What is a Paredrus?

The word paredrus is Latin and refer to the power of a familiar spirit in magic or wizardry. I first learned the word on Montgomery's blog and, as I noted in a prior post, adopted it to refer to the elemental half of my setting's vision of Nephilim as hybrid beings. A Nephilim is created when a Paredrus merges with a mortal and creates a microcosm of the Solar system: on its own the Paredrus has no awareness, identity or will, which is provided by the mortal's Solar-Ka. The Paredrus is what allows a Nephilim to work magic and to access past lives' experiences. 

So how does that fit with the backstory involving the KaIm? Well, I'm still using the secret history as recounted in the Gamemaster's Companion. The difference is the introduction of the Paredri and their role in the creation of Nephilim. After the fall of the Orichalka meteor, many KaIm were destroyed outright and most of the survivors were locked into permanent physical bodies. By the birth of Christ, they're believed extinct by those who knew they existed. No more KaIm were born after Orichalka poisoned the magic fields, only Paredri. Unlike KaIm, the Paredri were instinctive elemental beasts that required a human soul (Sol, get it?) to provide awareness, identity and will. Where KaIm could override the personality of their Simulacrum, the Paredri was its Simulacrum. The human host didn't have their mind submerged by the fusion, but opened to the possibilities of the magic fields. Their ego dissolved and their nascent higher self, submerged since their ego developed in early childhood, rose to the fore.

But an even darker secret is that the Paredri actually predate the Fall of Atlantis. The KaIm were advanced to the point of interplanetary space travel, dispatching spacecraft constructed and powered by magic to survey the Solar system. This included the outer planets, like Saturn. Samples of Orichalc asteroids were brought back to Atlantis for study and use in the horrific experiments on nascent humanity. The experimenters created the first elemental beasts, devolutions of the KaIm created by contamination with the Saturnian field. These beasts were instinctive like mortal animals, but just as immortal and unchanging as the KaIm. But the Atlanteans experimented on them with no more mercy than they showed mortal animals. They even fused them with human test subjects before attempting experiments on themselves, creating the first Nephilim. The Nephilim are human and just as much victims of the KaIm as their mortal brethren.

When Loki, Lucifer, Prometheus and other KaIm sympathetic to humanity led a revolt on their behalf, the nascent Nephilim were among their acolytes. These first Nephilim knew only pain and suffering under their KaIm "parents," so they gladly sought vengeance alongside their mortal kin. While forever disabled by the bite of Orichalc compared to the "uncorrupted" KaIm, they still benefited from the powerful magic fields of Earth before the Fall. Sorcery came naturally to them, the most powerful spells casually cast without need for rituals or enthronements. Some whisper they cultivated Khaiba within themselves, sending crazed ex-Nephilim beasts as living war machines against their former masters. They experimented with Orichalc based on their prior experience, using their own Solar-Ka impregnated blood to awaken the hated metal on their own terms. Some even whisper they summoned the Orichalka meteor to destroy Atlantis using their gathered knowledge of Saturn, for how convenient was it that the meteor that empowered the Orichalka Men just so happened to destroy the same civilization that experimented on them?

But the Orichalka Men and their descendants didn't distinguish between the KaIm who created and tortured humanity and the Paredri with whom they shared their birth. Saturn's evil darkened their hearts and made them think of nothing more than destroying the magic fields of Earth. Thus, Nephilim who had formerly been bitter enemies of the KaIm were forced to band together for survival. Even into the present, secret societies opposed to the Nephilim justify their atrocities by claiming the Nephilim are nothing but body-stealing parasites: killing their hosts is doing them a favor, and draining their blood to make Elixirs is martyrdom for the cause. Of course, after a while the Initiates realize this isn't true... but by that point they have given up their humanity and simply don't care.

There are secret societies with genuinely altruistic goals who mistaken the Nephilim for demons and think they're helping people by performing exorcisms and executions. Their members don't take it well when confronted with the truth and realizing they're actually serial killers. The Tower is quite familiar with the different motivations for witch-hunters: they generally consider killing them to be the most humane option, regardless of what the individual hunter believes. By contrast, Temperance believes that they can rehabilitated and turned into allies against the true enemies of mankind.

Black Paredri do exist, and are born spontaneously even without being transformed from Elemental Paredri by slow contamination or sundering by shadow blades. They are born in the nightmare realms of the lower astral planes under times of syzygy, and have only limited time and opportunity to survive on the scraps available before Entropy takes them. They can hitch a ride to Earth via the passing astral body of a dreamer, a near-death experience or another altered state, merging irrevocably with the human to become Selenim. The widespread stories of "shadow people" are believed to be based on dreamers' encounters with Black Paredri. Black Paredri cannot survive outside the astral plane, nor outside a human body on Earth. If somehow bound to a conventional Stasis object then they will always be sucked in without hope of release, and their Core will continue to suffer Entropy until dissolution. The Xibalbans (i.e. Selenim lords of Mexico) apparently created their own obsidian Stasis objects that preserve their Core indefinitely against Entropy, though the Immortals of the Bohemian Tradition know nothing substantial about these artifacts.

Ar-KaIm may or may not have Paredri, but this has been impossible to establish as their Heart cannot survive outside a human body even on the astral plane. Whether their body dies on Earth or during a sojourn through the astral, their Heart always explodes and leaves nothing salvageable behind. The only way to preserve against this danger is by somehow binding their Heart to a Stasis object. Stasis doesn't answer the Paredrus question either, as the Heart is only released by incarnating a new bearer from its occult dynasty.

And those are my ideas so far. Hope you enjoyed!