Fiction:Consanguinity

The Consanguinuity is a loosely-organized occult criminal/terrorist organization active in Tuuros Galaxy. While extremely few in number, the supernatural weapons wielded by its members, and the supernatural augmentations granted by those weapons, gives the Consanguinuity power and influence well beyond its size. Its name is a reference to the continuity of the weapons they bear, with each successive wielder taking up the legacy of all the previous.

Organization and purpose
The Consanguinuity is less of an organization and more of a group of people who share certain similarities. It has no common goal, or permanent leadership, or really any kind of formal group ethic. Every member is an individual with their own plans and motives, and vary wildly in background, age, and even species. Each member is united only by two points: the demonic weapons -- the Goads -- that each one bears, and their identity as Bearers.

Bearers and Bearers
The Consanguinuity is inherently disunited, at least among the Bearers. With their manifold backgrounds and reasons for taking up a Goad, they will always find reasons to fight and feud. If a Bearer isn't working alone, or as part of a team called together by the Goads, then they're part of a gang surrounding another Bearer of sufficient charisma and strength whose principles they agree with. Factionalism and personality clashes are common.

Which is not to say that more positive relationships are rare. Respect, friendship, and even romance are all possible. Similar backgrounds may engender sympathy. Shared privation on a mission can bond two Bearers as close as siblings. If all the social connections in the Consanguinuity could be mapped, it would be an ever-shifting spiderweb of friendships, feuds, alliances, and rivalries, as intricate as lace.

Goads and Bearers
The only reason the whole Consanguinuity doesn't devolve into internecine war is the controlling presence of the Goads. Each Bearer has a passenger in their heads: the mind of the Goad they bear. It is the Bearers who give the Consanguinuity its shape, but the Goads who give it direction. The Goads make plans, give orders, disseminate knowledge, and punish unruly Bearers.

The Goads don't actually care much about the relationships and vices of their Bearers. They like their agents joyful. So long as their Bearers remain competent and obedient (and they define 'obedience' a lot more loosely than most -- they like their agents rebellious and free), the Goads tolerate even their wildest behaviors. When Bearers carouse, they make legends.

The attitude of Bearers towards their Goads is more complicated. Certainly, the benefits of being a Bearer are considerable, but their own individualistic natures inevitably begins to chafe under the domination of the Goads. They begin to think too highly of themselves, or to object to their orders.

The Goads have ways of managing such recalcitrance. To bring wayward Bearers back into line, the Goads put the Spurs to them. Goads can transmit agony as easily as they do thoughts: burning psychic torment, spurs to chastise rebellious or incompetent Bearers, punishing them until they fall back in line, and a horrific form of execution if they do not. Almost all Bearers wind up tasting the full, prolonged force of the Spurs once; rarely two or three times. After that, a single kick from them is more than enough encouragement.

Goads
Goads: demonic spirits incarnated in metal, masterfully constructed, supernaturally charged, and malevolently sapient. Like their Bearers, Goads take on a myriad of forms. Many are blades. Some are spears, or axes, or bows, or hammers. None are weapons from past the early Iron Age. Goads are best understood as spiritual parasites. They feed on bloodshed, suffering, violence, chaos -- and they exist solely to cause such things. In simple terms, their method of operations is to bond themselves to a suitable Bearer, grant them unnatural powers, and set them loose on the unsuspecting galaxy.

Anatomy and powers
Each Goad has a physical component and a metaphysical component. The physical component is the weapon one can pick up and hold. The metaphysical component is the spirit dwelling within the weapon, giving it its unnatural properties and linking it to its Bearer.

While each Goad is unique, they are uniformly masterpieces of their type. Each one is perfectly balanced, beautifully decorated and engraved, and entirely functional. They also possess unnatural qualities beyond simple construction:
 * Goads can change their size. Bearers come in many shapes and sizes, and the Goad they take up automatically alters its size to fit them.
 * Goads are not always present. Once bonded to a Bearer, that Bearer will always be linked to their Goad. That Goad may not always be in their direct possession -- in times where walking around with a huge hammer strapped to one's back is detrimental to one's objective, the Goad may be relegated to the Goad-realm they hail from, effectively vanishing into thin air until summoned once more into the hands.
 * Goads are uniquely empowered. A Goad in the shape of a spear may be able to pierce any armor, regardless of material. A Goad in the shape of a sword may be able to break any weapon used to block or parry it. A Goad in the shape of a bow may generate its own arrows, which fly further than any conventional arrow and may change directions midflight... The type of empowerment is unique to each Goad, and each Goad is itself a unique construction.
 * Goads are hard to destroy. Whatever unearthly metal they're crafted from is far sturdier than any natural steel and capable of regenerating itself from whatever harm it might take. They can be destroyed -- snapping one in half will reliably kill one -- but this typically requires separating it from its Bearer and subjecting it to high explosives or extreme industrial processes. They are very rarely broken in the course of battle.
 * Goads are immortal. Their bodies can be broken, their spirits banished to the Goad-realm, their Bearers slain, but the Goad always survives. How this happens is one of their sacred mysteries. Inevitably, dead Goads return in the hands of new Bearers, wearing the same shape as before (if not the same size), ready to inflict violence upon the galaxy once more. There are anywhere between 36 to 70 Goads physically present in the galaxy at any given time.

Intelligence and personality
Goads are sapient weapons that exist solely to cause violence. Their personalities point in much the same direction. In short, they are spiteful, prideful, and fond of bloodshed.

They are not overtly so. They are also calm and cunning. They are fully capable of planning complex operations and formulating long-term goals. Their minds are not superhuman, but they are unbelievably ancient, with all the wisdom and experience that implies.

However, the Goads are fractious. This is one of their greatest weaknesses. Goads may work together in the short term, but long-term cooperation is impossible, inevitably falling out to self-interest and arguments over what plans to make and what courses of action to take. Long-term cases of the Consanguinuity working together is due much more to the Bearers than to their Goads.

Goad-realm
The metaphysical aspect of the Goads is rooted in the Goad-Realm. This is an otherworldly space or pocket dimension that links all Goads together, and which may be witnessed by Bearers at will through a ritual sacrifice: killing a sentient being, burning it, and enveloping oneself in the smoke.

The Goad-Realm is described as a place of red light and black smoke where the Goads hold absolute power. Through the Goad-Realm, the Goads share knowledge about other Goads and Bearers with their own. In the Goad-Realm, Bearers may communicate across vast distances as if they're standing next to each other. The Goad-Realm may even be used as an alternate form of transportation from world to world, bypassing the usual dangers of Hellspace, though the Realm is itself physically inhospitable and cannot be tolerated for long. Spacecraft are usually more convenient, especially over long distances.

Bearers
The Goads are artifacts of tremendous arcane power, but like any weapon they are little more than inert metal without an agent to wield them. Those selected to carry a Goad are known as Bearers. Uniformly, they are chosen from the downtrodden, the fearful and the disgraced: some trick of causality ensures that, when a prospective Bearer is at their lowest and most desperate, there will be a Goad nearby to manipulate them, promising power and vengeance, preying on their trauma and insecurity to convince them to take it up. The Goad may have been in their possession for years as an interesting curio; they may stumble upon it half-buried in the dust of some forgotten world; in some cases they may even receive one from another Bearer, told to find a Goad from somewhere and seek a certain person out by their master.

Regardless, the outcome is always the same: the Goad finds its way to them in their time of greatest need, and they anoint the Goad with their blood, becoming its next Bearer and forging an unbreakable spiritual bond.

Powers and abilities
Once bonded to a Bearer, the Goad grants them a broad spectrum of powers to better carry out the chaos and destruction the Goads feed on.

Goad

 * The Goad itself is the most obvious of a Bearer's new abilities. Every Goad is a reservoir of uncountable eons worth of occult lore and battle experience, which they pass onto their Bearers. Each Bearer thus becomes, from the moment they bond themselves to their Goad onward, a warrior of unrivaled skill and a potent channel of Elemental and Chaotic energies.


 * The Goad's own awareness whispers into their minds. It is very difficult to take a Bearer by surprise. Any attempt at psychic invasion must contend with the malign will of the Goad sharing their brain.

"Standard package"

 * The second most obvious of those is a "standard package" of physical augmentations: enhanced strength, enhanced speed and reflexes, enhanced senses, enhanced healing, enhanced survivability. This last is particularly notable and often underestimated. Bearers don't get sick, can go for extended periods of time without food or water, and may persist indefinitely in climates and atmospheres that would normally be inhospitable. They are resistant to drugs and poisons, but not immune.

Other powers

 * Besides the standard package, Bearers have been known to possess other odd powers, varying from Bearer to Bearer. Some have been known to track targets unerringly across interstellar distances. Some are said to command animals. A few have disproportionate longevity and youth, which is not considered part of the standard package because Bearers generally don't survive long enough to confirm that their Goads are extending their lifespans.

The Vicissitude

 * The final and most feared power available to a Bearer is known as the Vicissitude. The Vicissitude is the merging of Bearer and Goad; the physical manifestation of the violence the Goads are meant to bring about as expressed by their Bearers; the realized potential of the Goads' demonic essences.
 * In less florid terms, it is the physical transformation of a Bearer into a monstrous "pseudo-demon" form: physically fusing with the Goad they carry, massively enhancing their already formidable physical capabilities, and giving them new powers besides. The shape and nature of the Vicissitude varies wildly from Bearer to Bearer. As befitting such fusions, it takes one part from the originating Goad, one part from the subconscious desires of the Bearer. As a result, despite their unique shapes, they are always odd amalgamations of biological and inorganic characteristics, and often have only little to do with the Bearer's original appearance.
 * The Vicissitude may be entered at will and reversed just as quickly. When an enemy is too strong for a Bearer to defeat with their own powers, when a Bearer wants to cause the maximum amount of chaos in the shortest possible time, when a Bearer is cornered and the only way out is to fight through, they embrace the Vicissitude. This comes at the downside of losing any hope of stealth and typically becoming a huge target.