On Fiends, a transcript of a lecture from Fiend Disposal 101 in the LAGOONs

Fiends.

One of the first things you learn here at the LAGOONs is that you are always on fiend disposal duty and since this is Fiend Disposal 101 – it’s my job to make sure that you understand what they are so it doesn’t disarm you in the field.

They’re us. Or they were, at some point… after a fashion. You can see it and hear it in the younger fiends – when they scream, they still sound human. There’s no turning them back.

Get that bit in your heads – there. is. no. turning. them. back.

See, in order for a person to become a Fiend – they have to die first. This is why there’s no communicating with them and why they lack any memories of who they were. They’re already dead.

A few things are required other than a dead body and I’m going to list them – there will be a quiz on this at some point – so you understand how to keep from adding to their numbers.

One, the most obvious, a dead body. Human or animal, it doesn’t matter. They just need a dead body.
Two, high ambient magical radiation. Magical storms, a lot of casting, old battlefields… how the place gained the magical radiation doesn’t seem to matter. It just has to be there.
Three, …this part isn’t fully understood yet to be clear. Right now the leading theory is that someone with a strong will to survive has to pass through the area, but scholars have been debating this ingredient for a long time.
Four, a lack of acknowledgement. What I’m getting at here is – there’s a statistically lower chance of a body becoming a fiend of it has had rites of some sort. It doesn’t need to be buried, it just needs to be acknowledged.

Now I see the question in your head, the – so wait, are they zombies? And the answer is no.

Magic is within all of us, but when we die our magic scatters. Undead cannot use magic for this reason. Fiends are a case of the ambient magic collecting into a vessel and birthing new life. DNA testing has revealed that fiends are closer to being children of the dead in terms of their genetic sequence.

This is why there is no turning them back. They don’t have a back to be turned to. Fiends cannot be taught as children can; they attack all other living creatures – even other fiends. Most of them will always go for whatever is closest before moving on to further away targets.

You can use this. If you’re outside of the LAGOON and something starts attacking whoever is closest, you may have a fiend on your hands. Many of them don’t need to eat, so this attacking behavior does not serve as a method of food intake.

Which makes them dangerous. A fiend will see a walkway filled with ten people and see ten corpses it needs to make. If target C takes a single step closer than target B is, the fiend will switch targets immediately.

This, too, is something you can use. If you need to switch who is being attacked quickly, all you need to do is have a different person get too close. Mind that panicked civilians may do this on their own – not because they are trying to help, but because they are afraid. You’ll want to get them out of the line of fire as quickly as possible.

Now, there are only so many known fiend types and we will be covering them – starting with the weakest – so you know what to use against them in order to take out a fiend most effectively. If you ever need a refresher, the training decks are full of captured fiends that any tag reader can give you information on. But that is not our objective today. Today is understanding, because the more of us that understand how to prevent fiends – the less we will have to deal with them, and the better off the world will be.

Even if all you can do is provide some kind of rites to the deceased, you may log it as fiend disposal duty. And if you learn anything interesting, anything that stands out – a fiend using tools, for example – then you are to report it as soon as possible. We are still learning about fiends, and I want all of you to remember that even what I have said today may turn out to be wrong once we have learned more. As members of the LAGOON, you will receive an alert should further information be discovered. Now, do any of you have questions?