TRELMARIXIAN
THE LYSOGENIC PRINCE
NE male Horseman of famine
CULT
Domains Earth, Evil, Madness, Weather
Subdomains Daemon, Decay, Insanity, Seasons
Favored Weapon spiked gauntlet
Unholy Symbol jackal skull clenching an eclipse in its jaws
Temples circles at the hearts of blighted fields, empty
granaries, forests made barren by volcanic activity, poisoned
or eutrophic lakes, scarred and polluted regions, wastelands
Worshipers evil druids, famine sufferers, hungry ghosts
Minions astradaemons B2 , fiendish jackals and jackal monsters,
ghouls, meladaemons B2 , scavengers, vampires, vermin
Obedience Abstain from eating or drinking until you experience
the bitter pangs of hunger. Meditate in this state for just
under an hour, and then gorge yourself upon any available
substance regardless of its suitability as food, such as sand,
ashes, or flesh. Gain a +4 profane bonus on saving throws
against effects that cause exhaustion, fatigue, nausea,
or sickness.
EVANGELIST BOONS
1: Jackal’s Blessing (Sp) memory lapse APG 3/day, false life
2/day, or vampiric touch 1/day
2: Unending Whispers (Sp) You can cast insanity once per day
as a spell-like ability.
3: Kiss of the Lysogenic Prince (Su) You can make a touch
attack to infect another creature with a fragment of your
soul. The target can resist the attach with a successful Will
save (DC = 10 + half your Hit Dice + your Charisma modifier).
Otherwise, while you and the target are on the same plane,
as a free action you can observe what your target perceives
with its senses. Once per day as a standard action, you
can directly control the target’s actions for 1 round plus a
number of additional rounds equal to your Charisma bonus.
The affected creature retains no memory of your controlling
influence or its actions while controlled. This is a curse effect.
You can have only one target affected by your kiss at a time;
if you target another creature, the first is no longer affected.
EXALTED BOONS
1: Jackal’s Grace (Sp) ray of enfeeblement 3/day, feast of
ashes APG 2/day, or cup of dust APG 1/day
2: Unending Hunger (Su) Once per day as a standard action,
you can consume any nonliving substance without ill effect.
The size of the object consumed can be no larger than a
creature of your own size category, but regardless of the
size, consuming the object takes only 1 round. A body
consumed in this way can be restored to life only via miracle,
true resurrection, or wish. Any object you consume can
attempt a Fortitude save (DC = 10 + half your Hit Dice + your
Constitution modifier) to avoid being destroyed.
3: Withering Invocation (Sp) Once per day, you can invoke
Trelmarixian’s unending hunger to cause a number of victims
to consume themselves from the inside out. You can cast
implosion once per day as a spell-like ability.
SENTINEL BOONS
1: Famine’s Crusader (Sp) mount 3/day, wartrain mount UM
2/day, or phantom steed 1/day
2: Consumptive Aura (Su) As a swift action, you can radiate an
aura of hunger to a radius of 20 feet. Once you activate this
ability, you can maintain it each round as a free action. You can
use this ability for a number of rounds per day equal to your
Hit Dice; these rounds need not be consecutive, but they must
be used in 1-round increments. Each round a creature begins
its turn within this aura, it must succeed at a Fortitude save
(DC = 10 + half your Hit Dice + your Charisma modifier) or take
1d6 points of nonlethal damage and become fatigued from
extreme hunger. Creatures that don’t need to eat are immune
to this effect. You are immune to this effect, and although you
still feel hunger pangs, you no longer take damage nor are
otherwise inconvenienced by the effects of starvation.
3: Eruptive Arrival (Sp) Once per day, you can teleport yourself
into the flesh of any living creature that you can see (as
per greater teleport), erupting out of its body in a shower
of blood, bone, and viscera, arriving in an adjacent square,
and dealing 5d6 damage to all creatures within 10 feet.
The target itself takes 20d6 points damage. The target and
creatures in the affected areas can attempt Fortitude saves
(DC = 10 + half your Hit Dice + your Constitution bonus) to
reduce the damage by half, but any creature that fails this
saving throw is also nauseated for 1d4 rounds.
The youngest and most ambitious of the Four Horsemen,
Trelmarixian the Black obsesses over the systematic
exploration of soul consumption. In his words, “We are
born of souls and destined to destroy mortality. But we are
destined for even greater things thereafter.”
Often depicted as a thin, starving man with three jackal
heads, crystalline teeth, and black, oddly fluid or membranous
flesh, Trelmarixian in fact has no true form. The Horseman
of Famine’s physical body exists as a protoplasmic slurry of
bile, blood, and mucus, like a corpse that has decayed and
been reduced to a liquefied, pulpy muck.
The Lysogenic Prince is nothing if not ambitious. While
he is young compared to the other Horsemen, “young” is
a relative term, and the Horseman of Famine has held his
position for eons. Due to the nature of his mortal death,
his soul was ensnared by the former Horseman of Famine,
Lyutheria the Parasite Queen, but rather than devouring it,
she warped it into a form that was to her liking. Her interest
was rewarded, and he worked for millennia beneath her, as
time passed acting less as a servitor and more as a consort
and an apprentice, supplementing her research with his
own. So long had Lyutheria reigned, however, that she no
longer truly believed that she might be deposed, and thus
she allowed her servant more freedom than any of the other
Horsemen would ever consider doing. When Trelmarixian
eventually overwhelmed and consumed his mistress,
becoming the new Horseman of Famine, few were surprised.
Much like his predecessor, Trelmarixian the Black
concerns himself with both his titular dominion of
starvation and the broader concept of wasting, both
physically and metaphysically. Whereas the Parasite Queen
embodied the idea of wasting through violent parasitism,
the Lysogenic Prince instead embodies the idea of wasting
from cancers and other forms of self-consumption: physical
withering as a hijacked immune system turns the body
against itself in a downward spiral of corporeal decay.
Trelmarixian’s espousal of the Madness domain is also
telling, linked to both his current status and his past. Like
the viral cancers he represents, the Horseman of Famine
also behaves like his chosen concept in a concrete manner.
Over the centuries, he has infected his servitor caste of
meladaemons, including several of his more powerful
vassals among the Withered Court, with aspects of his
essence that lurk within them like viruses. Precisely
how much influence or control he can exert this way
is known only to the Horseman himself, but even if
this infection opens only a tiny window of awareness
to each servitor, he would be bombarded with sensory
information on a truly massive scale, enough to make
nearly any single consciousness insane.
As a result, Trelmarixian’s fragmented mind brims with
madness and a multitude of voices, chief among them the
voice of his lover, mentor, and predecessor: Lyutheria. He
still adores her in a way, though consumption was his only
means of expressing those mortal feelings. She in turn still
speaks to him, advising him as she sees fit or mocking his
shortcomings like an aggressive, self-aware conscience.
By force of will, he can silence the voices, but one of them
haunts him even so. Most daemons retain only fragmented
recollections of their mortal existences; Trelmarixian, on
the other hand, remembers everything save for the last few
minutes of his life. After snuffing out every single life on his
world in an unparalleled work of sorcery, but condemning
himself to starvation, at the end of his mortal existence he
recalls a voice talking to him, asking him questions and
mocking his success as paltry compared to what awaited him
after death. Despite killing everyone he had ever known in
life, he knew someone was there—but he cannot remember
the watcher’s face or last words before his own death.
As a mortal, Trelmarixian was born a tiefling of mixed and
unknown mortal heritage, but his blood carried a distinctly
daemonic taint. His memories haunt him, as does the
question of whose blood he inherited—and thus who may
still have some unfulfilled claim on him. Was he merely the
progeny of a random daemon or perhaps of the Parasite
Queen or some other Horseman? What troubles him most is
the notion that he was born to be the vector for the return of
his own progenitor—a virus within another, incubating and
waiting for the day to come to express itself and snuff out the
Lysogenic Prince as he did his own predecessor.
