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Culsu

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Extremely little is known about the ancient Talbot specter known as Culsu. In theory, the information still exists, locked away in some incredibly deep Censorium in the Underworld, guarded by the kind of arcane defenses that only a paranoid undead archmage could produce.

There are a few firm facts known about Culsu's mortal life. Culsu is probably a female (the Shadow Name refers to an Etruscan demoness and guardian of the underworld, and her voice seems too high to be a man's). She lived during the High Medieval Period, a span of years between about 1100 and 1250 when culture and learning was on an upswing, a kind of little renaissance right before a series of crises culminating in the Black Death brought everything crashing down. She was an Awakened Archmage of no small power, and spent a significant part of her early life and original Awakened training in Italy, probably Venice.

What is known for certain are two things. First, that Culsu established the Talbot ancestor cult. What relation the Talbots originally had to Culsu is unknown. She may have been a member of the family, or she may have simply chosen them as suitable subjects. Nevertheless, she instituted the arcane rituals of memorialization and propitiation that ensured that a very high percentage of the Talbots would return from the dead as ghosts.

Secondly, when Culsu grew old enough, she committed a highly complex ritual suicide, which ensured that she would return as a ghost with her faculties intact. Her original anchors have almost all withered away by now due to the weight of the ages (though there's a pair of iron scissors in the British Museum that still remain -- they had been one of Culsu's most powerful magical tools), yet the Talbot cult maintains Culsu's presence in the material world, as it does for all the other Talbot dead.
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