The Mask of Malruk

King Devanir's court is a web of smiles, and at its heart stands Grand Vizier Malruk, the man everyone trusts. The king drinks his counsel like wine, the generals sharpen their swords on his word, and along the border armies mass for a war nobody wants. You have been summoned as neutral mediators, the last voice of reason at a court balanced on a knife's edge.

What no one sees: Malruk is no man. He is Malruk, the Tiger-Demon, an old and cunning spirit who feeds on intrigue and betrayal, and who has been hollowing out this kingdom from within for months. His only tell is physical: when he extends a hand, the fingers bend the wrong way, palm turned upward. Ordinary steel glances off his skin like rain off glass. Only cunning, faith, and blessed metal can bite through his magic.

You must read the court like a chessboard: which nobles have been bought, which are merely frightened, who carries the lies from ear to ear. You expose forged letters, catch the demon in a single slip of the tongue, and hunt for the blessed relics that can wound him, all while Malruk works to win over or break your party one by one with flattery, blackmail, and threatening little accidents.

The turn comes when you discover the king himself is already half in the demon's claws, enchanted into a puppet. On the eve of the declaration of war, the mask falls: in the throne room, amid the fleeing courtiers, Malruk unfurls his true shape, a tiger rising onto two legs. You fight not only for your lives, but for the soul of a king and the fate of a land dancing at the very edge of the abyss.