I never wish to speak ill of a colleague, but I've just returned from a visit with Brother de Sourta. And I must say that what he's currently working on - with dogged persistence - is, well... it's disturbing.

Marnio Carno Fraga, Sceraisian Agnoscio, 2670 AoR

B

Larval Injection

Clutch Borers

Waxen Polyspores

Clinging to Life

What price is the heartbeat of a few stray travelers when the prize to be grasped is eternal life?

Nilton de Sourta, Sceraisian Agnoscio, 2679 AoR

Human Experiments

Butchery

First Daeman

omination is the process of creating a daeman from the near-dead remains of a person whose head has literally exploded due to the hatching of clutch borer larvae. It is one of the most reviled practices on the planet and is done almost exclusively by the outlaw "scientists" known as the Agnoscio . The result of bomination - a living, breathing daeman - is one of the most disturbing creatures that has ever been witnessed in casterway society.Borer injection has been an unfortunate reality of casterway life for nearly as long as there have been casterways . There are many different species of borers and they all have the common trait of injecting their larvae inside the cranium of unsuspecting hosts. Although the results of this affliction can vary slightly, depending upon the particular species that has done the injecting, the end result is always the same - eventually, the host's head (quite literally) explodes, and a new generation of winged, adult, airborne borers are unleashed upon the world. Unsurprisingly, the result of this horrific fate was, up to a certain point, always fatal. And quite frankly, given the catastrophic damage inflicted by this process, the victim's death is probably the closest thing in the planet's natural realm to "mercy", and it probably would always have remained as such - were it not for the Agnoscio In 2662 AoR Agnoscio Nilton de Sourta noticed that not all borer victims died in an identical way. Specifically, those who had been stung by the particular species known as the clutch borer tended to live on after the explosion, sometimes for minutes, but occasionally as long as an hour. Given that the victims of every other species of borer couldn't even survive for mere seconds after the trauma, he found this peculiarity to be worthy of further study.What he found was that clutch borers harbor a significant population of a fungus known as the waxen polyspore . When they inject their larvae, they also inject a generous portion of this spore. This seems to be a symbiotic evolutionary adaptation, as the spore helps to "pre-digest" brain matter, which in turn helps the larvae to grow and metamorphose into their adult form. The spore also has a curious side effect on human biology. While it is converting large portions of tissue to a goopy slime (that will eventually be consumed by the larvae), it also forms a thick shell around the area it has colonized. This means that, even while it is utterly destroying the host's brain, it is creating a crude form of natural tourniquet around the affected area. In practical terms, this means that victims suffer significantly less blood loss after the explosion. It also means that, when the violent rupture finally occurs (as gruesome as that may be), the damage is actually more localized and "contained" than it is in hosts that have been stung by other types of borer.When the cranium of a clutch borer host has exploded, there is almost always some degree of brain stem still intact. Frequently, there is even more brain left over than simply the stem. Furthermore, this remaining portion of brain matter, along with whatever sections of the head-and-face that were not ejected by the pressure, are, ironically, somewhat "protected" by the calcified shell that has formed under the fungal sac. It's this feature that allows clutch borer victims to actually survive for many minutes after the catastrophic rupture. Whereas the victims of other borers die almost instantaneously once their head has exploded, clutch borer victims often writhe and twitch on the floor, for some time after the event, before they finally pass away. It was in this torturous, lingering phase that de Sourta sensed an opportunity. For the next 19 years, he commenced an unconscionable series of experiments. And given that the Agnoscio are typically keen to record all the results of any experiments they might conduct, many subsequent researchers have been both enlightened and sickened by the knowledge and the techniques that are codified in his voluminous journals.Even by Agnoscio standards, de Sourta's research facility was particularly remote. Nestled deep in the wilds of the Silent Jongle , he had no problem conducting all manner of aberrant experiments without arousing the suspicions of any local authorities. And amongst its menagerie of frightening fauna, the Silent Jongle is well known for its overflowing population of clutch borers. So his only scarce resource was test subjects - but he also proved to be adept at finding such people. For even in the remote reaches of northern Isleprimoton , there are always stray vamps and itinerant day laborers, desperate to perform almost any task in return for a solid meal and a bit of shelter.Once he cultivated a steady flow of research subjects (who were all, unwittingly, stung by clutch borers and then kept around until the inevitable trauma occurred), he reasoned that these victims could be "saved", even after the horrific rupture, if only he could find a way to immediately apply his surgical skills to the writhing sufferers before they died. Given the state of medical knowledge in his day, accompanied with the details recorded in his journal, most cognoscenti surmise that his "surgical skills" were more akin to "butchery skills". But any doubts about his talents were not shared by de Sourta himself, and he proceeded to doggedly pursue his objective through trial-and-error over the next 19 years on no less than 241 hapless subjects.Many such tales from Agnoscio lore are as pointless as they are brutal. Often, the rogue "researcher" harms (or kills) countless souls before he-or-she finally passes away - having achieved absolutely nothing. Incredibly, de Sourta's tale is not one of these examples. In 2681 AoR , he perfected a repeatable process that yielded the first known daeman in casterway history. After witnessing the violent rupture of his subject's cranium, he immediately swooped in and performed a series of gruesome surgical procedures that did, in fact, "save" the life of the victim. Of course, "save" is a subjective term. For while the individual did indeed go on to live - for 33 more years - he was a grotesque shadow of his former self. This victim was also the first instance of something that no other casterway has, in good conscience, ever labeled as human. de Sourta had succeeded - in the most gruesome way - in creating the world's first daeman