The Resurrection Beasts are the massive revenants created by the sudden murder of the planets of the Ninth House System. Nine Beasts, one for each planet, have chased the Emperor and his Saints for a myriad.
Creation[]
"Yes, and I saw the thalergy convert immediately. The difference between dying of illness and dying from murder. An enormous shock, the immediate expulsion of the soul. And just as when a soul is ripped untimely from a human being, when a soul is so rudely taken from a planet--"
"A revenant." [1]
According to The Emperor, the planets of the Ninth Houses System were "killed," or had their thalergy converted to thanergy, instantly, resulting in the creation of nine great revenant souls. Named the Resurrection Beasts, the revenants fled to the far corners of the universe upon their creation and have chased the Emperor and his Saints ever since for their indelible sin of becoming a Lyctor.
By The Emperor's count, five of the nine Beasts have been killed (the Second, Sixth, Eighth, and two more), and three remain (the Seventh, and two more); leaving one unaccounted for. An additional beast is later revealed be Alecto, the soul of the Earth given form.
Appearance[]
Resurrection Beasts reside, corpus and all, within the River, and will only emerge into physical space to feed on a planet's Thalergy. A Beast will first project a small portion of itself into the physical world, which manifests as an intangible and translucent shadow of the Beast, to navigate its desired position in physical space before full emergence.
The true form of a Resurrection Beast is a nightmarish, physically impossible form that does not appear consistent between those who see it. Some lyctors have seen them as insectiod.[2] The only consistent method to permanently end the threat of a Resurrection Beast is to face its true form in the River and force it down to and through a Stoma, from which nothing has returned.
Resurrection Beasts afflict any proximal necromancer with terrified insanity, to the point that even sharing a galaxy with a Resurrection Beast is unpleasant. This insanity will increase in intensity until leaving the necromancer catatonic. Conversely, Resurrection Beasts have no particular interest in Necromancers other than Lyctors, who they slowly but ceaselessly chase through the universe. Lyctors are likewise afflicted by insanity, but can avoid this by diving their soul into the River and allowing their cavalier's soul to pilot their body as a sort of AI.
The Beasts[]
The First Beast[]
Corpus, and a true spiritual body of the Planet's Revenant. A Corpus is constructed of miscellaneous organic and inert matter collected by the Beast and its Heralds, with its true body located within similar to a hermit crab. The outermost layer of the Beast is the Hive layer, where Heralds are generated. Mercymorn and Cassiopeia both saw the first beast as machine-like. Mercy recalled it as having a tail and a thousand broken pillars on its back, while Cassiopeia saw it as a "mechanical monster with swords for wings, and great horns of myelin, tessellated over with graves." [3]
The Second Beast []
The Second Resurrection Beast was found and killed shortly after the Resurrection. Mercymorn remembered that it spewed quicksilver when they fought it, and that it remade itself into a hundred foot spikes.[3]
The Third Beast []
Nothing is known about the Third Beast.
The Fourth Beast[]
Mercymorn remembered the Fourth Resurrection Beast as "a humanoid creature with a beautiful face who held [her] under the water, and it spoke in a lovely voice but it only repeated die, die."[3]
The Fifth Beast []
Nothing is known about the Fifth Beast
The Sixth Beast[]
The Sixth Beast was defeated when Cyrus the First drew its corpus into an ultramassive black hole, killing both of them. The brain then fell into a dormant state, and Ulysses brought it down to the stoma singlehandedly.
Mercymorn recalled that it was covered in enormous sphincters which kept sucking them in, and sprayed them with worms.
The Seventh Beast[]
Fifty-thousand kilometres in diameter at last measure, the Seventh Beast hunts the Emperor and his remaining Lyctors at the Mithraeum after the events at Canaan House. Cassiopeia died drawing its corpus into the River alongside its brain. It was not harmed by this.
The Seventh Beast has spoken directly to Nona on more than one occasion, revealing that its name is "Varun the Eater".
The Eighth Beast []
The Eighth Resurrection Beast's defeat "cost a man's immortal soul," [4] in that Ulysses wrestled it through the stoma into Hell. The fight against it was the quickest, and took place in the bathyrhoic layer. Due to the length of the battle, it didn't tire, driving Ulysses to sacrifice himself in bringing it down.
Gideon the First remembered it looking like a giant head. Augustine remembered it being red, finned like a fish, with one green eye that moved around its body; he recalled it having bloody bandages for ribs and teeth tangled around its own face and protruding through its skull.
The Ninth Beast[]
Nothing is known about the Ninth Beast.
References[]
- ↑ "Harrow the Ninth," Act I, Ch. 2
- ↑ "Harrow the Ninth," Act II, Chapter 16
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 "Harrow the Ninth," Act IV, Ch. 36
- ↑ "Harrow the Ninth," Act I, Ch. 2