Beast Vassal

Beast Vassals (眷獣(けんじゅう), Kenjū, lit. "Kin Beast") or vampire’s familiars are beasts in the form of sentient, ultradense demonic energy brought from another world via blood flowing through a vampire's veins. Their abilities and forms vary according to the host. As Beast Vassals consume the life force of their host when they materialize, only vampires, who have an infinite "negative" life force, can employ them.

Overview

While Beast Vassals have varying strengths, even the weakest among them surpassed the power of an attack helicopter or a state-of-the-art main battle tank. It was said that the Beast Vassals employed by Elder vampires were capable of blowing away entire villages. Once released, there was no way to stop a Beast Vassal except by smashing it with an even more powerful magical force.

Beast Vassals were anomalies that could not normally exist in this world. Summoners had to sacrifice their own life energies to wield these creatures’ incredible destructive power while maintaining their physical forms. It was said only unaging, undying vampires could employ Beast Vassals. Astarte was the sole exception.

Beast Vassal. These were summoned beasts from another world, taking physical form in exchange for consuming the life force of their host. As familiars went, these were the worst of the worst, suddenly exhausting the life force of their summoners and granting them death. But by the same token, the combat ability of a Beast Vassal was immense. It was because vampires could use Beast Vassals that they were the most feared of all demonkind. And only vampires, with infinite “negative” life forces, could tame Beast Vassals…

A Beast Vassal was a beast summoned from another realm. To give it physical form, its lord had to shave off a piece of their own life span. Though there were different varieties of Beast Vassals, it was said that a normal human would lose their entire life from summoning one for but an instant. To a Beast Vassal, its lord’s life was simple food.

Even a homunculus lord was no exception. Astarte had been granted a life span far in excess of a normal human’s to attune her to symbiotic life with a Beast Vassal; however, little remained even of that.

History

Birthed from Deva technology, these creatures were the ultimate weapons of destruction. The Devas had strictly prohibited the summoning of Beast Vassals. This was because they were simply too powerful to be employed as tools of warfare. A single summoned Beast Vassal could burn a city or a forest to cinders, alter the terrain, and trample all life-forms in the vicinity, both friend and foe alike. Even the Devas, with their divine energy, found controlling them no easy task. When Beast Vassals went berserk, no one could stop them. They were truly calamities.

Characteristics

Are you folks mistaking vampire Beast Vassals as tools to be used at your convenience? Beast Vassals aren’t a vampire’s weapons or possessions, let alone obedient pets. They’re shitty, rampaging beasts that just happen to inhabit our bodies, y’see? If they think they’re not getting enough to eat, they’ll go off hunting on their own for sure, understand?

- Lost Warlord explaining the nature of Beast Vassals

A Beast Vassal was an amalgam of pure demonic energy. One’s very existence warped the laws of physics, consuming the host’s life force with incredible power. It was said that only vampires, with infinite negative life forces, could summon and employ Beast Vassals, making vampires the mightiest of all Demonkind.

Beast Vassals, by their very nature, were beings that did not belong in this world. Furthermore, as much as Beast Vassals possessed destructiveness far beyond the norm, the price the summoner paid to materialize them was their own life force. Vampires were feared as the mightiest of all demons because their infinite negative life forces, and theirs alone, allowed them to employ Beast Vassals.

The Beast Vassals that had lost their master. Unable to maintain physical form, the familiars’ vast demonic energy burst apart and scattered.

Physical attacks were virtually useless against the Beast Vassals that served vampires. They were the worst enemy for tanks and demon beasts alike.

The true terror of Beast Vassals, even more horrifying than their destructive power, is their contamination of memories. When Beast Vassals escape control, they steal ‘information’ without limit from sentient life-forms around them to maintain their physical forms.

Beast Vassals were information-based life-forms existing without physical form. To them, information was the feed necessary so that they could continue to exist. Accordingly, Beast Vassals instinctively acknowledged the one who fed them information as their host and obeyed that person. Joy, sadness, anger, sadness—the host’s powerful emotions, and the memories binding them together, were the finest of delicacies to Beast Vassals, and any host not sating this hunger would cease to be, his or her life force consumed to the last wisp. That was why the Primogenitors hated boredom. They needed pleasures to farm out to their own Beast Vassals. All the same, there was no rule that said the information fed to the Beast Vassals couldn’t be fabricated.

Summoning

Beast Vassals are beasts summoned from another world using a ritual spell. They’re masses of demonic energy powerful enough to possess sentience.

Summoning a Beast Vassal takes a sacrifice to serve as its icon, but human and normal demon bodies can’t take the strain of having a Beast Vassal dwelling in them. That doesn’t mean you can sacrifice the precious few Devas instead. So Devas built the vessels for Beast Vassals we call vampires.

Weakness

A Beast Vassal was a condensed amalgamation of demonic energy; no living being could withstand a blow from such a thing. It was said that nothing could defeat a Beast Vassal save smashing it with even greater magical energy —but there was a single exception. There was one other way to oppose a Beast Vassal: complete nullification of its demonic energy. That was why Yukina, the observer of the Fourth Primogenitor, had been granted a Schneewaltzer, which possessed that very ability. So far as shown in the series, there was but a single way to nullify demonic energy other than with a Schneewaltzer—the Black Bible once employed by Aya Tokoyogi. With it, she had rendered the Fourth Primogenitor’s Beast Vassals powerless by turning Itogami Island into a world where supernatural power did not exist.

Acquisition

A vampire’s Beast Vassals were summoned creatures from another world. Since they were tethered to one’s blood, only vampires could employ them on account of the infinite negative life energy at their disposal. Barring special cases, such as instances of cannibalism, there was only one way to acquire new Beast Vassals: A vampire of the parent generation had to allot blood and Beast Vassals to the newly born vampire—in other words, they had to clone the Beast Vassals. This was why vampire abilities weakened with successive generations.

Abilities

The violence and destructiveness of a Beast Vassal was not the truly frightening part. Those who had inherited the knowledge of the Devas knew this well. Beast Vassals were beings akin to flames. Weaker ones could be completely controlled through the actions of the summoner and could be dismissed once the need for them had passed. Overly powerful Beast Vassals, however, were very difficult to dismiss. Just like it was arduous to snuff out a massive conflagration, powerful Beast Vassals were beings beyond the control of advanced peoples. These beings sought to destroy everything and consume magical energy without limit in accordance with their cravings. Once summoned, these Beast Vassals could never be dismissed so long as magical energy was present. They vanished only when all magical energy in the surrounding area ran dry—in other words, only when any and all information, including the memories of living creatures, was erased.

Gallery

Trivia

• Spiritual energy was high-grade sustenance for a Beast Vassal.
• Taming a Beast Vassal required blood, just like when Kojou had sucked on Yukina’s blood to bring Regulus Aurum under his control—blood of a quality high enough to satisfy the Beast Vassals of the Fourth Primogenitor.