what they are as creatures.

I see three broad categories of Skairos to play with, especially if we treat them as "dark mirrors" of the Maradonian breed of humanity: the Skairosian Knight, the Skarosian Witch, and the Skairosian Lord.

The Knight is, of course, a dark mirror for the Maradonian Knight: an armored warrior wielding a force sword (or, perhaps, a crystal/glass blade?) who fights with one of the Maradonian styles, only differently, and in particular uses time-manipulating powers (similar to the Watcher at the Edge of time) to gain an advantage on his foes.

The Witch is, of course, a dark mirrors for the Akashic Oracle.  They would be female Skairos hidden behind veils who tell their knights what to do and offer them support via broader time-manipulation powers.

The Lords would represent the Maradonian lords or the Alexian dynasts.  They would be rare "super-bosses," the beings in the deepest parts of the labyrinth who represent the culmination of a great hunt.  There might even be different, competing factions of Skairos, each serving their particular lord, whose psychic power and physical stature might push at the bounds of what it means to be "human-like."

What Dwells Below

One last comment: I don't think everything in the Labyrinth should be "Skairos."  They created the labyrinth and rule them (or at least ruled them).  But twisted psionic energy has leaked into the labyrinth and corrupted them in the many dark aeons since the Skairos last walked the galaxy unimpeded.  Today, there are likely other monstrous beings who wander the labyrinth.  These might be standard ecological invaders, such as random space beasts who made burrows in the labyrinth or raiders who took refuge within.  There might be ghosts or the results of Broken Communion's twisting influence in the bowels of the more monstrous parts of the Labyrinth.

But what killed the Skairos? What emptied their worlds of the race? Against what do the Skairos move in the shadows? Are some of these "great enemy" lurking within the labyrinth, and are they want the Skairos sharpen humanity to be a weapon against?