Breath Reaper

Breath Reaper
also known as Rakshasa (Breath Reaper)
Kind	Rakshasa monk-sorcerer
Status	Free — the Red Seal was broken, and he has returned to his own realm
GM canon
first cited: [heralds-a#3]

Breath Reaper is a Rakshasa monk-sorcerer remembered as an old enemy of Sarlona who once destroyed many lives. ^{[heralds-b#245]}

Overview

He is known, from the murals of the Temple of the Red Seal that once held him, as a masked, faceless figure who does not draw chi from the living in general but from the instant of death itself. ^{[heralds-b#393]} He was once a monk of the Ten Thousand Breath, the discipline of drawing one's own breath inward for balance, until he broke that path by pulling chi from other monks instead of himself. ^{[heralds-b#392 · heralds-b#393]}

The breaking of the Ten Thousand Breath

The Ten Thousand Breath was a path of restraint, in which monks returned their own breath to themselves rather than releasing it outward, seeking balance rather than power. ^{[heralds-b#392 · heralds-b#393]} Breath Reaper broke that path: rather than reclaiming only his own breath, he reached for the breath of others, and in time turned death itself into a tool for gathering chi. ^{[heralds-b#393]} In doing so he dragged the continent of Sarlona into ruin — cities collapsed and temples burned as monks fled — so that, in the temple's own telling, not merely individuals but a whole culture was consumed. ^{[heralds-b#393]}

The Red Seal

The guardian of the temple, a Couatl, judged that killing Breath Reaper would wound the world itself, since his breath was bound to its flow of chi — so rather than slay him, the Couatl sealed him. ^{[heralds-b#393]} Breath Reaper was thereby imprisoned within the Temple of the Red Seal, bound by ancient Sarlonan seals. ^{[heralds-b#378]} Were the Red Seal ever to break while he remained bound, the region risked being plunged into a chi-harvesting catastrophe. ^{[heralds-b#378]}

Freedom

At a later point the Red Seal did break: the temple was destroyed, its guardian died, and Breath Reaper went free, returning to his own realm. ^{[heralds-a#3 · heralds-a#5]}

The Reaper's shadow

Players, stop here. What is hidden behind this point is game-master material. The full detail is on GM:Breath Reaper.

Related pages

• Temple of the Red Seal — the dungeon built to hold him, destroyed when the Red Seal broke
• Ten Thousand Breath — the monastic path he broke, turning it into a means of harvesting chi from death
• Sarlona — the continent he is remembered as having devastated
• The Couatl of the Red Seal — the guardian who chose to seal him rather than kill him
• Scuto — a monk of the same lineage whose master stood watch over the seal