Fingerkings

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"Humans rule the waking world, more or less. And the Fingerkings rule most of this place. A long time ago, some rather careless people made these images to imprison Fingerkings. I'm not so careless. I can use it to enact my revenge on the 'king that took my hand."

Fingerkings are snake-like entities that rule over the majority of Parabola.

The Emerald Coils

"The Fourth City trapped Many-Fingered Kings behind mirrors and tortured them for information: the rulers of the Is-Not, by knowledge of their domain and process of elimination, know all there is to know about the Is. But as the Khaganians today say, there is no greater curse than knowledge you cannot verify."

A Dream Serpent.

Fingerkings are serpentine beings that rule the dream-lands of Parabola. Their point of origin is unclear; some claim that they came from the country-sized lake that contains the Drowned Forest. The Fingerkings are the royalty of the dream-snakes, who do not exist. They are related to the Aeginae.

Since they are native to the lands of the Is-Not, the Fingerkings desire a true existence above all else, and derive sustenance from the memories and substance of beings from outside the world of dreams. The main way a Fingerking might achieve true existence is through possessing someone from outside Parabola, causing gaps in memory and a change in the appearance of their eyes - anything from a simple change in gaze to their pupils narrowing to reptilian slits. People who are possessed by Fingerkings may also have silver eyes, as well as unusually high strength. Fingerkings can also possess other creatures native to the Is-Not, though they don't wish do so unless said being can survive in the real world.

Fingerkings are very knowledgeable creatures; their vast knowledge of the Is-Not combined with the process of elimination allows them to know essentially everything. This great knowledge, combined with their power over dreams, leads many individuals to make bargains with and seek favors from the Fingerkings. Those who strike deals with the Fingerkings can trust that their agreements will be honored to the letter, sometimes even to the snakes' own detriment, for breaking a promise would render them hollow.

Fingerkings, while persuasive, rarely speak in a traditional sense. Communication with a lesser being is incomprehensible to powerful Fingerkings, and too subtle and complex for minor Fingerkings. As such, most communicate through dreams and visions, with some able to project their thoughts directly into other people's minds. Certain Fingerkings can also transmit information through their venom.

The Wriggling Courts

"The chamber is filled with unmoving, asymmetric shapes that blossom into lively colour under your lantern's glow. Painted statues, their pigments as rich as the day they were made. Red. Yellow. Black. You tap one. Wood. This one is a chimaera with a tiger's head, a horse's feet, and an angel's burning wings. The next is thirteen serpents knotted by their tails. A serpent-council? And covering the far wall, a fresco of cedar and ebony. In it, great oaks rise like battlements. Behind them soar towers of pine. At their centre, a gate of rosewood prickles with thorns."

An example of a white Fingerking.

The Fingerkings' biology is, like the rest of Parabola, rather flexible. That said, individual Fingerkings tend to appear as colorful venomous serpents, with red, yellow, and/or black scales. These scales are regularly sloughed off; the great Dome of Scales is built from the scales of the first Fingerkings. This quality is also extended to the Fingerkings' servants, who regularly slough off their own skin during certain rituals. Fingerkings reproduce by laying eggs; their most popular breeding grounds include the Drowned Forest and the dream-side of the great city of Varchas.

The most notable trait of the Fingerkings, beyond all of the above, is their ability to combine many individual serpents into a single hive-mind known as a congregation. These unions are vastly more powerful and intelligent than their individual components, and serve as princes, kings, and other influential positions in serpentine society. Congregations can vary wildly in appearance, from a single many-headed serpent to a giant mass of knotted serpents that blots out the sky itself. They are further divided into many specific types, such as Knots, Boils, Catastrophes, Conclaves, Orts. Orts are known for being particularly cunning even in comparison to others of their kind;

The War of Many Fronts

"On the fifth day, as the host still advances, a bronze trumpet sounds. From behind the Fingerking host, you make out pennants and spears: a vast army of bronze-helmed lions and lynxes, pouring into the valley. A great red lion is their general, his mane golden, his breast-plate gleaming."

While the Fingerkings hold sway in many regions of the Is-Not, such as the Castle of Forests, the Drowned Forest, and the Coiling Spire, they are not the undisputed masters of Parabola; many other factions constantly fight them in a giant, endless war. The foremost amongst these are the Cats and Tigers, tasked with an ancient duty to protect the real world from Parabola. The war between cats and snakes has culminated in fabled battles, like the Battle of Pulled Claws, that heavily impact the politics of Parabola. Two groups of humans loyal to each of the factions, known as the Shroud and the Glass, fight their own Parabolan proxy war in London, called the Wars of Illusion.

The Fingerkings also have a complex relationship with the Red-Handed Queen, who is known as both the ruler and a prisoner of the Fingerkings.

The Little Snake and The Grumpy Bee

"The devils swarming into Parabola longed for many things: for souls, for escape, for their own deaths and the things that waited beyond each death. The Fingerkings saw their longing, and welcomed them as food.

"The devils were bargainers, contract-writers, enemies of the stars. The Fingerkings saw their nature, and welcomed them as allies.

"The devils were hollow, skin-shedders, eternally in chrysalis. The Fingerkings saw their capacity, and welcomed them as salvation."

Fingerkings and devils have a long and tumultuous history. Long ago, when the devils sought an escape from the High Wilderness, the serpents allowed them to enter Parabola through Caduceus and stay there for as long as they wished, in exchange for allowing the devils to be possessed when they chose to leave the Is-Not. The Devils agreed to the deal because such a thing was impossible; the inside of a devil is too changeable and corrosive to properly host a Fingerking, and one of the Fingerkings' leaders, the Parlous Knot, found this out the hard way. And so, when the time came for the devils to leave for their new home, they did so without a single Fingerking among their ranks. This story is understandably a very sore topic for the two groups, and it may have led to the Fingerkings manipulating the Fourth City into a war with Hell.

Devils were also responsible for the creation of prisoner's honey, which allows for easy travel to Parabola and in turn makes the imbiber much more vulnerable to Fingerking possession. At some point after humans arrived in the Neath, the Fingerkings found themselves terribly lonely in Parabola, with only memories and their old rivals for company. In search of more friends, a "little snake" consulted "the grumpiest bee in both worlds" (probably a representative figure of the devils as a whole). In what may have been an attempt to settle the earlier grudge between the two parties, the Fingerkings offered to give one-fifth of the proceeds of their endeavors to Hell. In return, the devils used the Hellish Exile's Rose to brew the first batches of prisoner's honey and bring the Fingerkings their "new friends." Thus, the Fingerkings could more easily possess humans and progress toward achieving their eternal goal of entering reality.

The Serpent Compendium

List of Known Fingerkings

"Speech is a burden to the Fingerkings. To the Knots and Boils, Catastrophes and Conclaves, to communicate with a lesser is beyond their comprehension. To the single serpents, speech is a subtle, complex art, rarely mastered." Below is a list of all known Fingerkings. The Boil of Calamities, Lord of the Seething Sky, who tends to the sacred places of its kind. The Catastrophe of Crowns, currently locked away together with the Fourth City's final Khatun. The Parlous Knot , who made the unwise deal with the devils of old, dying in the process. The Sleeping King, a mysterious figure that might be partially responsible for the smoke that fills the Smoking Shore. The Serpent of the Dome, a nameless king raised from great tithes gathered throughout Serpentdom. The Prophet Exile, an exile amongst its kind and the former leader of an ancient Solonocean Conjunction. The Destroyer of Undeserved Admiration The Conjunctions of Misery The Sliver of Treaties A Lesser Boil of Smoke and Salt The Blistered Boil The Puce Boil of Perfidies The Boil of Raptures Reconciler of Friends Procurer of Lost Dignities and Favour Revealer of Fortune Bauble of Ecstatic Repose Conjuction of Absence, tricked by Fourth City priests and trapped in a triptych.