XALATH — The Corrupted Oracle

*"You think I lost my eyes. I gave them away — and the void has been describing you to me
ever since."*

The oracle of the **Void Cult** and the voice of **Ktara**. One of the **Starward Vanguard**,
part of the [STARWARD VANGUARD — collection](https://civarchive.com/collections/16942164).

**Trigger word:** `xalath` (put it first, then her tags, then the scene).

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THE LORE

Xalath was a signals officer of the Vanguard, good enough to be left alone with the deep
relays at night. She was on shift the night a transmission came in that had no sender: no
ship, no station, no origin vector — only a voice, reading back the names of the crew, in
order of when they would die. She decoded it. She kept decoding it after the relay was
physically unplugged, and by the time they reached her console the deck plates under her
chair had gone soft and the colour had drained out of her skin.

The Void Cult did not kidnap her. They came for their oracle's voice, and she opened the
airlock herself.

What came back wears the uniform she was captured in — torn to the ribs, one shoulder
slipped — with dark ritual robes layered over it and glowing sigils stitched into the cloth.
Nobody is sure who stitched them. She does not eat. She does not sleep, properly. She
floats a few inches off the deck, barefoot, and her short white hair drifts as if she were
still underwater in something very deep.

**She is Ktara's mouth.** When the Emissary of the Unfathomable Void has something to say to
a captain, a rival empress or a dying ship, she does not say it: Xalath says it, in a calm
and pleasant voice, and is almost always right. She is not a soldier and she is not a
monster. She is a translator, and she is very good at her job.

**Off duty** she sits cross-legged in mid-air in a bare cult cell — a glowing purple
blindfold, a hairbrush in one grey hand, a bowl of untouched food on the deck below — and
hums. The crew have learned not to ask what she is humming.

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APPEARANCE

- **Skin:** dark ashen grey
- **Hair:** short, choppy, white; drifts on its own, as if underwater
- **Eyes:** none — a **glowing purple silk blindfold**; thin trails of violet light leak from
underneath
- **Build:** slender, light, **floating** a few inches off the ground; small breasts; barefoot
- **Aura:** psychic purple, clinging to her like slow smoke
- **Work outfit:** dark ritual robes worn open over a **torn Vanguard uniform** ripped to the
ribs, glowing purple sigils stitched into the cloth, bare midriff, tattered hem, one
shoulder slipped
- **Off duty:** sheer translucent **void-silk** drapes wound low around her hips, with a
starfield visible through the fabric
- **Props:** a small black stone idol shaped like coiled tentacles