The Etchers, led by Hicest Corpus are a Doomduard coterie who fancy themselves as artists. Or, at least that’s how they prefer to think of themselves. Although only a few of them have any real talent, they’re all certainly self-centred enough to qualify. The members of the Etchers distance themselves from the rest of the faction both politically and physically. At the urging of their leader, a succubus who calls herself Hicest Corpus, all of these Sinkers have taken over a small tenement in the Lower Ward and turned it into a commune of sorts. The living quarters are on the upper levels, while the ground floor holds a studio – The Parlour Noxious – where they paint with acid and tattoo with poison onto a canvas of living flesh. Then they sit back and watch the world decay.
While this may seem to be a rather limited view of Entropy’s progress, the Etchers are quickly gaining some measure of influence within the faction. Painful though it may seem, entropic body art’s becoming all the rage in the cutthroat world of Sigil fashion, especially with the fiends, who’ll do anything for a bit of corruption. ‘Course, the fact that poisons don’t affect them might have something to do with it—there’s been many a fatality amongst trendy young Sinkers who’ve asked for a toxic tattoo they just couldn’t survive with. This popularity with the fashionably conscious of Sigil makes the Etchers one of the faction’s most (currently) reliable sources of income.
Still, if you’re a tiefling with a hardy constitution (and a sick imagination) or a veteran fiend from the Blood War with a few days leave and a pocket full of the shiny stuff, drop by the Parlour Noxious and let Hicest ask “What’s your poison, cutter?”
Hicest Corpus
(Planar succubus tanar’ri thief [she/her] / Doomguard / CE)
This fiend, allied with the Destroyers fraction, is one of the Doomguard’s rising young stars. (Although in this case, “young” refers to how long she’s been a member of the faction; age is mostly irrelevant to the planeborn.) In the three years Hicest has been a Doomguard, she’s used her fiendish charisma and natural charms (as well as the occasional magical one) to gather together and lead a group of the faction’s younger and more impressionable members. Although this group – called the Etchers – has become something of a political entity within the overall structure of the Doomguard faction, it’s more of a street gang than anything else.
Hicest Corpus has three goals for the Etchers. The first, which she readily describes to the general public, is to promote her personal views on the acceleration of Entropy. The tanar’ri prefers to keep such efforts focused on the personal level. As befits a succubus, she advocates a hedonistic path to self-destruction. Currently, she is using the art of tattooing, particularly with destructive and toxic inks, as the means to the ultimate end of the multiverse. The second goal is that the succubus simply wishes to have a group readily available that is willing to answer to her every whim. This manipulation of the group for her own personal pleasures is the main reason why the Etchers aren’t more influential than they are. The final goal is one that the fiend is keeping to herself. Hicest wishes to corrupt and destroy the entire faction from the inside out. She hopes to eventually pull all of the namers and factotums under her wings and thus rot the base of support for the Doomguard and bring the whole faction crashing down.
The succubus is quite proud – vain, actually – of her skills as an artist, pickpocket, and seductress. As such, she covers her body only in a collection of tattooed designs and symbols that represent her various corrupted victims, destroyed lovers, and stolen treasures. The chant says that some of the tattoos are the souls of victims or lovers, and that she has added their skills and knowledge to her own. Although she will steal anything, Hicest has a fondness for art, specifically body decorations. If a piece of jewelry catches her eye, she’ll take it – often with the body part it was worn on still attached to it. Even the tattoos of others aren’t safe. Her quarters are home to a grisly gallery of tattooed skins, pierced ears, be-ringed fingers and the like taken from their owners and hung on the succubus’ walls.
Sources: Jon Winter-Holt and Ken Lipka