Editing Puc'Kao

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Chaos Mythic Cycles: Puc'Kao, Nurgle's daemonic fairy of tooth rot, gum disease and sweets

Mischievous and carelessly playful to the point of sadism, the tooth daemon Puc’Kao represents all form of dental decay, mouth diseases, bad breath and yellowing smiles. An adamant foe of good oral hygienic, Puc’kao represents the natural decline as teeth age and grow brittle and sees the frantic attempts of men to keep their mouths healthy as a laughable contradiction against the passage of time. Taking delight in dispelling such illusions, Puc’Kao is infamous in the myths of many civilisations as a notorious prankster, a shadowy figure that haunts the murky places in the dark and the quiet corners of mortal nightmares.

To enter the material world Puc’kao appears in a semi-ethereal shadowy state and from there proceeds to play tricks on unsuspecting mortals. Curdled milk; animals growing extra limbs or heads; important items going missing; children being kidnapped; all are attributed to the nasty humour of the Plaque King. His favourite trick though is to steal fresh teeth straight from the mouths of mortals, looking for the healthiest, more pristine teeth for his collection. Such is his skill he can pluck them from sleeping men and women without waking them up. It is only from the moment they open their eyes the next morning that a rush of agonising pain hits them and they find bleeding holes where once they had perfect teeth. As much as Puc'Kao steals though he gives back in kind, leaving generous gifts of plaque, foul pus, cancerous growths and brightly wrapped candies for the troubles his victims have suffered.

Depictions of this elusive, rarely seen daemon tend to show him as an overweight black skinned cherub roughly the size of a human baby, with fluttering fly-like wings, greenish pus oozing from the corners of his mouth and a twig-like wand with a mangy crow’s head on top clutched in his pudgy hand. At times though he will appear as a wizened old man with a pair of vicious pliers or a disembodied floating mouth with no teeth and bleeding gums bubbling with painful diseases, a long inflamed tongue hanging out of the mouth licking it's lips eagerly.

Energetically fluttering on the winds of plague, Puc’Kao soars over the Garden of Nurgle within the realm of Chaos, the joyful tooting of his old bronze horn echoing like a funeral dirge. In his wake come the giggling pus sprites of ache and swelling, of dullness and stings, the deathly fey who live within the swamps and undergrowth of Nurgle’s garden. They shower everyone underneath with dried up petals, little bones and their droppings, laughing at every cringe and swear word directed up towards them. They are especially loathed by the Plaguebearers, the tallymen of Nurgle, for the pus sprites like to play mean tricks on their dour brethren to interrupt their counts, giggling all the while as they flutter out of reach of the rusting plagueswords of the outraged daemons. Always in the lead is Puc'Kao and his pranks within the Garden of Nurgle are as legendary as the breath-taking gall he possesses to commit them. 

Old wives tales state that if a tooth starts to ache overnight it is because Puc’Kao has paid the person a visitor in the quiet hours of the morning and laid a curse upon them. Over the course of seven nights the ache will intensify until the victim is in seething agony, their teeth will blacken and rot from the inside out and then start to drop out one after another in front of the victim's horrified eyes. Gifts of money, baby teeth, sweets and freshly baked biscuits are said to placate the bringer of cavities and only then for seven nights, after which Puc’Kao may or may not visit the victim once more depending on his mood.

Surprisingly Puc’kao is popular among demonologists and desperate mortals as it is said if one can catch the daemonic fairy during one of his nightly wanderings then he will grant all the wishes that your heart desires. There are no limits to his generosity and all the tales speak of immense riches and good fortune that comes to those rare individuals that succeed in capturing him. Likewise though the tales darkly state how each person realised too late that they were being spoiled rotten through all of their wishes being fulfilled, their souls and bodies decaying into foul corruption as too much of a good thing lured them into a maddening spiral of greed, gluttony and insatiable want.

Puc’kao is not as powerful, dangerous or even ambitious compared to some of the Plaguefather’s other daemonic servants but the daemonic fairy’s little tricks amuse Nurgle and he gives him free reign to do as he wishes. It is this independent spirit that serves Nurgle the best, for it means Puc’kao can strike anywhere and anytime over the many worlds and plains of reality, as unpredictable and sudden as misfortune can be.