Mordant Custodian of the Unbalanced Scale of Justice

Game: Orichalcum Handbasket

Mordant Custodian of the Unbalanced Scale of Justice was an Exalt of the First Age. His soul was later reincarnated as the Twilight caste monk Duricorre, Reverberations of the Scale's Imbalance.

Exaltation and Expatriation

The outline of Mordant Custodian of the Unbalanced Scale of Justice stood starkly against the setting sun, casting long shadows that were set to dance by the flames still licking the charred bones of the farm-stead. An exhale of gasses from his facial assembly signified his disgust at the scene, a rare sign of emotion that few would even recognize beyond the constant thrum of machinery beneath his Soul-steel carapace. This gesture, however, did not go unnoticed by The Corundum Drake Rampant in The Sun's Ruddy Dawn. Mordant sensed his young pupil shift his weight restlessly, eager to be off in pursuit of the forces responsible for the carnage at hand. Such haste was inimical to the truth, however, and Mordant had learned long ago the cost of haste. It was then, too, that he had seen the handiwork of the Primordials' mortal servitors. In Autochthonia, where the Unconquered Sun cast no shadows. In the Realm of Brass and Shadow, where his haste in pursuit of truth and justice cost him his home.

Mordant was one of the earliest and most promising of the Alchemical Exalted decanted by the Sodalites of Jarish. A small and religiously devout nation, the Populat of Jarith heaped praises upon him as he was educated in their ways. Created as a member of the Soulsteel Caste, Mordant was taken under the figurative wing of Iron Hand of Justice, Jarith's first and greatest Exalted still functioning autonomously. Iron Hand instructed Mordant on the nature of law, justice, and truth as he schooled the younger Exalt in investigative and combat protocols. It was not long before Mordant joined the regular patrols to root out the dangers that lurked in Jarith's shadows, and it was here that Jarith first came to know that not all was right within the walls of his beloved home.

Mordant still remembers that fateful day when the shadows of Jarith turned against him. He and Iron Hand had been dispatched to investigate a failing in one of the manufacturing plants, and the mysterious disappearance of the workers sent to repair the malfunction. As the two Soulsteel Caste approached the plant, all was uncannily still (an unnatural state for a city of constant industry). The Populat workers were nowhere to be found, either having fled the premises or having gone...somewhere within.

As Mordant breached a service entrance, his booted heel easily sending the merely 6 inch thick iron door flying, he and his mentor swiftly advanced in a Delta formation. The service lights activated by their Sensory Charms swept across the inner expanse, at first doing little to penetrate the acrid smoke that hung in the air. An unmistakable scent of death, however, could not be so easily masked. As the two swiftly descended to the main floor of the plant, drawing closer to the main assembly line, the scent of the stench was no longer difficult to ascertain - mangled bodies had stopped up the machinery. The bodies were shredded and bloodied, faces twisted in expressions of unimaginable pain.

Fortunate, perhaps, that Exalts gazed upon this scene of horror and not mere mortals. The rigidity of his training and the depth of his own personal Clarity allowed Mordant to survey the depravity unmoved, except by a crystallized sense of duty to avenge these people. It was this focused and collected state of mind that allowed Mordant to realize they were not alone among the still-living inhabitants of this room. Iron Hand silently transmitted his acknowledgment that they were being observed, and swiftly spun to fire into the darkness. A cry that reverberated almost mechanically broke the air as the bolt of Iron Hand's crossbow pinned a robed form to corrugated outer wall. A second figure swiftly ducked down a stairwell into the darkened sub-level of the factory and Mordant sped swiftly in pursuit. As he did so, Iron Hand transmitted to him audio and visual footage as he uncloaked and interrogated his target.

The image that came through as Mordant pursued his prey through the twisting guts of the facility was of a degenerate, pitiable creature that may have once been a man...but had defiled its body with abhorrent technology. Wispy wires grew in patches from an otherwise bald head that gleamed of metal in patches, as if these non-organic additions were a viral infection rather than the pure work of the Doctors and their prosthetic enhancements. It spoke blasphemies in a tinny, partly mechanical voice as Iron Hand questioned it. Discovering little of use beyond praises to the "Old Gods of Creation" and "The Void", Iron Hand mercifully ended the abomination's life and the image cut out, clearly indicating Iron Hand was working to join Mordant in his pursuit.

Calling up a technical readout of the plant, Mordant would have grimly smiled if he hadn't replaced that function with more useful mechanisms. His target, it seemed, was trapping itself - they were headed towards a service tunnel that led to a disused generator room, with no further passages beyond. False joy turned to disappointment however, when upon entering the dismal generator room Mordant discovered a waste disposal chute not detailed on the plans had been opened and entered. Grimly, Mordant slid down the chute into a labyrinth of passages that should not have existed.

As part of Mordant's training, he had been given information on every detail or the city-state of Jarith, down to the tiniest rivet on its outer wall. These tunnels and the chute he just came down, therefore, shouldn't exist...but here they were. Jarith's bureaucrats were not known for laxity - there clearly was a reason for their omission. As Mordant continued to speed down the tunnels, he had just finished these thoughts when he noticed something strange...Iron Hand had disappeared from his tactical display. Doubling back, Mordant found a passage previously unnoticed had opened up near the chute he'd originally slid down in...and signs of struggle. Into the waiting blackness Mordant descended, optical sensors gleaming with purpose.

In these labyrinthine depths Mordant became aware of an increased luminosity akin to that generated by Iron Hand's Sensor Charms. Activating Charms of his own to silence the mechanical whir of his own mechanisms and cloak his form, Mordant advanced to stare into a scene of indescribably horror. The tunnel opened into what looked like a crude temple, with rows of shoddy iron benches bolted into place to face an altar upon which his superior was restrained. Iron Hand lay unmoving and unresponsive to sub-sonic hails. His facial assembly had been breached, the lights from his helmet still active and sending garish shadows along the wall of the celebrants at this "ceremony". A robed figure huddled over him, muttering as he fidgeted with Iron Hand's mechanisms. He and all the other figures in the room bore signs of the same unholy fusing with technology, and Mordant watched in disgust as the creature in robes removed wiring and pieces of assemblies from Iron Hand. These pieces in turn were swiftly distributed among those gathered. In zealous rapture the recipients of this grim sacrament inserted these pieces into their own flesh in ways innumerable and abhorrent.

With a cry of righteous fury, Mordant opened fire upon the congregation. The bolts of his arm-mounted auto-cannons, a gift from Divine Minister Ku himself, blazed with essence as they slammed into one twisted form after another, ending their wretched existences. The creature administering to Iron Hand let forth a mechanical screech as it drew back...and to its full height. The oil stained robes were shredded to reveal an elongated spine lined in spindly pincers, topped by a more or less human-ish torso. The Minister moved inhumanly fast in the open chamber, easily dodging Mordant's shots. Realizing that the creature had the advantage here, Mordant withdrew to the labyrinth behind him.

Within the long twisting tunnels Mordant and the abomination strove for what seemed hours, their battle unknown to anyone above. The twisting tunnels limited the creature's mobility and at long last Mordant delivered the killing blow, pinning its metallic skull against a tunnel wall with his booted foot as his cannon spread its still all-too-human brains upon the wall. Shaken from the experience, Mordant called up his map-in-progress of the tunnels and returned to the branch that lead to his fallen comrade...to find it was no longer there. Not only that, but Sensor Charms revealed that the entire section was solid, as if some unknown force had shifted the unholy cathedral and its access tunnel elsewhere. Likewise, the waste chute leading back up to the factory had been sealed entirely.

When Mordant finally found exit from the labyrinthine tunnels it was to find himself curiously in the basement levels of the government offices. An older, more wary Exalt like Iron Hand may have taken pause at this and more carefully considered his next move, but Mordant was young and weary and driven by his sense of Justice to report his findings and the loss of superior...and friend. He ordered the first minor bureaucrat he came across to take him straight to the Lector.

Lector Marin Treyos listened to Mordant's report inscrutably, his right eye gleaming strangely in the low light of the office. Mordant caught the detail but didn't think much of it at the time. At the conclusion of the tale, Treyos stood and wordlessly left the Exalt alone in the room, and when next the door to the office opened it was to reveal an armed detail arriving to put Mordant in restraints! Mordant demanded an explanation to which the Lector coolly responded that Iron Hand of Justice had arrived earlier and already reported...implicating Mordant as a ring leader in efforts by insurgents to destabilize the government! Outraged, yet having full faith that due process would hear him out, Mordant dutifully awaited his trial.

That night Mordant pondered his fate in a holding pen within the depths of the administrative offices. He considered the implications of all he'd seen, and it was slowly dawning on him just how far the reach of this cult he'd uncovered exceeded when he realized that the strange gleam in the Lector's eye was a similar modification to what he'd seen below. As he collated his data with a mix of dismay and horror, he received the last visitor he would ever expect to see. The skeletal form of no less august a personage as Divine Minister Ku himself materialized from the iron wall, his Soul-steel assembly gleaming in the dim light that penetrated the cell.

"My blessed child, I am afraid this would happen...long have I feared, indeed, because I have seen what lurks in the shadows of this city and many others....many many others. This is but a seed for what is to come, I fear, a seed planted from forces beyond Autochthonia that have been nurtured by the very shadow growing within the Heart of the Maker himself.

Long have a strove to convince the other Divine Ministers that agents of an ancient enemy stir among us. But...my cries fall on deaf ears as often I am told my fears are unfounded. I am gravely concerned that the other Divine Ministers no longer hold me in great esteem after we fled Creation...but that is another matter I'm afraid.

I fear your efforts here have done naught but to put a thorn in the side of a very dangerous beast. Even now, servants of the Old Primordials, fallen and degenerate kin to our great Maker, stir against you...and they are well entrenched. They hid among those the Maker took with him into seclusion, and have festered within this Realm of Brass and Shadow. To my dismay, they are bolstered somehow by forces still in Creation. Perhaps agents here may have breached The Seal of Eight Divinities in key locations. I'm afraid the infection has spread too deep for one lone Exalt such as yourself to root out. Though I dread the thought, a champion must be sent into long-abandoned Creation to root out where these wretches are receiving support from. To gather the forces of the Celestial and Terrestrial Exalts, who I in my fear had perhaps unwisely pushed us to separate ourselves from. To gather them and stop this corruption at its source!

I charge you, Mordant Custodian of the Unbalanced Scale of Justice. It was I who named you such, knowing in time you would be my Hand. I will send you as my agent into Creation, and there you will become my Fist. Once the tide of insurgents has been stemmed, our forces within Autochthonia stand a chance against the rot spreading from within.

Join with me now. Say the prayers and mark the sigils as I instruct. Lend your Essence to this grand Protocol I will construct, and you will be pushed through the Seal of Eight Divinities and back into the bosom of Creation."

As the physical construct of the Divine Minister spoke these final words the room began to glow with pale blue light, and Mordant felt a great hum build within his Essence generators. The vibrations worked its way to his Essence chakram outlets. The light focused as if seen through a lens into configurations, circuits, and patterns. The entire room seemed to shake and the air smelt of ozone as a rippling distortion began to build in the center of the confined space. The rippling increased in intensity with the light and the humming as harmonic resonance, powered by Essence and Protocol, opened a rift filled with bluish light. Divine Minister Ku cackled as the rift spread and the light became blinding...and then Mordant was sitting in an expanse of thin green vegetable growth, the surface beneath him strangely giving and non-metallic. As the last of Divine Minister Ku's laughter finished echoing in his aural receptors Mordant gazed upward into the dizzying expanse of sky, something he had never seen before. Instinctively, his servo-motors thrust long spikes into the strangely yielding ground to stabilize him lest he might fall into that limitless expanse above. Crystallized lenses were already polarizing against the bright light of the singular orb that hung overhead, an orb that ancient memories told him was something called a...sun?

Mordant Custodian of the Unbalanced Scale of Justice, Alchemical Exalt of the Soul-Steel Caste, stood in Creation. Alone.

The First Age

Mordant, a gunsmith and Soulsteel Alchemical Exalt, had always had numerous experiments on hand, but he never expected what he came upon that day. He had been experimenting with the properties of Soulsteel and how to attain the greatest firepower from actions and bolts created from it, and became aware that something had gone awry. He had in fact created the mechanism to power an Essence Cannon. As the professional he was, he could not simply throw this idea away, regardless of how dangerous it could be. In his old age, he knew that he himself could not wield them, even though he had been an Exalt for several years. Because of this, he constructed a cache at the ancient site of The Dream of the Sun-Baked Young and buried his creation, The Incandescent Arbiters as They Sit Upon an Earthen Throne. The only person that he notified of the cannons' whereabouts was the Dragon King Knopsen Dhul'tek, as he was the advisor of a Solar Exalt, The Corundum Drake Rampant In The Sun's Ruddy Dawn.