Vesket
King of the iruxi of the iruxi village in the Greenbelt.
The possession
According to Xiat, Vesket has been acting oddly and appears to be possessed, possibly by an evil spirit. Under his direction the village has turned to actively hunting humans - which accounts for the “altercations” with the local populace that Kairos had heard reported, and which does not match the iruxi disposition otherwise. Iruxi are patient by doctrine, generally willing to trade stories and forge alliances, and not aggressive without cause.
The village had decent relations with the local populace before this.
The cause is unknown. Xiat raised the spirit in the village’s mound in the same conversation, but says that entity is separate from the change in the king. The creature in the mound was killed in Session-27 and the question is still open.
Whether the possession is literal, or a change of temperament being read as one, remains unconfirmed.
History with the Party
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Session-27 Vesket walked in on the party inside the mound, moments after they killed the wisp-like creature there, and asked what the commotion was, what the noise had been, and who they were. He gave his name.
Notably, he asked. He did not raise an alarm and did not attack on sight - despite finding armed humans in his settlement’s ancestral chamber, and despite having ordered his people to hunt humans. Either the hunting orders are less absolute than they sounded, or something about his condition has already changed.
Djacquess talked, using Intimidate. Vesket was convinced by the remains of the wisp and accepted the party’s account, then asked them to leave immediately so he could fix his mistakes in the village.
What actually happened
The morning after the fight, Xiat told the party that Vesket had been growing steadily more aggressive, more hostile and more fearful over a long period, and that it began after he started spending time in the mound. Before that he was a good king.
That settles the order: the creature came first. It did not move in on an existing crisis - it created one. And it did not possess him in any literal sense. It fed on him: a thing that lives on fear kept a king alone in a cold room and made him frightened over months, and a frightened king turns his people outward. The hunts were the harvest.
”Possessed” was the village’s word for a change they could see but not explain. Xiat’s earlier belief that the two problems were separate was the single thing they had wrong, and understandably so.
This also means Vesket should genuinely recover, and that “let me fix my mistakes” was very likely sincere.
Status
Vesket acknowledges mistakes and has said he will put the village right.
Kairos was not wholly convinced at the time:
- He conceded under intimidation, not persuasion. A king leaned on by armed humans in his own ancestral chamber has grounds to resent it later, and it hands anyone who wants this village hostile a serviceable story.
- ”Fix his mistakes” is unverifiable from outside. It may mean calling off the hunts; it may mean managing who knew.
- The party was removed from the village at precisely the point where they could have checked.
Kairos has asked Xiat to stay in contact and warn her if he backslides.
Djacquess wanted to spread rumours that Vesket had been fooled by a simple illusion and banished the party out of embarrassment. Kairos asked him to hold off - and Xiat’s account the next morning makes that story flatly untrue as well as unkind. Kairos intends to return in a month or so to open proper diplomatic relations.
Notes
- Iruxi settlements are dense with ancestral remains, and veneration causes primal power to pool in those bones. A spirit problem in an iruxi village is not an outside intrusion by default - it may be something that belongs there.
- Precedent: the Sootscale kobolds were driven to hostility by the curse of Old Sharptooth while Tartuk manipulated the tribe from within. A leader turned hostile by an apparent supernatural influence has happened in this region before, and it had a mundane hand behind it.
- Nyrissa was found to be the power behind Hargulka in Session-26. A second local leader being pushed into war is worth weighing against that.
- The party was smuggled past him by Xiat. Anything said in front of Vesket about how they got in exposes Xiat.