The N'allai Wysae-roja, also sometimes called the Black Demon, encompasses the most frightening aspects and villainous mistruths surrounding the One who Holds the Key, and refer specifically to Ash, the bestial assassin created at the Sacrifice of Korah in 230AH. An unnatural, bloodthirsty half-beast by all accounts, it appears in various forms throughout history, all of which are mostly or entirely false, and are the key source of the One's dark infamy. N'allai Wysae-roja translates roughly into "fell guardian" in the Ancient Tongue, describing the beast's nature as chaotic and dire.

Responsible for spurring the desperate attack on the city of Korah, the Wysae-roja was at first seen by the Amiiroans as a manifestation of the growing immorality of their once beloved Empire, an inhuman monstrosity that should never have been created, and which greatly threatened the survival of the resistance. Later, the Fell Guardian became the Black Demon, believed to have been summoned by a corrupt Fergus to aid him in his terrible genocidal acts - many of the terrifying, brutal deaths in the night carried out by the Timora were blamed on the N'allai Wysae-roja.

The descendants of Barrow in the New World largely forgot the name of the beast, knowing it only as a shape-shifting creature of the night, part animal and part man. While varying across cultures and coloured by local folklore, the Wysae-roja persisted as part of the fantastical fiction and superstition that much of the Great War had been reduced to over the millennia following the division of the New World from the Ancient and the subsequent abandonment of magic. However, any connection to stories of mighty empires or magical wars was lost - the Wysae-roja stood as its own frightening legend, described sometimes as a demon, an anomaly of nature, or a victim of a terrible curse. Commonly taking a particularly terrifying half-human, half-animal form that could hide in human disguise under all but the light of a full moon, the beast was seen as frightening for reasons similar to the Amiiroans: the half-human quality of the terrible Wysae-roja seemed to defile Humanity and suggested that a monster may lurk behind any human's eyes, making the beast seem all the more insidious.

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Ash, as seen as the Black Demon - the "spines" should now be apparent as arrows:


Drawn one evening after taking a break from work, and one of the first story-related pieces of art done in a single sitting in a long time.

I'm considering now doing some sort of fire-painting tutorial. Don't know if anyone would be interested, though.

Also considering doing a fully rendered version, rather than leaving her entirely in shadow.

~4 hours Adobe Photoshop CS3.

Characters and story © Jen Philpot (The Tripartitus).

PRINTS AVAILABLE AT http://jocarra.deviantart.com/prints/