[ Outsiders > Fiends > Parochial > Kyton/Velstrac ]
Kyton / Velstrac
Velstrac (this is their own name for their race)
Home Plane: Originally Acheron or perhaps Baator, but mostly now inhabit the Shadowfell
Alignment: Lawful Evil
Themes: Sadomasochistic surgeons, seekers of transcendence through exquisite pain, sculptors of flesh
Philosophy: These self-styled artists of agony view suffering as a path to existential perfection. Not just the suffering of others mind, for they also have a morbid fascination with masochism, body modification and self-mutilation.
There’s controversy about the origins of these fiends in graybeard circles. Certainly, the kytons are an ancient race, who may even predate the baatezu. Some legends place their origin in Baator, others claim it was Acheron, and indeed there are secretive enclaves of kytons scattered across both of these planes. However, some kind of schism shattered the race millennia ago, and most kytons retreated to the netherworld of the Shadowfell, becoming ever-more secretive and insidious. These cutters started to refer to themselves as the velstrac, although this seems to be more of a cultish mindset than a physical difference between them and the kytons who remained in the Outer Planes. The kytons who remained in Baator forged strategic alliances with the baatezu, sparing them from the lash of the slavers’ chain—not that some kytons would object to that, frankly. Kyton-baatezu agreements tend to be tenuous at best though, solely based on mutual benefit. The kytons of Minauros make the finest chains in the multiverse, and the kytons of Avalas operate some of the most widespread slaving rings with combatants reconstituted from the endless battlefiends. With the ever-present demand for Blood War cannon-fodder, the baatezu can grin and bear the kytons’ strange obsessions, so long as they continue to provide warm, or even cold, bodies for the War.
The velstrac of the Shadowfell are still be considered fiends, although they don’t strictly come from the Lower Planes, and banishing one will send it back to the Plane of Shadow rather than the Outer Planes. The velstracs identify as amoral ‘scientists’ (their term) who dissect mortal fear and pain to create ‘living artworks’ which explore concepts of suffering and trauma. Almost in a twisted reflection of the eladrin, velstracs each embody an individual aesthetic of pain and loss. The lampadarius kyton is fascinated by darkness, and cuts away its own chain-wrapped body to replace flesh with limbs formed from shadowstuff. The apocrisiarius is obsessed with truth, and will invent the most creatively horrible of tortures to wring it out of unlucky victims. Perhaps most awful of all are the eremites, who scour the planes seeking the perfect body part to steal from another creature and add to their own wynorrific carcasses.
Paragons: There are said to be nine velstrac demagogues who rule shadowy cities of pulsating flesh in the darkest parts of the Shadowfell.
More chant on the kytons coming soon…
Canonwatch: †from the Pathfinder setting; the original kytons from Planescape were expanded into a whole deliciously nasty race by Pathfinder, and I’ve blended the lore here, splitting them into two sort-of factions depending on whether the relocated to the Shadowfell or not.