Davak
Writer
Z H E R A C H
The Child Born in Flame
The Child Born in Flame
OUT-OF-CHARACTER INFORMATION
Intent:
To create a Living Fire entity that was spawned during his ritual on Death Star III. An extension of Da'Razel's power, and a companion that haunts, amplifies, and accompanies him.
Image Credit:
Meramon
Role:
Zherach acts as a bound Force entity, and haunting familiar. It accompanies and assists Da'Razel, resides within his armor and weapons, or explores its surroundings, quenching its strong sense of curiosity.
Permissions:
N/A
Links:
GENERAL INFORMATION
Name: Zherach
Affiliation: Da'Razel, Cult of Saud, Church of the Dark Side
Homeworld: Manifested aboard Death Star III
Classification: Living Fire
Age: Recently spawned, no more than a few weeks or months old since its manifestation aboard Death Star III.
Gender: N/A
Race: Living Fire / Force Entity
APPEARANCE
Zherach exists purely as flame, a being without physical flesh or bone. Its smallest forms can resemble a drifting ember-wisp or even a candle flame.
But no matter its form, the blaze is intensely eerie; there is something unnatural in how it licks and cracks. Even something as small as a flicker will bend, curl, or gleam with intention. Many who experience its presence describe the unsettling sensation of having a hunter's eyes pierce one's back.
A fire that is watching them.
When it chooses a more defined shape, Zherach often takes on a crude silhouette of whatever creature or person it is observing, imitating their outline with fire rather than flesh.
These shapes lack precision, but they are unmistakably purposeful, humanoid forms of living flame with smoldering ember eyes, or bestial shapes licking at the air as if stalking prey.
In extreme situations, when heavily fed on life-force, Zherach can grow into a raging inferno and surging wildfire, or into a towering giant of living flame.
Zherach cannot grasp or touch anything without burning it. It has no physical means of interaction beyond the destructive properties of fire.
It frequently hides within the vents and seams of Da'Razel's furnace-grown armor, in the smoldering heart of his hammer, or in any flame that he produces.
PERSONALITY
Zherach's personality is a product of its violent birth. Created in an instant from a vortex of dark side energy fueled by death, consecrated suffering, and ritual immolation, it entered existence already as an incarnation of fiery wrath.
It does not experience the world through traditional senses. It has no understanding of morality, no sense of social decorum, and no concept of personal boundaries. Instead, it perceives reality through heat, emotion, and living Force currents.
Despite the violence of its origin, Zherach is childlike in many ways. It is impressionable, eager to learn, quick to anger, and deeply attached to Da'Razel. It refers to him as its "Fire-Father" or "The Vessel-That-Burns-Correctly," believing him to be the only being it has encountered whose Force energy has the shape of flame rather than being chaotic.
Around strangers, it behaves cautiously or in a predatory way, reacting to their emotional heat rather than their words. Around Da'Razel, it is loyal, attentive, and attempts, often clumsily, to mimic his controlled nature.
Zherach cannot speak aloud and communicates through telepathy. It can materialize its thoughts and experiences as crackling sensations, flickers of emotion, and crude impressions within the minds of those sensitive to the Force.
TRAINING & ROLE
It obeys Da'Razel instinctually due to the bond formed during its creation, but it learns behaviors through repeated exposure and imitation. It can learn when to retreat into the armor, when to lash out, and how to mirror Da'Razel's emotional state, but these are learned patterns rather than commands in the traditional sense.
Zherach's role in combat is highly dependent on how much fuel—life-force, emotional energy, or heat—it has recently consumed. When starved, it is little more than a dim ember clinging to Da'Razel, offering minimal assistance. When well-fed, it becomes a potent source of destructive fire-energy.
In battle, Zherach behaves like a living extension of Da'Razel's flames. It can lash outward as a burst of fire, scorch or ignite targets it touches, create momentary heat distortions, or manifest fiery silhouettes meant to distract or intimidate foes. It cannot wield weapons, block attacks, or strike with physical force, as it has no solid form. Instead, it saturates the battlefield with heat, reinforcing Da'Razel's presence and augmenting his pyrokinesis. It is most effective when acting in close proximity to him, responding directly to his emotions and intentions.
Away from Da'Razel or deprived of fuel, Zherach dwindles rapidly, reducing its combat presence to little more than a flicker.
FORCE ABILITIES
Zherach does not wield the Force as a trained practitioner would. Its abilities are instinctual manifestations of its nature as Living Fire and expressions of the energies that birthed it. It does not cast techniques so much as behave according to the rules of its existence. Its connection to the Force is raw, immediate, and inseparable from flame.
• Pyrokinetic: The ability to manifest and manipulate fire proportionally to the life-force it has consumed.
• Force Drain: Zherach instinctively burns and absorbs life-energy, emotion, and vitality to sustain or empower its fire.
• Mimicry: The capacity to take on crude silhouettes or shapes formed from living flame, though these hold no physical substance.
• Telepathy: The ability to project crackling thoughts, urges, and emotional impressions into the minds of Force-sensitive beings.
FORCE SENSITIVITY
Yes. Zherach is composed entirely of Force-animated fire and exists by consuming life-force. Its existence is intrinsically tied to the Force.
STRENGTHS
• Living Fire Physiology:
Zherach is non-corporeal and immune to conventional physical harm, able to slip through spaces and ignore physical obstruction as a manifestation of pure flame.
• Scaling Power:
The more life-force, emotion, and heat it consumes, the larger and more destructive it becomes, capable of briefly echoing the colossal inferno-form in which it was born.
• Symbiotic Bond to Da'Razel:
The ritual that created Zherach bound it instinctively to Da'Razel's presence and will, giving it clarity, stability, and direction whenever it remains near its Fire-Father.
WEAKNESSES
• Water, Cold, and Submersion:
Contact with water or extreme cold rapidly weakens or extinguishes Zherach's manifested form, collapsing it into a dormant ember until reignited.
• Force-Dead Materials and Null Zones:
Ysalamiri-like fields, voidstone, vonium, and other Force-dead environments immediately snuff out its flame and leave it powerless.
• Fuel Dependency:
Zherach burns constantly and cannot sustain itself without consuming life-force, heat, or emotional energy; when starved, it dwindles to a frail spark unable to defend itself or manifest meaningful power.
ORIGINS
Zherach's existence is rooted in the Empire's attempt to turn holy war and genocide into a single act of worship.
In the wake of the Jedi Coalition's strike on Had Abbadon, the Galactic Empire accelerated its plans and wrenched Death Star III across the stars, dragging it to Atrisia as the centerpiece of the annihilation. There, above a world claimed by the Lightsworn, the superweapon prepared to erase a planet, while deep within its bowels the Church of the Dark Side wove a ritual of unthinkable magnitude. As the Emperor's servants chanted and the superlaser primed, the battle station became a crucible of death, terror, and devotion, every casualty feeding a growing wound in the Force.
Da'Razel served the Church as the Saint of Flame, entrusted with an experimental sub-ritual conceived from fragmented Sith scripture rediscovered on Athiss and reworked under his own hand. Where the Emperor's rite sought to tear open a gateway through the Blackwall and chain whole regions of space, Da'Razel's design was more focused and more blasphemous: to breathe true, living consciousness into the fire itself, to awaken an avatar of the Church's creed from the slaughter the Empire had sown.
To that end he gathered his chosen flock in the shrine he named the Scheiterhaufen. Salafir, the Force-gifted youth offered by a desperate diplomat. Kandora, the veteran zealot who had found faith at his side. Gazim, the branded gladiator torn from the Mawite pits. Alongside them marched wardens, cultists, and nameless faithful, all consecrated not merely as soldiers, but as fuel. As the wider Annihilation raged and Atrisia burned under the shadow of Death Star III, Da'Razel's followers bled, chanted, and died in the heart of the station's own furnace.
Kandora was the first to truly witness what their devotion had purchased. As she fell, transfixed by Phaelissia's blades, her dying gaze turned not to her killer but to the ritual pyre. She saw the flames twist, coil, and knit themselves into the outline of something immense: a gilded, incorporeal shape, its limbs forming out of roiling fire as though flesh and bone were being forged from molten light. All that death, all that worship, all that power was drawn into a moon-sized wound in the Force and given a single direction, a single purpose, embroidered into its very being by Da'Razel's hand.
They had birthed Living Fire.
A towering giant of flame tore itself free from the pillar, a featureless titan crowned in pyre-light. It took its first steps in the shrine, heat so intense that metal wept and breath itself could burn. It did not need to be told what to do. Like a migratory bird knowing north from south, it was born already knowing its truth: to burn, to unmake, to flare brighter than suns until only light remained. It was bound to one distant light in the storm of souls, a single will at the center of the rite, and in that bond it recognized Da'Razel as its Father.
As the battle within the Death Star spiraled toward catastrophe, Jedi saboteurs attacking the weapon, CryoBan and counter-rituals lashing at the inferno, fleets tearing the superweapon apart around Atrisia, the giant's first scream shook the chamber. Waves of fire crashed forth, a mute proclamation of its birth. But even a living cataclysm cannot stand forever against a galaxy's worth of resistance. Struck, contested, and choked by cold and opposition, the titan of Living Fire began to recoil, folding back into itself. What had stretched to fill the hangar collapsed down, gathering like a storm compressed into a single thunderhead.
What remained was not absence, but a core.
Da'Razel felt it before anyone else: a molten presence smoldering in the chest of the fading avatar, a heart of Living Fire that refused to go out. As Death Star III's fate was sealed and the greater Annihilation unraveled, that heart clung to the one will it had been bound to since its first breath. It followed him into his armor, into the furnace of his hammer, into every flame that rose at his command.
In the days that followed, that core of fire distilled into something smaller, sharper, and more focused. It remembered the screams, the prayers, the light of Atrisia burning beneath the battle station. It remembered the faces of the zealots who had died to bring it forth. From those memories and that bond, a child-mind coalesced: a newborn spirit of flame that named itself Zherach, and that named Da'Razel Fire-Father.
Since then, Zherach has haunted him as cloak, shadow, and whisper, a living ember of the Empire's failed annihilation, bound not to the Death Star, nor to Atrisia, but to the saint who dared to give the fire a soul.
