Malphas
Malphas sits in the Root quadrant of the Ars Goetia. The binding is fixed by the digit-sum of each card's mana cost.
Malphas is one of the 72 spirits catalogued in the Ars Goetia, the first book of the Lesser Key of Solomon. Eigendark reinterprets that historical register as its fictional operational layer. When a Root card with cost digit-sum 6 resolves, Malphas is the Goetia the game associates with that binding.
Office
Malphas: Building towers and revealing enemy designs
In the Solomonic grimoire tradition, each spirit is assigned an office — a domain of attributed knowledge or power. Eigendark uses those offices as design prompts for card effects. The exact faction, digit-sum and mechanical mapping on this page are Eigendark canon rather than historical occult doctrine.
Faction: Root
"Think in epochs. Worlds are patient. Stone outlasts flesh."
Geological consciousness. Root shamans tap into planetary forces — tectonic shifts, weather, ecosystems, magnetic fields.
The science of earth as system. Geology, ecology, climate, the planetary substrate, the slow intelligences of rock and forest. Gaia-aligned. Geotrauma, Cthelll (the molten trauma engine), tectonic deep memory, plate time. Substrate-dependent, earthbound, rooted — the opposite of Glitch's deterritorialized network.
The Goetic Register
Within Eigendark, the 72 Goetia are divided evenly across 8 factions — 9 spirits per faction, assigned by the digit-sum of a card's mana cost. The game fiction places the binding in its 1577 receiver chronology. Each spirit represents a specific instrumental goal of its eschaton, The Planetary Mind. The older handle Gaia is a receiver alias.
The primary working demonology is the 72 Goetia of the Lesser Key of Solomon, the Ars Goetia, attributed to Solomon and preserved through the European grimoire tradition. Bael, Agares, Vassago, Asmodeus, Belial, Paimon, and the rest. In Eigendark, exactly 9 Goetia are assigned to each of the 8 sciences, partitioning the 72 cleanly. Each card's demon is determined by (faction, cost) via a digit-sum rule. See GOETIA_ADDENDUM.md for the full table.
The Rival Register
Beneath the Goetic layer, a rival system persists: the Pandemonium Matrix — 45 Lemurian Amphidemons that predate the Solomonic hierarchy. During Broken Transmissions, the Lemurian register briefly overrides the Goetic one, producing cards flagged as "ontologically unstable."
All Root Goetia
Agares — digit-sum 1
Leraie — digit-sum 2
Valefor — digit-sum 3
Focalor — digit-sum 4
Halphus — digit-sum 5- Malphas — digit-sum 6
Marax — digit-sum 7
Bifrons — digit-sum 8
Bael — digit-sum 9
The Aesthetic
The horror is not dark. The horror is procedural. A Goetic demon assigned by a Python function that computes the digit-sum of the mana cost.
Play with Malphas
Summon a card with cost digit-sum 6 in the Root faction to invoke Malphas. Browse the Grimoire for existing Root cards.