Vulkanos Fumor Champion Lore
As Authoratrix Lamasu is loyal to Siroth, Vulkanos Fumor is loyal to her. He has little ambition to rule over all Creation, as she does, but in her eternal struggle to dominate all, she has provided Vulkanos with hundreds of battles and sieges, and for that alone she has his unshakable devotion. The shriek of massive projectiles speeding through smoggy air, the echoing, earth-shaking clangor of stone crashing against stone, the crackling of wooden doors splintering and fires burning: all are sweet music to Vulkanos’ ears.
Even before he was a Demon, Vulkanos was fascinated by the mortal races’ buildings, and studied their methods of construction and demolition thoroughly. Siroth seduced him during the Great Divorce by giving him the opportunity to help bring down Lumaya’s fortress. The thought of destroying such a mighty edifice was salivating to Vulkanos. If he could destroy it, nothing was beyond his skill.
After the banishment of the Firstborn, Vulkanos’ enthusiasm for architecture and engineering became twisted by bitter hate and eternal longing. He was desperate to finish what he started. The creation of Demonspawn allowed him the chance to see what great cities, walls, and spires had arisen on Teleria in his absence, and devise myriad ways to bring them crashing down. Desiring a strong body to host his soul, Vulkanos sent agents to find one during the First Great War. They overpowered a knight of Kaerok and bound him with infernal chains of fire, roasting him alive in his armor. As his agony peaked, he was dragged through a portal to Anathraad to serve as Vulkanos’ vessel. During their merging, the chains and armor fused together and melted onto the flesh of the former knight. Augmented with lethal spikes and blades, this aged coat of plate is what Vulkanos wears to this day. The knight’s greatsword, similarly twisted by Demonic magic, channels Vulkanos’ natural pyromantic might, glowing red-hot at his merest touch.
Able to travel to Teleria thanks to his Demonspawn form, Vulkanos longed to return. He swore himself to Lamasu, as he saw her as the most spirited and dedicated invader, one who would best give him opportunities to destroy the greatest fortifications and grandest palaces. In her service, he used his mastery of fire and magma to shape molten metal with his bare hands and forge red—hot iron into parts for infernal siege engines. He pioneered catapults and ballistae that launched their projectiles with the force of infernal explosives, bombards that fired huge globs of molten slag, and battering rams that glowed with internal fire, letting them ignite wooden gates as they crashed against them.
Though the First Great War was unsuccessful, as were the others, Vulkanos never lost his spark of ingenuity. He has made his most prized creations with the grafted bodies of lesser Demonspawn, their own flesh and joints used to articulate the movement of the engines and their tormented agony adding to the dark magic powering the devices. He relishes firing his own creations himself, using his superheated sword to light the fuses of cannons, or to cut lines holding catapults in tension. As his mechanisms swing into action, he watches carefully for the tiniest deviations in angles and forces, for minuscule shudders and hitches, spots of unnecessary friction, and points of wear and tear. His scrupulous reviews ensure the next generation of war machines — which he plans to build with many more ‘organic components’ — will be even more effective.
Despite his exacting and studious ways, Vulkanos is not merely a siege engineer content to watch his creations smash the enemy from afar. He longs for the moment when gates are shattered or walls crumble, creating a gap that he can lead a host through. Blazing sword in hand, he is always the first through the breach, heedless of the danger or tactical value of his presence elsewhere. He cannot resist the opportunity to behold the terror of mortals who had thought themselves secure, whose last hopes have been shattered along with the stone and mortar of their walls.
During Lamasu’s great siege of Holmskurt, Vulkanos targeted the city’s vulnerable and vital buildings with pinpoint accuracy, lobbing burning orbs and caustic globs over the walls to strike granaries, hospitals, stables, and wells. Several times, Vulkanos and his diabolical devices blasted a breach in Holmskurt’s walls, but each time he and his Demonspawn vanguard were driven back and the breach sealed once again, to his fury. His failures, and Lamasu’s ultimate success using the brute-force tactic of a living ramp of Demonspawn bodies, only drove Vulkanos to greater heights of fiendish innovation and depraved designs. lf Lamasu were to decide she no longer needed him, he would lose the power and influence he needs to continue following his grisly passions to their fullest extent.