Vindicator

“Never mistake a Vindicator for a savior. He may return your daughter’s soul, or lay it gently to rest. Then he will spend the next days teaching the demon who sold it how pain sounds when it begs.”

— Asha the Chronomancer

Among the Corrs beyond the Wall, few warriors are more feared than the Vindicators. They are scouts of Therasya's outermost frontiers, hunters of soul crystals, and hardened wanderers who cross ruined passes, abyssal roads, black markets, and corpse-haunted valleys in search of stolen mortal essence. Their flesh often bears some stain of corruption. Their wounds turn to ash-colored scars, their eyes can see in the deepest darkness, and their skin is hardened like cracked stone. Yet they are not slaves of Chaos. Through brutal discipline, pain rites, and deep ancestral hatred, they have trained their bodies to allow corruption to alter them physically without surrendering their will. The result is terrifying: warriors of immense strength, impossible fortitude, and endurance beyond mortal measure. No mortal is eternally impervious to corruption; thus, when they sense the abyssal grip nearing their soul, they dedicate their death to one last deed against their sworn demon enemies.

The Code of the Hunt

Vindicators abide by Creation’s law, but they are as removed from goodness as a Helkorian executioner. They keep contracts, honor prices, and obey the codes of their order with rigid certainty, yet tolerance rarely guides their hands. Men of the South sometimes hire them to recover the soul crystals of lost loved ones or comrades, so that the trapped souls may be freed and reach the Pool. A Vindicator will accept such work if the terms are clear, and few creatures are better suited to hunting soul merchants through lands where ordinary men would vanish before the last rays of light. They know the smell of soul glass, the tricks of demon brokers, and the hidden routes by which stolen souls are carried toward Othmog, Helkor, and darker markets still.

They despise those who trade in souls.

The Reckoning

Their hatred for demons is absolute. Vindicators hunt soul merchants, fiends, corrupt priests, and mortal traffickers with merciless devotion, not because they pity the innocent, but because they despise those who trade in souls. When they catch such prey, death is seldom swift. They believe demons must be paid with the same coin they forced upon the world: fear, pain, humiliation, and the slow knowledge that no bargain will save them. To the grieving, a Vindicator may appear as grim justice. To demons, he is the sound of chains being dragged back toward the slaver.