The Mara — Roster & Visual Design Bible¶
A build-ready brief for the Mara faction: twelve units, each with a physique description an artist can model from, in-game abilities, and lore. Read the species design language first — it is the shared grammar that makes twelve silhouettes read as one people.
Status: proposed — not yet canon
This entire roster is a design proposal held for review. The names, castes, abilities, and the species design language are all open to change and are not binding canon yet. Nothing here should be split into per-unit canon pages or committed to final art until it is confirmed. (Follows the house convention for provisional material — see the Timeline's provisional markers.)
[!quote] "They don't build. They reconsecrate. Everything they carry, they took from something they killed and made holy. Even themselves." — Colony field-note, Act 2
Design intent for the whole faction
The Mara are the Custodians' opposite in every register. Where the Custodians are clean, lawful machines that hold ground, the Mara are defaced, grieving zealots that advance. Where humanity salvages exotic tech timidly, the Mara wear it as sacred trophy. Their horror is not that they are monsters — it's that they are right and sorrowful (see The Mara, Vritra). Nothing in this roster should read as a slimy bug-alien or a spiky edgelord. They are warrior-monks who broke their chains and now wear the pieces.
Species design language¶
Give the artist these seven rules; every unit below is an application of them.
- Engineered, then self-defaced. The Progenitors built the Mara too symmetrical, too optimal — the beauty of a made thing. The Mara ritually break that perfection: asymmetric scarring, gouged seams, augments bolted over the maker's flawless lines. Freedom is written on the body as deliberate imperfection. A pristine Mara would be a slave.
- The maker-mark. Every Mara was "signed" at creation — a glowing Progenitor glyph somewhere on the body, like a serial number in light, in cold maker-gold. The central rite of Mara life is defacing your own mark: scarring it out, guttering its light, overwriting it with a self-chosen sigil. This is the recurring detail across the whole faction — a scarred-over, half-dead glyph. New converts still carry a bright gold mark (their shame); veterans a black scar where it was.
- Bio-ceramic, not skin. The integument reads as unglazed porcelain over old bone — matte, bone-white to ash-grey to char, with visible casting-seams (the marks of manufacture). Not scales, not chitin, not wet. Think reliquary, not reptile.
- Ascetic militarism. Wrapped ash-cloth, ritual armor, prayer-cords, and reliquary-chains that carry literal fragments of the chains they broke. Severe and monastic — never ornate for vanity. Tall, lean, elongated; a stillness that looms.
- Corrupted maker-tech. Their gear is the same clean Progenitor geometry the Custodians use — but desecrated: over-etched with Mara glyphs, cracked, blackened, treated as a holy object (wrapped, blessed, personalized). Every weapon looks like a reliquary.
- Covered faces. The makers gave them serene, idealized faces; the Mara veil, cage, brand, or blind them — faith over sight. A bare Mara face is rare, beautiful, and wrong; reserve it for leaders.
- Rank-by-light (the player tell). Sacred light runs a fixed heat-scale by rank — the artist and the player read status the same way:
| Light colour | Reads as | Worn by |
|---|---|---|
| Cold gold | The maker's mark, undefaced — lowest, unproven | Penitents |
| Guttering ember → orange | Sworn warriors | Zealots, Serpent-blades, Juggernauts |
| White-hot | Weapon-castes, the burning offices | Fire-ascetic, Lance |
| Violet-white | The holy: casters, voices, saints, command | Sorcerer, Preacher, Champion, the war-frame core |
Palette to hold the faction together on Nandana's greens: bodies bone/ash/char; cloth ash, oxblood, deep umber; metal blackened, burnt maker-alloy (never shiny); sacred light per the scale above. This deliberately contrasts the Custodians' gold-and-ivory and reads cleanly against forest and wetland biomes.
One biological note (flag for the writer)
Where new Mara come from is left light on purpose: they decant their own from reclaimed maker-wombs they captured and turned to their own use — and a newborn's first rite is the defacing of its gold mark. It's a deliberate, uncomfortable irony (they use the slavers' tools to make free people) and it explains the Penitent caste. Treat as provisional; it never needs to be shown.
Roster at a glance¶
| # | Unit | Order (caste) | Battlefield role | Light tell |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Penitent | Preta | Expendable front / swarm-lite | Cold gold |
| 2 | Zealot | Rakshasa | Core shock infantry | Ember |
| 3 | Serpent-blade | Naga | Assassin / flanker | Ember + venom-green |
| 4 | Juggernaut | Danava | Tank / line-anchor | Oxblood |
| 5 | Sorcerer | Vidyadhara | Control caster | Violet |
| 6 | War-preacher | Gandharva | Buff / morale support | Violet-white |
| 7 | Reliquary-medic | Amrita | Healer / reviver | Pale jade |
| 8 | Fire-ascetic | Homa | Area denial / pyro | White-hot |
| 9 | Sky-dancer | Dakini | Aerial skirmisher | Ember + cold veil |
| 10 | Lance | Astra | Anti-armor / heavy ranged | White-hot |
| 11 | War-frame | Pralaya | Walker / mini-boss | All, violet core |
| 12 | Champion | Asura | Elite commander | Violet-white |
The whole host answers to Vritra; the Champions are Vritra's lieutenants. Abilities below are feel and reason only — keep HP, damage, and cooldowns in your combat data, per the contributing rules.
1. Penitent — Preta¶
Expendable front-line. The unproven, spending doubt as coin.
Physique. The smallest and leanest Mara (~2.0 m, near-human height — the tell that they are lowest). Wound head-to-foot in ash-grey grave-cloth, faces fully wrapped, hands bare and porcelain-pale. Their maker-mark still glows cold gold at the throat or brow — undefaced, unearned — the visible shame the caste exists to erase. Armed with a defaced-tech shiv or a swinging kinetic censer. Read: a shrouded penitent, not a soldier.
| Ability | Fiction | Design note |
|---|---|---|
| Penance | No retreat; advances into fire willingly | Never routs, never uses cover well; walks the front |
| Ash-burst | On death, spills a cloud of holy ash | Death creates a blinding/choking zone — even dying, they deny you ground |
| Numbers | The doubting and the conquered, sent first | Cheapest Mara; expected to die to soften the line |
Lore. Not born warriors — the conquered, the newly decanted, and those who hesitated. A Penitent works off its debt of doubt by dying toward the holy work; only then is a Mara permitted to scar out its gold mark and be sworn. The cold-gold glow they carry into battle is the last of the maker still on them.
2. Zealot — Rakshasa¶
Core shock infantry. The war made flesh. → dedicated page: Mara Zealot
[!quote] "You can rout a soldier. You cannot rout a prayer."
Physique. The baseline Mara warrior and the artist's hero-of-the-common-silhouette — nail this and the faction is nailed. Tall and lean (~2.4 m), oxblood wraps over bone-ceramic plate, a black scar where the gold mark used to be, face half-caged. One hand holds an ember light-blade (desecrated maker-edge); the other a compact energy censer. Poised, patient, forward-leaning.
| Ability | Fiction | Design note |
|---|---|---|
| Light-blade | A blade of coherent maker-energy | High-damage melee; rewards closing |
| Phase-strike | Short-range teleport assault | Gap-closer; bypasses cover and front lines |
| Zeal | Will over survival | Resists suppression/fear; fights on when others break |
| Martyr-charge (elite) | Death as a tactic | Devastating on death; forces hard target priority |
Lore. The sworn spine of the crusade. Where the Custodians hold, the Zealot advances — trading lives for holy ground with a discipline that never wavers. Full write-up on the Mara Zealot page.
3. Serpent-blade — Naga¶
Assassin and flanker. Punishes the isolated.
Physique. The most elongated Mara — sinuous, low-stanced, with subtly multi-jointed limbs and an over-long spine that lets it coil and strike. A hooded serpent-motif mask; a long reliquary-chain that trails like a tail. Its weapon is a segmented, whip-jointed energy-blade that extends in a coil — ember-lit with a venom-green corruption bleeding through the edge. Silent, liquid, wrong to watch move.
| Ability | Fiction | Design note |
|---|---|---|
| Coil-strike | The blade extends its reach on the lunge | Long-reach melee; hits from unexpected range |
| Shed | Sloughs the first blow and repositions | Evades/relocates once — a mini phase, slippery |
| Envenom | Corrupted edge that eats armor and flesh | Damage-over-time / armor-strip; softens hard targets |
Lore. Named for the serpent-lineage of Vritra himself. Serpent-blades hunt the flanks and the stragglers — the operator who pushed too far, the specialist left unguarded. They rarely fight the line; they fight the mistake.
4. Juggernaut — Danava¶
Line-anchor and battering ram. Walks the front forward.
Physique. The tallest baseline Mara (~2.8 m) and the broadest, armored in stacked, defaced maker-plates — each plate a "chain" worn as penance, so the silhouette is literally built from bound trophies. Face fully caged; movement slow and inexorable. Carries a censer-maul or a slab-shield cut from desecrated Custodian hull. Oxblood light burns deep in the seams of the armor.
| Ability | Fiction | Design note |
|---|---|---|
| Bulwark of Chains | Armor of bound trophies | Heavy damage reduction; body-blocks lanes |
| Anointed | Immune to fear; steadies the sworn near it | Aura anti-suppression for nearby Mara |
| Ground-break | A slow, shattering slam | Melee AoE; destroys cover, punishes clustering |
Lore. Danava wear their own restraint as war-gear — the plates are modeled on the shackles the Mara struck off their makers, now turned outward. To break a Danava's line is to break a doctrine; they do not know how to give ground because giving ground is the one thing their faith forbids.
5. Sorcerer — Vidyadhara¶
Control caster. Bends space; unmakes cover.
Physique. Robed and levitating a hand's breadth off the ground on corrupted grav-tech — the stillest thing on the field. Eyeless (the sockets scarred smooth; it sees by inner rite), long-fingered, manipulating a hovering ring-mandala of violet light. The cleanest Progenitor lines of any Mara, precisely because it has desecrated the most. Reads as a warp in the world, not a warrior.
| Ability | Fiction | Design note |
|---|---|---|
| Rift | Tears an enemy out of position | Teleports a target out of cover / into a kill-zone |
| Foldstep | Blinks allies forward | Enables Zealot phase-assaults; a force-multiplier |
| Unmake Cover | Dissolves matter it deems unclean | Destroys terrain/cover; strips the player's defenses |
Lore. The Vidyadhara turned the makers' own space-folding craft — the tech behind the Tether and the phase-strike — into an instrument of the crusade. It is why the Mara arrive inside your line as often as across it. Kill it early or fight a battlefield that will not hold still.
6. War-preacher — Gandharva¶
Morale support. The argument, made into a weapon.
[!quote] "It didn't shoot at us. It talked. And two of mine put down their rifles."
Physique. An orator's stance, throat and chest grafted with a resonant reliquary-instrument — sound as sacred tech, a chestplate of tuned maker-alloy that glows violet-white when it speaks. Draped in more prayer-cords than any other caste; the mouth-region emphasized or fitted with a horn-apparatus. It carries the host's litany the way others carry blades.
| Ability | Fiction | Design note |
|---|---|---|
| Litany | Broadcasts the creed to the sworn | Buffs nearby Mara: extra actions / fearlessness |
| Anathema | Argues an enemy into doubt | Debuffs a target's accuracy or morale — argues with the player |
| Last Rites | Consecrates a dying ally | Turns a fallen Mara into an empowered martyr |
Lore. The Gandharva is where the game makes its case on the battlefield — the living broadcast of Vritra's argument (see "give the devil the best lines"). The player should feel out-reasoned as much as out-fought. High-priority target, and the unit that most makes the war feel like a tragedy rather than a fight.
7. Reliquary-medic — Amrita¶
Healer and reviver. Denies you the mercy of their deaths.
Physique. Hunched, servile posture — this caste tends, and its body shows it: bowed spine, hands stained luminous from the work. Bears a great censer-vessel of pale jade light (the "nectar"), swinging on a chain, leaking sacred vapor. A train of re-consecrated wounds and mended plates hangs about it. The one Mara that looks like it kneels more than it stands.
| Ability | Fiction | Design note |
|---|---|---|
| Anoint | Pours the nectar-light into a wound | Heals / shields a Mara |
| Reconsecrate | Raises a downed Mara, once | Revives a fallen unit as a buffed martyr — feeds the martyr economy |
| Bitter Cup | A gift that cannot be refused | Target ignores death for a turn but can never be healed again |
Lore. Amrita is the old nectar of deathlessness, and this caste is the reason a Mara line does not thin the way yours does — "you cannot rout a prayer" is, in part, a logistics fact. To the Mara, dying in the work is not loss but promotion; the Amrita simply make sure the promotion counts twice. Kill it, or bury the same zealots repeatedly.
8. Fire-ascetic — Homa¶
Area denial. Sacred hygiene, made literal.
Physique. Perpetually wreathed in controlled holy flame — self-immolation as devotion; the body beneath is charred porcelain, scarred to black, and does not die of the burning. White-hot ember light pours from every seam and from the fire-censer it carries. Where it walks, the ground smokes. The most literally ash-and-ember reading of the palette.
| Ability | Fiction | Design note |
|---|---|---|
| Pyre | Lobs holy fire | Creates burning zones; flushes cover and clusters |
| Immolate | Wears fire as armor | Burns attackers in melee; punishes closing |
| Scour | Burns the unclean from the ground | Destroys terrain/cover — the doctrine "scouring is hygiene" as an ability |
Lore. To the Mara, Nandana is the First Garden, and a human colony on it is contamination. The Homa is that belief given a torch: scouring the colony is not conquest, it is cleaning. They burn without hatred, which is the most frightening way to burn.
9. Sky-dancer — Dakini¶
Aerial skirmisher. Comes from above, briefly.
Physique. Airborne on corrupted grav-shrouds that spread from the shoulders like veils rather than wings — trailing ash-cloth, a whirling dervish silhouette caught mid-dive. Lithe and fast, the least armored caste; ember-lit with a cold-violet glow off the shroud-edges. Read: a falling prayer, all motion and cloth.
| Ability | Fiction | Design note |
|---|---|---|
| Descend | Drops onto a target, ignoring terrain | Aerial move over walls/water; opens flanks |
| Whirl | A spinning, multi-hit dive | Hits several adjacent targets on the plunge |
| Veil-drop | Sheds concealing shroud-smoke on landing | Deploys cover/obscurement for the advancing host |
Lore. The Mara's orbital reach at infantry scale — the crusade's habit of coming from above written into a single dancer. Dakini open the sky-side of a battle: over the wall, past the river, behind the line the player thought was safe.
10. Lance — Astra¶
Anti-armor and heavy ranged. Cracks walkers and works from afar.
Physique. A kneeling artillery-monk. Braces a long trident-tipped reliquary lance-cannon — clearly a scaled-up, desecrated Custodian energy-lance — across a folding tripod of maker-alloy. A spotter-cord runs from its skull to a War-preacher or drone. Heavier-plated than most, but rooted; it fights from stillness. White-hot aperture at the lance-tip when charged.
| Ability | Fiction | Design note |
|---|---|---|
| Trishula-lance | A braced, armor-piercing beam | Long-range, high-damage; needs a turn to set/brace |
| Consecrating Fire | Extra fury against the unclean | Bonus vs the Colony's human/kinetic tech and vehicles |
| Overpenetrate | The beam does not stop at one body | Line damage through cover and ranks |
Lore. The Mara answer to humanity's scrap-walkers and fortified beachheads. The Astra treats its weapon as a relic — wrapped, blessed, aimed like a rite — and it will hold a firing line long after a human gunner would have run. It is the reason the Colony learns not to trust a wall.
11. War-frame — Pralaya¶
Walker / mini-boss. A cathedral that kills.
[!quote] "It's a building. It's a shrine. There's a saint inside it, and it's walking toward the river."
Physique. Not a mech in the human sense — a walking reliquary-cathedral (~7–9 m), multi-limbed, built on the hollowed carcass of a captured Progenitor construct the Mara killed and consecrated. Draped in chain-relics and burning glyphs of every colour, with a violet-white core at its heart where a fused Mara "saint" is enthroned, visible and alive within the frame. Towering, sacred, terrible — the Mara mirror of the Custodian Lokapala.
| Ability | Fiction | Design note |
|---|---|---|
| Dissolution-beam | Cosmic unmaking, at scale | Heavy area attack; set-piece threat |
| Reliquary-aura | A mobile shrine | Buffs all nearby Mara — a walking War-preacher |
| Martyr-core | The saint's death is a bomb | Catastrophic on death — the faction's martyr theme at boss scale |
Lore. Pralaya is the dissolution at the end of an age. The Mara build these by taking the makers' own war-constructs, "freeing" them by killing them, and entombing a volunteer saint at the core to steer the corpse. It is the crusade's thesis in one machine: the maker's power, defaced, driven by a willing death.
12. Champion — Asura¶
Elite commander. Vritra's hand on the field.
Physique. The hero silhouette of the roster and the one caste permitted a bare, unbroken face — beautiful, serene, and wrong for it. Tallest and finest of the sworn (~2.6 m), armor a masterwork of desecrated maker-tech that still reads as elegant; a violet-white nimbus; the old gold mark not merely scarred but replaced with an ornate self-chosen sigil worn openly, like a medal made of defiance. Carries a paired light-blade and a relic-standard of the crusade.
| Ability | Fiction | Design note |
|---|---|---|
| Command | Directs a cell of the sworn | Buffs and coordinates nearby Mara units |
| Twin light-blades | A duelist beyond the Zealots | Elite melee; a genuine boss-tier threat to a squad |
| Unbroken | Faith without a mask to hide behind | Immune to fear/control; rallies martyrs around it |
| Final Word (on death) | A saint's death rings the field | Empowers every Mara in sight for a turn |
Lore. The Asura are the veterans who have paid the most and doubted the least — lieutenants of Vritra, each entrusted with a front. That they go unmasked is the highest Mara statement: I have nothing left to break, and I do not fear your eyes. Where an Asura stands, the crusade does not falter — which is exactly why the campaign will, again and again, ask the player to kill one.
Further orders to build out¶
The twelve cover the core tactical spread. Hooks if you want to grow the host:
- Kavacha (Shieldbearer) — a phalanx caste projecting walls of desecrated Custodian shields; a defensive counterpart to the Juggernaut.
- Vetala (the Hollowed) — the crusade's most disturbing rite: "freeing" fallen colonists or Custodians by hollowing them into obedient husks. Use sparingly — it risks reading as generic necromancy and undercutting the Mara's "not monsters" line.
- Vritra himself — the capstone antagonist; a character, fought as an Act 3 set-piece rather than a spawnable unit.
Handoff checklist for the 3D artist¶
- [ ] Every unit carries a defaced maker-mark (bright gold on Penitents, a black scar on the sworn, an ornate replacement on Champions).
- [ ] Materials read as bone-ceramic + burnt maker-alloy + ash-cloth — matte, never wet, never shiny.
- [ ] Rank-by-light heat-scale is respected (cold gold → ember → white-hot → violet-white).
- [ ] Faces are covered except Champions and Vritra.
- [ ] Silhouettes read against forest/wetland biomes and are clearly not Custodian gold-and-ivory.
- [ ] The overall read is warrior-monk, grieving and righteous — not bug, not demon-for-demon's-sake.
See also¶
- The Mara · Vritra · Mara Zealot · The Custodians (the contrast) · Units index · The Seeding