Role in Its Society:
Sythriss does not rule kingdoms—she inhabits the fractures between them. Wherever ambition festers and restraint weakens, she embeds herself as an advisor, oracle, or benefactor. Courts fall into decadence, merchant princes become obsessed with excess, and cult leaders suddenly gain impossible influence, all without ever realizing they serve a single, patient will.
Among monsters and outcasts, Sythriss is treated with wary reverence. She trades secrets instead of favors, debts instead of gold. Even demons hesitate to bargain too freely with her, for she remembers every promise and enforces them not through violence, but through exposure.
In mortal folklore, Sythriss is remembered as a curse wearing silk. Cities touched by her influence often appear prosperous—until the moment they collapse under their own indulgence. When she leaves, she leaves nothing burning… only hollowed.
Appearance Description:
Sythriss’s upper body is unmistakably humanoid—regal, composed, and unnervingly beautiful. Her skin bears a faint opalescent sheen, her features sharp but inviting, and her eyes glow faintly gold when she speaks truths meant to wound. Her voice is low, melodic, and deliberate, each word placed with surgical intent.
From the waist down, her body transitions seamlessly into a long, serpentine coil covered in smooth, dark-scaled hide patterned with subtle metallic veining. Her tail is powerful and precise, capable of coiling around stone pillars or crushing a body without disrupting her calm posture above.
She adorns herself with layered jewelry—gilded collars, arm rings, and chains that drape along her coils like offerings rather than restraints. When she moves, there is no haste—only inevitability.
Backstory:
Sythriss was once bound to a desert empire whose rulers prized pleasure above duty. She did not conquer them; she listened. Within a generation, the empire collapsed beneath debt, betrayal, and excess, its rulers too distracted to notice the slow tightening of the coil.
Rather than perish with the ruin she engineered, Sythriss learned the value of subtlety. She abandoned crowns and temples, embedding herself instead within smaller power structures—trade guilds, noble houses, clandestine cults—where her influence could persist undetected for centuries.
Legends claim Sythriss feeds not on flesh, but on want. The more someone desires—power, love, absolution—the more sustenance she draws from them. Those who escape her grasp often find themselves empty, their ambitions burned away, unable to explain what they lost.
