Long long in the past, even before the great dragon wars that drove many of the great advanced civilizations and powerful elder dragons to their end, a far evolved folk living up in the mountains developed one of the greatest breakthroughs this world has ever seen..

Sadly after the passing of the great dragon wars which left this world in despair, much of this breakthrough and their knowledge was lost...

The mountain ones, that's what many called the people that lived far up in the great mountains. In large temples and cities carved into the stone of the mountains they kept most of the time to themselves, spending their time researching. But news of the growing tension between the elder dragons and the people of this world, specially through their aggressive hunting of those elder dragons for pieces to build their cruel machines and weapons reached the mountain people too.

It were worrying news, specially the work on the equal dragon weapon was a threat. A symbol of how far some of the advanced civilizations have been corrupted by their misguided advancements in technology.

But the mountain people didn't believe in taking the life of a monster just for parts. No, they have been researching about the hidden magic of the mountains, minerals and rocks unlocking almost unbelievable technologies.
Finally all this research lead to the Aperatures. Monster bodies, carved out of a mixed and molten sludge of different minerals. The bodies were made of many individual disconnected pieces, forming a hollow body. By themselves these bodies were nothing more then a loose fancy pile of stone. But introducing the soul of someone or something to the core of the aperatur, the piece with the soul stone which most often was the head, would give the aperatur the energy to awaken. Introducing a soul would cause it'd energy to be amplified and start pulling the body togheter into it'd predetermined natural shape. The soul energy flows through the hollow construct, allowing the soul inhabiting it to be fully conscious and operate a physical body.

Every core piece had a channeling crown, this stone crown was bound to its Aperatures soul stone. If someone set it on, the spells molten into the crowns stone would take effect, pulling the wearers soul from their body into the aperatur. At the same time a curse would activate, sealing the crown to the wearer's body and turning it to stone.
Removing a soul from a body would cause this body to die, but the curse turning a wearer to stone evaded that, putting that body pretty much into a state of stasis.

While the curse sealed the crown to the wearer's body, the aperatur the crown belongs to actually is able to take the crown off again. By the wearers soul, taking the crown off their real body through the Aperature, the spells and curses are instantly reversed.
Making the soul jump back into the real body and turning back to normal from the stone state.

Aperatures were meant as work bodies. Using these stone bodies to do work a human body isn't capable of or is way too dangerous. Because a destruction of the core piece will cause the crown to break and the curses and spells to lift too, returning the soul to its original body aswell.

Aperatures do need soul energy to function, they can absorb it from other creatures. Luckily the amount of soula is not very high and the mountain people used hunted monsters souls they had to catch for food.


They made many Aperatures, resembling many different monsters over the time. But sadly the horrors of the great dragon war didn't stay away from their home for too long either. Eventually they fell too.... Leaving only their once great cities ruin's and some remaining Aperatures to tell the long past tales of the people that created them...




So yeah! It was a blast working on this and diving into monster hunter lore to work out the lore behind the Aperatures!


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