> *”What is given to gods is not given to mortals. The teachings of this apostate are worse than heresy: they are a blasphemy so grotesque they must be utterly destroyed.” -Immortalis Gemellus Aelius* ### Overview *The Radix Veneni* is the only text on the deepest dimensions known of [[Sorcery]] and the history of [[Demons]], albeit one unconfirmed by any other source, that exists in the entirety of the world beyond the secret personal repositories of [[The Princes of Iron]], passed down to their successor power in [[The Imperium]], [[The Divine Imperatrix]]. A series of eight volumes preserved on vellum rumored to be human skin, it is a work absolutely despised by demons, gods, and mortals alike. In [[The Western Lands]], it is marked for destruction by an *edictum solii vacui*, one of only two such Imperial unified judgments; the only other example of this rare agreement between all seven Princes of Iron expressed as Imperial law is [[The Aeterna Pacis]] itself. In [[The Eastern Lands]], the work exists only really as a rumor…though whispers persist that it can be found in fragmented forms in the most vile and unspeakable desecrated sites. The only supposed substantiation of such mutterings is the work of the explorer [[Mikel Garaia]] (791-832 RY), who describes a series of eight damaged scrolls he saw in his delve into the half-sunken labyrinth that once served as a stronghold for [[Valac the Arbiter]], a demon of strange origins and a stranger nature who made his home in [[The Mere]] until around the year 800 RY. What became of the demon is unclear, but his name is still not spoken by the wild people of the Mere, who refer to the Valac by epithets for reasons known only to them. ### Authorship and Creation While the author’s name is never directly referenced in the script of these volumes, students of demonology know the symbol of [[Sammael the Torturer]] (???-798 RY) all-too well. An apostate demon who has worn many faces and titles since [[The Revealing]], he was a solitary elder fiend who bowed to neither the Princes of Iron nor the pantheon of the East. His destruction in the Imperial conquest of [[The Red Mountains]] (787-798 RY) is a thing of legend: a titan of demonic power who broke his isolation in order to challenge entire legions for reasons of his own. It is not clear when the volumes were composed, but in the Imperium, it was rumored that his work escaped eastward across [[The World-Sea]] and that failure to carry out an *edictum solii vacui* led to the public execution of an Immortal and then a vicious purging of Divine Prince Michael’s most favored servants. If this supposition is true, the discovery of similarly-described scrolls in Valac’s abandoned lair circa 829 RY suggests they were relatively recent acquisitions. *The Radix Veneni* draws its very name from its author, the title best being understood as “*The Root of Venom*”. It was not named this by its demonic author, but by its critics in the Imperium, and the title stuck. Most interestingly, however, the last scroll is only half-filled. It is unclear if Sammael was unable to complete it due to Imperial interference…or if the demon intended for another to complete it. ### Composition and Content It is clear from the text that Sammael spent centuries studying both Void and its intersection with the world. Oddly, it is almost cyclical in nature: the first scroll Sammael claims is a series of lessons from an unnamed entity, perhaps a god, that he calls “Mother” and the last scroll appears to be dialogues recorded by the demon between Sammael and an apprentice who speaks in the same style and with equal depth of knowledge, but who is positioned as clearly not a demon. Though *The Radix Veneni* is often cited as a possible source of demonic history, Sammael is clearly far less interested in such things throughout the text than he is the use of sorcery and the nature of Void. Sammael’s descriptions of the origins of demons are cryptic at best, but unlike most myths, the author asserts that demons existed before [[The Deceiver]], though some passages do note that they were supposedly once different: slaves stripped of will, not masters of Void until that coming. Sammael does not use the Imperial style for that entity, nor the Eastern name used in this summary for clarity’s sake: the text quite stubbornly refers to the Deceiver as “The False Prophet”. The bulk of the work, however, is an intricate dance between sorcery and philosophy. While the sixth and seventh volumes contain some truly horrifying descriptions of blending flesh with demonic qualities and the nature of demonic brands, much of the focus is on the nature of will and how it is an absolute requirement for sorcery. Sammael posits that [[Magic]] can be accidental, spontaneous, and follows a set of laws that are consistent, but sorcery cannot. It is purely an act of will. But while other demons consider their behavior, power, and role to be perfectly orderly, Sammael embraces sorcery as entropy bent to intention. All eight scrolls of *The Radix Veneni* are structured as a dialogue, but only the first scroll and the incomplete last scroll ever identify the other speaker in Sammael's dialogues. It is unclear who the demon converses with in the other scrolls, but the structure is virtually identical except the anonymity. The common conception is that Sammael uses the other voice injecting lessons or questioning techniques philosophically as a rhetorical device, but one hesitates to so simply face anything written by such an inscrutable creature. ### Reception To say the reception of this work was negative would be profoundly understating the virulent opposition it has garnered from both adherents of [[Creation]] and Void. Even Sammael’s fellow apostate demons tend to regard the work as a theory of madness and reject it entirely. And yet, there are stirrings of thought (always punished as heretical wherever they arise, in the East or West) that propose Sammael knows more than anyone would like to admit about the true nature of Void. Perhaps that is why it survives, both in fragments of text, and in the idea of a “True Prophet” of Void that seems to refuse to die which originates in these scrolls.