Deopa's guest

Every other hero in the ancestral catalogue is a Wanderer, a foreign soul carrying a heart demon. Deopa's guest is the exception. It was born in the Deep. It has no foreign soul and no demon lodged in a released core. It is one of the shapes that belong to Deopa, the Deep.

The Deep lies inside the god, beneath the Hallow's remade ground and outside it. When a Turning ends and the world is unmade, Deopa, the Deep keeps his guest. That keeping saves nothing else: the Hallow's buildings, armies and living people still perish. Nor is the guest one of the natives' dead who wait at the Deep's threshold. Those are remnants; the guest is a creature of the Deep itself.

It comes up only one way: through The Deep bargain. It asks no pay in geld and no ordinary upkeep. Instead, each turn its employer spends, the bargain takes mana from the kingdom. Some turns it takes more, some less. The card shows the range. Sealborn who have made the bargain say the mana goes down into the Deep, where the guest's host keeps it.

It serves in Umbra, yet its strikes are fire. On the ring of affinities the dead burn, so Umbra feeds Pyre. It grows stronger and harder to kill the longer it serves.

Player-visible facts