Cortés and Pizarro are the two captains of the company of the Rooster, Spanish-speaking planar conquistadors who reached Isidora some ten years earlier seeking Cathay; Auro beheaded Cortés and severed Pizarro’s arm.
| Type | Characters (planar conquistadors) |
| Company | The Rooster |
| Serve | Queen Astrea |
| Spanish entry | Cortés y Pizarro |
The company of the Rooster
They came in planar ships, under a spurred-rooster emblem with a caduceus of serpents, with red iron that kills shadows. They claim to fight the shadows in the service of Queen Astrea, the Virgin Queen of the silver void, recruit fighters at cockfights, and distrust the emissaries of the Great Khan. In the arena at midnight, when diplomacy rotted through pride, their true names came out in the fight.
Hernán Cortés
A great swordsman — local bards sang to him from the low walls as he fought — with a mithral Aldori dueling sword. Luca riddled him with thrusts and Auro, as he began to slip free of execution, cut off his head. He did not evaporate or transform like a devil: he was a person, one who had once fought the shadows — perhaps cursed or dominated, a puppet masking a “peaceful conquest”.
Pizarro
He registered as faintly evil and fell with his arm severed by Auro. Bleeding out, he was saved out of pity by the cleric Pérsico. He woke one-armed and in debt — “the priest of my enemies saved my life” — and confessed: he comes from another planet, Neptune Ultra; he never saw Queen Astrea (Hernán did); he signed on for money and treasure, as a condottiere of the conquest. Promised a hook for his arm, he joined the city’s defense on probation: “I believe in your God a little more than in other things.”