The Starving God
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Ht: 8'4 / Wt: ? / Hair: silver / Eyes: glinting
Age: unknown / Creed: Titan / Status: *DECEASED
Khors is a giant humanlike figure who stands over 8 feet tall. His body is emaciated and stooped, a virtual skeleton, with ashen desiccated skin clinging to his sinews and bones. Upon his body are the long faded marks and whorls of tattoos or scarification, now indecipherable against the marbled creases of his flesh.
In spite of his seemingly withered condition, his frame remains robust, his joints thick and gnarled. His hair is like fine strands of silver, sparse and retreating from a largely bald head, with a scalp dry and cracked like volcanic stone.
Upon his face hangs the drooping remains of a long mustache that seems for all the world like hammered gold, a faint reminder of a grandeur long departed from his cadaverous face. The black hollows of his eyes glint with reflected starlight, and his long, chipped teeth and nails are grey like tarnished iron.
He stands naked, but for a white-gold ring around his neck, which might once have been a torque, but now hangs loose about his scrawny collarbone. Dangling from the ring is a white-gold disk that flashes in the light.
ORIGINS
Khors is believed to be of the Titan lineage. He likely ascended to semi-divine status during the Mythic Age, and seems to have been a figure of worship in ancient civilizations in what is now the region of Koshkovia.
It would appear that Khors was revered as a sky-god; a bringer of light, a protector of travellers, and a bestower of prosperity. The original followers of Khors were likely the Duathan, though his cult persisted some time afterward among the tribes of Common Men. Khors has referred to the First Men as his children, and to the humans that came after as his grandchildren, though it is likely that this is a metaphorical relationship, rather than a claim to be the progenitor of Men.
Khors has implied that he was the first of his kind to inhabit the Moonless Plain. He has also referred to his magic cape, which once permitted him to control the Hungry Shadows that live in the cracks and the crevices beneath the Plain. With this item, he said he could even command them to brave the harsh heat of noon.
At some point in the ancient past, Khors' power waned and his following among mortals declined. According to Khors, as he weakened, both his domain and possessions were taken from him by the Titaness Kuyuu, another moon deity whose influence was rising. Among those items she claimed from him was his magic cape, which he said she refashioned into another form.
Khors has implied that he was the first of his kind to inhabit the Moonless Plain. He has also referred to his magic cape, which once permitted him to control the Hungry Shadows that live in the cracks and the crevices beneath the Plain. With this item, he said he could even command them to brave the harsh heat of noon.
DECLINE
Khors has either refused to fade into oblivion, or simply found himself unable to die. His gnawing resentment left him with an unending hunger, even as his supernatural body succumbed to attrition and the harsh conditions on the Moonless Plain.
While Khors still lives, it seems to be only in a state of perpetual dying. Whatever mystical essence nourished him at the height of his power has now been drained from him, leaving him emaciated, vulnerable, and half-mad from starvation.
As a derelict figure, he cowered on the periphery of his former domain, and watched events unfold over many thousands of years. He saw Kuyuu's status diminish, just as his had before. However, unlike him, she did not seek to escape her destiny - instead she withdrew to her Golden Hall with whatever power she retained, and laid herself to rest - to sleep and dream for eternity. With chagrin, Khors watched as she abdicated her sovereignty to a newer, more feral demigod: the Morza Uluyan Kovalayan.
Much later, Khors would also witness as the Court of the Moonfae brought their assembled might to the task of subduing the Howling Khan, in order to establish their White-Gold King's dominion over the silvered sands and eternal stars of the Moonless Plain.
For over a thousand years, Khors squatted in the subterranean Golden Hall of Kuyuu. His magical body was a brittle shell. To sustain himself, he leeched whatever mystical essence remained in the Hall, draining Kuyuu's Silver Mirror of its magic, and consuming the life energies of her magical Primeval Reindeer.
RECENT STATUS
Only the crypt where Kuyuu's immortal body sleeps remained tantalizingly out of his grasp, for even in a death-like slumber, the defensive wards of her chapel-like sepulcher, and the faded grandeur of her God-Shadow were too potent for him to penetrate. Thus the last embers of her divine essence protected her last sanctum and its treasures.
When the White-Gold King was taken with madness and consigned his armed host to the Quiet Sea, Khors braved the Hungry Shadows to plunder their corpses, first draining the enchantments from their weapons, and then sucking out what residual Faerie magics still resided in their physical flesh.
It is through these means that Khors was able to cling to the ragged tatters of his immortality... but his hunger would never be quelled. He longed for a lost glory which could not be recovered, lingering as little more than a wretched ghoul, feeding on the crumbs of life left by those who came after...
DEATH
He offered them hospitality in the Golden Hall of Kuyuu, purportedly to spare them the burning heat of the long noon upon the Moonless Plain. Once they were inside, resting, Khors sought to steal their magical artifacts to nourish himself with their essence. He then attempted to extort more 'tributes' from them, and finally entreated them to desecrate the sarcophagus in Kuyuu's sepulcher, removing her body so he might feast on the residual divine power that remined there.
Instead of complying, the humans tricked him by remaining inside the sepulcher where he could not threaten them. When they had rested as long as needed to escape the noon sun, they challenged Khors in battle.
Infuriated by their defiance and empowered by the magical treasures he'd claimed, Khors stood his ground, but in his degraded state, he was no match for them. He was brought low, and dragged into Kuyuu's sepulcher, where her radiant shadow crushed and suffocated him, and her magical golden bees stung his flesh for the crime of transgressing into her domain.
Among the heroes was Jack Tyrsson, who wielded a specially-enchanted blade of Faerie Glass. Although weak by the standards of God-Slaying weapons, it was enough to take Khors' head - vanquishing Khors for eternity, and finally ending his long, agonized existence.
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