Crazed Risen

A Crazed Risen looks like a human body caught between ascension and damnation.

Its flesh is pale and stretched tight over warped muscle, marked by glowing veins of gold and black that pulse beneath the skin like competing heartbeats. Patches of skin appear burned away by radiant light, while other areas rot with dark necrotic decay. The air around it flickers strangely, carrying the scent of incense and sulfur in equal measure.

One eye may glow with soft celestial radiance while the other leaks shadow like spilled ink. Its movements are uneven and jerking, as if multiple instincts are fighting for control of the same body.

The most disturbing part is that traces of the original person remain.

Some mutter broken prayers between snarls. Others whisper fragments of names or plead for help in cracked voices before suddenly collapsing into violence. Their bodies cannot contain the conflicting divine and infernal energies forced into them, and every moment of existence is agony.

When slain, that unstable power tears free in a violent eruption of radiant and necrotic energy.

⚖️ Origins

The Crazed Risen are the failed results of forbidden experiments meant to transcend mortality.

Certain cults, desperate kingdoms, and mad arcanists discovered that both celestial and fiendish blood possess transformative power. Individually, these essences could enhance mortals—granting strength, resilience, or supernatural gifts.

Someone eventually asked:

What would happen if a mortal survived both?

The answer was the Crazed Risen.

Subjects were injected, infused, or forcibly bathed in the mingled blood of celestials and fiends. Most died instantly as the opposing energies annihilated each other within their bodies.

Some survived.

Those survivors lost nearly everything that made them human.

🧠 State of Mind

The mind of a Crazed Risen is shattered by contradiction.

Within them:

• divine instinct urges order, obedience, and ascension
• infernal corruption drives rage, hunger, and destruction

The mortal soul trapped between these forces slowly tears apart.

As a result, Crazed Risen:

• lash out unpredictably
• alternate between terror and violence
• react aggressively to strong emotion or magic

Many retain fragments of memory:

• recognizing loved ones
• repeating prayers
• mimicking old routines

These moments never last long.

🩸 Physiology

A Crazed Risen no longer functions like a living creature:

• it does not sleep
• it does not eat
• it does not breathe

The celestial and fiendish energies sustaining it constantly consume and rebuild its body in a grotesque cycle.

This instability causes:

• glowing cracks beneath the skin
• spontaneous burns or frost
• bleeding radiant light or black ichor
• twitching limbs moving before conscious thought

Upon death, the conflicting energies violently separate, causing the corpse to erupt.

🏛️ Use by Their Creators

Most creators view Crazed Risen as:

• disposable shock troops
• guards for forbidden laboratories
• unstable prototypes
• evidence to be hidden

Because they are difficult to control, they are often:

• chained
• magically restrained
• locked in underground cells until needed

Some experimenters intentionally provoke them into frenzy before unleashing them on enemies.

😨 Public Fear & Rumors

Villages near sites of experimentation tell stories of:

• glowing figures wandering at night
• screams mixed with choir-like echoes
• corpses burned and rotted simultaneously
• survivors begging for death

Religious orders often consider the Crazed Risen an abomination against both the heavens and the hells.

Some celestials reportedly destroy them out of mercy.

Fiends usually find them amusing.

⚔️ Combat Behavior

Crazed Risen fight like wounded animals:

• charging recklessly
• clawing wildly
• attacking the nearest target

But flashes of instinctive supernatural power occasionally emerge:

• bursts of radiant fury
• unnatural resilience
• sudden violent surges of speed

They rarely retreat and often continue fighting despite horrific injuries.

🌗 Rare Variants

Not every subject fully loses sanity.

Very rarely:

• a mortal survives the transformation with its mind intact
• the opposing energies stabilize instead of tearing the soul apart

These rare beings become something far more dangerous:

living hybrids of celestial and fiendish power.

Most stories involving such survivors end badly.