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Kasadeya
Trigger warning — this sahkil has themes of parasitic wasps and oligarchs, so if you have concerns about content like that, I suggest you give this one a miss.
The Queen Sangreal, The Royal Parasite (planar sahkil tormentor [she/they] / NE) â€
Portfolio: Industry, parasitism, seduction
Realm: Ethereal / Xibalba / the Black Pyramid / the Sour Hive
Alignment: Neutral Evil
Kasadeya [kassa-DAY-uh] is a sahkil tormentor of exploitation, and predatory hierarchy. She embodies the nightmare of being slowly ground down and consumed by those who call themselves your betters, who also demand that you thank them for giving you their attention. The Royal Parasite represents the insatiable hunger of oligarchs and aristocrats made flesh. She might be beautiful at first glance, and her touch might be ecstatic—but she becomes hideous the moment one sees what it takes to keep her looking that beautiful.
The true body of Kasadeya is a hideous mass of buzzing wasps, constantly crawling over one another. This swarm is able to extrude venomous limbs and drain life from those around it. She veils this bodily horror in illusions, instead taking on the form of a beautiful, powerful, and impeccably desirable humanoid queen with alabaster white skin and glowing golden eyes. It’s not just physical ugliness she hides behind a mask mind. While she projects an aura of refined grace and elegance, this charming personality is actually a predatory adaptation too—as the saying goes after all, you attract more wasps with honey than with vinegar.
Kasadeya’s philosophy is that an ideal world is one where a privileged and deserving few feed on the oppressed many. She guides her cultists to use charm, deception, and a tissue of lies as the tools of effective leadership. Exploitation, dressed up nice and pretty as order, apparently beneficial to all, until you scratch the surface and see the rot beneath, at least.
An example might make things horribly clearer. Imagine a royal court where the queen holds court and insists that everything must always look perfect. Her courtiers fall over each other to try and impress her, but she dismisses their efforts with single words or looks of disdain. She wants the whole world arranged around her desires, with dependents, flatterers, enthralled lovers, social climbers, and the disposable masses all reinforcing the lie that predation is just the privilege of the naturally superior. The most favoured of her entourage frequently end up disappearing, however, because in order to replenish the swarm of wasps that makes up her body, Kasadeya must use warm bodies as incubators for her fiendish eggs. This happens often enough for other courtesans to have noticed, but they always seem to fall for the obvious lies that they have moved on upwards to a better place, a secret role, or become a foreign ambassador for the sahkil.
Unlike cruder sahkils who thrive on panic or despair, Kasadeya cultivates a more intimate type of dread: the fear of wanting the very thing that is actually ruining you. Survivors of her embrace describe it as ecstatic even while they come to realise it is destroying them. This is what makes her doctrine especially vile, because she uses pleasure and social pressure to make cutters accept their own exploitation.
Her cult appeals to seducers, deceivers, and to those who possess unearned wealth or station. Kasadeya flatters them with the idea that they deserve their exalted position, and the exploitation they depend upon is the natural ordering of the world. Meanwhile, they must keep the lower ranks just broken enough to serve, while tempting them with the dream that one day they will be able to feed on someone else in turn.
Her realm, the Sour Hive, is a part of the shared realm of the sahkil in the Deep Ethereal. Kasadeya rules over a decadent palace-hive with glittering halls and perfumed air. Here she hosts sumptuous banquets, where her ever-obedient courtiers make polite conversation with sahkils who at least pretend to be allies of the Royal Parasite, and ambitious vampires and vermin lords petition to become a part of her fawning retinue. Visitors are warned that while everything might appear genteel and civilised, there’s a good chance that they will be seduced by the queen or one of her courtesans—and end up incubating fiendish vermin within themselves until the relationship quite literally tears them apart.
Edicts: Use charm as your tool and beauty as your armour, accumulate wealth and power through the labour of others, keep your lessers dependent and grateful for their shackles
Anathema: Share power or wealth without extracting something more valuable in return, reveal your true nature before it is too late to matter, treat the powerless as equals
Source and Stat Block: Originally homebrewed by the Creature Codex [PF1e], expanded by Jon Winter-Holt and partly inspired by both Meryl Streep’s portrayal of Miranda in the Devil Wears Prada, and also billionaires.