WORLD BOOK WORLD BOOK WORLD BOOK 0130 0130
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Chapter 7:
BESTIarY
Azurat (Blue Watcher)
The azurat is a small, beautiful creature that lives
around the Lesser Barren Lake and other watery areas
of Khitus. To the uninitiated, it seems inconsequential,
but its size and appearance disguise a horrible truth. Its
playful dance catches the eye and prepares the distracted mind to be utterly controlled.
Commonly called a “blue watcher” (or very rarely, a
“blue angel”), this tiny being is a powerful mind bender.
To take control of an intelligent creature, the azurat gets
inside its host, usually through the mouth, and makes
its way—painfully—to the brain. Its bright colors and
exotic movements mesmerize a victim, luring one close
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for a better view. Without realizing it, a victim accepts
an azurat crawling delightfully on her skin. By the time
the blue watcher enters an orifice to gouge its way to the
brain, a victim has been conditioned to accept the pain
and its fate.
Azurats guide hosts to bodies of water where they can
lay eggs and spawn more of their kind. Any lake, stream,
cistern, or even a barrel of water will do. While it can
force a host body to march directly to water, an azurat
knows instinctively that abrupt changes in behavior
lead to its own discovery and expulsion. Instead, it subtly alters the victim’s desires and behaviors in ways that
its companions will not immediately recognize. Unfortunately for a victim, though, an azurat’s only egress is
out through the brain, destroying the mind and killing
the host in the process.
Blue watchers can be useful to wizards and alchemists
who know of one of their subtler attributes. Fresh from a
host body and for several days after egress, the creature
retains all the contents of the mind on which it fed. Every
memory, every thought, every emotion, every plan … all
of this can be extracted from an azurat either through
direct application of scrying magic or by simply ingesting the creature directly. This latter approach is less accurate and some information may be lost but, properly
prepared, a simple meal can impart most—and sometimes all—of the former host’s knowledge right into the
diner’s mind. These are only fleeting, so any pertinent
information must be recorded quickly before the person
fully digests the azurat and exhausts its strange powers.
Azurats live inside small bodies of water everywhere.
They prefer unstable hosts in whom any subtle alterations of behavior may go unnoticed. When choosing
among multiple hosts, an azurat will select the moodier
or free-spirited among them. Blue watchers may take
their time selecting victims, moving from one to another, subtly taking each one’s measure from afar before
settling on a single host. Once discovered, removing a
blue watcher requires dangerous poisons or direct intervention with knife and awl, often leaving the host
severely damaged.
