This is part of a series exploring the worldbuilding of the dark fantasy setting of OROBORO.
Within this setting, the fear of death shapes every aspect of life, from medicine to art, but no facet of society has become more profoundly changed than warfare. Killing another person means bearing the eternal wrath of their ghost, and this has forced humanity to find methods of warfare that avoid outright killing.
Vengeance of the Dead
The price of killing, whether in murder or warfare, is gaining the eternal enmity of the victim’s ghost. Before the taboo against killing solidified, warriors were accompanied by an entourage of vengeful ghosts whose wrath might take the form of disease, madness, mutilation, or other, more subtle misfortunes.
Necromancers sought to seal away or placate these ghosts, but could do so only temporarily. The minds and souls of some warriors became so broken by the daily torment that they became possessed by their victims’ ghosts, who used their host’s body to exact further revenge on them.
Butchers & Healers
After embracing the taboo against killing, capturing enemies alive became the goal of every warrior: each captured opponent was treated as a trophy to be ransomed back to their family, earning the victor riches and respect.
Each warrior was expected to be both a butcher and healer, adept at blinding, dismembering, and incapacitating foes fortified by armor and spellcraft, while also capable of staunching their opponents’ bleeding and keeping them alive long enough to be carried off the battlefield.
War Hounds
The arts of war demanded ever more precision, resilience, and flexibility from warriors, leading to schools of war that blended martial arts, spellcraft, and surgical augmentations to create warriors whose strength, and vitality outpaced any normal warrior.
These ‘duelists’ usually sported redundant organs, hawk eyes, grafted muscles, and a host of tattooed enchantments that protected their bodies and minds from blades and spells. The mark of being a true duelist became the ability to defeat and capture a dozen or more opponents in a single battle.
Ritual Duels
The rise of duelists led many factions to abandon open warfare in favor of ritualized tournaments, with each of their duelists fighting matches against their opponent’s stable of duelists. A complex code of honor grew out of these tournaments, with the most important tenet being: “A true duelist only surrenders to unconsciousness, not their opponent.”
Within these duels, victory was achieved by the duelist that could successfully break the body, mind, or soul of their opponent first, leading to duelists with exotic and devastating techniques meant to counteract their opponent’s resilient bodies and magical defenses, such as illusionists who sought to overwhelm their foes with nightmarish visions.
Want to read a story about a duelist?
Read “Debts Unpaid” on the Occult Triangle Lab or on Kindle.
Summary:
After disgracing herself by losing her first, pivotal duel, a young swordswoman named Ryna is forced to serve as a bodyguard for an unscrupulous necromancer called Sozu to pay off her own ransom.
Ryna has been trained as a vysora—a warrior skilled in the art of tearing apart the body and mind of their opponent without killing them. To kill is forbidden, for it means becoming tormented by the ghost of one’s victim forever.
As Sozu introduces Ryna to the wondrous city of Senkaku and its wild ghosts, Ryna realizes that she will have to choose between holding onto her honor as a vysora or embracing Sozu’s cruel path to pay off her debts.
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