Cheshire Cat

Were one to believe the priests of the Church of Lumaya or the war-bishops of the Sacred Order, every Demonspawn is a depraved worshiper of Siroth. This is not true. Some have turned against him in recent centuries: disappointed by the defeats suffered in the Great Wars, tired of the infernal politicking and brutality of Anathraad, or just wishing for a peaceful life. For his part, the Cheshire Cat – known also as Khessyrkit – abandoned Siroth in the aftermath of the Second Great War. Every inch of Teleria was soaked in blood during that terrible conflict. The meat of corpses fed carrion for months and nourished the soil for a generation. Entire woodlands have grown on some battlefield sites, their roots entwined with the skeletons of the fallen – some of which strain and twitch with Undeath to this day. The Cat had been aligned with Siroth for many a century when he made the decision to abandon him. It had been a long stint, and many Sirothi Firstborn had expected such a betrayal earlier, for even before the Great Divorce the feline-esque Khessyrkit was known for his fickleness and untrustworthy grin. He was a darkly playful creature, who toyed with mortals and immortals alike for what seemed like little more than his own pleasure, before tiring without warning. Many of the Shadow God’s other Firstborn noticed that Khessyrkit didn’t do much in the way of fighting. He was able to disappear at will, appearing to phase in and out of existence. Walls were little barrier to him, and he clawed many a Dwarf to death who considered themselves secure when he did join battle. His powers didn’t protect him from the banishment spell, however. Like other Firstborn fighting for Siroth, he was cast into Anathraad and became a Demon. He was trapped. There was little to do in Anathraad for the Cat besides play with lesser Demons. To protect himself from others, he brokered information – his ability to render himself invisible and teleport, as well as his lack of allegiance to any save Siroth and himself, made him an ideal spy-for-hire. That all changed with the Sin of Dragons, and Siroth’s discovering of a way for his Demons to return to Teleria by implanting their soul into a Telerian body. The Sin had left thousands of Dragonkin soldiers as captives in Anathraad, and all were taken as hosts by Demons, the Cat among them. His feline essence blended with the reptilian form of the Dragonkin body he took, resulting in the creation of a Demonspawn that resembled a spined lizard-tiger. He retained his slippery, trademark grin. Between his transformation into a Demonspawn and his abandoning of Siroth’s cause, the Cheshire Cat went back and forth between Teleria and Anathraad dozens of times. He soaked his paws crimson with Dwarf blood during the fall of their under-empire, teleporting between sealed chambers at will. Nomad hunters of the Krokhan Desert lived in fear of the ‘Bluescale Tiger’ who hunted so many of their kin. He was the bane of mortals and Lightbringers alike during the Second Great War, but Siroth’s eventual defeat finally saw him bored and frustrated. He never returned to Anathraad. He was well known enough to be hunted by the Lightbringers, who were less easily fooled by his invisibility and better able to anticipate where he teleported next. The Cat fled into Durham Forest to evade them, where he met beings who were even harder to elude. The Insect Lords could have killed him, but did not. They saw his annoyance with Siroth and had no love for the Shadow God themselves. They also knew the value of a Demonspawn servant, especially one so sneaky and cunning as the Cat. They presented themselves to him, impressing upon him the need to thwart Siroth, telling him more of their nature than they had to any other previously to win his trust, then proposing he serve them, with full liberty to fulfill his tasks as he saw fit and freedom to walk where he willed when he had no mission. The Cat agreed – the Insect Lords were powerful creatures, tricksy in a way he greatly respected, and like them he did not want Teleria to fall. Many centuries later, the Insect Lords ordered the Cheshire Cat to reclaim knowledge and treasures the Queen of Hearts had stolen. It was they who directed him to Alice the Wanderer. An ally in the Sacred Order could yield them much useful information, and they themselves could not leave the forest, so intertwined were their souls into it. For his part, Khessyrkit was greatly entertained by this task. The Queen’s impulsivity and the Mad Hatter’s insanity made for a combination in his enemies no one could be bored by.