Editing The Enshrouded (section)

==The Red Slivers==
A placeholder name for the original coven these ideas sprang from. The Red Slivers are an old and embittered Haemonculus Coven, believed by most of Commoragh to be long swept away by the predations of upstart rivals. They lurk in the fringes of Commorite society, their works unpraised and their mark unknown save to some who have the foresight to have the history of the Dark City obsessively recorded. No Kabals answer to the Red Slivers, at least overtly, but the truth is this society of torture-surgeons has a far more sinister way of spreading its influence.

The Red Slivers have bent their craft to the creation of a flesh-creature, a sinuous and barbed worm which burrows into the base of the victim's spine and rapidly threads its body with invasive fibres through which the victim may be controlled at will. From the moment of symbiosis the victim is as good as dead, for removal of the parasite causes irreparable damage to the host's innards, literally ripping their blood vessels out with it. The only way to tell if someone is a host is a series of pinprick-like scabs on the host's collarbone, from which the Coven gets its name. Through the horrid science of the Haemonculus' art the Slivers may control the newly assimilated victim, and often the first sign of a Sliver attack is when a portion of the population goes berserk at the worst possible moment.

The parasites themselves feed upon their host, draining the nutrients from its body until the host is emaciated and bony. The worms also continue to grow, and they shift within the body to accommodate themselves. Thus hosts which have survived for a good while will be horrid, utterly dysmorphic things, lurching forward single-mindedly while the rippling form of their massive parasite is seen pushing against their flesh.

The Red Slivers themselves are not immune to the sapping effects of the parasites themselves, however, as controlling any more than a few at a time takes its toll upon the mind of the controller. This becomes especially true when the worms come of age and develop a terrible sentience of their own. This goes so far as to warp the bodies of those who regularly use a great deal of the parasites at once into freakish, thin beings not unlike the parasites themselves.