Fire On The Velvet Horizon PLAIN TEXT PDF

FIRE ON THE VELVET HORIZON
Written by Patrick Stuart

Drawings by Scrap Princess
These are not included in this. You are really missing out without the drawings.
Some pages proof read by

Zach Marx Weber
and
Radek Drozdalski
But not all. We did some also, and we are difficult, difficult people to proof read for. So
any failures in the final results here should reflect only on us, not them.
David Cinabro took raw text provided by Patrick Stuart and formatted it to produce this.
Scrap Princess dedicates this great work to TIAMET and would like to thank prescription
medication.
Patrick Stuart would like to dedicate it to his parents

But also kind of hopes they never read it since he is not sure what they will make of it.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0

International License. To view a copy of this license visit
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Terry Hintz (Order #32174893)

CONTENTS
1 ABHORRERS
4 AESKITHETES
6 ANEMONE MEN
8 ANTS OF NEUTRALITY, THE
10 ATROCIOUS CROWS
12 AZUL
14 BEDLAM BIRDS
16 BLATHERING BIRD, THE
18 BOA BOY
20 BOA CONSTRUCTOR
23 BOG ELF
25 BOG ELF (SWAMP DRUNKS)
27 BRAINSTORMER
30 BRAINSTORMER, PALACE EXAMPLE
31 CAPITUALTORS
34 COLOUR MONSTER
36 CORBEAU
38 CRIMSON CONTRARODRON
40 CRYPTOSPIDER
42 CURSELINGS
45 DISCRETION BUGS
47 DISGUSTAPOID
49 DREAMONS
51 DUMBSMOKE
53 ECLIPSE-LICH
55 EEL AMARANTHINE
57 EO3IAN WYRM1
59 FLAMMEOUS LADS
61 FRUIT HOUNDS
63 FRUIT HOUNDS TWO, CATASTROPHE TREE
64 FULVOUS DRUDGE
66 FURNACE CHLOROCHORUS
68 FUSE MEISTER
70 GEISHA SPORES
72 GEYSER LORD
74 GLYPHAPILLAR
77 HADEANS
82 HERMIT GEIST
84 HEX DRAGOONS
86 HOROLOGNOMON
88 HOSTAGE FROG
90 HYDRA-MORAY
1
3 is the capitol version of 0. It is pronounced like a rattling hiss with the back of the throat.

92 ICE AGE EYE
94 IMPERATOR APE
96 JUKAI CITY
98 KINDERGNAW
100 LUNARAPTORS
102 3KROGOR3
104 3ORN OWLS
106 MEDICTOR
109 MEREMAIDS
111 MINOCHOIRON
114 MOBIUSNAIL
116 MONSTER MAIDEN
118 MOON APE
120 MURDER MEN
122 NAVARCH OF AA3T, THE
124 NAVIGATORS OF NOTHING
127 NIVEOUS DREAM AXOLOTL
129 ORANORN
131 OZIMANDRIANS
133 PALADINS OF THE FALL
136 PARADUSA
138 PARROGUANA
140 PERSPECTIVE DOGS
142 PHOENICEOUS WINGS
144 PICEOUS PUCCOON
146 PICKCHICKEN
148 POIGNANT MEN
150 POTEMKIMEN
152 POYAZUKA
154 PREDATOR SAINT
156 PRIEST-OF-HOOKS
158 QUARYNX
160 QU3RST
162 RAPTOR CHEVALLIX
164 RIVER-SURGEONS
166 RUBIOUS FLUKE
168 SANGUINE CRANE
170 SARCOLINE REDEEMERS
172 SHAMEFUL BEAST, THE
174 SHRINE-OH
176 SMILING BIRD, THE
178 SNAPKEG
180 SPECTRE-WEB BEETLE
182 STAR GROOLS
184 STEGALOSWAN

186 STRANGELS
188 STUMBLEWEED
190 SUNSET STORK
192 THUG BUGS
194 TRENCH HERALD
196 TYCHOCLASTS
198 UMBRA-TECHNICAL ELEMENTAL
201 UNGULIX
203 VITELLARY
206 VORE BULL
209 WHIRLWIND WURMZ
211 WOUND WHISP
213 XAXAVRAZNAZAK
215 YAM MAN
217 ZEN BEAST
218 ZUG-ZUG

ABHORRERS
They are, above all, creatures of Law. Of form, of process. They will never break a rule and
until they do they are beyond the reach of either blade or wrath.
Anyone approaching one can clearly see it is a slug. A huge and monstrous slug, nine feet
high, with a sharklike triangle mouth, intelligent black eyes and rows of flaccid arms hanging
from its sides. (They do not like interacting with the world except to destroy.) Each has a
kind of darkly coloured sheath around the head and body top with five pulsating organs on
each side. Like lipless circular mouths, always threatening to disgorge something. As you
approach, the urge to kill it rises in your throat like broaching spew. Your fingers twitch
with the desire to do it harm, to pierce its monstrous body with a blade, to crush it with a
weight, to slice its grinning face, anything at all to let it no more be, to burn the wound of
it from the world.
But your fingers loose from your hilt, your fist refuses to clench, you reach out, smiling, to
shake it by the hand.
Nothing disordered the Abhorrer can stand. It is a pool of order in the world. Nothing illegal
can happen around it, nothing impolite. No one can be hurt or struck or harmed.
People can be hanged. Or whipped. Or otherwise destroyed. But only if it is within the
law.
Simply to be in the presence of an Abhorrer is to be bound by social law. The assumptions of
politeness take on the raw enforcement of physics. A greeting must be returned, an invitation
exchanged a complement dealt. This is no mysterious influence to be shaken off or dispelled.
It is the true nature of reality wherever the Abhorrer is.
Everyone near an Abhorrer hates it and wants to destroy it and this they can never do,
except by legal process. And Abhorrers are very very good lawyers. They know all the laws.
All of them.
And the Abhorrers hate. Everything. They hate everything. Every race. Every culture. Not
with the distant poetic loathing of remorseless gods, they hate in a particular way. They
hate your clothes, they hate your smell, they hate the way you stand and the colour of your
skin and your shoes and your jokes. They hate you. They hate everyone but right now, at
this particular moment, they hate you.
They are incredibly intelligent and well-read. They love art. They love to seek out the best
art and arrange it in the finest collections. Then safely and legally burn them to the ground.
They like to watch.
If slavery is legal they like to buy the strongest and most beautiful people, and chain them
in rows. And safely, and legally, burn them alive.
As the Abhorrers see the world there are only beings like them, beings who are lying about
being like them or beings too stupid to be like them. They genuinely do not comprehend that

all other races and cultures do not regard each other with secret and eternal hate. They will
assume that any claims to the contrary are clever lies and politely pretend to agree.
They love the petty wrongs, elisions, small flaws, mild lies and worming resentments that
make up a part daily life, treating them with complicit amusement and secret joy. If they
see this behaviour in you this way they will mark their notice with some look or turn of
phrase that indicates that you have been accepted into a clever clique.
They are dangerous and difficult to encounter in the wilds, but the true threat they pose is
to a civilised land. In a city, they are a nightmare of law, a daemon of civilisation.
The longer an Abhorrer stays within a city the more powerful it becomes. It arrives as a
wealthy dealer in slave or sugar. Everyone despises it and wishes to destroy it. Of course to
begin with various priests and heroes make serious efforts to get rid of it. They are unable
to do so. In fact they are scrupulously polite to it. Gradually, over time, the elite of the
city tire of dreaming of destroying the Abhorrer. Slowly, horribly, they get used to it. They
must tolerate it anyway and inwardly they slowly surrender to its influence.
And the Abhorrer is very useful. It is a legal expert, an accomplished creature-of business
and very socially connected. The Abhorrer can do very well indeed. It can become a lawyer,
a council member, perhaps even the leader of the city itself.
All the time, in every way it can, through every legal means and with every effort it ex-
pends, the Abhorrer is trying to corrupt and destroy everyone and everything around it. It
wants to seem them morally and spiritually ruined, and then physically destroyed. Legally.
Decently.
It will trick families into debt, it will support the expansion of slavery, it will gleefully
enforce the cruellest laws, it will destabilise the economy, it will encourage factionalism and
resentment and pointless feuds.
Abhorrers have been beaten in two ways, the path of Chaos and the path of Crime.
The chaotic path needs revolution, invasion, destruction, inversion or a total overending of
the law. The social compact must be utterly dissolved. In a state of revolution when the
normal laws are being cast down, or invasion, when an old law is supressed and lost, or
simply utter chaos, then Abhorrers can be fought. With no defining structure to embody
and infest, they are made vulnerable and can be physically attacked. Of course the side
effects of such a path can be severe, many innocents will die, and the creature must be killed
in the chaos between social worlds, as a new order emerges from the mess the Abhorrer will
infest it once again. The City Patriarch becomes the Peoples Commandant.
The other path, the cunning path, is the path of Noble Crime. The Abhorrer must obey the
law, that is what it is, it is simply incapable of doing otherwise. But laws can be perverted,
judges bribed, juries bought, facts can be fabricated, evidence invented and witnesses deluded
from the truth. To use this path involves becoming minor lords of crime. Those who engage
in it must risk all and dare everything, placing themselves in danger not only from common
groups of organised crime (often more well-connected to authority that they would wish to
admit) but also, by breaking a plethora of laws they make themselves subject to arrest if

anything comes out.
A conspiracy must be constructed, a network of events that implicates the Abhorrer in some
treasonous and utterly extra-legal crime, something so vile and extreme that the most total
sanction must be sought. This conspiracy must be iron-clad, provable and utterly made-up.
A mad confection of facts, yet testable in court. Abhorrers cannot break the law, if they are
subpoenaed, the will attend, if they are formally arrested they will quietly come, if they are
tried and convicted in a court of law, they must accept the verdict. They will die passively.
Screaming, placing their own heads upon the block, calling out that they have been framed,
set up and sent down. It is the truth. But nobody will care.
Everybody hates Abhorrers, and anyway, the verdict was fair.

AESKITHETES
(Ay-Skith-ee-ts)
The Aeskithetes are a civilised and reasonable people, focused here from an incomprehensible
world where life and heat beat up from the earth in regular time and death rains from a cold
sky where impossible gods move.
Their curling, vertically-oriented bodies look like thick translucent smoke, or running wax
from multiple candles, fouled and merging together as one. The torsos curve like question
marks, only a few feet of frictive tail pressing into the earth. The Aeskithetes are unnaturally
strong, they can easily retain this stance, despite its apparent balance and poise. Their
substance is fluxal, tough and dense, much more than normal flesh.
Slim whiplike tentacles undulate oddly and poke out from their body at mad angles. The
Aeskithetes control these cords through concentration, they serve as arms and grappling
hands. The average Aeskithete can regularly calm the two tentacles just below its head,
these will still, grasp, gesture and emphasise remarks in mimicry of of mankind, while the
rest of the tentacles writhe. If an Aeskithete becomes distracted or upset, all of its tentacles
bug out and madly wave their own response. Through inner harmony, or force of will,
one may arrange its tentacles in patterns of its choice. The harmonious use of limbs is
a strong sign of status amongst them. Two under semi-permanent control is considered
enough for polite society. But the more potent and respected an Aeskithete is, the more its
limbs obey its will. Their heads are horrible, like slim squid with flickering gnathopods and
black fishlike eyes drilled in an eerie skull. This makes them terrible to look upon for most
humanish things. Viewers are often enraptured by the horrid mystery of their bodies and the
Aeskithetes are exceedingly sensitive about this. The delicate and socially-aware Aeskithetes
find the frightened reactions of others troubling, and, out of shame and sympathy, they have
taken to a culture of masks.
The masks are also terrifying. Abstracted creatures of the Aeskithetes home world, or madly-
reconfigured beasts of this one, seen through alien eyes. They freak everybody out but the
obvious and tender concern of the Aeskithetes for the feelings and perceptions of others
means that people are too embarrassed to tell them this. They would prove vibrant and
dangerous masks of war in human hands, if not for the fact the Aeskithetes only give their
masks away to those considered friends, and no friend of the Aeskithetes has ever sold a
mask.
As they describe it, the world of the Aeskithetes is an endless labyrinth of vast keratin
pylons that reach up into a blurred and incomprehensible sky where the gods of the ancient
Aeskithetes live. The pylon-forests are haunted by silent yet titanic beings. The only place of
safety is to tunnel into the life-giving earth. Preventing this, are boiling rivers of iron running
everywhere under the surface of the world, which gout forth in response to astronomical
events, and a sourceless, unpredictable apocalypse which falls thunderously from the sky,
obliterating all. Time runs faster there and Aeskithetes know that should they return home,
many generations will have passed and all that they knew in their lives will be altered and
changed. This makes them sad.

They collect art and information of every kind, to take back to their home. Knowing that
whatever they return with will benefit a generation they do not know, gives Aeskithetes a
keen sense of public duty and frees them somewhat from the temptations of power. They
are humanists, non-prejudiced, and have excellent taste. Craft is not beyond their powers,
they use tools with skill, but in the manner of the dilettante.
Their monstrous looks, their clear potential for harm and the fact that they don’t use it,
leads people to accord Aeskithetes the kind of respect usually afforded to large, calm men.
Everybody is relieved that they are not doing something more horrible than they are. The
fact that they are amazingly awful to look upon, but very pleasant to know, affords their
associates a comfortable sense of their own good nature, at almost no risk to themselves they
were friends with a freak and it worked out fine.
Though generally non-aggressive their extraordinary strength and toughness makes Aeski-
thetes well capable of self-defence. They practice dimensional magics of limited extent. They
can shrink or grow, and dislocate in space and time, small volumes of non-living mass. The
number of tentacles an Aeskithete can harmonize is a rough guide to what they can move
and how. Two tentacles can move about a cubic foot of soil or water about six feet, and
about a second back or forwards in time. As more tentacles are used, the range and potency
of this effect increases, though exactly how, and what its limits are, they will not say.
They can also vomit a vile acidic bile that eats flesh on contact, but this is as horrible for
them as for everyone else and they will do anything to avoid its use.
The spell or song that keeps them in our world runs continuously through an Aeskithetes
mind like a chant in the back of the head. If deeply distracted, the chant will stop, they will
snap back into place on their own world, disappearing from our own. This makes them very
hard to kill outright.
The ‘world’ they come from is a person’s skin. Aeskithetes are very very small, there are
probably thousands of them all over you right now. Their magic refracts them through time
and space, to the same huge size and slow span as a human life. How much they understand
this is unknown, certainly, most Aeskithetes give no sign at all that they walk amongst their
primal gods. It is possible they do not know. Even amongst mankind it is fragmentary
knowledge, hoarded by a few.
There are, though, rumours. Tales of certain people captured and banished impossibly to
the surface of their own skin, wandering the endless leagues of their body and the forests
of their hair, escaping ticks the size of houses, terrified to scratch, knowing that if they but
receive a wound in the wrong place, a vast valley of impassable gore can open up across their
path, seeking for years through the scab cities and fumarole glands for the fragments of the
song to bring them home. A god trapped upon a god.
But these are only tales.

ANEMONE MEN
or PEACEABLE PEOPLE
The Men Of Peace are friendly but their touch means pain and death.
They are as intelligent as men and can walk and thrive outside the oceans bounds, though
they love neither bright light nor the scorching heat of the sun. The darkness is their home,
where black pools kiss their rims and shiver with the oozing fall of drops that form but once
in every month. There they glow silently and dream.
Each has six limbs which end in soft, inquisitive hands, a tail with numerous small, irregular
finlike blades and a faceless ‘head’ shaped like a pitcher plant. The neckhead sprays bouquets
of sensing stalks. Each sees, and waves, rippling gently in a focusing sine. If a third or more
are pointing at the same thing then it is usually focusing on that. Anemone Men see in low
light, their capacity for smell and touch is so far unplumbed. Capacities may differ for each
one. They have a keen sense of movement in every direction and are difficult to pass by
stealth, even when they sleep, the gentle echoes of the air will show your path.
The bodies are gelatinous, but firm, from three to four feet high. They phosphoresce at will
or in their dreams, glowing porraceous, hyacinthine and a deep melanic blue, though many
other colours have been seen.
They sleep in little homes they make themselves. Anemone Men build cones, or forts, of
rock and packed-together mud. Each one roughly three feet high. Since Anemone Men
can walk easily on walls and ceilings, they can build their homes all round the rims of
mighty portals, or upside down across the roofs of corridors and rooms. They dream inside
with heads protruding from the top, and as they dream their minds and thoughts disperse.
Their sensing stalks extend, further and further apart, each blind in sleep, but moving to
unconscious thoughts. They reach three or four feet from the head, spread and glowing,
sensing the air but not the light.
Every single part of the Anemone Man is full of paralysing and agonising toxin that cripples,
stuns and kills on contact with the skin. Never touch one.
If anything small and live (less than the radial rim of Anemone Man’s vase-neck), strokes
against a tendril, it is caught, quickly paralysed, agonised and stung to death, then dragged
back and slowly digested. The Anemone Man in question never wakes, they dream through
it all. Deaths by poison are their snores and turns.
Only if something fiercely resists, or the tendrils sense its size is large, will the Peaceable
One wake up. If one wakes up, those nearby will as well. They crawl, muttering, from their
homes, seeking out the thing that woke them up. Since they dream so deeply for so long,
they rise in great confusion, confused and fearful of what might be real, or not, truth or
nightmare blended in their minds. Their voices burble up from the centre of the neck and
sound like a children being strangled by wet rags. “Is this a dream?” they say, as they crawl
across the walls and ceiling, rippling with light.

The sound of their strangled-child voices in unison is terrifying.
Sometimes uneducated or recently awoken Man O Peace will try to pull the eyeballs out of
peoples skulls to ‘free’ them as they think the eyes are the ‘real’ person, trapped inside a
strange prison of meat.
No offence intended. The Peaceable People are without prejudice of any kind and hate no-
one for long. They will fight to defend themselves, but once they understand that they are
awake, and you are alive, they will usually be reasonable and try not to accidentally sting
you to death.
They are most often encountered as guards. They are highly reliable, need almost nothing
to live on and can be left in-situ, sleeping, for very long stretches of time. (They do prefer
damp air, darkness, and a pool nearby.) Lacking many hatreds as they to, and thinking
all beings equally strange, they can often be employed by those whose shape or reputation
keeps them set-off from the rest.
They have a relaxed , fatalistic, zen-like culture of calm acceptance, though they do not
entirely lack sympathy.
Leptoblast has noted the odd effects of their sting: I have spoken with more than one who
has survived their stings, most curious: they all report a dream. Each survivor spoke of a
Blue Sleep which gave them visions of an ocean world. A world of the Peaceable People. The
dreams are not unpleasant, even of the provoking incident certainly was. Each sting-survivor
said that since that event, none suffered insomnia, nightmares, terrors or strange waking’s,
each slept through the dark without interruption or stir. Furthermore, and most odd, one
survivor claimed that she has seen the Peaceable People again, once, since receiving the
initial sting, and that they seems to know her and treated her with familiar words.”
Some desperate sad insomniacs will risk death to sleep again. They seek the Blue Sleep,
agony at the hands of the Anemone Men, hoping survival will bring them to dream once
more. Their deaths are regretted by all.

THE ANTS OF NEUTRALITY or EQUAL ANTS
They only seem like insects from a distance, when examined closely by the eye it can be
seen that they are lines. Matte black lines like those a pencil leaves upon the page, existing
somehow above the surface of the world. Limbs and bodies like a sketch and dull ovoid
faces.
Their gaze goes neither left nor right, their mouths remain a flat black line speaking in a
murmuring monotone drone. Their eyes stay low, the nose a snub. Each has, projecting
from its head and curling back over its matte black spine, a line, which flexes strangely in
the presence of the Odd.
These ants are democratic, yet they always vote the same way. They voted to become the
things they are and if given the chance again today, they would vote exactly the same again.
They descend from an attempted Utopia. An isle where the perfect society was declared and
science and magic used to keep it so. They would improve the lives of all, regardless of rank
or race. Utterly equal citizens in an utterly equal land. Slowly and invisibly they came to
regard difference as a loathsome thing. Though bound by law to respect all creatures as of
equal worth, in their neutral hearts they loathed. Loathed anyone exceptional, unusual or
unlike the rest, and, in some small way, everyone was.
Alterations were begun. First to look more average than the crowd, avoiding sticking out.
Raising their children to be as utterly normal as could be conceived. Any exceptional quality
suppressed and reversed by magical art. After many generations of this work, the average
height began to shrink. People got smaller, to loose physical and facial form. They became
a race of pygmies, then a race of living dolls. Then the colours faded, then, inexplicably,
width. Then depth and weight, dimensions disappeared, only the black lines remained. The
people are the Equal Isle were slipping out of existence for good.
But, something watched the Island, observed, and measured what it saw. It took the people
there and brought them somewhere else. They call it only ‘Exfoizoksostrin’, and name it their
ruler to this day. They claim it made them Sacred Beings, and gifted them with Entropic
Antennae which they still wear. Now the Ants of Neutrality can be found everywhere
on earth. Look for their perfectly cylindrical hives in the wasteland where the ground is
exceptionally flat and the trees exceptionally symmetrical.
They are not potent beings, lacking much capacity in war, but the blessing of their patron
has gifted them with the nutritional qualities of cardboard. They surrender no sustenance
when consumed, meaning it is not worth the while of any living being to hunt them down,
and they retain the raw intelligence of men, matched with the energy and size of ants.
Wherever they have a hive (or ‘city’) they send out huge work parties to even the ground
all around, reducing everything to a flat level plane. If trees exist they cut branches and
trim leaves until the tree either grows exactly even, or simply dies, at which point they chop
it into cubes. If rivers flow nearby, they slowly and painstakingly straighten their banks.
Boulders are carved down to spheres or perfect polyhedra. Footsteps are erased, blades of
grass are braced and made to grow straight, flowers are made geometrically correct. This

never entirely works. The ants never give up.
The Entropic Antennae of the ants can both detect, and absorb, disturbances in chaos itself,
that is to say, randomness, excession, the unusual. Rivers carry some of this, and falling
rain, acts of unplanned violence and even life itself. Acts of magic, or gambling, are like
explosions to them and cause them to swarm madly. Well, not ‘madly’, calmly, but with
ferocious intent.
The Antennae dampens this quality. Their touch is cool, and it is killing you, very very
slowly. (It would take being utterly covered by ants for a log time to reduce entropy enough
to stop a human heart and still the blood.) Anyone beset with ants will be utterly unable
to cast spells and spells will not affect the ants themselves.
Certain parties have tried to take advantage of this quality but the ants are very difficult
indeed to deal with. They have no imagination whatsoever. They fear nothing, hate nothing
and love nothing. Results have been mixed. If a large amount are somehow forced into a jar
or large tube, and thrown, they can form a brief but powerful anti-magic field as they tumble
through the air, and wherever they land. These tubes, or jars are exceedingly valuable to
some.
Owning one involves great danger, of a very boring kind. While imprisoned the Ants will
try relentlessly to escape by any means they can imagine, which is not many, but they are
persistent. Hive ants will often set off in search of any abducted ants, in addition, any
abducted ants that escape will begin the epically long trek back to their hive. If the two
groups meet they will make a full assessment of their abductors and any unusual things they
have done, then go in search of them.
When confronted by beings of startling inequality (i.e. all adventurers) they go into a state
of extreme discomfort which is almost like rage. While not very dangerous so long as a party
stays mobile, if they are trapped, or foolishly fall asleep, or are knocked out, in the territory
of the ants, they will be restrained by carefully-engineered web-works of tiny rope and tiny
chains and interrogated by a tiny tribunal in front of a vast, grey, expressionless crowd. They
will be interviewed, investigated and tried for any excessive randomness, heroism, success,
failure, madness or luck.
There are folk rumours of those who have escaped the ants with the clever (not too clever) use
of statistics and a handy book of accounts, proving thereby that though they are adventurers,
they are exceedingly average adventurers, doing pretty much what all adventurers do, in
pretty much the same way.
It is not certain what happens to those found guilty, but they are never seen again.
Probably it involves lots of neat cubes.

ATROCIOUS CROWS
Called ‘atrous’ for their blackness first, their deeds and nature quickly earn the Crows a
truer name.
The Atrocious Crow is flightless, about five and half feet tall with only vestigial wings. Its
long legs take up almost half its length, they grip hard and run fast. Grime coats them
all the time. The head of the Crow is domed and round, big for a bird, its beak is thick
and strong. The feathers of the Crow eat light, they are as dark as dark can be, making
Atrocious Crows almost invisible at night.
Atrocious Crows are cowards and it is good that they are so. If found alone or in small flocks
they use their long legs to run away or climb stained trees, from which they bark out their
depressive call, a vantage point to shower acidic shit on those below. If cornered, the Crow
can fight, it is lighter than a man but strong, and can use its claws and beak to gouge and
stab. The shit of the Atrocious Crow is acid and diseased, it causes burns on skin and will
blind if it touches an eye. The Crows know this and will pause in their escape to bend over
a project a shower of shit in their defence. But this rarely occurs, few seek the Atrocious
Crow and the Crows themselves most often flee from those who do.
They have a suicidal caw.
Its call sounds like a deep, dark, mocking bark: an almost-laugh. It causes sadness in most
animals and organised beings. A single caw turns the mind to past failures and embarrass-
ments, a loud cycle of singing calls to mind the inevitable nature of death and the futility
of human life. When threatened the Atrocious Crow will use its call to numb and stupefy
whilst fleeing for its life. Few predators pursue the crow for long, most that do give up.
If it were not for the complex nature of man, the Atrocious Crow would be barely any threat
at all. Very rarely human beings are trapped within the zone of crows and cannot get away.
They hear the Crow call and try too late to flee. The depressive effect sinks in, they slow and
fall to their knees, then lie upon the ground. After a day of constant calls, the human spirit
breaks, some simply wait and starve to death, some feel a mad surge of furious energy before
the end, they leap up and hang themselves, fall upon their swords or bash their brains out
on a tree. But some do not die. They change instead. Transfigured into life-in-death.
Some who hear the Crows dark call stand up and, believing they are empty and are dead,
go on. These people are annihilated souls. They see now the empty machinery of the world
and the horror that is life. Trapped within a cage of active flesh and bone, knowing there is
no way out and nowhere left to go, they live, somehow, and breathe, when every breath is
painful fire within their lungs.
They have many names but the names all mean the same. The Atrous-Men. The empty
ones.
When groups or tribes of Atrous-Men exist, they become a terror on the land.
They hate life. And human life the most.
10

Atrous-men live naked in the woods around the shit-stained trees of the Atrocious Crows.
They wear nothing, mud, or feathers of the Crows. Some think perhaps they are Crows, and
cloak themselves in feathered cloaks of utter black, fashion beaks and walk on stilts uttering
caws.
With human minds to guide them, the Atrocious Crows can now attack as well as run, and
gather in flocks several hundred strong. They gather, tamed and guided by the Atrous-
Men. Then they come en-masse, a vision of madness and despair. The Empty Ones hate
gatherings. Weddings, celebrations, festivals of any kind, these put them in a rage. They like
to wait till all are gathered in one place, with music, lights and dancing, then they swoop,
running over the fields, cutting their way into the tents, Atrocious Crows in hundreds and
amongst them, on their stilts and cloaked in black, the Atrous-Men, guiding and driving
them one, waving weapons and uttering their black language.
Most are knocked into weeping passivity by the terrible calls of the Crows en-masse. Those
with will enough to move, or wits enough to block their ears with wax, may try to rescue
them. Any still remaining become utterly paralysed with despair, looking blankly on as the
Atrocious Crows destroy. Soon, bodies lie dying on the floor, some swing from chapel rafters
while Crows nose through abandoned food. Then, listlessly, the Crows and Atrous-men will
eat the soft tissue and the unseeing eyes of the dead.
And the dead are lucky to be so.
If any should survive the horrid calling of the Crows, they will become new Atrous-men
11

AZUL
They come with the storm, and die with it.
“It’s said they ride the light, leaping closer with each flash. They are renowned for rarity,
ferocity, and speed. Few see an Azul in this life, or the next.” - Leptoblast
“I, as it happens, am amongst this few. The size of a large bear, the Azul, at first, seems
unrelated to any living thing. Not so. A little like the segmented creatures that run from the
light when rotten logs are tipped. Something of the crab. And (a key point here) a great deal
like the memories of the creatures held in stone. Those shield-things, the armoured ones,
left there either when the stone was made, or as the dreams of some idle god. Many-legged
creatures, armour-clad. The Azul is similar to those, but larger. Perhaps as the Azul lives
in the air, once long ago its ancestors swam within the earth and stone. But something
changed. They died and left their stony bodies to be found, while the Azul itself escaped–
migrated somehow to the sky, becoming one with that light firmament as it had been with
the stone before. We know it is not made of any earthly flesh
Its great differences are its size, its eyes and its vertical mouth. Its jaws open like a book
held in the hands. Its teeth are inter-locked like the sides of a puzzle box or a complex
carpenters join. The jaw goes deep into the creatures mass, almost halfway; along its side
are eyes arranged in vertical lines, three on each divide. Its bites leave marks like shards of
broken glass.
I saw mine with the storm and only as the lightning struck, or after it. In the moments after
a lightning flash, as if some invisible lamp had been kindled by the strike, a lamp emitting
light that showed only one thing: the Azul. This lamp defined the depth and edges of the
creature, allowing me to see it move. It lasted a handful of heartbeats. Only in that moment
did it seem truly real, a huge blue-burnished monster, appearing then slowly gone, like a
rapidly setting sun. As the illumination faded in the seconds after the strike, the image of
the creature hollowed out. It remained, barely, when outside the light, just visible in the
dark patches between trees. Its edge was outlined faintly in an aura of electric blue. The
creature does not ride the light it moves constantly and quickly, but when the lightning
strikes unleash their secret glow it can be clearly seen. This makes it look as if the creature
leaps from place to place. They are strong and fast and light, lighter than they should be
for their size, but they move like living beings, not like ghosts or projections (Though in its
aura the Azul does seem to be a giant and savage insect ghost.)” - Zenithal
The clouds, to them, are hives. All heavy, piled-up, lightning-bearing storms hold, as well,
Azul. Perhaps thousands on each cloud. Perhaps they are born with the storm, living rapid
lives, growing, battling, breeding, and passing away in the time it takes a cloud to broil.
Perhaps they come through from some other place, only riding on the stormcloud while it
lasts, then exiting before the end, the same way that they came.
They skitter over charged clouds as if they were soft earth, and hold lightning in place as if
it were rope. Sometimes they fall, and, rarer still, survive.
The others gather, watching from the banks of cloud and the revetments of the storm as it
12

moves on. Some hear their howl, calling for the fallen one.
A fallen Azul must race the lightning. It will chase after the storm, seeking the connecting
point where earth and air are briefly linked. The lightning strike. If the Azul can reach a
bolt just before it strikes, and leap upon it, the crackling fire will hold in place, like a rope
of jagged sunlight hanging in the dark of the storm.
Azul are always terrified and angry as they chase the storm, desperate to survive. They
sense where the lightning will strike next. Those wishing to follow the Azul will find this
out. Should they see it climb its rope of fire, anyone with the desire and the ability to ride
the storm may try to climb the lightning as it does. If they are quick, they may survive.
Azul are fast, but rarely fast enough to race the falling light. It will survive only so long as
the storm is active and in view. The further the storm, the weaker it becomes: their lives
are linked somehow. On death the corpse of the Azul fades slowly into an ethereal haze,
then only the feel of static and ozone smell remain.
Its ghostly organs are worth incalculable sums. They must be harvested directly in the mo-
ments after death and will persist, at first, only if carefully preserved. Azul shell and organs
can manipulate and hold enormous potential energies. They are capacitors of staggering
power. One half its jaw, if stripped of most its teeth, and carved into shape, may form a
strange and jagged staff, a tool to twist the energies of the air. It can soak up ambient
charge, absorb or re-direct the lightning’s path. Translucent, solid, seeming not-quite-real,
humming with a halo of blue light that highlights it against the night, it is a rare and
favoured symbol.
13

BEDLAM BIRDS
The cruelty, cunning and fearful look of the Bedlam Bird leads many to consider them
demonic or undead. They are not. They are mortal and marsupial, distant kin to the
Platypi.
The birds are about three feet high, although the serrated beak itself can sometimes be a
foot and a half long. They wear their skulls outside their skins and the eyes, which seem
black pits, have tiny living orbs recessed within. If you smashed open the head you would
find flesh inside, and pumping blood. They see well in the dark.
The little flipper-paws are not much use, though small things can be grasped and moved
around. A key, a map, a children’s toy. They make no use of tools, except for doors. And
latches and locks, which they know well. They cannot pick locks. Thank god.
The Bedlam Bird is, by the analysis of man, about as intelligent as a young boy, though
with the cunning of a torturer or corrupted judge. They understand language after listening
for a while. They can talk, for themselves, in growling whines of one word, or sometimes
two words long. Yet they mimic very well and can rattle off verbatim long strings of things
they’ve have heard in perfect simulation of the voice they heard them in. They use this trick
to bait and mock their prey, which they enjoy. Even more than they enjoy eating it.
Strangely, to the senses of enlightened minds, Bedlam Birds detect as evil, yet no tool or spell
affecting evil seems to affect them. The circles, charms and prayers specifically arranged to
defend the user from evil beings, do nothing, and treat the Bedlam Bird as if it were not
only natural, which it is, but neutral, which it certainly is not.
They understand religion at least well enough to mock its believers. When a speaker for
the gods attempts to exorcise or banish them as daemons or undead, they play along. For a
while. Then leap up laughing with the spell having taken no effect.
They can sense a sliver of thought, and this may be part of what has made them mad. A
Bedlam Bird can always tell when something is looking at it, no matter from how far. They
are impossible to spy on by any means and can only be approached by stealth by someone
willing not to look upon the bird itself. Even hearing one can tip them off, the bird will
twitch, knowing that someone, somewhere is listening and can hear it move. They hide so
well that few who live have ever seen one whole with those who have so close to mad their
stories seem like supernatural tales.
They can move quite quickly, at about the speed of a running chid, and through dense cover,
which they prefer, to lend assistance to their stealth. They swim moderately well and will use
rivers and littoral zones in the enactment of their schemes. In addition to its speed, stealth,
mimicry, intelligence its huge and gouging beak and its low-level telepathy, the Bedlam Bird,
like the Platypus, carries poison spines upon its wrists. This poison sends the victim utterly
insane, causing the Bedlam Birds to laugh hysterically. Which does not help.
Tactics of the Bedlam Birds can vary a great deal, but a perennial favourite is the tracking
and derangement of small groups in the wilderness and wilds. A party camping, or, most
14

gleefully, a family barricaded in its house. They like to find families in isolated homes, send
the parents mad, and leave them raving with the children.
They will steal, kill horses and dogs, sometimes let themselves be seen by children, madmen
or the old who will not be believed. They love to step out of the dark before the very drunk.
They like asylums. Especially those for the veterans of war.
They spoil food, wreck fences, madden and mutilate cattle and sheep. They harass and
mock in the night and keep people awake. They lure single people away from the group with
mimicked sound.
In small settlements they may wait for a funeral then sneak into the graveyard and dig up
the body. Sometimes dragging it through town in the night and leaving it inverted or strewn
shamefully naked on the steps of a temple or a church.
They will hold off the direct sight of their forms for as long as possible, until they are certain
that no-one will escape, and to enjoy the shock and horror they create when seen directly
for the first, and last, time.
If captured or surrounded they will deal, but only to do future harm. They will hurl them-
selves upon the ground, rolling in the dirt and beg forgiveness, making much of their degraded
state. They will say and do anything to avoid death. Never trust them.
If Bedlam Birds have one positive quality it is that they are equally horrible to everyone.
They will not serve Necromancers, Dark Lords or Evil Masters any more than they would
serve you. They may trick and assault them if they think they can get away with it. The
monsters of the wilds despise them too. Giants hate them as the birds chase them, cut their
Achilles tendons and drive them insane. Everybody hates the Bedlam Bird. It is almost
the only thing on which Monsters and Men can always agree. Genocidal wars have paused
briefly so that both sides could concentrate on killing a nest of Bedlam Birds.
They scream and burble wonderfully when burnt alive, their oily flesh and feathers go up
with a popping, snapping white flame.
They taste bad.
15

THE BLATHERING BIRD
Frustrating and enraging, the blathering bird does little but harm.
The Blathering Bird is an intelligent Crane that stands about as tall as a man on a pair of
exceedingly long red legs. Its bill is a soft pink and its feathers pale celadon green like glazed
pottery and sapphire blue in complex patterns that vary bird-to-bird.
Though they are born mute, at a young age the Blathering Birds like to seek out populated
places like markets and cities and listen. They are attracted to the murmur of speech en-
masse. They love crowds, small or large. The young birds listen here and learn human
languages extremely quickly. By talking with children and aged people who will tolerate
them for a while they learn the art of conversation. Except the Blathering Bird never really
learns to converse, it learns to talk.
The bird is unable to stop speaking for more than a minute. This is no curse, the bird is
simply certain that whatever it has to say is pertinent to the conversation. It has the verbal
intelligence and memory of a man, but the crazed monomaniacal certainly of a bird.
If people are speaking about a particular topic, the bird will remember a story it thinks
relates to it directly. If about a skill, the bird will reluctantly admit that it happens to be
especially skilled in that particular thing and then relate a long story of how this came to
be so. If they are discussing a person, the bird knows them too, or somebody just like them,
or has a valuable opinion on the nonetheless.
The Blathering Bird knows a lot of jokes. You can sense quite clearly when it wishes to
speak, its pink beak becomes even pinker and its eyes narrow, as if the hidden inner pressure
of its desire was boiling inside it. Sometimes it weeps pink tears and whimpers a little before
it blurts out words, especially if it knows it should not speak.
When it is comfortable and safe, the Blathering Bird taks a great deal, when it is in danger
or under stress, it talks even more.
The Blathering Bird does not actually want to derail conversations, interrupt everyone,
talk endlessly about itself, filling the air with a continuous blur of labyrinthine personal
recollections, prevent any meaningful plan being decided on or to annoy anyone to the point
where they grab it by the neck and choke it to death. It does not want to do these things,
it is simply sure that whatever it has to say right now, whatever fact it just remembered,
whatever story it just recalled, whatever humorous point it just gleaned, this exact moment,
is the most important, the most useful, the most pertinent, the most amusing thing that
anyone present can or could say.
It is impossible for the Blathering Bird to believe anything else about the Blathering Bird.
The Bird does have an almost perfect memory for its own life, or at least the stories of its
own life. Listeners get the sense that the Blathering Bird translates anything it experiences
directly into an amusing or informative recollection and remembers it in that form, that
everything they do or say is being mined constantly for future speech.
16

There is the famous (and verified) case of the Blathering Bird at the banquet who found
itself so interesting that it forgot to eat and starved to death.
People both loathe the Blathering Bird, yet also find it useful. The most common form of
death for the Bird is to be strangled by an enraged human screaming something like “STOP.
JUST SHUT UP. SHUT. UP!!!!” However, the Birds can be a valuable source of information,
if you can stand to listen through their Blather.
Settlements will not tolerate them for very long. This causes the Blathering Bird to fly
on to another populated place where it will start relating news about its former home.
Despite its irritating nature this makes the bird quite useful for connecting remote settlements
and making sure they have news of each other. In some places a certain person, perhaps
an old grandmother or untouchable, is assigned the job of listening to the bird in case it
says anything meaningful. Once its store of knowledge has been drained, another group of
formally attired pensioners will approach the Bird and drive it off with small (non-lethal)
pebbles. The Bird will keep talking as it flies away and will often return a few times over
the next few hours as it just ‘remembered something’.
Blathering Birds have saved lives. They have also driven people mad.
Should a Blathering Bird see a small group of travellers lost in the wilderness it will fly down,
not to help them, but to talk to them. However, should they ask questions like “How do we
get out of this Desert?”, “Where can we find water?” or “Where is the nearest town?” the
Bird Will probably (eventually) tell them what they need to know.
Prisoners and escaped slaves trekking through the desolate wastes have sometimes been
drawn towards hidden water holes by the sound of the Birds endless talking as it addresses
the frogs and worms of its pond. After weeks without human contact they have sometimes
found comfort in the Birds talking, for a while.
Hermits, Monks and Smugglers loathe them and the Blathering Bird is regarded as a minor
kind of daemon by several religious orders. Criminals call traitors to the gang ‘Blatherers’
and the anonymous gift of a Blathering Bird feather or one of its feet, is a coded threat of
death for anyone thinking of betraying a secret scheme. Some crimelords have been known
to wear cloaks of the green and blue feathers of the bird, symbolising their willingness and
ability to punish those who would expose them. The ‘Second Chancellor’ of Jukai city
famously wears a ruff of Blue and Green feathers which is generally assumed to indicate that
they are the hidden spymaster of the city. (Though even-more laterally-minded observers
claim this is a double-bluff and the feathers prove the Second Chancellor is not the spymaster
and is simply drawing attention away from someone else.)
Only the male of the Blathering Bird is know to speak, the females are a soft grey and are
rarely seen. It is suspected that they possess the same cognitive capacity as the male bird
but employ it in a more birdlike way, to outwit predators and stay hidden.
Ashkott has suggested that the Blathering speech of the Bird has adapted in the same way
as a peacocks tail, an apparently useless affectation that puts enormous pressure of the
organism, ensuring that only the most healthy and vital manage to breed.
17

BOA BOY
Boa Boys are awful things, they should simply be allowed to die.
Their creation is simple, horrible and relatively cheap, at least compared to the assemblage
of any other kind of mangled necromantic half-man. To make Boa Boy requires a fresh baby
corpse, an adolescent boa constrictor and a magic wielder of middling skill and no moral
core. The snake is the most expensive part, one must be found with growth-potential, Boa
Boys can get quite big.
Ashkott - “Take care in securing the snake. Feed it first to slow it down. Have your baby head
prepared. Chilled is best though some advise pickling in brine if ice cannot be found.
SWIFTLY decapitate the snake. (Have the body clamped, it will writhe and flex.) Begin
reading the ritual aloud, bring the parts into union. Please be sure that the spines match
closely or all your work will be lost and you must begin again, I cannot stress this strongly
enough. As you clamp and sew, the vitality of the dying snake should flow into, and reanimate
the child-parts that remain.
The temptation exists to place more than the head onto the neck of the snake, perhaps to
include shoulders and a torso to create a kind of Boa-Centaur. Please DO NOT attempt
this. There is only enough life in the snake to return the head of the child to life, as greater
sections of flesh are included the vitality required increases exponentially. The end result
should be an active, questing being with a keen hunger. Several mice should be kept on
hand to feed the new construct and to lure it onto a secure zone. Even with care taken in
preservation there will be some loss of higher functions due to necrotisation of the brain,
but,happily, this can often aid with re-training.
All in all I found it a simple and efficient process, leading to an effective and highly-replicable
result. I am astonished at the remaining legal prejudice against this procedure. Certainly, if
any children were actually killed to provide the necessary materials then I could understand
the general public reluctance, but the bodies of dozens of children are simply thrown away
each week in any major city! A total economic loss! I can only hope that my analysis leads
to a more rational and reasonable allocation of resources in the future.”
Without the glands and fluids of a human being, the head never develops in a fully adult
way, retaining the proportions of a child, its skin stays smooth, no new hair grows, its gender
never sharpens into view. Once returned to ‘life’, a Boa Boy can easily be trained. Their
intelligence develops at the same rate as a human boy, and they are easily made loyal. The
vital urges of the snake remain and, since the human jaw cannot distend, they must be fed
small prey every few hours. Catching mice is hard for something the size of the growing Boa
Boy with only-human eyes and primate teeth. Constant and regular feeding leads them to
see their owner in a parents role. Without them, they are told, they would soon starve.
Boa Boys are rarely illegal to create, so long as you own the snake and didn’t kill the child
yourself. Since there is no fully-corporeal reanimation of the corpse, the resulting construct
counts as property in most laws. Cities with strong codes on the use of beasts may take
some issue with the harming of the snake.
18

Boa Boys are kept to guard palatial houses while owners sleep, or while its keepers are away.
They can be trained to talk, just like a human boy, and think. Their giant Constrictor
bodies make them poor at chasing prey but they can be very effective against men, they can
trap, crush and question all at the same time. A Boa Boy that clamps a thief will be well
rewarded, perhaps even let out of its box for a whole day. Not in daylight though. They are
frowned on in society, kept out of sight, it is a sign of extreme eccentricity and indifference
for an aristocrat to let their Boa Boys about in daylight hours, or where guests can see.
To speak to them as if they are true children, or develop relationships with one, is a sign of
madness or decadence. Always popular in ballads and cheap popular theatres is the character
of the ‘Snake Widow’, a rich old woman with no surviving sons, whose family never come,
who roams her homes empty corridors, talking to her ‘boys’. In these stories, usually the
Boa Boy gets jealous and crushes her to death, or sometimes tries to warn her against the
schemes of a handsome rogue who seduces her and steals everything.
The snake always dies at the end.
It is not uncommon for young girls to taunt each other with cries of ‘snake lady!’, meaning,
not that they have the qualities of a snake, but that they are unmarriageable, and therefore
worthless.
Sometimes the ‘castoffs’ are retained and recombined. The body of a child with the head
of a snake. They are hard to keep alive and not very useful, but some clients do insist on
having the pair, for their own amusement.
Some Boa Boys do not stay loyal. They slowly work out what they are and how they came to
be. They grow to understand what others took. Some go mad. Some go berserk. And some
stay silent, thinking and planning. They have the body of a powerful beast, the intelligence
of a man and free access to the house when all others sleep. Much could be done with such
things.
19

BOA CONSTRUCTOR
or SERPENT DACTYLIS
Born with what seems to be a crippling mutation, the Boa Constructor must ferociously
adapt to stay alive. It has a four-staged life, Brunneous, Xanthic, Pavonated and Griseous.
Most die along the way, unable to face the challenge of their size or grasp the opportunities
presented by their hands. Those who reach the last stage, the Griseous few, are rare and
barely seen, they sleep within their palaces, but their works are world-renowned.
On emerging from its egg, the Boa Constructor is about the size of its near-equivalent, the
Boa Constrictor. In its infant form it looks much like a normal snake and its intelligence
is not much more than that. They are born a dark brown and life for the Brunneous Boa
Constructor is hard. Unlike any other kind of snake it has, instead of pointed fangs and
poison glands: hands. Its mouth is full of rows of tiny arms with hands upon their tiny
wrists. At its smallest size these hands are not much use, it lacks the wits to manipulate
them well, and even if it could, there is not much in the tiny world for it to do. It can just
about strangle a mouse.
So most Boa Constructors die young.
BRUNNEOUS
If it finds a way to stay alive the Boa Constructor grows, its brunneous colouring turns light
like sunlit stone. It must grow larger than almost any normal snake, when its head is roughly
the size of a large bucket the dreams begin. Haptic dreams of touch and feel, prompted by
its active hands. Perhaps a natural and inevitable result of growth, or it may simply be that
any Boa Constructor capable of surviving this long must learn or die.
The snake becomes more capable of complex acts. It’s tooth-hands now do more than grip
and pull, they can test, manipulate, discover and arrange. The Boa Constructor becomes
aware that, rather than jamming its body between rocks or branches to slough off its skin, it
can undress itself. It does this carefully, slowly teasing apart its brunneous covering, beneath
the fading brown is bright summer-yellow. The snake enters its Xanthic phase.
XANTHIC
From this point on, the Boa Construtor learns, but more: it knows that it can learn. It
sets out to understand the world and what it is. It learns through objects: in a tactile
way, putting them inside its mouth and rolling them through its toothands. The enormous
sensitivity and awareness of these hands gives it a deep understanding of the nature of
material things. It learns first to tie knots, then to make simple twine and rope, to sharpen
and blunt stones, to cut. This is a dangerous time for man. The Xanthic Boa Contructor
retains most of the instincts of a snake, and adds to this the use of tools and traps. It can
20

make snares, set spikes, dig pits, hold weapons, even throw sharp stones from its mouth.
Xanthic Constructors knap primitive pseudoteeth, sharpened stones arranged so that the
snake can ‘bite’ for the first time.
The Boa Constructor grows.
Possessing tools now of its own, the Boa Constructor becomes aware of things not made by
it, of other tools. Other tools imply other minds. Things with hands, like its hands, that
make things as it does. Slowly, a new category opens up inside its mind: ‘Not-Food’.
PAVONATED
The Pavonated Boa Constructor is truly huge. Now its yellow scales are patterned diamond
blue, shaped like the eyes on peacock wings. The Constructor becomes interested in com-
munication with the ‘Not Food’. Another round of deaths begins. Most Boa Constructors
who survive this long, die trying to make contact with thinking beings. So far they cannot
speak and understand language as derivative of tools, as ‘tools of sound’, not the other way
around. If they have been in the same area for some time the growing Boa Constructor will
have trapped and eaten quite a few of the ‘Not-Food’ in its early years.
Should it succeed, a new phase in its life will open up.
GRISEOUS
A Griseous Boa Constructor is the mass of a small house. Its blue-grey patterns expand and
the shrinking dots of yellow slowly fade and disappear. It speaks but in a whisper, snake
lungs were never meant to project breath. So huge now, that few environments can support
it for long. But a market of trade can.
The things a Griseous Boa Constructor can achieve with its almost-man-sized teethands are
incredible. Almost a hundred skilled limbs can act in concert on the same object. It can
weave a tapestry in minutes. It can sculpt a statue in an hour or two. It can build and
repair simple machines and it can do all of these things much faster than even a team of
skilled workers.
As it picks up skills and accumulates wealth, the Griseous Boa Constructor can grow huge
indeed. Its Pseudoteeth, instead of stones, are now master-crafted weapons, tools, devices
and small but lethal machines. Some are the blades of those brave or foolish to challenge
the Boa Constructor. It keeps these hung around its neck in case of use, or held by one of
its attendants in case it should equip for harm.
The toothands are individually skilled combatants, working perfectly in sequence or alone.
The bite of a Griseous Boa Constructor is like fighting a hundred expert duellists in one go.
They can load and fire quite well. meaning the Boa Constructor can effectively vomit bowfire.
Some develop one-of-a-kind explosive-projectile weapons only they can understand.
21

But it is rare for a griseous Boa Constructor to offer battle, they are too careful, too rich
and too bound up in the careful economy of the world. They have financial interests. They
also need to eat at least one large cow almost every day to stay active and alive, so they
need to be rich.
ITS CREATIONS
The art of the Boa Constructor is usually well-known. They are excellent architects and
builders. Their sculpture is renowned. They can also build weapons, armour and unusual
machines.
To be armoured by a Boa Constructor, or sculpted by one, requires gigantic wealth and lots
of nerve. The snake must learn your shape. To do so, it picks you up bodily, rolling you
around its mouth, testing and feeling your limbs. When it has fully considered your form, the
Griseous snake constructs a sculpture, or a suit of plate to match. Its sculptures are always
remarkable and the suits of armour that it makes are composed strangely, differently each
time, with choices no human armourer would ever make. Nevertheless they work perfectly,
for the person for whom they were made. Many become subjects of study once the owner
has passed on.
On reaching its apparently-maximum size, the Griseous Boa Constructor starts work on its
palace. Incredible formations. A fortress-palace-pleasure dome, built as if by a thousand
skilled hands, yet with the mind, and for the body of a gigantic snake. They are few but
astonishing to look upon. No two are remotely alike. The Boa Constructor disappears inside
its palace, with its wealth and incredible tools, and does not emerge. They do not like to
be disturbed. Reports of the interior are few. Those who go in generally do not come back.
They speak of halls and columns, carved in exquisite detail, but arranged for no human form
or size. There, people creep along the oddly-arranged buttresses like insects climbing on a
human wall, the dry and cavernous interior silently unfolding all around. What the snake is
doing there, sleeping, building, experimenting on impossible things, is unknown to all.
The Boa Constructor is always minded like a snake. Its desires and instincts remain that of
a snake, simply with massively added intelligence and more toleration, and perhaps respect,
for living things that are ‘Not Food’.
It can be civil.
It is never safe.
22

BOG ELF
The Bog Elves live beneath our world, in an inverse mirror-version of their own whose portal
is the still water of the mere. They may be a nation, a species or simply failed members of
some distant race, banished to the mirror of the moors for some unknown failure or wrong.
Perhaps all Elves could live beneath the bog if they so wished.
Few do.
They are pale and bald, slender and shorter than men, with long thin arms. They make steel
there in the other world, but whatever they burn instead of coal leaves strange impurities in
the forge. Their swords are always short and wide and the blades are sometimes stained with
green, as if a vine grew spiralling inside the steel, pressing against its sides. The hilts of their
swords and the shafts of their spears are always a dense black bog-hardened wood.
They are each armoured differently, with things seized and stolen in the bog, or drawn from
the long cycles of its time. The first order clad in closely arranged bone, a chainmail of the
skeletons of fish and eels. The second type wear scale woven from the overlapping beaks
of storks and cranes. The third have armour stolen from the dead, but always altered in
some way, its joints bound with the shining skins of fish, edged with the sharp teeth of frogs
or simply woven with lilies. Always made more beautiful and strange. It is said the lords
of the Bog Elves wear sheets of stained and pierced paperthin gold, made brittle by slowly
expanding smargadine rust, brought on by the alien chemistry of their home.
The masters of the Bog Elves are judged by their stillness and the subtlety of their plans.
For one to move too much could bend or tear its sheath of brittle gold, leaving bright seams
of shining gleam to show the lines where it has flexed. To move rapidly or be surprised is
a sign of incompetence, innocence or youth, none of which are valued qualities in the Bog
Elf world. Therefore the greatest are known to be those who see furthest, know most and
seem to do the least. Their greatest minds sit whispering on thrones of black wood, caked in
overlapping robes of strangely punctured gold, weaved with bright green stains of expanding
fungal decay to illustrate the long reach of their thoughts.
They walk in a world where the floor is a shining sheet of glass, the sky a dense stew of
darkness and dying things. In every direction they see pools of shadow, which, to them,
is like a liquid in which they can swim. The bravest can enter these pools and dive to the
bottom, entering thereby a world of shadow, very distant from our own, and having converse
with the beings there.
They bridge these pools with arches of black wood horded over hundreds of years, they as-
semble homes and palaces upon these arcs and their palaces are dark and beautiful to behold.
Careful creations of painstakingly recovered wood, held together by vibrantly coloured and
madly shaped fungal blooms, diligently bred and guided for this purpose. Lit by fireflies,
fungus and lanterns in the upturned skulls of enemies and friends.
The shining glass floor of this world is simply still water on ours. What, in our world, are
patches of solid land, on the other, are the pools of shadow. By placing their only permanent
23

structures away from the shining glass surface on which they walk the Bog Elves ensure that
no-one can find them.
They can be seen sometimes at night as they transit on the other side of the reflected world.
A traveller might look into the water of the bogs under the moon and see below the pale
faces of the Elves going from place to place. But they are stealthy and quick and will easily
escape notice.
If the traveller should decide to try capturing one of these strange figures, and dive into the
water, ninety nine times out of a hundred they will simply find themselves having jumped
into a shallow bog. The water shatters, the reflection is gone, they emerge drenched.
Should they be skilful, lucky, wise in craft, or deeply learned in the secrets of the Elves,
they may actually smoothly enter the other world. This would be very bad for them. They
would find themselves standing on a smooth glassy surface, glowing either with refracted
sunlight, if day, or distant stars at night. They will be right next to a pool of liquid shadow,
exactly where the solid ground they dived from was, and they will be surrounded by angry
Bog Elves. In the glassy floor beneath their feet will be the twisted image of the place they
left.
Despite the weird, secret and magical nature of the Bog Elves they do still need material
things. They war ceaselessly with the Potemkimen, whom they loathe, striving to outwit
and delude the amphibian freaks. It is not certain how the war is going, or even exactly
when and how the battles take place. The conflict is composed mainly of feints, deceptions
and decade-long double-bluffs, but the Bog Elves are certain of their own eventual victory.
This war requires resources, and they do live in a bog, there is a limit to how much it can
provide, even for patient and immortal race.
The Bog Elves trade in liquid shadow, delivered in vials and philtres made from the shells of
snails. They dive for this in the depthless pools of darkness underneath their fortress homes.
The depth of the dive indicates the darkness of the shadow and the blackness of the shade
and the size of the snail that made up its vial decide how much gold it is worth.
This strange substance can be refined and altered in a number of ways and is much sought
by mages, madmen and secret cults. It can also be used ‘raw’ poured over or onto something
to cloak it in shadows, wherever it happens to be.
For prodigious cost, or in dire extremes, the Bog Elf lords may sanction an embassy to the
reality of shadows that lies beyond the bottom of the midnight pools below their span-castles.
A favoured few may be allowed to dive themselves into the pools of darkness or lowered on a
silver chain, with a bodyguard of expert shadow divers to ensure they survive the trip.
24

SWAMP DRUNKS
“Why are they drunk, and on what? This was my question. I was soon to find out.
From the conversations of the rich I had thought the Melanic Moors and the tribes of
Swamp-Drunks there to be little more than an irrelevant scattering of primitives living in
the marshlands all around the bay.
As I listened more and spoke less, and descended deeper into the city, I found that knowledge
and news of the Drunks and the Moors bubbled beneath the surface of the cities conversation
like a cyst beneath the skin. Stories of the tribes of the Moors: the Dismals, Great-Dismals,
Thesingers, Morokie-Men and the feared Fluke Boys, as well as the doings of the notable
characters of the Moors: ‘Her-Face’ Shah Lun, Nine-Hundred Wilson, Chthonic Jones and
Tenberous Djang, were on the lips of all classes, though only the poorest would speak directly
to me on the subject, the rest spoke only amongst themselves, as if they guarded an open
secret.
It was only from an apparently-homeless woman sitting on a disused landward dock of one
of the poorest towers that I was able to learn exactly why the Swamp Drunks are drunk so
much.” - Z
“The Melanic Moors cannot be navigated by the conscious mind. The Moors themselves
are a several broken archipelagos of reeds and black water, a maze of creeks and waterways,
lakes, wetlands, insects and broad floating islands, a baffling labyrinth of reed beds, sunken
forests, acidic mangroves and dismal pools. No-one can be sure exactly where they start or
end, whether one environment or several linked. Even without any other-natural quality,
they would present an incredible challenge to navigation. But some unknown quality of the
Moors, some secret force, makes their pathways impossible to rationally understand. Any
sane intelligent person attempting to move through them will find themselves travelling in
circles, faced with impossibly branching paths, drawing maps that make no sense, unable
to describe or understand where they are or should be. If they are very lucky they will go
insane before they starve to death.
Only a deranged mind can move safely through the moors. You must be mad, drunk, drugged
or half-asleep. Only then, with the conscious analytical part of the mind baffled and closed
off, may you move by clever instinct, as the animals do, and find your way.
It is for this reason that the tribes of the Melanic Moors are named ‘Swamp-Drunks’ and it
is this that makes up one of the few points of continuity between the baffling miscellany of
cultures in the Moors.
There, insanity is valued over sanity, the inability to hold your drink or drugs is thought
highly of, rather than the other way around. (Anyone who can get drunk easily is a cheap
and reliable guide.) It is common for childhood to be valued over adulthood, dreams over
reason, instability and intuition over reason and reliability. Though by no means absolute
amongst all Swamp-Drunk cultures, these factors do present a common theme.
Professional guides usually keep a bottle of strong spirits on them at all times in case of
25

emergencies. Some tribes specialise in certain drugs, some keep insane people to guide them,
small families can be seen floating past on reed beds, guided by half-asleep children.” -
Leptoblast
“There is an extensive economic relationship between the City and the Moors.
The population of the Moors is sparsely distributed but the Moors themselves are huge There
are reaches of which even the Deep-Drunks do not speak The total population may be very
large indeed.
Trade directly with the Drunks is banned and there are regular attempted punitive expedi-
tions in response to some outrage or act of piracy. As well as a flickering state of inconstant
conflict. The two cultures are bound closely together.
I estimate as much as a third of the total mainland trade of Juaki comes from this illegal
source.
The Moors supply, or transmit from further on: rare and or aromatic woods (for example
gaharu, sandalwood, sappan and Orn wood), puccoon-Silks, Virid Steel, Caged Fruit Hounds,
the leaves of the Catastrophe Tree, the feathers of the Blathering Bird, the Sanguibe Crane,
of Hornbills, Peacocks and Kingfishers, Snapkegs and Snapkeg parts, rare forms of art, war-
puppets, bezoar stones, dried organs of swamp fauna, aloe wood, hostages, edible birds
nests, honey, beeswax, rice, opium, rubies, riddles, sapphires, liquid shadows in the shells
of snails, a variety of spices, the services of Hex Dragoons, diseased spines and many other
things.
In the other direction flow all kinds of manufactured goods: machetes, axes, tools, pots and
pans, lamps, fuel, candles, sheets, clothes, weapons, fast shallow draft boat, sail, drugs and
a truly staggering amount of alcohol.
All of this is carried on secretly, or semi-secretly. Yet the trade is so vast and so important
to both cultures that, though they both feign independence from, and contempt for, each
other, if it were to ever cease they would both be ruined.
The balance of power shifts endlessly between the two. The borders of the Moors by the
bay are dotted with the abandoned watch towers of failed alcoholic colonisation. Now more
usually bases for smuggling operations. At times explosive tribes have threatened the towers
of Jukai. They are swiftly absorbed, incorporated into the cities history, government and
mythology.” - Ashkott
“The Mystery of the Moors! A tantalising secret sought by many and postulated, theorised
on and discussed by courtiers. No man is without a theory of his own: The ‘Second God’
theory, supposing the Moors a kind of Twin to the Forest of Orn, the ‘Ten-Shadows’ theory
put forth by Stammel claiming the Moors as the seat of some ancient power, a mere emission
of the reeds, a special kind of pollen, the bite of a specific moor-bound insect, a simple curse of
Subtle Art, great black gates down beneath the deepest pools leaking forth the logic of some
other world, space stolen from the world and worked into an alternative mirror-land.
No-one knows. But the discoverer would become famous throughout the world!” - Lepto-
blast
26

BRAINSTORMER
The Brainstormer believes they read the mind of the sky.
To become one requires intelligence, obsession, tremendous resources, a questionable grip
on mental health, and time. All to gather and distil a golden crackling fluid composed of
lightning and madness. The Elixir Anemoi.
The elixir is composed primarily of collected lightning strikes, at least a thousand are re-
quired. To gather them, would-be Brainstormers like to occupy high mountains in tempes-
tuous lands, secreting their equipment in fortified peaks, building copper spires and praying
for storms. Waiting, perhaps for years until the fluid glows its golden hue, ripe with electrical
power and the hidden discharge of the sky.
Before even that process begins, the elixir itself must be devised. It is composed of the
concentrated and purified bile of certain eels. It also needs traces of certain rare metals
and compounds, carefully processed. Most difficult to attain are the body-parts of various
electrically-related creatures, which activate the potion. The spine of an Azul, for instance,
is necessary before the end, and they are very hard to get.
Only a small amount of the golden Elixir Anemoi is made, all of it is required. It is insanely
valuable and anyone creating it will take exceptional pains to hide and protect what they
are doing.
The Brainstormer must hone and whet their mind through avid concentration and deep
thought, to make its ready for its commune with the sky. The strange refracted minds of
clouds and storms can be a rapid maze of vectored thought to those who tase them for the
first. The Brainstormer must ready themselves to not only understand, but control these
atmospheric psychologies.
A number of syringes must be made. These should be things of exceptional and precise craft.
Copper, each with a cruciform end. Each syringe is filled with the Elixir Anemoi.
Well all is prepared, the Brainstormer will shave their own head, they will drill holes in
their skull at certain exactly-placed points. This is actually the least-dangerous part of the
process.
And then, in once precise movement, the syringes are driven into the brain. The Elixir
Anemoi floods certain selected organs of the mind. Sublime awareness. The Brainstormer
feels, for the first time, that complex ecology of ever-adjusting, never-ceasing thought and
dream that makes up the inverse world of air above our own. The unspoken poetry of the
sky, the secret driver of the winds.
At this point every Brainstormer on record has gone completely fucking nuts.
Their eyes unfocus, they begin to drool. Between the copper crosses of the syringes injecting
golden light, a network of crackling electrical fire leaps into being.
Before the process begins all would-be Brainstormers are careful to inform their lackeys and
servants that the levels of Elixir must be carefully and continually adjusted to avoid disaster.
27

Once the first dose is taken and the halo of electricity begins, the Brainstormer reacts to
anyone trying to adjust or alter the syringes in any way by screaming madly, firing bolts of
electricity and sometimes sucking them up into a tornado. From this point on the levels will
adjust themselves.
If they speak at all it is usually to inform anyone still remaining nearby of their new title,
(they all re-name themselves and this is how they become known to history: The Sul-
tan of Storms, The Tempest Khan, The Baron Boreal, The Cycloczar, Great Psychoty-
phon) and to inform people that they are certainly not insane, that they are the first ones
to truly understand the process and will be the first to truly master it, the others were
fools. . . FOOLS!
Clouds and storms begin to gather in the air above the Brainstormer. They achieve a
frightening density. The inside of the gigantic storm cloud will be shaped into a kind of
palace-dungeon that matches the Brainstormers conscious and unconscious mind.
Some parts make sense and seem to bear the marks of deliberate design, others, as if they
were created by an architect on drugs, or in a dream. Everything is there for a reason, its
simply that the reason is insane. The Brainstormer is broadly unaware of the exact nature
of their palace. To them, everything is as it should be, things are going well, the experiment
was a success.
Though the geography of the Palace is their creation, it is not under their continual control.
Once things are built up in the original flurry of invention, corridors and room and halls
cannot be re-shaped without breaking the coherency of the storm. (Although of course, the
whole things does tend to rotate quite fast.) Sometimes the front or bottom of the storm
will be re-shaped into a rough approximation of the Brainstormers face, from which they
will speak to the people below in a voice of thunder and hurricane.
When they are satisfied with the creation of their new abode, the Brainstormer will summon
forth a Tornado from the storm. A whirling finger of darkness will reach down to touch the
earth. Inside this annihilating vortex will be a silent calm core, and a spiralling stairway,
which the Brainstormer will ascend. From this point on they dwell within the heart of the
storm.
The Hurricane-Palace of the Brainstormer will set off on its journeys. These will be decided
by whatever the new Cycloczar thinks their ambition is, or was, or should be. Their minds
can be a little confused at this point but general constants are a desire for money, acclaim,
sex and the punishment and destruction of those who mocked or degraded them over the
long years of squeezing eels for their brine.
The storm will race around, attacking and collecting things. If the Brainstormer wants
something, they threaten cities and towns in their godlike voice to prepare it and send down
a Tornado to suck it up. These Tornadoes are terrifying and incredibly destructive. It the
town or city disobeys, they send down multiple Tornadoes anyway, rain lighting and gigantic
hails, tear roofs of houses, drown streets and unleash primordial chaos on the place. Should
the target surive the journey, it will be dumped somewhere in the Hurricane-Palace, then
forgotten, or not, depending on what is going on at the time. The Storm Palace can end
28

up with an odd collection of money, weird creatures, things that look interesting from above
and attractive and somewhat traumatised people.
The Brainstormer is still aware enough to make deals with intelligent creatures, it can offer
certain groups transport or safety in return for protection. It can form small storm-golems
and lightning-golems to defend itself, though this niggling fine work requires concentration
and time.
Eventually the elixir levels will go out of whack and their head will explode, it’s just a matter
of time.
When the Brainstormer dies, the storm dies with them. The Palace of Storms will start to
very gradually fall apart, segments separating and drifting to the ground like falling leaves the
size of merchant ships, strewing their wreckage and survivors all over the countryside.
29

BRAINSTORMER, PALACE EXAMPLE
This is a piece of art, not included in this.
30

CAPITUALTORS
The Capitulators are lax, a purposeless semi-supernatural race of indifferent thieves and
tired spies. They live surrendered lives, abandoning themselves to fate and chance and they
are sacred beings to fate itself, organic angels of the absence of directed will.
A Capitulator stands man-high, it wears insectile shape. They eyeless head is split. A pair
of living horns? Twitching mandibles upraised in prayer? Sometimes the Capitulator seems
a faceless man, masked and helmed. Sometimes like a beetle rearing up, jaws wide as if to
eat the sky. They can stand and walk as men, or run upon all fours like insects would, both
are natural to them, both are right. Those jaws close slowly when they fight, but they are
strong. They speak. but rarely. When they do so it is in a high pitched whine. Like a fly
trapped in a jar of glass.
Capitulators hives look like grey smoke piled in drifts through complex darkened woods.
They like shadowed, cimmerian places, dense forest, looming canyons hard to reach. People
fear these hives. Once you see Capitulators they are everywhere at once, watching silently.
They seem to haunt their hives like ghosts, appearing where no living thing should be. Men
come back from there deranged, afraid of things that no-one else can see.
Capitulators ride the eye. Their unique and unstoppable power is that, once directly seen,
they can become one with the observers sight, to live inside their vision of the world. They
seem, to those whose eyes they ride, like a symptom of insanity. The Capitulator pops up in
your visual field, integrated into the scene. If in a room - its in there with you, if you look
across a landscape , it is there, close up or far. It can be man-sized in your sight, half hidden
by a curtain or a door, or very small. The Capitulator can seem no larger than a bug, an
ant on the ground, a fly crawling on the page. It can be so small and so discrete you may
think it is gone, but it is not. For as long as the Capitulator rides your eye, it is never out
of sight. It can remain there, like a visual ghost, for as long as it so desires. At a moment of
its choosing, it is real. The Capitulator is now actual, no longer an illusion or hallucination,
it is there, in the room. You may not know this till it reaches out to touch your flesh.
To encounter Capitulators without knowing what they are or what they do is frightening
indeed. A disturbing vision that cannot be removed or cured, that signals something in
movements and strange signs. It feels like going mad. A specific and irreversible insanity.
If you do know what Capitulators are, it’s even worse. To know that at any moment and
in any place, the Capitulator can be real. That you are never out of danger, never safe so
long as you can see. In darkness, or without eyes the Capitulator cannot come, it is trapped
inside the lightless eye, but if you see anything at all it can escape.
The Capitulators think they have no self. This is their greatest weakness and the source of
their strange power. They submit utterly to fate and chance. They know that everything
they do and are is set, no true choice exists, they are machines of flesh and even that small
inner voice that says ‘I am’ is just a ghost of thought, a necessary illusion of the self. Thus
so, empty of selfhood, they can be no more than an image in the eye of one observing them.
The second they stop believing this the power disappears.
31

While it persists, they wait. Capitulators never move too quickly, they drift like jaded
children of the rich, they amble and they pause. To be seen taking too deep and unconsidered
interest in anything, even life itself, is thought quite gauche. Involvement, desperation,
admiration, joy, desire, hatred and real need, all these are eschewed. They stand always at
one remove from what they do. In speech they speak of what they do in second or third
person, names are never used. In truth they do not believe they are real, a Capitulator
watches its own reactions like the employment of a complex automatic machine. They are
languorous and diffident, superior and hard to motivate or scare.
“. . . found that, ceasing use of names or personal words, and by confining to abstractions,
that I could communicate quite well. I asked about their culture and their hive. (That is, ‘I’
did not ask at all, an unspecified intelligence made commentary related to the general forms
of its construction and their relation to any governmental and societal systems operating
within said structure. No name entered my speech and no solid object was described.)
They seemed animated (almost) and replied. (No actual reply was made, a series of relations
were analysed in the abstract in the presence of a possible observer, that is: myself). It was
difficult to unfold meaning from their words, but it seemed as if the hive, the society and
everything inside it was not primarily a living place, but a kind of work of conceptual art.
That the purpose of this art was as an ironic commentary, or refutation of, a similar work
of art. That is: another hive. That all such societies and ways of life are simply part of a
Grand Argument, played out over ages and generations of life. That nothing is what it is,
but is a sign or metaphor for something else, which, when found, is also simply a sign or for
some still-more-distant thing.
This explains quite well, I think, the preference of the Capitulators for those human organi-
zations and movements which are elaborate, emotionally distant, highly self-aware and very
theoretical, and likewise their near-hatred (they never truly ‘hate’ anything) for ideas and
societies that are embodied, unquestioning, passionate and zealous.
Added to this is the fact that if one society of Capitulators acts in a certain way, a different
one, observing this, may perform strange and inconsistent actions simply as a comment on
the first. What seems to us an anarchy, in which nothing certain of their motives can be
known, is, in fact an argument beyond our understanding or our reach.
Our conversation ended when they asked me (in their way) what my own life and society
was comment on. The idea baffled me and I was able to issue no reply.” - Zenithal
They can be tricked. Sometimes even persuaded or just forced into acting like they have a
choice. They do love to gamble and to bet, in the middle of a complex game they can forget
themselves and start to care. The moment that they do so their power is gone, they can no
longer ride the eye. They spring into reality, observable to all.
Capitulators claim a link to certain other-natural realms. Abstracted from reality as they
are by one degree, it may be that they move more easily into those other worlds. They
are found often connected to, or employed by, creatures that wield the power of fate and
inevitable time.
Capitulators are always slightly bored, they rarely get impatient and almost never scare. If
32

a scheme requires deployment of great energy or drive, they will most likely fail, but if only
time and patience are required, and an absence of fear, it is likely they will get it done.
They make effective spies and thieves, capable of living as they do inside the eye. They go
everywhere the victim goes and see everything they see. If the sufferer thinks themselves
insane, they may simply choose to hide their ‘dark hallucination’. Or they can be threatened
or controlled in other ways. If the Capitulator stays small and hidden in the sight, the carrier
may not fully realise they are there. If undirected Capitulators may still find themselves
stealing jewels or works of art in a tired and offhand way. They have a good sense of beauty,
but it wakes nothing inside them, abandoned paintings dot the hive.
33

COLOUR MONSTER
or PIGMENT EATER
No-one knows for certain exactly what the colour-monster is. It’s skin is shaded absent-blank,
a tone that cannot be percieved by eyes.
It is probably some kind of lizard, a little like the Chameleon. It could be about the size of
a big cat, but bigger somehow, with likely four, or maybe five, lizard-like limbs. They might
be monkey-like, with tiny hands. There is certainty about its tail but the curl of the tail is
disputed by all.
It scampers quickly and leaps from branch to branch in the forests where it makes its home
and flies on prism feathered wings.
It is not white or grey, transparent or invisible. You cannot see through the Colour Monster,
you simply cannot see the colour that it is. The sight flinches. The only its bright coccineous
eyes, and its wings.
Its wings are very lovely and are made of light. Zenithal has said “the creature, instead of
manipulating colour as the Chameleon does, to disguise itself, has learnt to project colour in
some raw form, thereby gaining the rare power of flight without the inconvenience of physical
propulsion.”
When the Colour Monster flies the imperceptable void of its form is haloed in projected
rainbow, like light spilling from a painted lantern. Most bold are cardial and indigo, pyrrous
red and ultramarine, but shades of every kind are seen. It is hard to look upon, the wings so
bright they nearly blind and the absence of it grouxing the orb, but at least it can be found
and maybe stopped before it licks your eyes with its sharp tongue.
The Colour Monster eat only extremely colourful things.
Handily, for man the range of living skins makes their flesh less appetising for the Colour
Monster, but Lepdoblast remarks: “I have seen it try to pierce an un-marked dull-eyed
individual only twice, and on each occasion the only unifying factor was the vibrancy of the
victims skin, one being almost coal-black, the other extremely white and pale, of skin tones
of the average range the creatures took almost no notice at all. Though those with bright
eyes were afraid.” If the creatures are swarming and hungry, starved for colour, even the
beige greige and brown of human skin may seem appetising to them. And of course, they
like to eat eyes, the brighter and more vivid the better.
They do so with their small sharp tongues, which act much like reversed tattoos. They
needle-flicker in and out, initially they do not cause much harm. The bleeding is mild but
quite difficult to stop as the area around the tongues strike is utterly and permanently drained
of colour. It goes the same absent-blank as the Colour Monster, becoming imperceptible to
the eye. But then the area goes numb. It will never feel anything ever again. The only way
to tell if you are bleeding from a Colour Monster wound is by the warmth and wetness of
the blood.
34

If someone is beset by colour monsters and suffers numerous wounds, the scars will be
impossible to see. The visual effect of this on the human body is disconcerting indeed.
Areas, sometimes whole limbs, seem not to exist. Body parts do not connect or float oddly
in the eye. Dusturbing and frightning to look upon, and deeply traumatic for the person
involved.
The monsters love to feed from the colours of living eyes, the brighter the better. Should they
do so, the result is often blindness. But even if the victim survives and regains their sight,
their eyes will now be absent-blank, making them terrifying and strange to look upon.
One or two Colour Monsters can be difficult to deal with. A large swarm can be a serious
threat.
The cultural use of the Colour Monster can be more disturbing still. Despite the lack of
proof, rumours persist of the existance of deliberately made “Colour Monster-Monsters”.
Unusually here, Zenithal confirms, and Leptoblast denies, the exisance of such things.
Zenithal alledges that tribes of Swamp-Drunks and Bog-Elves will range far from the Melanic
Moors to capture Colour Monsters. This done, they return them home, and use them to
tatoo a chosen few. This carefully-selected elite are inscribed by touch over a number of
months, eventually becoming total absent-blank. They are utterly imperceptable, even to
themselves.
Leptoblast decries this utterly: “if every oafish commune that claimed posession of an unseen
secret warrior truly did posess one they they would be running into each other by accident
all over the moors. And how, may I ask, are such being to be controlled once made? How
how do they find their way, being unable to see thier own feet? It is a nonesense.”
(He goes on to decry the fashion amongst the youth of Jukai City for Colour Monster tattoos,
calling it “a calamity”.)
Nevertheless, popular belief in the existance of the ‘Colour Monster-Monster’ runs high and
rumours or claims of one can be enough to spark a frantic riot as crowds tear homes apart
searching for the thing they cannot see.
35

CORBEAU
Corbeau are blackish green like a deep, dead pond and are feared much more than their
limited powers would suggest, especially by men.
They are the size of small women. Each slender limb tapers to a sensitive hoof. Their heads
are bare and blank, proportioned like human heads. The black eyes are located half way
down the ‘face’ and difficult to spot from far away. They have no visible organs of sense
other than this. The mouth is small and hidden. When eating it extends from below, where
the chin would be on a human head. The teeth are small and sharp and the jaw of the
Corbeau is not much stronger than a human jaw.
Each has a long elegant whiplike tail which flows in time to the shiftings of their adjustable
spine. The chest is round and strong, the waist is very slim and expands to rounded, muscular
buttocks and hips.
The Corbeau has muted senses for a hunting beast, its brain is large and it uses this to
plan and think ahead and to make use of the single piece of magic which all Corbeau know,
its ability to hide within, and duplicate itself from, reflective surfaces. It has one more
advantage: a poisoned bite which injects a highly specific toxin into the veins.
Popular imagination regards them as utterly evil, seductive, demonic beings who trick lonely
foresters and family men into perverted acts, weaken them with kisses until they are but
shells of their former selves, and then consume them. They are feared and hated by all simple
folk and regarded by them as virtual, or effective, devils, either produced by, or in league
with, some destructive and demonic power. Witches are held to have Corbeau Familiars, or
to change into them.
The Corbeau is also linked in the public mind with the decadence of wealth, they are a ‘rich
mans plague’. This probably relates to their relationship with mirrors. The only people
likely to have mirrors large or clear enough for a Corbeau to move through are the those
of considerable wealth. There are numerous folk tales in which the innocent bride opens
the door that must-never-be-opened in her strange new husbands house and finds inside: a
black mirror and a Corbeau nest, in a specially built bedroom made for them, and is then
promptly eaten. (This is despite the fact that exactly the same peasants will usually report
that Corbeau eat only men, usually men they have seduced first.)
Leptoblast eschews the peasant tales and suspicions in a perfunctory way, but in effectively
confirms them with his heightened and somewhat purple description of observing a pack of
Corbeau by starlight by the side of a melanic pool. (A description so vivid that it lends
its name to the famous Sonata by Veridian.) He also claims to have uncovered the original
source for the popular Corbeau-In-The-Bedroom story, although, typically, he neglects to
mention what or where or who it is.
Zenithal gives a quite different analysis:
“The Corbeau is an entirely innocent, or at least, not evil creature, regarded with fear and
dread due to an accident of circumstance and form.
36

Its size, the proportions of its hips and waist, its continual slow movements, the human seem-
ing of its head and the fact that no features can be directly seen, gives no other impression
than of being approached by a masked woman on all fours. The effect is quite eerie and
whether directly understood, or sensed only in the deeps of the mind, explains some of the
fear and uncertainty the creature generates, especially in men.
In smaller creatures the poison of the Cobreau bite may be strong enough to kill. In larger
ones, the effects are muted. Remarkably, the Corbeau poison does carry a gendered effect.
In men it causes apparent physical weakness, passivity, dithering, loss of primal (that is to
say, generative) drive and depression. The effects on women (I injected a small dose to be
certain) are similar, but much less keenly felt.
The true revelation of the Corbeau bite may be the discovery, by inference, of some gen-
erative, impelling fluid or elixir, present in all human beings, but much more so in males,
which is suppressed by its venom. If this is the case, then it explains the stories of the
creature eating only male beings. Its poison is more effective against them so it may indeed
concentrate on hunting them.
As to the final power of the Corbeu, their ability to hide in mirrors, and breed new reflected
selves within, it is simple to explain.
They are most often found in the forested margins of the Melanic Moors, where the dank
gruneous pines loom silently around acidic pools of utter black. The silence of the pools and
the stillness of their skins transforms the woods into a mirrored maze, lit darkly by reflected
moons. By day the empty sumps are dank and brown with the ever-encroaching roots of the
gruneous pines, by night they repeat the sky, perfect observers of the stars. No advantage
is more obvious than that of mirrored transit in just such a place. Whether the Corbeau
developed this capacity naturally, over the long reaches of time, or gained it in some rare
and other-natural way, this is the place for them. Their nature and the nature of the land
and life in such a place, fit each other like a lock and key. As we see elsewhere in nature,
creatures either adapt themselves as aptly as they can to their local arrangement of things,
or else migrate to lands where they may fitly live.
The Corbeau go where mirrors are, in the absence of mankind, these environments are
few and far between. By not only constructing artificial mirrors in large numbers, but by
abducting Corbeau for our own entertainment, and then bringing the two into close proximity
we have unnaturally enlarged its hunting ground.
The mazes of the gruneous pines stretch now into our homes, our parlours, our bedrooms,
bathrooms and halls. They do not replicate themselves inside the glass, it is simply that
where one has been, others can now freely go. Once a single Corbeau has been reflected in
the glass, more can come through. As more come through, they seek out mirrors wherever
they go, creating yet more access points.
The resulting plagues and swarms, invading mansions and theatres in the night, crowding into
abandoned homes before spilling out into the street, stalking revellers before disappearing
as suddenly as they came, can only be prevented when every mirror they have seen has been
destroyed.”
37

CRIMSON CONTRARODRON
Eyes a-spin, she rolls rolls rolls in the red rippling waves of crimson petals and reaches out
with poorly-ordered hands to mash more poppies into her maw.
The Crimson Contrarodron is the size of a small house and changes colour based on what
she eats. She is wise enough to know this and since she wishes to be red, in a field of red
flowers so she becomes so as she feasts.
She is invisible now, amidst the red inflorescence, moving with the wind, swaying gently.
With a thought she becomes intangible, ghosting through the florets like a gust, or transforms
into a red mist that curls and sighs, or she is the flower, or a red sky over a red land, looking
down on the tiny figure of a Contrarodron who thinks herself mighty, or a flower, as she
crams more poppies into her carnivorous mouth. The red sky laughs quietly to herself to see
such a thing and the world shivers under her laughter.
The Crimson Contrarodron is high as fuck pretty much all of the time and ruinously addicted
to the poppy seeds fermenting in her belly.
She is a large, fierce, lizard-like predator with asymmetric limbs, gifted with the ability to
change her pigmentation based on what she eats. By consuming a small amount of vegetable
matter, the Contrarodron can pigment her own skin with the colours of her food. This could
help her large form blend in with a wide range of environments.
But she only has one environment.
Leptoblast remarks: “Clearly, most Contrarodrons would a have been a mixture of porra-
ceous pigments and sorrel shades, moving smoothly from colour to colour as they crossed
from zone to zone. Unknown now as the only remaining examples of their kind are the
pathetic and poppy-addicted Crimson Contrarodron.”
The Contrarodron has three limbs along her left side and only two along her right. The two
front limbs on the odd-limbed side have rudimentary hands, which the Contrarodron can
use to manipulate and grasp. Every other limb ends in a tough, large lizard-claw.
Her strange gait may be due to her oddly-arranged limbs or simple chemical dependency.
No-one has ever seen the Contrarodron sober so nobody knows. She has speed when she
needs, but zig zags a little and loses things.
She has both speech and thought, and claims certain remarkable powers, though, again, no-
one is entirely sure if these are powers or qualities the Contrarodron actually has or simply
powers she believes she has.
She believes she absorbs a little wisdom of those she gobbles down, and only wishes to eat
the wisest, she will engage in conversation before assault, in order to decide who she should
eat. These conversations can be quite long and, sometimes, confusing for everyone involved.
The Contrarodron believes she gradually grows ‘ever wiser’ through these consumptions,
eventually becoming ‘the wisest of all’.
38

She must answer single riddles, or theoretical questions of her prey before . Consuming
them, should she fail to do so her jaws will lock and her eyes will weep and roll back in her
head and she will moan as if going mad. She can still tear someone apart with her strange
uneven hands in these cases. However she will not eat the remains.
She has claimed to be descended from an ancient race of titanic beings, or sometimes that
she is one of those beings, and will happily discourse at length on eons during which blood
rained from the sky, the earth spoke in voices and the sea was a woman who danced for the
stars. Again, it is not clear if these are things that actually happened or simply what the
Contrarodron believes.
Numerous small cults have sprung up based on these rather dangerous conversations and
radical and foolish pilgrims are an important source of protein for Crimson Contrarodron.
Though most sages agree, this is not a deliberate feeding tactic, she says the same thing to
everyone, and when she thinks no-one is near it says the same things to herself.
Other stated powers include the ability to read minds, to see all as if from the sky, to
understand the language of the wind, to occupy all points in her own lifespan at the same
time, to cause poppies to grow around her and ‘oneness’. Though there is less consistent
evidence for any of these abilities and the claims do vary day-to day.
She does help poppies grow as her stomach cannot fully digest the seeds, leaving them
everywhere in her spoor, and she kills and eats any large nearby herbivores. By such means
she both sustains herself and prevents any other being from eating ‘her’ poppies. She is
jealously protective of the flowers.
Opinions on the development and descent of the Crimson Contrarodron vary wildly, few
creatures occupy such a fraught cultural space inside the human mind.
The conservative faction, exemplified by Leptoblast regards the poppy-addiction as the cause
of, and final remnant of, a species-wide cultural decay: “ a once-mighty race of Lizard-Kings,
made Slaves of Brute Addiction and, so Dwindling to a shameful shadow self.”
Zenithal has always denied radicalism but few have stated that viewpoint more succinctly
than her: “She is, above all, a survivor. Drifting imperishable on the deep waves of time,
sustaining who-knows-what primordial wisdom through the long dream of her being.”
Ashkott leaves only scattered notes about ‘mutation’ ‘gigantism’ and one very detailed draw-
ing of the Contrarodrons middle-limb.
39

CRYPTOSPIDER
This small, intelligent spider is so harmless and weak that it seeks to escape harm by sleeping
in your pocket in the day. For this it trades the secrets that it catches in the night.
The Cryptospider is about the size of a big mouse, gold and grey in bands, with blue eyes
like tiny shining gems. Its legs are small and thin, projecting not far out. A Cryptospider
speaks quite well, its voice is like a tiny flute. It hunts poorly, requiring the aid or protection
of some other living thing to survive the rigours of the world. Its one advantage is: its webs
can catch forgotten thoughts.
If an intelligent being should accept the Cryptospiders terms, it resides upon their person
from then on, curling up in a pocket or somewhere next to the skin. It sleeps through the
day, maintaining opposite hours to those of its host. While the host slumbers the spider is
awake and while the host is awake, the spider dozes quietly, warm and safe.
Twice a day, on waking in the evening and before it goes to sleep, the spider will politely
request food. This can consist of insects, honey, tiny strips of flesh or any combination of
the three. On being fed, the spider thanks the host in its small voice, then climbs on to their
sleeping head and begins to build its nightly web. This grows like a halo of silk, expanding
in a radial pattern from the host, linked to nearby solid points. The web is softer than a
spiders should be, insects can punch right through, and the Cryptospider must grumble in
its tiny voce and struggle to repair the holes.
An abandoned idea or misplaced memory may blunder into the web during the night, the
Cryptospider will catch it, paralyse it with its bite and wrap it up in silk. When morning
comes, the Cryptospider will offer its host all the thoughts it caught that night. Only swallow
the squirming silk cocoon, as it dissolves smoothly in the stomach the idea inside will come
to mind, as if it had never been lost.
“Thoughts and memories fly around in the day like mad invisible insects, often returning to
their creator at odd moments when the mind is otherwise blank. I personally have found
these returning thoughts attend me often while on the toilet, or arrive in a huge swarm just
before I fall asleep. The great advantage of the Cryptospider for the Scholar is that, so long
as you sleep quietly without a great deal of moving around, somewhere quiet, that is, without
rain or driving wind, it is almost impossible to forget anything in your sleep. Even complex
abstract information like the code to a lock or the details of a letter have been returned to
me with my morning meal.
More notable and less spoken of are the secret advantages of the Cryptospider. My own
ideas, of course, may not be the only ones dashing about in the night. (Though frankly
I suspect they make up the majority in the local area, the minds of others lacking my
unusual cognitive fecundity, (sometimes I suspect that my companions wake up with ideas
that certainly should be, must have been, my own. . . )) These memories and ideas can also
be caught up in the Cryptospiders web, and offered to me at breakfast. The Spider, of
course, simply catches thoughts, she does not know from whom they come, any more than
an ordinary spider questions the genesis of flies.
40

I have, on some mornings, woken up and realised that the key to a jail cell was in the pocket
of an abandoned coat, (most useful information in those circumstances). Once I realised
that a letter to the Duke had fallen behind the sideboard, although I woke in a forest with
a castle in the distance, and did not know a Duke, or own a sideboard. Once I worked out
how to shoe an angry goat, or realised that my guide resented the cut of my cloak
These memories, or thoughts, can only come from others who have lost them in the night.
(Close minds I think, within about five miles.) What was once theirs, was now mine to
know. The chances of this happening are quite rare, I estimate perhaps once in every twenty
days, but the cumulative effect of these tiny contextless revelations over a breakfast of silk
can built up over time and become very useful indeed.” - Leptoblast
“The mind scabs over many dark events. This engine of forgetting allows us to survive the
pain inflicted on us by the world. But, the spider does not know exactly what it catches in
the night. Several months after our encounter with the creature in the Yurt, I consumed a
Chrysalis and, terrified, leapt to my feet. I had to be restrained from dashing out into the
wilderness. The fear of that moment had returned in one fell swoop, and the dying memory
of that terrible event had pressed itself into my mind once more.
If it could be known which cocoons contained bad memories, they could be cast away, (or
even used as poison, shocking thought), but it is very hard to discern which is which.
As well as this, I found that the range of tiny indignities done by friends and which are usually
quickly forgotten, and the frustrating detailed chaff of daily life, sprang back into being each
morning with full force, making me, I believe, resentful, crabby and detail obsessed.
Regarding the ridiculous ‘covert’ applications of the Cryptospider, I found myself picking
up, more than anything else, the random thoughts of those who slept nearby. Neither they
nor I were happy about this.
How often is truly vital or important information idly left aside? I would venture: not at
all. Almost by definition one is exposed to random useless nonsense every morning.
I did enjoy the spiders company at least, and so long as I paid its (very small) twice-daily fee,
I was under no obligation to eat the thoughts it caught for me. But it was very disappointed
if I did not eat at least one a day. I felt guilty as the creature did have to watch its careful
webbing being destroyed every morning when I woke up, and, as it reminded me: “I do an
awful lot of work catching thoughts in the night.” I am now in a complex and difficult social
situation, lying to my Spider every morning and pretending to eat my thoughts, while the
pile of dry cocoons builds up slowly in my pockets. I am not sure what to do with these
memories or how to dispose of them. It seems ridiculous and possibly dangerous to simply
throw them away. Perhaps I shall mail them to a relative or friend, let them deal with my
chaff if they so wish.” - Zenithal
41

CURSELINGS
Curselings bleed into our world through the shadows of the innocent dead.
They are always there, watching and waiting from inside pools of absence where the light
grows dim. They can observe but never touch, though they would like to very much.
First an innocent must die and their shadow, not their corpse, must touch the ground. They
can be hung from some rafters or the branches of a tree, or drown in clear shallow water
which the light streams through, so long as their body does not touch the earth but leaves
a black and clear-edged shadow there. Only then can a Curseling climb through the shadow
like a door and clamber out.
They are a little taller than men, with long long-angled limbs, three-toed feet and three-
fingered hands. Their bodies look like dark brown glass shifting in the shadows of a sunlit
room. They are semi-transparent and inside the brown-glass bodies are nearly-black-glass
bones to keep them up, and liquid-looking organs at the core. Their living skulls, a little like
long-jawed sheep, are more clearly visible than the thin flesh if their almost-goatlike face.
Their eyes semi-reflect and flash in the half-dark as they focus and turn.
Only single Curselings can come through each shadow cast. They are careful, never coming
when in view, always awaiting silence and averted eyes before they make their move. Should
one Curseling cause an innocent to die, and bring another through, the second will obey
the first. This is the only rule or hierarchy they respect, but Curselings do respect it, if
one brings through another, the other will be loyal, and so great pyramids and chains of
them can come to be, each ultimately owing fealty to a single shadow-thane. This is how
Curselings grow in power, each seeks to bring as many as they can.
Riddles, gold, murder and the lost are all things Curselings love.
They will sit riddling in the darkness for hours, whispering voices passing back and forth.
Curseling riddles rarely have a happy end;
I am your child
made of your flesh
another helped
they entered you
I spit but eat your time.
A wound.
I am a bond
you won’t seek to loosen.
I make of you
a prison
you hope won’t be escaped.
What should go freely
I prevent.
42

but I, a painful visitor
come almost-too-late every time.
A tornequet.
Riddling is one sure way to distract a Curseling, they cannot leave one unanswered. You
may count your life as safe so long as you can match them tongue-to-tongue.
Lost things they also know, some sense leads them to things that no-one else can find. Lost
people, objects, lands and paths, they seek and find them all. And pass, if not invisible then
certainly unseen.
They love abandoned treasure and they know its place. The long leagues of watching from
the dark have given them the routes to hidden hoards, un-guarded, lost to all, placed in secret
rooms or caverns deep beneath the earth. Totally unknown to any who live. They love these
secret hoards and travel there to lair within. Here the shadow-birth Curse-Lords make their
thrones and sit amidst the fabled glories of a final age, luxuriating in the loneliness and the
wealth. Sometimes they skip spontaneously through the dusty tracks, leaving three-toed
prints where nothing else has tread.
It is well that they do for it keeps them far from the affairs of men. Murder, Curselings also
love.
A man dying alone, face down in a ditch is a sight they like to witness. A woman wandering
a mountain without friends, caught in a storm and freezing to death, they hunger to observe.
Not far are their hearts from thoughts of sorrow or loss. Always they adore isolation, the
wanderer or exiled things. Not for its own self, but for the long slow drawn out sorrows of its
doom, which they will eat from its skull just before its death, pulling it out in silver strands
and gulping it down.
And so the exile and lone wanderer should dearly fear their dark attentions touch. Curselings
are clever, cunning, tireless and nearly invisible in the dark. Sharp mimics of the voice, they
will use their wits to break up groups, luring them in different directions, hiding their path
or moving things around to baffle the mind.
To see enemies happen each upon the others sight, surprised into sudden violence, amuses
them and they will bait opposing groups until they meet. Violence thins the numbers and
perhaps a lone survivor will be lost who they may tease and torment to a ruinous end.
If captured, a Curseling will often try to bargain for its life. They will promise access to
the hidden hoard wherein they dwell. A bargain most unwise to make, but many do. The
hoard and its dwelling place are real as winter ice, the Curselings word is not. Their souls
are scribed in water and they have less honesty than Crows. Many things occur on such a
path, long as it is, gold heralds many jealousies and fears.
If gold does not tempt its captors, a Curseling may pledge other things. All have something
they have lost, something they would wish returned or something they desire and cannot
find. And certainly Curselings can find these things, they can find anything un-found if
given time.
43

Some very foolish people seek to hunt a Curseling or even bring one through themselves, so
desperate are they for this un-found thing. That path is dark, and ends not well.
44

DISCRETION BUGS
“THE CONSIDERATE ONES”
“THOSE WHO KNOW”
“DRAGON-FLYS”
“Words From The Worm” is a popular term to describe a thing nobly said or particularly well
spoken, though the bugs are not much like worms at all, and would resent the name.
The average Discretion Bug is about a finger-length long. The head at the end is round, the
size and volume of a finger from the cuticle to the tip. If it landed neatly just before your
knuckle starts and kept very still on your hand, it might be seen as an accessory, and in
fact they are a well regarded subject for the jewellers art. The Discretion Bug is associated
always with culture of the most refined kind.
They come coloured widely, in iridescent variety, spanning the whole spectrum, from gleam-
ing gunmetal melanic, atros and piceous to silvery leucochric white, and every colour in
between. Each particular bug comes one colour only, though they vary tremendously in
tone. The papery substance of their wings is pale with capillary filigree. The head and joint
where the thorax meets the wing is of the deepest, darkest shade.
The Considerate Ones love conversation and speak well. They treasure civilised companions,
the dirty, boorish and poorly educated are quietly shunned. Should you fail to meet their
standards they will tolerate you briefly, make their excuses and leave. A sense of propriety,
discretion, compassion and social awareness is necessary to remain friends, they rarely express
offence, but are easily offended none the less. If the Bug respects you, it’s warmth and
discretion know no bounds. It will ask a great many personal questions (apologising for its
impertinence), but only so it may know, understand and like you better in the short time it
has left. They survive for only five or so years, which they consider to be a ‘Great Eon’.
The Bugs love to both deliver and receive small gifts to and from their friends. They curate
and collect very very small, but perfect, treasures. The nest of a Discretion Bug is a tiny
woven palace of arulent and luteous knots, lit by reflected light from barely perceptible gems.
Sometimes they have scraps of silk, pieces of illuminated manuscript, fragments of incense
or even ‘large’ objects like rings, keys, lockets or coins. The bugs have excellent taste and
can correctly value gems, coins or works of art quite exactly so long as they are not much
bigger than the bug itself. Each thing they own has a particular history which they will be
happy to relate to you.
They love sugar and protein and like to hunt live prey. Usually smaller insects or very very
tiny mammals. Raw meat is acceptable if neatly prepared. They have never herd of sushi
but would probably like it.
In many circles, having converse with these creatures is considered a sign of breeding and
good character. It has become a fashion in some aristocracies to have your children raised
around Discretion Bugs. This rarely goes well. The Bugs are impossible to breed in captivity
and so hunters or ‘collectors’ must be paid exorbitant fees in order to ‘acquire’ them in the
45

wild. This occupation is frowned upon by society, but very well paid. In addition to this,
children are generally horrid and neither they, nor the Discretion Bugs enjoy each others
company. The more respected of the ancient kings are said to have had ambassadorial
Bugs and very old, pretentious or ambitious coats-of-arms may have them in their shield or
sign.
There are numerous fairy tales in which the hero or heroine wanders in the wilderness and
makes friends with a Discretion Bug, this is usually indicative either of their good character,
or hidden noble birth. The Bug generally gifts them with a certain ring or locket which
plays an important yet unexpected part in the stories denouement. The villain of the story
sometimes tries to rob the Discretion Bugs lair, and does so, gloating obscenely over its tiny
granular treasures which they hold in the palm of their rough hands. Something terrible
usually happens to this person at the end of the tale. Blinding by alkali spit and falling into
a bear trap are favourite finishers.
One of the oddest things about The Considerate Ones is that they all claim to act as dragon-
analogues to a race of tiny intelligent mantids. This leads them to prefer the name ‘Dragon
Flys’. Though they are not ‘Dragonflies’.
As the bugs relate it, they regard the micro-mantic-men as their natural prey, they consume
them and steal their tiny treasures, then swoop off and collect the pin-head jewels and micro-
bullion in a pile on which they sleep. At intervals mantis-man knights seek out these lairs
and do battle with the Bug, seeking to steal back these hordes and destroy their oppressors.
The Bugs claim that in the boles of the deepest trees there are ancient Bugs ‘Ten, or even
Twenty years old, the size of bats, or even cats!” and that they sleep on hordes of gold almost
as heavy as a purse of coins.
No-one has ever been able to find evidence of this civilisation of mantis-men or their generations-
long conflict with the Bugs. Questioning this story always results in deeply offending the
bug in question.
Each bug can spit out a tiny gob of alkali slime which does about as much damage as a
needle entering the skin and then expands into an area of poisonous gas up to four inches
across. If you do try to steal their treasure, there is no magical or supernatural response,
but the bug will flip out and try to blind you with its spit. If it escapes it will ruin your
reputation for miles around.
46

DISGUSTAPOID or WAILVIATHAN
It’s coming is rare, but feared by all.
The Disgustapoid is made (somehow) or comes to be, only amidst the Beasts of Shame.
Some say they are a rare mutation born to the Beasts, others a religious or magical figure
summoned into being by them. Others still claim they are spontaneous generation from
the bile-pits of the Beasts, where they dump their refuse and faeces, that the Weepviathan
emerges head first, rising slowly and blindly out of the corrupted ooze. It is not difficult to
believe.
Whatever their origin, the Beasts always treat the Disgustapoid as a cherished and loved
shamanic figure. They feed it and tend to it until it is ready to begin its Pilgrimage of
Screams.
The creatures themselves look a little like the Beast of Shame. They have skin of varying
colours and balding irregular patches of grey-black fur. Usually they are covered in grime
and unwashed filth.
They have the same round black mouths as the Beasts and the same pointed teeth. They
have only one eye and three limbs with no hands. Even when fully grown the Disgustapoid
finds it difficult to walk, it stumbles forward with its head waving madly in a strange pattern
caused by its awkward gait. Half the time it falls over and just rolls wailing on the ground
till it can get back up. A deep low moan that sounds like a huge engine about to fail comes
intermittently from its mouth.
If it was not tended by the Beasts then it would probably starve to death quite quickly, so
clearly unsuited to world it is. Yet it has a will to live. If cared for it can grow to eighteen
feet in height.
The greatest danger of the Weepvithan is its gaze. Anything living that it looks at starts
screaming, goes into shock, and dies of a heart attack. It is never difficult to find the creature.
It is surrounded by the screams of dying birds and the thumps as flocks fall to the ground
en-masse. The beasts of the field fare no better, foxes, oxes, rabbits and dogs, lions and
leopards, snakes and marmosets. Even animals thought not to have a voice, will scream and
die as it looks upon them. Monsters are not immune, neither is man. Only the Shameful
Beasts survive its attention. (Very rarely, exceptionally tough creatures have simply gone
into shock and been merely heavily and permanently traumatised.)
It has been supposed that the internal state of the Disgustapoid is so powerful that some
aspects of life simply cannot exist within its gaze. That anything it looks at sees itself, from
the outside, as the Wailviathan sees it. That the primal horror of this causes the heart to
stop and the mind to retreat into coma.
When the creature has reached its full growth it will begin its pilgrimage. The Beasts will
take it on a great journey that brings them through all the most beautiful sights they know.
The Wailviathan looks at them and moans, anything living there dies.
47

The Beasts are no more aggressive than usual, but they will fight to the death to defend the
Wailviathan from assault
No-one knows exactly where the pilgrimage is intended to end. In every known case so
far, something has killed the Wailviathan and all of its attending Beasts. This has been
accomplished by waiting until the procession is inside a large forest, then setting the forest
on fire from every direction, by leaving a trail of artworks to a nearby cave, then blocking it
up with the Wailviathan inside, and by numerous other strange and diverse methods
The rewards for ending a Pilgrimage of Screams are high.
48

DREAMONS or SUMMERLINGS
These bright beings visit a rare few in dreams, and trade in certain objects for great
acts.
They come first when you are asleep, and in need. You find yourself surrounded by a summer
sky. Vast angle-spanning pillars and revetments of cloud. Like the piled layers of storms,
but more peaceful, higher and deeper than any storm could ever be with no ceiling to their
reach and no ground below. Lit in the low long light of a fading summer, the rich red sun
that draws long shadows on the ground at end of day. And the many colours, vermillion and
crimson, cornflower and petal-pink, more like the shades of flowers than of clouds.
The Dreamons are there. They are tall, and bright, like that place. There are several all
around you but they speak as one. Their arms are sleeved in feathers, their heads wear
iridescent helms and the rest of them is shifting scales that shine like beetle shells. The
feathers on their arms are strong, thick and stiff like the flight feathers of eagles, but bright.
The plates of its body seem like armour, perhaps they are. But there are hundreds, thin, and
delicate, like china-ware, none identical, all neatly shaped to fit and slide. What armorer
would build like this? and in such colours? The rippling pigments of the feathers and plates
are precisely counterpoised.
The head is hidden in a kind of mask or helm. Each holds its own identity. It looks like
metal plates have been bent around the head and joined together with seam down the centre
of the front. There are lenses in the mask and these can also vary in their shade. The metal
of the helm is like that of the armour plates, iridescent, shifting like spilt oil under the light,
with weaves and snakes of metal running through. Behind their heads, the Dreamons have
a spray of feathers, radiating like a peacocks tail.
When they come to you in dreams, they do not yet have the black spikes that can lodge
them in this world.
They will make you an offer. A thing for a thing. The item that you seek must be solid and
specific, with a particular relationship in the world. So “a Key” is not acceptable, but “The
Key that opens the ivory door in the magicians library” is. You do not need to know where
it is, or even what it looks like, but you must know exactly what it is. It must be easy to
hold in in one hand. It must be made from natural materials, not difficult to arrange since
almost everything in the world is, but very magical items sometimes cannot be retrieved. If
you agree, the Dreamon will simply hand you the item. You wake up holding it.
In return they will want something from you, something you must go and get. They will
tell you what it is. These things vary enormously, but they have some qualities in common.
Like the item you recieved, they are easy to hold in one hand. They are highly specific, very
beautiful, natural objects, always the most perfect and sublime. They are never manufac-
tured things, but are sometimes worked inside them, like a pearl in a crown, a bird in a cage,
a leaf pressed in a book. When this is the case, the Dreamons always want the natural thing
without the manufactured cage around it, the pearl, not the crown, the bird, not the cage,
the leaf without the book.
49

It will be in a very particular place, and often particular time. A bird freed from a cage in
the palace of a king. A stone carved into loops beneath a waterfall. A spiders web from
the library of an undead Thing. A moon-moth landing on a petal in a monsters lair at a
certain moment in a certain night. These are typical Summerling quests. Strange things,
with dreamlike logic and life and death bound together in the deed. Simple objects, in very
very dangerous conditions.
If you retrieve this thing, and sleep with it in your hand, the Summerlings will be satisfied,
and go. You will wake up with it gone. If you do not, they will be angry.
The Dremons want things from this world they may not take themselves. They can move
items around, but this creates a debt. To pay the debt, something must be taken out, or
someone us be found to take it on. You must retrieve what you have said you will find. If
you do not, they will come for you.
The Dreamons can move a single small object each night and leave it in the hands of a
sleeping individual. If you anger them they will use this power to confound you, either
taking things of value to you and giving them to your enemies, delivering cursed objects to
your hands or leaving you with other peoples valued property. They may even make vital
objects of your own the condition of a quest for some other person or group. Desperate
bands of ner-do-wells can turn up demanding the hilt of your sword or the cloak from your
back, you hair, or an eye.
When a Dreamon comes through into this world, its form is different in two ways. It has
angled black metallic spikes sprouting in rows from both of its arms. These do not look like
natural growths. It carries behind it like a tear in space, a vision of its world. This can only
be viewed from directly in front of the Summerling. Behind it, like a halo, is a view of that
cloud-strewn, depthless sunlit skyscape where winter never comes. They walk slowly here,
dragging the other world behind them.
They will try to take you and pull you through into their world. You cannot survive there,
your flesh will burn with the fire of dreams and you will fissure into multi-coloured ash, ash
that joins the architecture cloud.
If the black metallic antennae are damaged or removed, the tear between their world and
ours can fluctuate alarmingly, anyone near can be pulled in.
50

DUMBSMOKE or SPAZZ GAS
An intangible golem of stupidity, the Dumbsmoke is a patch of brightness in the world.
Composed of little rainbow-spectra droplets, the view through it is reality as seen by children
and fools. Much of the detail is removed. The chains of cause fray at their links, seconds
lose their division, hours melt into days, tomorrows die and times horizon tightens round
the eyes. Scale is lessened, the world is shorter now, infinity is almost within grasp. Colours
are brighter, fewer and more bold. People conform more closely to their type. Stage magic
looks like real magic. Statements spoken though the smoke are simpler and stupider. Music
in the mist is less artful and complex.
Dumbsmoke has a face and limbs. The face is flat with a gawping mouth, large blank eyes
and little else. Its limbs are little curls or wreathes of smoke that it forms and then forgets
about, leaving them drifting in the air and chasing it as it moves on.
The Dumbsmoke prism’s stupidity into a burning tear of primary shades, nothing may enter
and emerge un-dumb. The effect ebbs away into the general zone around the smoke, making
it hard to form or execute complex plans.
There is a secret rite, hunted by a few, which distils the dumbness from a human mind. It
is banned by all authority and abjured in every civilisation known. Those who seek the Rite
of Thought, believe this rule is made to protect the lazy and corrupt. That what the world
fears most is thought, and to free the mind from stupidity is to birth a race of hyper-beings.
People free from fear and rage, superstition and racial contempt. Super-citizens who, once
created through the Rite, will throw off the shackles of corruption and ancient fear, issuing
in a perfect world. But the Rite is complex, hidden and hard to find, and anyone caught
seeking it is killed.
Should they succeed, in every case thus far, the results of the Rite of Thought have been a
cavern full of cultists with severe mental problems, detail-obsessed to the point of total social
withdrawal and incapable of communicating in any way, and a patch of living Dumbsmoke
hanging in the air.
It is a necessary waste product of the Rite, composed of pure distilled stupidity. Dumbsmoke
is unbelievably hard to destroy or control. Fire evaporates it, but this can simply spread the
moronic gas over a wider area, and the smoke itself will re-congeal in time. One or two have
been tricked into bottles and air-tight rooms. And any scheme designed to deal with it must
be one executable by idiots, because anyone near it will be dumb until they get away.
The Dumbsmoke does not understand enough to be deliberately dangerous to man. In fact
it half-understands everything said to it, no matter how complex or in what language. If
you told it to ‘drop the ball’ in the common tongue, it would throw the ball. If you told it
‘analyse the orbit of the moon’ in the tongue of the ancient lizardmen, it would analyse the
cubit of a spoon. It always grasps just enough to catastrophically screw something up, and
no more. Generally it wanders aimlessly around, feared and avoided by all except holy fools.
It likes active living things and will float towards them, trying to interact.
The greatest threat is if the Dumbsmoke moves, unobserved, into an urban populated zone.
51

Cities have emptied overnight to escape its caress.
Various irregular adventuring bands have been tasked with battling the dumbsmoke, with
borderline success. Often the best that can be done is to somehow lure it out into the
wilderness and then run away very fast. Some have been bottled. One group claimed that
by going back in time they managed to prevent the creation of a dumbsmoke that had
retarded the entire aristocracy of a small kingdom during a royal wedding. Since they had
no evidence of this they were jailed for insubordination, but quickly escaped by unknown
means.
The same method has never worked twice.
52

ECLIPSE-LICH
The stars in the sky range in size, some as small as watermelons, others as large as affordable
homes. This can be seen by examining their iron remains. But we must not let its metal
corpse bemuse us as to the significance of a star. Stars are the engines of fate and torn from
this purpose, like the wheel of a mill blindly grinding without corn they can be monstrous
indeed. And a star, dead, brought back to life, can possess a very terrifying mind, a meteor
falling without end, for it passes through its own despair, a journey without limit, boundary
or time. We see the echo of its fall but do not understand that everything it does is like
the scream of someone plummeting into a river from a bridge, self-murdered, a fall within a
fall.
Should a star die out of time, or be broken from its sphere by fearful entrail or the vengeance
of the rest, it falls in wrath. These bad stars seem to aim for life, hurling into cities, poisoning
the earth like venom’d blades. Calling as they fall, to those who share their pain: A high
position, betrayal and a fall, then black and endless rage. Inculcating visions and demands
into their dreams and waking fugues.
A dark pilgrimage begins, slowly, from many places, those called begin their trek towards
the fallen star. When those who serve the star discover it, they hoist it from the earth.
They bathe the star in fire and stolen blood. For years, perhaps for centuries. If it consumes
enough, it burns and breaks once more into a hideous mockery of celestial fire. An undead
star casting an undying light. The Eclipse-Lich.
The star-mortar stands on four black legs and arms have been created for it to manipulate
the world. Thin, spindly limbs puppeted by a disgusted hand. Like an imprisoned aristocrat
would, grimacing, pick up and wield a grimy doll, the Eclipse-Lich so submits to grasp and
hold, to move at all. From one who never moved but turned the earth beneath their gaze,
ordering it as they would, now they must crawl and work and do, like broken living things,
the slaves of time.
An urn, huge, squat, lead, black with soot and black again beneath, the star-mortar issues
fire. The star is roaring deep inside and all that can be seen of it is smoke and flame, a great
light, flickering blood-red and white. The tongue of fire that leaps forth is the flame that
wraps meteors as they fall, the tail that springs from comets, as if the star inside the urn
was falling still.
Above the mortars mouth, radiate six black rays that seem to hover in the air like the
diadem of an invisible crown worn by a featureless monarch of fire. The rays are made of
no substance known to man, pure black, absorbing any heat or light. They stand clearly
in the comet-fire emerging from the urn. These are the corpse-rays of the undead star, it
wore them once in life during its transit through the nightly sky. In death they are reversed,
yet still signify celestial rank. Those stars once mighty in their kind have greater rays and
more.
These rays reflect through space and all possible time. True stars use their rays to unlock
fates for living beings, to work the machinery of time and let change and life occur. The
53

Eclipsor cares no more for life, it makes its rays bind servants to its will. Each black ray is
a prison-gate, any single living being it sees may be entrapped. They are reduced to black
reflections in the burning glass, the ray brings forth a dark new being, an anti-self, with
every power enhanced, reversed and utterly under its command. These creatures are the
captains of the Eclipsor. They can be killed, but can be re-born from the black ray at any
time with ease. The only true defeat they know is for the ray to be seized from the fiery
crown and smashed.
The powers of the Eclipsor are the dark opposite of the fate-bound stars and life-sustaining
sun. Chaos, death and living-death. At night it issues forth a false dawn of fire which will
cause the angry dead to rise and walk. As the true sun rises, the Eclipse-Lich sends forth
in rage, its fuliginous rays, burning blackly, blotting out the sunlight where it can. This is
how we know its closeness, as you near the Eclipse-Lich, or it is nearing you, a dark bite is
taken from the sun. As you sink into the zone of its control, the blot gets bigger, eventually
creating a full and false eclipse that darks the land. When true night falls, the sky turns red
and the dead walk. Darkness upon darkness without end. The greater its rays, the wider is
the range of its control, each ray bestows a rough radius of a mile.
Its long sojourn in the sky and its memory of the conversation with the stars, means the
Eclipsor recalls much of the fates of nations and of men. It is the duty of the stars to signal
change and make the space in time for great events. They watch us constantly, counting out
the minutes and the years, calmly marking time and making ready for each subtle change,
and large.
The Eclipsor is plunged into the centre of an epic tale they half-already know. They under-
stand the future and the past, not perfectly, but like a half-remembered dream. Now free
from duty to the celestial sphere, they use this knowledge for their own design. The death of
life. The destruction and consumption of the sun, to feed upon it utterly and then replace
it in the sky, becoming a black-red undead sun over a world made dark.
54

EEL AMARANTHINE
Despite its dark looks, dark habits, dark reputation and magical powers of regrowth, the Eel
Amaranthine is not especially evil. They rarely hunt man, preferring smaller prey, though
they will if desperate or if they have the numbers. Neither are they especially malicious in
their hunting behaviour, merely ruthless.
The Eel Amaranthine is a centripetal amphibian eel which both swims and walks easily on
the land. They dash and splatter madly, racing in and out of the dark water where they live,
twisting themselves in complex knots, weaving around terrain, climbing things then running
off.
They are scaled a deep, dark purple-red, some scales are nearly black. Each has a dorsal frill
running its body-length. This stays laid flat along the spine until aroused or under threat,
then the frill lifts up and reveals itself as a blood-bright arterial-warning red. Its eyes are
huge pupiless ochroleucous orbs that seem to glow. Even more disturbing as the Eel always
seems to be smiling at everything and the combination of this with its aggression lends it a
fearful aspect.
The skull of the Eel Amaranthine is about the size of a mountain cat, it is the disposition
of its jaw that makes it seem to smile. Its eyes emit no light, it is a sensory illusion caused
by the blue-grey sight of night and the shine of reflected stars.
Most have around eight sets of claws, running evenly down their length which give them
excellent short bursts of speed through the thick knots of ruined stone, black entanglements
and sad gruneous trees that rim the mirror-flat pools where they reside. They lack stamina
and will usually fail over a long chase. But rarely require one.
The length of the Eel can differ according to the individual, reasonably sized specimens have
been found from six to seven feet long. ‘Young’ Eels are shorter. There is no technical upper,
or even lower, limit to their span and there are, of course, wild tales of mile-long eels told
by swamp-drunks round the guttering smalt of peat fires in the dark autumn eves*.
The Eels are nocturnal and like to spend the day curled up in a bog-hole or drifting asleep
under the surface, but they can wake up, and become active, very very quickly indeed. At
night they come out to play. The Eels Amaranthine like still, stagnant water and are not
subdued by the cold, preferring long dark twilights. The darker and more silent and more
still the evening is the more excited they become. In the black pools of the Melanic Moors
they are often the only things moving, leaping and gambolling, churning out of the water
and racing through it in groups. Combined with its eyes and its smile the effect is sinister
indeed.
An Eel Amaranthine is about as smart as an ape, they learn quickly and can solve puzzles.
If well-trained they can be highly effective pets and guards. They are tricky though, and
difficult to make loyal.
The one thing everybody knows about the Eel Amaranthine: they grow back. If an Eel is
sliced in half across its middle, each half will slowly generate the parts it needs to become
55

whole. They will not grow any longer, a six foot eel will simply become two three foot
eels, but one half will generate a head and the other a tail and they will both continue
on. Ashkott himself gave up his Eel anatomy investigations in disgust after they resulted in
“nothing more than an unnecessary multiplication of my stores of eels.”
It is unknown if they truly breed in any way or simply suffer harm and then grow back.
There may once have been only a single Eel Amaranthine in the world and perhaps all Eels
are simply reflections of the Amaranthine Eel.
In popular thought the Amaranthine Eel is associated with death and believed in some way
to have death as a patron. Their behaviour certainly lives up to the expectation, as well as
their regenerative capacity, the Eels to seem to like the symbols and moods of ruin and doom.
They are happy to writhe around skeletons and skulls, black leafless trees or broken statues.
They like abandoned places and homes and castles in decay. Grunelings ‘Potemkimen Village
With Eels’ is rightly acclaimed as a hypnagogic masterpiece, we must hope it is recovered
soon.
The villain in plays and stories will often have an Eel Amaranthine as a pet and everyone
knows the children’s rhyme:
“Mother shouts
and Father shoves
but look out for
the Eel-skin gloves!”
*Leptoblast rages repeatedly against the swamp drunks of the Melanic Moors in his ac-
count of that area and blames them largely for the catastrophic failure of his expedition
and his subsequent bankruptcy after his backers brought suit for the excessive drowning of
hounds.
56

EO3IAN WYRM
We do not know its origin and the rumours of its birth cannot be held in words. Carved
in temple walls, locked in soundless dances repeated over time, in shardlike statues and
metaphorical tales we find the legends of the Wyrm. Every culture has a different view. To
some it is the wrath of fate, the signal of destruction and unavoidable death, the raptor-polis
which can wipe a city from the earth as simply as a hawk seizes prey from the flock. To
others, a grim messiah, intercessor between the gods and man, the ward of the Apocalypse,
fierce angel, tetra-aegis, the Serpent That Poisons Death, battling abominations, monsters
and daemons of all kinds.
It must come from the first order of created things, from the dark heart of time before
it beat to life and from the still blood there, cool in its great chambers where it waits.
Before the world, before the sun, while stars paused in their birth. Before the light divided
from the dark. Betrayed. Imprisoned, chained in silent bonds, a fastness outside the order of
comprehensible things: a prison without syntax or time that words cannot describe. Tortured
to the point of destruction by those powers that think no thing should ever be.
Then, escape. Refuge in a wild and insignificant archipelago of time and space, an uncon-
sidered corsair-world in a lawless reality. That is: our world. Here it found great darkness
and from this built its broken shape.
It gnawed darkness from the deeps of the sky. Wherever it bit and tore, through flowed the
golden light. But the dark disappears at the end of each days night and flows into the deeps
of the ocean and the depths of space and slowly breeds and grows, it creeps back into the
sky, lengthening each night again. So the battle between the Wyrm and the Night goes one,
ebbing in regular time. Each year the Wyrm grows stronger and consumes a little more, in
the winter it grows weaker and the dark expands.
It takes these shards of dark and makes from them its twisted form. From its tangled self-
assembled shape we know its inner madness. They are a mighty armour still. But the Wyrm
battles constantly, and its shield must be renewed. Some of these conflicts have been seen
and recorded by mankind: against the behemoths of the land, or unearthly creatures that
come from the beyond. But even when there is no challenge on the earth or in the empty
sky, the Wyrm descends to the unseen deeps and battles what it finds.
The Wyrm is a fearful thing and it preys upon us at its pleasure, but it may be only through
its constant war against the dark that we survive at all.
Its size seems to differ with the time, the age, the season and the years. It is most commonly
at least a mile in length, and the width of a fat whale, though it often looks longer. When it
climbs mountains and flies into the air to gnaw upon the night, in the distance it can seem
to reach between the land and sky like a curling black thread. And its width is jagged and
irregular, each fragment is composed of a different type of dark, torn from different places at
different times. Some blurred with half-veiled stars, some think with oceanic gloom, some
almost-grey with storm and some a pulsing hot tectonic dark from beneath the mountains
root. The shards of the Wyrm are sharp, they slice through tides and grind through stone.
57

The Wyrm curls through the land, the sea or sky much as a sea serpent loops through the
waves. Though it does require a moment in which to make the leap between the land and
sky, or between the soil and stone.
The Wyrm fight titans. The greatest of the mighty beasts, colossi, huge beyond compare,
the valley gougers and the lifters of hills. The breed of hell it also fights, any daemon that
appears on earth in form of challenging size may face its coiling dark. And combats also
those inexplicable and indescribable unnatural things that come from beyond and which can
never be fully known.
If creature of gigantic puissance arrives upon the earth, whose purpose or nature is the
destruction of the world or of the reality which binds it up, then the Wyrm will come. It
has saved the life of the world uncountable times over the Eons.
The Wyrm preys upon mankind whenever it wills. It sinks ships, devours towns from below
and has attacked and destroyed cities, nations and Empires in the whole. It may have wiped
out whole civilisations. If it has, no memory of them persists.
Some think, or hope, that the Eo0ian Wyrm preys upon man only when we threaten the
World that sustains us. And there are times when this seems to be the case. But often not.
Sometimes the target of the Wyrm seems random, insignificant or simply one of whim. It is
a Serpent still and, though it protects this world, it may have little sympathy for any of the
particular species on it. No-one knows its opinion or fully understands its will.
The Wyrm has been battled by man. It has never been defeated. No-one knows what
danger victory would bring in such a case, though the brave say that if mankind can defeat
the Wyrm, we prove themselves able protectors of the world, and will no longer require
it.
Nevertheless, legends claim it has been tricked, persuaded or guided away from its chosen
prey on a number of occasions, mainly through courage and guile.
58

FLAMMEOUS LADS
Flammeous lads crusted and crippled horribly by transit through the fire. They leap out
from its heart, cruel and ready for mischief.
They can be summoned simply with strings of words, transmitted orally and never written
down, exchanged in the backs of bars, drug-den crannies or lamp-lit libraries in the middle
of the night.
For the summons, blood of innocents is spilled and poured into the heart of a fire. The
words, the blood, the blaze and they will come. The more blood and the larger grows the
fire: the more boys torrent forth. (The burnt blood must come from one heart only, thank
the gods, which limits the legions of lads. - L)
As each lad leaps forth, little by little the life in the fire dies down. The first are burnt bright
red, still raw and smoking. They are vibrant strong and lively, climbers and leapers, biters
and batterers. As the flames lick lower in the grate, the lads turn cinereous, grey and caked
with ash, still hot, but slower, silent, thoughtful and dark.
When the last innocent blood sizzles away in the blaze, the final lad comes through.
This fire must be kept lit. For as long as it burns the Flammeous Lads will serve its
keeper, resentfully or not. If the fire goes out, they will begin to cool inwardly and die,
eventually slumping to the ground, looking, finally, little more than the bodies of burnt
children, dropped inexplicably beyond the reach of any blaze.
Before they die they will go mad with rage, attacking everything they can, wreaking first,
revenge on those who called them through the flame.
The Flammeous Lads look a little like barbecued boys or baked apes. They range in size
from two to four feet tall, with most around three feet high. They move a lot like apes,
knuckle-walking and scampering in rushes. The red ones climb well. The slower, more ashen
and aware ones walk like men and often seem to lead and plan. A wise Ash Boy will stay
by its originating fire, seeking to secure the means of its continued being. Even staying
hidden in the flame itself, under the kindling or guarded by the licking tongues. It waits and
watches, making sure that no-one tries to put it out.
Their flesh is burnt red like raw meat. Like a victim pulled, seconds ago, from a blazing
home, they sizzle and smoke. They actually smell rather nice, like cooking pork. Their
eyes are milky white pools. Their teeth are always white as well, like badly baked porcelain
webbed with cracks. As strong as men, they grin. Some proportioned like boys, some like
apes or other things.
They are violent chaotic and cruel, with the sharp cunning of bad boys. Traps and schemes
are not beyond their thought. Battle-by-harassment is a favourite thing. Secrecy is known
to them (and cunning. -L) To climb houses, break and enter, hide in alleys, throw knives
and bricks. The red ones do not speak but their laughter and screams sound like that of
mad boys, or boys in pain. Some of the darker ones communicate in strangled words.
59

They are brave and bold, undisciplined. Flammeous Lads race in and out of battle, retreat-
ing, or attacking en-masse. They won’t hold a position for too long. After a long while they
tire, get bored and want something else to do. Orders requiring time, focus and a lack of
force will often fail. Nevertheless, if given something direct and horrible to achieve: “kidnap
the daughter of the queen” the Flammeous Lads can be inventive in the extreme with their
cruel and cunning schemes.
They are hard to harm with fire and feel very little pain, but they can be chopped up,
smashed, drowned and salted. (They fear salt on their skin.) They can be pierced, but must
be run through like a pin holder or a ball of overtaxed wool to shut them down.
“No one knows from whence the baked boys come. Few doubt that its direct from hell, the
souls of boys born bad let out on trips to continue now what they did then. Other posit
imphood from eternal lands of fire, or the products of bad dreams, nightmares of a future
war, perhaps cursed children of a perverted ancient race. I have come think they are those
sacrificed in times long past to gods of brass and burnt in those furnace hearts, thus given
to them utterly and raised by horned and shining monsters in their cruel realm. The words
I think are names of ancient gods. So perhaps for them, revenge is justified. Vengeance
against all who live and breathe an air unstained by fire and pain.” - Zenithal.
60

FRUIT HOUNDS or PIN-DOGS
The surface of the Hound is black and gnarled, tough like of old boots. The thorns that
stick out are exceedingly sharp. No eyes or ears can be seen but the Fruit Hound seems to
find its way around easily enough.
They can dash quite quickly on their pointed limbs, but usually remain curled up into a
spiky lozenge.
This shape is hard to penetrate or hurt so only the most dangerous of creatures will attempt
to consume them, which is exactly as they wish.
When threatened, or when it senses potent creatures nearby, the Fruit Hound will uncurl
into its dog form. It will attack. First any creature that seeks to penetrate its rind. Then
anyone else nearby
Fruit Hounds can remain dormant for a very long time. Once dropped from the branches
of the Catastrophe tree they will remain where they are for years, ripening, blackening and
growing more fierce. Sometimes washed or carried away by storms or floods.
The purpose of the Fruit Hound is not to kill (although en-masse they often do so) but to
ensure that it is eaten by the most ferocious and dangerous beast possible. This can include
man.
This is to increase the chances of the seed of the catastrophe tree coming to rest in a place
thick with violence and conflict.
Inside the Fruit Hound is a delicious high-protein rind that looks, and tastes a little like roast
beef, but softer and more sweet. The older the Fruit and the longer it rests, the sweeter and
more strong this rind becomes.
Fresh Fruit Hounds with the rind still green can make a meal for several.
The oldest Fruit Hounds can heal when eaten. They can close wounds and even cure disease.
But these hounds lie thickly around the trunk of the Catastrophe Tree, to retrieve one risks
awaking a great many at once. This is dangerous work.
Whomever seeks to steal a medicinal hound must sneak quietly through the maze of greyblack
roots, black spikes and silver leaves, through the brittle white bones of the dead in the shade
of the tree, reach one of the oldest fruits fallen near the trunk, dislodge it without waking
it, then escape, all without alerting the rest of the Pin-Dogs. If one awakes then all awake
as one.
That being done, they must take the hound away, subdue it and hope that its beefy rind is
rich enough to cure the ailment in question.
In addition to that, once the consumer has passed the fruit, they risk depositing the seed
for another Catastrophe Tree, perhaps even near their very home. Someone must take the
faeces of the healed individual and carry it out a long way from where they live, to some
61

stony place, and cast it on the ground, hoping no catastrophe takes place nearby and causes
the tree to germinate.
Of course, if an animal, or adventurer is killed tying to sneak into the shadow of the Catas-
trophe Tree, then this is simply a minor Catastrophe, off which the tree will feed, and thence
grow more tempting hounds. Their bones are common underneath the silver leaves.
62

CATASTROPHE TREE
The Catastrophe Tree feeds not on rain or the light of the sun, but madness and disaster.
Its fruit is delicious, dangerous and sharp.
It’s branches cast a pall of pearly grey, and the earth there can be thick with the black spikes
of fallen hounds, hidden by the piled-up silvery leaves of the tree itself. (The leaves of the
Catastrophe Tree, of course, have their own uses.)
No mortal chemistry imbues those bitter leaves with life, or tangles those black roots. The
Catastrophe Tree can grow where nothing else survives. Without water, without heat and
even in the darkness beyond the reach of the day. It’s trunk is iron hard and so cancerously
packed with clustered knots it blunts the woodsmans axe within a clutch of blows. Its roots
ramble chaotically deep into the ground, removing them its both a puzzle and a grind.
To germinate, they require only disaster. A single death is enough, but should a city burn or
a race die, every tree within a hundred miles will bud forth as one. All who see it know that
somewhere near, horror stalks the earth. The tree grows slowly, feeding off the minor deaths
of animals or wandering things. Should another Catastrophe take place, another surge of
growth will begin.
There is no upper limit to the size of the tree. Ancient ruins of forgotten cultures are often
dotted with the trees, still basking in the faint afterwash of whatever broke the walls and
cracked the stones. In some cursed corners of the earth that have never known peace, the
trees reach up like temple columns into the sky. And tales of rumoured eons speak of black
pillars so high they breached the heavens and were brought down only by the actions of
gods.
It’s leaves, if chewed can numb the pain of life. Not the physical pain of wounds, but the
sorrows of existence itself. Those chewing the leaf are sealed against terror, fear, sorrow,
sadness, hope and joy. Nothing touches them. The leaves are extremely addictive, and
banned in all civilised lands. At the same time, they are also very valuable. Their nature
will be known to any professional criminal, but not necessarily anyone else.
63

FULVOUS DRUDGE or TASTY NEWT BOYS
Stupid, servile and delicious, the Tasty Newt Boys are a depressing grey-green, attaining full
fulviousness only after staining themselves yellow with the bile of their victims and pulps
chewed from the seeping sap of certain glooming roots and nuts. The greater a Newt Boys
dominance and strength, the more bile it will seize and the more pulps it will chew, the
more yellow it will become, turning at first fulvous, then xanthic bright. And the brighter
the newt the more things it has eaten, and the greater the dreams of its knowledge will be
when you gobble it up.
The Fulvous Drudge are the size of small and slender men. They have strong legs and a tail
of equal thickness to the thighs. Along the back extends fin or ridge of flesh, often the tallest
point of the Newt Boys as they tend to walk hunched over with their shoulders raised.
Their lips are black, their eyes are like drops of dirty rain hanging from a bare black branch,
reflecting the surrounding world, but through a murk. Their arms are slender, with a three-
clawed hand. Their tongue is most remarkable, two or more feet long, more often out than
in, pink and motile with a delicate multi-forked tip that quests hunting in the air. They can
smell thinking and the chemical action of the mind as it works, a subtle scent, but impossible
to hide, unless you think of nothing at all.
The Tasty Newt Boys have the intelligence and enthusiasm of a smart dog, making them
loyal, active and good for no particular complex task. They will attempt them if ordered
to, with disastrous effect. Cooking, cleaning, the guarding of delicate things, all will be
catastrophically bargled in a mad parody of necessary deeds. They can be relied on to chase
and hunt an active prey, at least until it bores them.
They are happily craven things, cringingly servile before huge or remarkable beings. This
makes them favoured pets of certain things that dwell beyond the light. Some fearsome
entities allow the Fulvous Drudge to live and breed within their dank abodes. In the wilds
they can be found round pools and tarns, though rarely so yellow, they are more successful
as symbionts or hangers-on to something worse.
These creatures eat the Newt Boys. They reach down and grab the brightest by the tail. If
the Fulvous Drudge is lucky, the tail comes off, (a new tail grows back in a couple of weeks,
but the Drudge will lose its status in the pack and be unable to seize much bile or chew
much root, losing its bright yellow shade.) In the case of an unfortunate Drudge, the tail
stays on, the monster eats it whole.
The Newt Boys are delicious, hence the name. Their most exciting property is this, they
metabolise the brain and keep its thoughts. If a Fulvous Drudge consumes the brain of
an animal, it receives dream like comprehension of that creatures recent life. These are
fragmentary visions, impulses and smells, but the more a thing a Newt Boy eats, the more
it knows.
They are stupid things and cannot make much from the taste of complex thoughts. A very
clever Tasty Newt Boy might perhaps attain a single spell after eating a sorcerer whole. But
they can learn things like travelled paths, the shapes and sounds of people, simple words,
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the way into a fort, the things something has seen. So they may exhibit sometimes and
unexpected cleverness and familiarity with things they should not know. (Zenithal has said
that an Alpha Drudge, after eating several men, may pick up and wield a spear or sword.)
Or find their way to places they have never been.
This knowledge is not only learnt, but stored, in their delicious and detachable tails. Anyone
eating the tail of a Tasty Newt Boys receives in woozy visions, knowledge they compiled from
things they ate. This allows anyone with a regular supply to sit at the centre of a dreamy
web of thought. In any particular place where Newt Boys lair, the rats and lesser things
observe it all through their tiny eyes. The Newt Boys eat the rats and know what they have
seen. And whatever eats the Newt Boys knows it all, attaining a kind of weird panopticon
consciousness through regular feasts.
(Leptoblast claims that Jukai nobles assemble secretly in the lower levels of the city at
night, at the borders of the alkali slums, and “make great and decadent feasts of these
horrible things, dredged at huge expense from the far horizon, then fall afterwards into a
kind of vile dream in which they take on the aspects of beasts.” Though as usual he offers
no proof of this.)
In the case of intelligent intruders, the usefulness of the Fulvous Drudge is sharpened still.
They can interrogate effectively through consumption. There is no need to keep prisoners
alive, simply feed them to the Newt Boys then eat their tails. Rumours state that the Second
Chancellor of Jukai City keeps, not a torture chamber, but a cage of Tasty Newt Boys, the
threat of their horrific attentions being enough to loosen any tongue. Although if a Drudge
who has eaten a prisoner with vital information escapes then catching them before they
eat much else and blur the knowledge in their tails can be an extremely difficult process,
especially as owning or eating Tasty Newt Boys is technically illegal in most civilised lands.
And because the Newt Boy knows what the prisoner knew and can repeat their schemes.
65

FURNACE CHLOROCHORUS
(Chlor-ok-us)
Born from the union of eight evil women and one unwise man, the Furnace is an immortal
flame and ceaseless nest of schemes.
Green flame, bonfire-high, bright as smargadine or glaucous as a distant sea. In it’s midst: a
gawping face, a leering idiot whose eyes are black pits in the fire and mouth a gnashing void
bordered by blunt tomblike elephantine teeth. The fire-voice laughs and shouts, a violent
child, it speaks but little, yet eats people with aplomb. The true threat is the snakes.
Around the central fire curl snakes of smoke and flame. They spray out from the central
blaze like the branches of a tree and curl around its base like roots. The Serpents cradle
the green fire, shifting endlessly in a scaffolding of self-knotting smoke. The furnace slides
around on scorched earth and soot-blackened floors
Each serpent sister has a name and the name is either infamous or lost to time. Their
eyes are burning red, and despite their snakelike forms, no two are the same, each is clearly
different, with a character of its own. They are the true mind of the green fire. Cunning,
clever and gleefully cruel, they delight in schemes and evils of all kinds, plotting sometimes,
even against each other despite their bound-together fates. Each serpent knows one spell,
this spell is written burning on its smoky scales. A serpent may intone its spell at any time
and as many times as it likes.
The life of the fire is the life of the snakes. The serpents of smoke and fire can never truly die
until the fire is doused. They guide and protect it, fantasising of unlikely threats, planning,
thinking, dreaming always of ways to keep it safe. No mediocre cold can freeze this fire, nor
simple bucket quench its life. A riverfull of water, or the utter void might put it out. The
snakes dream fearfully of such things and plan constantly and cleverly against the day when
they arise.
“Most vile and salutary is the tale of the creation of this monstrous flame. At its core exists
a pact, eight utterly evil women must agree to die. (It is likely that between five and eight
would be sufficient and the gender limits have never been confirmed - Z) These beldames
must each be skilled in dark and magical art, utterly without scruple, and willing to work
closely together. Rare conditions, rarely matched.
Having bound their compact in their blood, they must begin the corruption, by whatever
means, of a powerful and noble man. (Again, untested - Z) The man in question must be
strong, a man of parts and inner force and genuinely good. A man of high ideals and noble
birth is best, the deeper he should fall, the higher burns the green flame at the end.
The target of their Subtle Art must choose, of his own unbound free will, to join the women
in a grotesque and awful deed. A ritual known to almost none, and never written down,
passed on in only whispered words by the witches of the wastes and sorcerers of the bogs.
Yet, I shall reveal it now! (unbelievable - Z)
A huge fire must be created in a pit, the only kindling to be allowed: the dried corpses
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of poisonous snakes! Surely many thousands must be hunted and preserved to feed this
fire. Above the blaze a platform stands, upon it is the man. Now a sadly ruined being, a
wasted and perverted shell, thralled in durance vile to the sickening whims of the scheming
sorceresses! These harridans stand with him and, one by one, transform themselves to
snakes. They slither up his body, and into his mouth. The snakes squirm inside his belly.
As they bite him to death from within, the man falls into the fire. Man and snake, magic
and flame now burnt and bound as one, the Furnace Chorochorous is born. Immortal, unless
destroyed.” - Leptoblast.
67

FUSE MEISTER
You die fast but while you live you live like a flame.
The Compact of Combustion is not too hard to complete. Even the grimly dense and
mentally tired can track it down and work it out. And that’s what most Fuse Meisters used
to be before they burned: ordinary, boring, mediocre, slightly pointless people with vague
undefined lives.
They changed that though.
The Compact consumes your life, translates it into something else. In one moment the prism
of your being twists. Everything you are and were and all Fate had for you to be, the entirety
of your future life–however long it would have been–is seized and wrangled in the Compact’s
hands. All the life you would have had is forced into your body in one go. The sluices open;
every year between now and the grave flow torrential through your hands.
You burn alive.
Ianthine flame cascades from out your mouth, your body chars in argent fire, your head
reduced to ash, your body black: a hunched figure of charcoal and carbonised flesh. Your
soul becomes a fuse projecting from your neck. A long angular animate black fuse up to
six and a half feet long, tipped by the fire that is your will-to-live. This fire is now your
face and head, how you perceive the world, the organ of your sense, your voice. The flame
features shift to match your own, but your face changes rapidly now, the way fire changes
as it burns, shifting in its colour and its heat. And you are bright.
This fuse is constantly and slowly burning down at the rate of roughly one foot per year.
When it’s gone, so are you, for good. It’s possible you may explode, or just drop dead to
the ground like kindled wood. Something even more amazing may occur–who knows?
A Fuse Meister has the intelligence and drive of a full life, compressed and concentrated.
They are never slow. They think, decide, act and move about at speed. They do not sleep.
Perceptive and aware, they learn things fast, much faster than a merely-mortal being; extra-
mortal Meisters never need to see a thing shown twice. Magic comes fluidly and quickly to
them, even if they knew none before. They have a way with flame and favour spells of fiery
flamboyance and dramatic effect.
All Fuse Meisters are famous for their deeds. They spit out small ambitions preferring only
great desires. Great-heroic, great and strange, terrible and great or simply great alone. To
change the face of nations, avenge giant wrongs, free whole peoples from the whip, battle
titanic evils, explore impossible realms or be the first to think the most shattering ideas.
Whatever they do, they do to the maximum extent, with a deep passion for life and fearing
almost nothing. What little fear they feel is spice to them. People know that when a Fuse
Meister arrives, wonder, danger and adventure are not far behind.
Sometimes they are compassionate, chaotic, intuitive and wild. Sometimes strange and
distant and indifferent to this world. An evil Fuse Meister is very rare, few dark souls would
68

choose to deliberately shorten their own life, although they can be indifferent to the point
of callousness.
Rogues and adventurers flock to them like moths to candle flames, and with similar effect.
Few can move so fast, fear so little or sustain such passion without pause.
No force or power loathes Fuse Meisters more than the Geyser Lords. The Meisters’ short-
lived perspective, total lack of fear, ability to wield magical flame, intelligence, and tendency
to overturn social arrangements and long-prepared schemes at the drop of a hat enrages
them. They drown them whenever they can. Fuse Meisters ignore this threat, eyes fixed on
some vital attainment, which frustrates the Geyser Lords still more.
Some are seen in feathered cloaks and intimate alliance with the Dreamons and the land of
sleep. Others claim to duel the Dreamons at the gates of other realms in some formally-
arranged yet vital way. Whatever the truth, some strange relationship exists between the
sleepless men and the watchers on the borders of night.
The Fuse Meisters flaming will-to-live can be extinguished by anything that kills a normal
fire. If this occurs the Fuse Meister falls to the ground effectively dead. Temporarily. The
flame can be re-lit in the same way, by any normal fire. The Fuse Meister stands up and
carries on, directly from the point where they left off. For them no time has passed. No
Fuse Meister would ever deliberately put themselves out, no matter the circumstances, and
no force or power exists that can extend their life once their fuse has reached its end.
It is the Compact that they made.
69

GEISHA SPORES
Women fall in their hundreds, drifting down silently out of a midnight sky, landing in waves
and milling palely in the night.
A Geisha Spore is clearly not a human being. She stands about four and a half feet high.
Her flesh is pale, translucent like a solid kind of mist, within strange webs and structures
can be seen. Small dark organs floating free. Strands of inner black support her weight, not
bone, more like wood or wire in how it acts.
She is shaped like a young woman just out of her teens. Draped around her pseudo-face, the
‘hair’ is one semi-transparent sheet, the same substance as the rest of her. The face has two
long black eyes and a purse-lipped closed black mouth.
They never speak.
From her back spreads a ray of tendrils of the same black substance as her bones. Smooth
and strong, they wave endlessly as if catching an imperceptible wind.
“Extending webs of filament. Much too small for the eye to see. A surface area great enough
to allow the slight body of the spore to drift on tempests which, must lie above our lesser
airs.” - Ashkott
Once landed, the spores rarely take off again unless very strong storms occur with hurricane-
fast winds.
The spores are stronger than they look but rarely fight. A Geisha Spore will simply do
whatever anyone tells it to, so long as it does not endanger its own life. It has the intelligence
of a child and is capable of performing simple tasks.
When it can, it will kiss a human being, then die.
The kiss injects into the mouth and sinuses a dusty cloud of smaller spores which rapidly
infest the flesh. These burrow through body, consuming and replacing those parts which
transmit movement and thought. The means the fungi use to replace those parts which
think and act are crude and large. Knots and lumps will appear where nerves and joints
once were.
A wave of paralysis moves slowly through the body as its parts are eaten and replaced. When
the new crude fungal versions are complete, movement and a sense of touch return. There
is no pain.
Eventually the fungi reach the brain. Slowly but surely the plates of the skull crack open
and are pushed aside as new mind-matter blooms within. Sometimes the eyes are pushed
out and hang down the face.
The subject seems unbothered by all this. The simulation of the personality goes on, totally
unaware that it is a copy of a person who is effectively already dead. The replaced parts are
tougher and more resistant to damage than animal flesh, the person is stronger. They need
70

not be dangerous and will simply try to continue their old life. Usually they are forced out
or burnt alive. Some desperate families try to keep them secret or locked up.
When the first sign of a storm is felt, they will move instinctively to higher ground. They
face the storm and a long black stalk bursts from their throat. The human body sloughs
away as the stalk reaches higher.
The new growth will release its cluster of tiny Geisha Spores into the moving air. They will
float upwards, feeding on lightning and sunlight until they finally become heavy enough to
sink back to earth somewhere in the night.
“It is a cycle, simply one whose continuation is beyond our reach. Let us look to fungi; a
fungal spore does not instantly turn into a mushroom, it forms a mycelin web and only when
conditions are favourable does it pop out a fruiting body. Clearly, the spores form hyphae
networks inside clouds, or stretched absurdly thin in that upper world between the stars and
our own. They wait, attending to conditions down below. When the situation is ripe, the
Geisha form and drift down in the night.
As to what conditions, exactly, the Geisha look for, there many be many, but I suggest:
desire. Driver of the human engine. Great loneliness and need, sensed, somehow in the
clouds above, signals of isolation rippling invisibly through a lucent network far above our
heads, causing it to coalesce, to form and shape its spore, to rain down mindless angels of
seduction on the hope that even one may live and kiss and birth the cycle once again.” -
Zenithal
71

GEYSER LORD
ORACLE OF THE VENT
FUMEROLE LICH
There are caves where Kings have crawled and Emperors have knelt to hear a fortune that
is never wrong. Deep beneath the earth, in spaces choked with heat and fumes, there are
said to be oracles. Chancellors of hidden thought who knot or unknot curses dealt by gods,
unfold the futures branching paths and open secrets long since lost.
And in the fields of pitted boiling clay, where gouts of water burst in regular time from the
grounds gaping wounds, there are said to be Lords, who rise up from the black earth and
rule a while, delivering compulsions and revenge to those who come.
And philosophers will say the oracle is just a girl, in a mask, tripped out of her mind on fumes
and faith and that the shaman in the boiling lands is just the totem of a savage tribe.
They are wrong.
In the pit in the earth is a fountain of water the colour of night. If you could taste it, it
would taste of iron and lead and a thousand bitter poisons. Like the edge of a stained and
ruined sword. You never will. This water burns. Hot enough to take your flesh off at a
touch.
When they come for the future, or commands, if they come at the right time, the water rises
up, it surges and falls back. Trembling and cringing like a frightened dog. Then it fountains
in a boiling column.
In the geyser in the sacred ground, the same thing occurs. The water drops, then surges,
shifts its colour and smell, then vomits in a torrent like a column of black glass. Poisoned
steam curtains it and sinks in wreaths of toxic fog to curl about the feet.
Inside the boiling black water is the Geyser Lord. The Oracle Of the Vent.
A long torso, coiling like a flanged worm, white as melting snow or sugar in a drink. Slim
black tentacle hands press against the surface of the flow. Its head, no face, no eyes, no
mouth, a spray of tongues. Flat red extended ribbons coloured like the sides of bleeding
meat. They wave gently in the boiling water, tasting the toxins that flow past. Listening to
the vibrations of speech.
The deep-dwelling sorcerer worms live darkly at the oceans deepest points. Moving amongst
the vents of fierce water, black smoke and crushed steam that come up from the planets core.
They drift amongst dense forests of white worms, white crabs and strange bacterial growths,
listening to the earth, thinking on its words, working their strange magic’s, in an place where
few could ever go or would even think to look. Each rules one vent and there they usually
remain, gazing down into the pit of poison and black fire that gave them life, musing on
the strange deep politics of that even-deeper realm, and considering also, sometimes, the
great cold desert of the outer word and the spare and starry reaches of the surface above the
seas.
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And sometimes, rarely, the reasons turn inside their minds, the taste of some unsuspected
future meets their tongue, their attention shifts, and for reasons of their own, they seek to
influence the outside world. Our world.
They can only survive for long inside the torrents of poisoned smoke that make up their
homes, so they look for the rare veins and scabs of stone where the blood and breath of the
deep comes forth. They cause the earth to flex and ride the hissing torrents till they stand
suspended in boiling crepuscular thrones, and can speak, directly, with those here.
Dark and poisoned words torrent from them like the fumes of the earth. They speak the
verse of magma flows and deep magnetic shifts prophecies of fire and stone. They bring
wisdom from the dark, but sorrow too for they care little for the lives of men, or peace, or
love, or gods, or life.
Their schemes are deep and long, directed at the eternal or those deep in time. There are
vendettas from the beginning of the world, and from its end. The lives of human kingdoms,
or cultures, can be little more than the turn of a card in one of these great games.
The futures of the Geyser Lords are always right, black, violent, seductive and harsh. They
speak of war, of empire and of heroes deeds. Of horror also. Those who listen well will know
glory and death, those who listen not, and seek to break the geysers word will know death
only, at the hands of those who do.
Only the destruction of the Geyser Lord itself can stop its prophecy coming true.
They must be paid. Sometimes in sulphur and gold, cast into the water when they rise, but
any payment can be demanded.
Some Geyser Lords bend your fate to escape their own. They seek to become the Fumarole
Lich, and fearless of the cold, move directly from their world into our own. Out of the
fountain, into the light. It would be incredibly dangerous if any were to achieve this.
73

GLYPHAPILLAR
These tiny crawling grubs possess one unnatural defence: they make you go away.
They are short, squat and segmented, about an inch long, and an inch in height. (The
Glyphapillars tail is raised and pointed in the air, it waggles as they walk around.) Half an
inch wide and coloured a dazzling zinnober green.
Almost all of the time and in almost every way, the Glyphapillar does very little at all. They
are neither intelligent, venomous nor swift. They simply plod around and eat dead wood, or
wait for wood to die, which takes a while.
The only interesting thing the Glyphapillar has is written on a translucent carapace across
its single frontal eye. This has, by fluke or fate or random chance, formed a Mark of Warding.
A product of High Art, of the same kind used to seal a circle or sorcerous book.
Though only on a tiny scale, the symbol etched upon the Glyphapillars front is active,
effective and functions powerfully at its task. Nobody and nothing with a mind can come
within a few feet of the Glyphapillars gaze. They can be sidled up on from the flank or rear,
but if you catch its gleam: the sign repels. You will find yourself backing away, even being
forced, feet dragging furrows in the dirt.
The gaze of a single Glyphapillar is just enough to push you back beyond arms reach, but
the gaze-force grows with the numbers looking. Glyphapillars nest together, feeding slowly
and en-masse on certain dead and dying trees. If disturbed, the colony creeps out and lines
the dying limbs like sparks of green fire. They look at what disturbs them. This combines
their power. If it holds a mind the subject of their gaze will be repelled, not just a few feet
but twenty, thirty, forty feet away. It depends, simply, on the size of the hive and the unity
of the gaze.
“Glyphapillars do tend to lie in trees near sinkholes, on the edge of cliffs or bogs, or in other
irregular or broken ground. Whether this is instinct, chance, or learned behaviour, is very
hard to tell. Once the threat is gone the Glyphapillars go quietly back to munching dead
wood with tiny mouths located underneath their heads.” - Z
“Many are the speculations held on this most simple and mysterious of living things, many
origins suspected and tales told of whence they come.
Their repelling gaze is said to work, not just on living things, but on any minded beast,
from animals as simple as mice and birds, to men, tetramorphs of many kinds, constructs,
‘angels’ and visitors from ‘supernatural’ zones. This leads to the theory that they are from
some Other place, unlike our own, where such a power, working on the mind itself and not
the flesh, would be most valuable.
Ths tale I heard from a simple drunk-of-the-swamps on a journey through the moors, I
repeat it here, as best I can in its original language and tone:
“Gaol they make, they Fey Folk in the wood. From worms. (They eat the black bark.) I
saw one. A pretty meadow, with flowers, and a knight. A knight on his knees and his head
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bowed, and long hair, grey, in loops on rusted mail from rain. Ring of black dead trees with
green ones. Not leaves, shining, green coins and gems. LOOKIN’ AT HIM. Eatin’ the black
trees, then lookin, eat some more. He was waiting for the trees to be et’ down, then he
would go. That or be let out. It is a smell they say, like ladies use, my friend he said:
“The Smell, the Smell you see” he said “that’s the key to the green worms and to a prison
of them. Learn that smell and make it and your out!”
But he never said how to learn or how to make it, since the Fey Folk guard it close like any
key. So what use was it? I left soon after that. Never went back.”
Also worth recalling is the legend of the Glyphapillars Lie, familiar to you, no doubt, as a
child’s fairy tale. In fact a relic of an ancient story-cycle in which the Power or Entity named
as ‘Moon-Reflecting-From-Metal’ is being pursued (for complex inter-dynastic reasons of the
Other World which I will not go into here, for the full legend I direct to you Stammels
Enyclopedia Of Ancient Myth.) by the Creature or Thing known as ‘Ten-Shadows’.
Moon-Reflecting-From-Metal hides within a forest, he/she sees a small ‘Shining Worm’ and
speaks to it saying:
“Friend, you shine as I do, you see we are family. Only protect me now and I will do you a
service.”
The Worm offers no reply. Moon-Reflecting-From-Metal nevertheless hides nearby.
Ten-Shadows then arrives and calls the sorrows of the Trees and asks them.
“Sorrows, you serve me. Where is Moon-Reflecting-From-Metal?”
But the sorrows can speak only of what they have lost not what they have found. They say
nothing. Then Ten-Shadows calls forth the Dreams Of The Fire and says:
“Dreams, you serve me, where is Moon-Reflecting-From-Metal?”
But, of course, the Dreams can speak only of what they will one day consume, and Moon-
Reflecting-From-Metal dies by water, not by fire. They say nothing.
Then Ten-Shadows notices the shining worm upon the leaf and says:
“Worm. I am Ten-Shadows, I am the darkness between the lights in the sky, I am the fear
in your mind when you wake in the night, I am the edge of the Axe of Time called Death,
where is Moon-Shining-On-Metal?”
And the worm says “If he is not made of wood, I do not know.”
Assuming this means Moon-Shining-On-Metal is not nearby, Ten-Shadows passes on and
continues his pursuit. Moon-Shining-On-Metal then emerges from his/her hiding place and,
pleased with the worm, writes a letter on its eye ‘to keep it safe’.
An interesting fragment and about as likely to be true as any other theory.”- Leptoblast.
“The Glyphapillar is, in fact, an example of Neoteny. It is a larval stage, adapted to sexually
reproduce without maturation. When exposed to certain environmental conditions they
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transform into their adult form. This is the dangerous Vitallery. The stimulus is fire. A
fact only I have ascertained. I hope this answers any criticisms made about my use of fire.
My samples are my samples, and if they must be burnt, they must be burnt. A test is not
complete until the sample is used up.” - Ashkott
76

HADEANS
LEPTOBLAST - WHAT THEY DO
Strange beings they are, with strange rages and strange wants. Heralds of destruction and
bringers of war, yet also saviours and preservers, born from one disaster, disappearing with
the next.
The Hadeans always emerge first from the heart of annihilating chaos. They have been said
to step from the explosion as a meteor lands, to germinate inside the womb of a Tsunami as
it mounts the earth, they walk calmly out of cyclones and climb volcano lips as they erupt.
Always they are born from disaster, is if animating spirits of those dark events, given life
and form.
Yet they come not as destroying angels, but as conspirators of harm. Hadeans work in secret,
invulnerable as they are, they hide from view, working through long chains of intermediate
beings. It is an unexpected cunning, employed with subtlety and care, whose ends remain
unknown till they emerge.
Their interest in war is well observed. How many wars, quietly midwifed by alien things, have
swept across the earth, cannot be told. Where the webs of their conspiracies are found, they
relate to the deepest and most intensive conflicts, wars in which great energies are unleashed,
wars where nature is upended and total violence rules. Hadeans take some interest in the
hearts of these great conflicts, they provoke and sustain them if they can.
This would be enough to make them enemies indeed, but their schemes often have another
side. Few can fail to recall the records of the Great Comet, how it filled the sky, moving
neither east nor west but advancing directly on. It seemed to every intelligent being that
this celestial avenger was certain to strike our world, and much chaos resulted simply from
this fear. And then, a few hours before the estimated impact, it disappeared. It did not
land, it did not pass the world. The comet was stolen from the sky. Reports from every
shore relate intense Hadean action at the time. In many places they walked openly amongst
men. Gigantic organs and devices vast are reported, not simply by credulous common fools,
but by educated men.*
What occurred? Did these creatures simply summon a world-destroying threat, then change
their minds? Did they somehow save the world? And if they did, then why?
This is not the only mixed report of Hadean deeds. Coastal cities have reported gigantic
waves advancing from the sea, big enough the wipe out life for miles around. On the brink of
disaster, as the wave crests, just before the impact comes, the Tsnumai disappears. They say
‘broken into splinters, like a mirror falling to the ground, then swept away.’ And reported
on the scene: Hadeans, in great numbers.
Cyclones have disappeared, earthquakes have been calmed, or killed, dark eruptions have
been quelled or stolen from the air.
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ASHKOTT - THE TYPES
I have noted three, but there are more. The first amongst them, shaped like men, I call
‘Prime Hadean’ or simply ‘Hadean’. They are taller, stronger and more slender than men,
with a curving wide-shouldered trunk and long limbs. Their heads are alien and strange,
vertical ellipses split into three fronds rising like a crown, a single circular lidless eye and
what may be smaller sensing organs running up the leaves of their divided face.
The second sort, which I have named the ‘Engine Beast’, walk like tall six legged pigs.
They are hoofed and their faces are radially split, having four equidistant eyes, like the True
Hadeans these eyes will never close. Upon their backs, where men might strap a load onto
a beast, is an odd emanating construction, like the model of a castle placed upon a donkey.
This spiked organ grows into three bladed vanes and I have seen it burn with light. This
light was like bright summer sun seen through the borders of a dark advancing cloud. It
was somehow both bright and dark, like a strong star in a black-clouded sky. This creature
I suppose lends service to the rest. As, for us, a horse may lend its strength to the plough,
a dog its nose to the hunt or a cat its cunning to the guard, so I believe this creature,
the Engine Beast lends Hadeans. . . something, that service they require to advance their
unknowable aims.
The third kind I have seen seemed lesser than the rest. I have called it ‘Guard-Beast’ or
‘Hadean Dog’. This walks upon four legs, with its round body close to the ground, to the
rear comes a smooth tail, ending in a spike or pick. Facing forwards come two claws on the
ends of short curving limbs, making its arrangement something like that of a fat scorpion.
The head is simple and strange, an extension or vertical flap with one dominant cyclopic
eye and a secondary directly beneath. Underneath the head and between its forward limbs
is a large vertical mouth. This creature I think acts something like a dog or trained ape,
marking the perimeter and performing simple tasks.
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ASHKOTT - OF WHAT THEY ARE COMPSED
They are clay, as many men of god have said we are. I think they must change their nature
or die. Of the parts I have considered, there are few, for they are hard to kill indeed, and
the samples recovered were already in the change of death, but what I found is this: A kind
of grey-black clay-ceramic, extraordinarily dense and sometimes wet, boneless, but stronger
and more brittle at the core. It moves in the hands unlike any other thing, flexible and subtle
but strong, stronger than steel, sometimes stronger than stone. My tests of its limitations
found no bounds, the greater force or fire I laid upon it, the less it seemed to change. Acid
and extreme cold, high pressures and testing sharpness, heavy blows or the forge itself, all
failed. Only on observing my control group did I start to understand.
It was the tests themselves that made the flesh so strong. Those samples subject to extremes
grew stronger. Those battered by the greatest range of force, to fire and frost, acids and
explosive force, were strongest of them all. Yet those untouched for several days began to
slowly die. The wet clay of them coagulated into strands, and could be pulled apart like
well-cooked meat. This was their decay. Not change, but stasis spelled their doom.
LEPTOBLAST - OF THEIR SORCERY
Hadeans are masters of fire, frost, storm and bolt. No human thaumaturge has ever met
their challenge in this art. They have been known to summon forth, in quick succession,
freezing winds, great storms of fire and falling rock, mad lightnings, the surges of great waves,
hurricanes of poisoned air, movements of the earth and blasts of acid, mud and molten stone.
They conduct these manifold annihilating forms as if an orchestra of destruction was waiting,
just out of sight, at their command.
ASHKOTT - ON THEIR MAGIC
On observing Hadean magic I have noted two things:

Firstly: they are not profligate; despite their enormous power and the ease and fluidity
with which they summon destructive harms, Hadeans make use of this ability as little as
they can. Every previous report of contact was made in the midst of conflict and, typically,
no compilation or analysis has been done. Though every individual conflict was violent and
destructive in the extreme, the overarching strategy is clear. Hadeans generally retreat when
faced in force. They use their enormous powers to the minimum extent. These beings born
of destruction do not seek out conflict, they avoid it if they can. So potent they are that I
suppose they must have little to fear of earthly weapons, their fear, I think, is not ourselves,
but the diminution of some unseen resource. They are carful and conservative beings and
they are guarding something.
Secondly: the light, both bright and dark, evinces when their powers are employed. Again,
those subject to direct conflict tend to note the general force brought against them, but not
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any minor ancillary effects. They would record the firestorm, but not the light that came
with it. I, however, have observed multiple conflicts of this type and read records of many
more. When Hadeans summon destruction, when they first appear on earth, when they
disappear and when they execute the keys of their strange plans, this light is seen. The light
of the Engine Beast. The black-white light-dark burning shade.
ZENITHAL - WHENCE THEY COME
Though my conclusions may seem radical in the extreme, even blasphemous, I ask only that
you follow the logic of my assumptions to its necessary end.
My supposition is this: Hadeans are natural creatures. Not daemons or creatures from
a supernatural realm, but mortal living beings, like us. Their plans and actions, though
incomprehensible to us, are plans for their survival, they are trying, like every natural being,
to stay alive.
Once this simple assumption is made, we need no longer look for bizarre plots or the influence
of alien gods, we need only search for an environment in which the nature of the Hadeans
makes sense.
What might this environment be like?
It would be a place of wild extremes. Of crushing heat, chilling cold, hurricane winds, of fire
and storms, of acid and poison, each extreme leading directly and unpredictably to the next.
In this chaotic world the Hadeans would be adapted perfectly to survive. Their incredible
flesh, which seems to require huge charges of conflicting energy simply to cohere, would fit
the situation well. In a state of primordial chaos they would seem not, as they do to us, like
beings of enormous power, but like men. No stranger than a traveller shouldering their way
against a storm.
I believe this place exists and that this is why Hadeans come as they do and where they do,
in the heart of destruction. To them, these terrifying events are simply those points which
seem most natural and correct. As a man lost in a desert seeks out the oasis, so a Hadean
on our world hunts for the volcano or the storm. The remainder of the world must seem to
them like a silent wasteland, quiet, still and full of stasis and death.
As to the reason for their arrival here, I will suggest: their world dies. That is why they
come, to keep their world alive they farm destruction in ours. This is why they encourage
war, it is the only human action capable of birthing the destructions upon which they feed.
That is why disasters disappear, why comets are stolen from the sky, why storms evaporate,
why earthquakes seep away. They are being taken, somehow, to the Hadeans home, there
to restore what they have lost.
No environment can maintain such a high state of energy for long. Like soup cooling or
sediment falling, the energy must ebb and it must calm. For Hadeans, born to and adapted
for a world of cataclysm and shock, this means slow death. A gradual loss of energy from
the world, making theirs like ours, liveable for us, for them a nightmare of silence and decay.
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Whatever art or science they use to travel to our world, they use the same to take things
back, and their ‘magic’, I believe, has the same source. The waves of conflicting destruction
which they so freely wield, are simply gates into their world, and this is why they make such
cautious use. Every time they use these powers, their home dies a little more. Hence the
cunning, hence the stealth.
I have one supposition more: this world is ours.
If we suppose, for a moment, the existence of alien worlds, we must admit that any intelli-
gence capable of reaching beyond its own surface to scoop up destruction like loose wheat,
would not come here. This world is peaceful, and there must be many where great violence
reigns. Why come here to farm annihilation? I say: because they move no distance at all.
They lack that art. Hadeans come through time itself.
It is known the world was made, and many myths and legends speak of this. All conflict.
But it is reasonable to think there would be fire. This fire still burns within the earth,
and must have cooled somewhat over the long reaches of existence. As well there must be
storm and quake, perhaps the freezing winds of the upper air lay more directly on the earth.
Perhaps the seas turned over in their sleep, perhaps the atmosphere was changed or poisons
thronged. But certainly, it cannot be denied that the energies released in the creation of the
world must have been vast, and that the time of its creation (however long that was) would
seem to us a kind of hell. A hades. A Hadean period in fact.
It is known that life within our world infests every available angle and aspect that it can,
adapting, ever changing, always giving up new and unexpected forms, invading every envi-
ronment. If we simply suppose the extension of life further back in time, and ask: in this
Hadean period, what kind of life would thrive? Here we have found our world, not circling
some impossible star, but here, at home, within our distant past.
And we know that this world calms and dies, as it must, to become the world we know. And
we know why Hadeans come. They are stealing from the future to sustain the past, and
they will fail, as we and they both know they must. With every theft they only strip their
future of a little chaos, putting of the inevitable end for days or months, yet making it more
certain. Clawing at the slow-tightening noose around their necks, grasping a few seconds of
breath.
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HERMIT GEIST
This spirit flies its home around, feeding off the fear of those it lures, and seeing out a greater
habitation for its slowly growing power. A predator memory.
A Hermit Geist occurs, only when a tragic death takes place in a small and portable place.
A ghost forms in the air. A poltergeist. But, light and portable as this habitation is, the
ghost can move, not only objects, but the thing entire. Slowly and secretly, the animating
Geist will learn to pick up its tent, harness its cart to a spectral dray or tumble its yurt
across the moonlit snow to find more prey. This must be done where no-one can observe, so
hermit-geists are born in places very small and most remote.
The memory makes a shift because it has a choice. It need no longer wait, frozen in position,
for the unsuspecting traveller to breach its rest. It can decide its motion, to expose itself
or not, to rest somewhere undisturbed and slowly decay, or to hunt. The fear and terror
given off by those it meets, and the souls of those who die, can fuel a spirit, making it more
powerful. Death can be addictive. If the ghost frightens someone new to death, it grows in
strength.
Out on the tundra, a nomad peers through densely falling snow and sees a Yurt placed
oddly on a pathless reach. Deep in the night-forest the freezing woodcutters lamp picks out
a cottage side that seems to leap out of the gloom.
It was. It did. The ghost inside them picked them up and threw then through the air,
dropping it silently in in exactly that spot specifically to lure them in. It lit the lamps in
the window. It kindled the fire in the grate. The shelter is a trap.
The Geist learns to hunt. It moves its habitation secretly around. Travellers take shelter, are
terrorised, and killed. And the Geist grows in power. The better it can hunt the stronger it
becomes. The stronger it becomes the more cramped and insufficient seems its home.
It will seek out new habitation. But not just any place will do. It must be a scene of
tragedy. It doesn’t matter if this tragedy was in any way connected to the Geist, it just
needs a haunted place.
And then it fights. One night, a second property appears, facing the first. A supernatural
battle begins, a battle of will and wits, of memory and desire. Should the Geist win, the
opposing ghost is ejected from its home, the Geist occupies the new, more capacious resi-
dence. If the other ghost persists, (and there is a will to be or not-be, even in lifes absence),
it may take the Geists former, lesser, home. Where they was but one predatory ghost, there
are now two.
This is traumatic and transforming act. The Geist leaves behind the memories and ideas
and the dreams of the terrible deeds that first formed its shape in space. It becomes now
something new. The first time is the hardest, but the second time, the third and fourth,
fifth and sixth, become simplicity itself.
The name and face and wounds of death, the clothes, the race the memory of the act, the
knowledge of their innocence or guilt, the very reason for their life and death and life beyond,
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all are lost to an infinity of time and change. The memory has its life and shapes itself. They
float like undulating flukes or strips of silk. Flat, simple, turtle-like heads, basic arms and
bodies like long and crooked flags. The oldest are old indeed and have haunted species now
extinct in worlds no-one recalls.
Many lands have tales of flying homes. A witches cottage or sorcerers tower that swoops
through the clouds in the night. They do not think the witch a prisoner of the house, a
peasant woman kept in fear and forced to act the part so that a ghost may freely hunt. And
if the guards of civilisation act at all, they will certainly kill the witch, and if while licked
by flames she screams “The house! The House–”, no-one will be surprised.
At times, two mightily Alpha-Dead have met within a cities bounds. Slowly creeping closer
over centuries and years, replacing burnt down or demolished homes, shuffling over parks,
risking everything by leaping over streets in the early hours before dawn, feeding all the
while on homeless people and the lost. Eventually they meet, and in a howling supernatural
backwash that tornado’s round the town, the weaker Geist will be destroyed and the stronger
one expand.
Perhaps they dream to one day put on cities like a cloak, a million doors and windows under
their control, a million separate lives to terrorise and end.
83

HEX DRAGOONS
These deadly and vicious mercenaries are the broken relic of a now-shameful war. Trapped
at their tiny size and disavowed by those they once served, Hex Dragoons survive the only
way they know how, through violence and murder sold to the highest bidder.
The average Hex Dragoon stands about three and a half inches high. Most still wear the
armour with which they were first equipped. A chest-plate and a blade or lozenge-shaped
helm which, located forward of the head, has bulbous eyes on each side, delivering the
near-360 vision which prevents them being taken by surprise or eaten by birds.
To the rear spill folds of soft metal or stiff silk, expanding in a kind of ruff. This rare
vane-substance refracts magical attacks, turning it to a sparkling dust Dragoons can use to
hex you back. (It also looks very pretty.) This direct conversion of defence into magical
assault gave them a necessary edge in the wars where they were first employed. The dorsal
vanes can also flex and expand, increasing wind resistance, along with their tiny mass, this
lets Dragoons survive falls which, from their perspective, can be incredibly high. Most still
carry their hexing wands. These enchanted lengths of yew fire recombinant curses. Each is
composed of multiple rings around a solid core. The rings are marked with symbols, like the
tumblers of a lock. By spinning them in combination, the Hex Dragoon can generate highly
specific curses.
In combat the rattling of their snap-spin curse was known and feared, they would strike
and spin their curse-wand rings, and fire, in one movement, producing truly-random curses,
impossible to predict or ward. The sound of the spinning rings was the herald of death.
They are cunning, patient and extremely skilled in military matters. They will follow a
target group in secret, watching from the branches of trees using telescopes made from a
drop of water and a curled-up leaf. They will use the environment against their foes, luring
monsters, leading people astray, causing chaos invisibly, waiting for exactly the right moment
to strike.
Dragoons cannot fly. To travel, they hunt and tame a range of wild animals. They are known
to ride Crows, Parrots, Lizards and Dogs, but will seize mounts of any kind depending on
terrain. High status Dragoons will usually ride a more ferocious type to illustrate their rank,
a bird of prey, a wildcat or even a wolf. (It is rumoured that out in the wilderness there are
bands of truly evil bandit Hex-Dragoons whose leaders ride blinded peasants and orphaned
boys.)
Animals ridden by the Hex-Dragoons are always treated abominably. Dragoons have no
affection for them and regard mounts as machines of meat, to be used until they break, kept
obedient with pain and fear. When the animal finally dies, a new mount is sought.
In every record kept of the Hex-Dragoons, they begin as honourable patriots. Their kingdom
besieged by the invisible terror of magical beings. Children stolen, families abducted through
mirrors, priests and heroes struck dumb or changed into beasts. The weak tempted with lies
and the strong cursed with strange fates. A war of magic, invisible, intangible, a foe of tiny
size, against which no blow could be struck.
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Conventional forces were useless. Radical methods were employed. The appeal went out for
volunteers willing to meet the enemy on their own ground, to besiege the mushroom rings
and duel on the petals of flowers. Only the bravest and most able were accepted. They were
warned the magics used to shrink so many in so short a time would be impossible to reverse,
but each made the choice freely, from love of country.
The war went well, but the battles fought to win it were horribly violent and strange,
survivors became hardened, traumatised and cold. Eventually the enemy retired, but the
Hex Dragoons could not be returned to normal size. The war was over and there was no-
one left to fight, and no way home. The great battles that they fought, in which so many
lost their lives, were now the subject of jokes, because they were small. The Battle of the
Bathroom was a bloody three-dimensional slaughterhouse of magic and horror from which
few returned, but those who did heard it sung about by drunks and mocked by comedians
in bars.
Slowly, or quickly, the remaining Hex-Dragoons became corrupt. Treated with contempt by
a world for which they had sacrificed all and to which they could not return, and loathed
by the natural members of the microverse for the role they played. There was nowhere for
them to turn and they had no skill to trade but harm.
Hex Dragoons have drifted into lives as assassins, spies, murderers, thugs and enforcers for
dark and unlikely things. Hunting pixies for witches, helping slavers by tracing escapees,
carrying drugs to addicted aristocrats behind closed doors, sometimes hired by those they
once fought, used in the horrid balkanised wars of the smaller world, they care not who they
harm, or why, no deed is too dark for them and even their payment is small as they require
but little to survive.
The things they truly want, purpose and respect, are always beyond their reach. They loathe
themselves, and everything else.
85

HOROLOGNOMON
A dying elemental of recorded time. Not of time itself, but of its careful division into hours
and days and months and its recording in the world. Derived from the intelligent awareness
of time, made incarnate through joint and angle, mechanism and transported stone. And
dammed for that, for time survives its engineers and feeds on their devices. Time eats time
and tolerates no harness or analysis for long. Time wipes clean its reflection in the glass,
and that life born from its recording is born wrong.
Their shape is always that of Arachne, the spider. Like her - they do not speak, their words
are silent actions. Like her - they wait, and watch, and build and kill. The nature of the
Horolognomon, and its potency and size, is affected by the nature of the time it guards.
The most common Horolognomon is wax. Tiny, bulbous, yellow-white, brave, living only
for a night. Where notched candles are used to mark the time they sometimes issue from
the melting wax. Small spiders of wax, fierce guards of the flame as it burns throughout the
dark, circling the furnace that will kill them before dawn. Pridefully they march the candles
length, their circuits quicken as the column shrinks, perhaps they do not know (too small)
the time they measure is their own. This is the horror of the Horolognomon.
In those distant lands where an artifice of wheels and springs is said to mark the hours, little
brass escapement-horlognomon are born inside the cases and the clocks, leaping between the
pendulums, frantically polishing the wheels as they spin. They guard these time-pieces, and
are treasured for it, a watch Inhabited is a notable thing, and worth much more. But if, in
time, the timepiece goes unused, the spirit maddens and can leap from the casing on metallic
limbs, attacking those who would not keep the time. It’s sting ages flesh and wastes muscles
and limbs. The poison of the Horolognomon is age.
There are Horolognomon of mercury and glass, of water, wood and golden weights. Some
lair with living clocks in some populated place where their complicated clocks receive the
constant care they need, but most do not. They can be found in tombs and temples lost to
time, in cities, marking out the long degrees as trees grow through the empty streets. The
time they keep counts nothing now, but still, they cannot stop. To stop is death. Filled
with lassitude they lie upon their backs and twitch their limbs or ramble madly, scratching
patterns in the dust, bursting into flurries of bipolar rage before sinking back into the long
long dream of their madness. They hunger for adjustment, and hate it above all. They may
kidnap living beings and attempt to make them set or fix the clock. They may haunt the
city, exterminating any expression of alternative time. Diaries, clocks, sundials, shadows
on the ground. Flowers that drop their petals one by one may be torn up in rage. Those
who count, those who speak an hour that cannot be, things with dates, things that age and
things that never do. Enemies all, invisible and absolute.
The oldest Horolognomon are made of shadow, stone and light. Some come only in the day,
when the shadow of a needle marks the earth, and others only when stars surrender their
signals to the radial traps of stone.
The sundial spiders still haunt the titanic style raised so long ago to mark the passing of
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the sun. Built from joints of bright light and clearly marked dark shadow, straight lines and
slender limbs of written stone, only while the sun is bright and shadow neatly drawn. These
can be enormous beings.
The elementals of the standing stones arrive with night. Slim stone limbs moving upon joints
of starlight and darkness, as if the stone were a carapace covering a void of stars.
These are the wild, old Horolognomon, unfamiliar with their long decay. The stones are not
re-set and no one marks the hours, yet still they persist, marking out the fine divisions of
the year with the turning of the stars, or the segments of the day with the movements of the
sun. They are dangerous and mad.
Born from the stars and the sun they are imperious, inflexible and mighty in their wrath.
Their time is wrong and no-one keeps it now, but made as they are from the interactions of
eternal light, they cannot accept the truth. They have the pride of ancient gods.
The sting of this Horolognomon can wipe someone from time, their webs are made of hours
and days, to be trapped in them is to be lost in time.
87

HOSTAGE FROG
The Hostage Frog is about the size of two neatly built cows kneeling down. Half of its size
is made up of its gigantic head and jaws. These truly are prodigious and come arrayed with
an almost uncountable number of extremely sharp teeth.
The frog has two squinting atrous eyes glaring from the front of its face and one more, very
primitive orb located centrally on the top of its head. When it lies almost invisible under
the caesious scum of a hidden swamp or pool the third eye, just breaching the surface, gives
it a panoramic view
The frog is slick with slimy poisons brewed within its noxious guts. Its intestines are a
caustic nightmare, discomforting even to the creature itself. In the melanic darkness of the
muddy deep, it clenches its jaws and howls, tortured by cramps and abdominal knots. Here,
alone, it broods upon its rage and malice. The only part of the frog not poisonous to the
touch, is within its horrid mouth.
The size of the Hostage Frogs mouth is probably intended to serve as storage space for big
meals while it drifts through the long months of time and silence in the grimy watering holes
and cholochrous murky ponds in which it lairs. But the creature is cunning and has found
another use for its jaws, as a gaol.
The Hostage Frog will wait, then wait a little longer, for groups of thinking beings to near
its hole. Then, as they get closer, it waits some more. (It is very good at waiting.) It will
listen to them speak, and drift closer to the shoreline where they are, watching through its
primitive eye. One will come to the water’s edge, not just any one, a particular being. The
frog is waiting for the highest in status, or the weakest, or simply someone it can neatly fit
inside its mouth. Then, in a flurry of action it will leap from the water, snatch that person
up and back into the swamp.
If escape or rescue is attempted, the Hostage Frog has a number of defences. It can be very
difficult to get close using stealth or speed in the centre of its bog. Its sharp rows of teeth
can bite off limbs that are reaching in or out. It’s outer surface is toxic to the touch and, as a
last resort, it can simply tip back its head, raise up its chin and open its throat. The hostage
in its mouth can hear and smell and taste the toxic bog inside its guts and will usually beg
mercy.
But the Hostage Frog does not want to eat the hostage. It wants almost everything else. It
wants to LIVE, to taste the world denied it for so long. It hungers for the widest variety of
the most beautiful foods known to mankind.
The fearful friends of the hostage, listening to their screams inside the frog will be its means.
The Frog can speak, though it is a little unclear with a person in its mouth, and will threaten
to swallow the hostage whole if its demands are not met.
It wants specific foods. Things you cannot get inside a swamp. This seems reasonable at
first. The food can be thrown into the frogs mouth. A brief glimpse of their friend, cramped,
desperate and covered in porraceous slime, is proof of life But negotiation is a mistake, once
88

the Frog knows how capable its victims are, its desires accelerate madly. It asks for more
and more nightmarishly complex meals. These can be things from very far away, found and
retrieved very quickly indeed. Fresh fruit, rare spices, spoilable milk. Sometimes civilised and
expensive meals prepared by specific chefs, who must be abducted or paid off and transported
to the swamp at speed. (How it came to know their names is not clearly understood, perhaps
it listens in its mire to the Discretion Bugs who buzz around the swamp.) Others are simply
suicidal, Quarynx Steak, Pickled Hex Dragoons, a Wound Whisp in its brine.
The Hostage Frog will promise to release its captive after a certain number of meals. It
sometimes does. There are tales enough of Frogs who kept their word to make co-operation
seem worth while. There are certainly stories of attempts to outwit the frog, and the resulting
mess when a hostage, poisoned and horribly dissolved is cut from out its side. The frog can
be killed, but anyone swallowed is almost certain to die. If the chemical mess of its insides
is pierced, the frog will certainly expire, but so will anything nearby as horrid poison surges
out. And the Frog will go berserk, chopping and gnashing with its terrible jaws, wailing of
betrayal, spraying mangled pieces of its hostage wide around.
While captive, the hostage must make do at they can. They can often steal pieces of the
Frogs ransom, thrown in by their friends, snatching a few bites of a wedding cake or freshly
baked loaf before throwing the rest down its throat. Perhaps a few gulps of excellent wine.
At least the food is good.
In rare cases the Hostage Frog may have a previous victim still inside its mouth, someone
or something small. Then both must share whatever is cast in. This can lead to a strange
alliance indeed, with two utterly different groups dashing about the landscape looking for
rare foods. These groups may betray each other, hoping to extend the life of their friend, or
work together to outwit the frog. The Hostages may fight inside its mouth, quietly trying
to strangle each other.
There are sad legends of very mighty people being lost inside a frog. Their power and
wealth did not assist them. In fact it simply extended the length of their imprisonment
as their servants and followers tried to satisfy the ever-more extravagant demands of the
frog. (Though, the Caliph Amaranthine is said to have governed his kingdom from inside a
Hostage Frog for several months as part of a plan to outwit his ambitious Vizier. One of a
number of unlikely yet telling stories about that individual.)
The grinding of the teeth of the frog as it waits for its next meal is truly terrible to hear
for everyone involved, including the frog. They are continuously hungry and carry a kind of
rage against the world and all that is yet unconsumed. Perhaps they dream they will eat
the world.
They almost always overreach in the end.
89

HYDRA-MORAY
Inexhaustible hunger and small multiple mouths that cannot chew combine to shape the
savagery, and the care, of the Hydra-Moray, a simple, subtle, semi-aquatic predator that
most people wish did not exist.
It is ferocious, a Hydra-relative whose heads, instead, are Moray Eels. It’s body is a seals, or
something like, with no rear legs and two blunt forelimbs that lever it up off the earth and
let it slump along. From its shoulders and neck, project the heads of five to fifteen Moray
Eels, sticking up to ten feet out, shifting constantly, interweaving and scenting the air where
it dwells. They do not see well but smell keenly, especially in water or wave.
And down there its appearance shifts, the huge seal body hangs neatly in the blue, the whole
propelled forwards in a sinuous arc, moving smoothly and with speed. The necks sometimes
grouped, held together like a bouquet of mouths, moving as one, and sometimes spread out
to smell and hunt, like a branches of a predatory tree.
Hungry is the Hydra-Moray, and extremely aggressive almost all of the time. It can only
take small bites, and it never lets go with its jaws.
The Hydra-Moray’s teeth are very very sharp and its jaws are strong indeed, it has two sets
per head. It can neither chew nor swallow, instead it keeps a second set of pharyngeal jaws
inside its throat, which projects forwards into its mouth when it bites. As the eel attacks,
this looks like a second, smaller mouth inside the first, reaching for its prey. These jaws
grasp the meat or targeted flesh as well, pulling it into the throat as the mouth snaps shut.
The Hydra-Moray cannot willingly release its grip, even in death. If an Eel is swiped off
with a sword mid-bite, it stays latched on till carefully pried off. The jaws of the Eels are so
strong that there are very few selections of any living thing that it can grip, which it cannot
also nip right off.
If it does grab hold of something that it cannot swallow down, that head will be trapped, it
will slowly sicken and die, eventually cannibalised by the rest.
The thing must take enormous care with what it eats. It must master its hunger and rage
and wait. It must work to overcome the poor sight of its eyes, to listen and smell, to attack
the extremities first. On land, it must secure its escape, never going far from a river or pool.
The combination of ferocity, care and hive-like awareness of its numerous heads, makes the
Hydra-Moray quite difficult to fight. It will hold heads in reserve, sacrificing some to pin
down limbs, keeping one back to go for the throat. In battle it will fearlessly bite off its own
trapped heads to prevent it from being pinned down. It learns to avoid armour, to attack
from the rear or hunt from under water, leaping in a surge of spray, pulling outliers down to
drown in gloom stained with their billowing blood.
The skin of the Hydra-Moray is swathed in oily mucus, making it hard to wrestle or restrain.
Still worse: the slime is toxic to the touch, causing paralysis and internal wracks.
As a final grim addition, any head cut off will come straight back as two more separate
heads. In the long term they battle for dominance, one will eat the other over time, bringing
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back the total to its customary number of necks, but in the short term, both will assault
whatever they can find in defence of the whole.
There is no theoretical limit to the number of heads it can grow, but it can only manage
so many. Young heads have not yet learned to function as part of a whole. If two thirds of
the Hydra-Morays heads are new, the government of its senses will collapse. Hydra-Anarchy
will ensue, the heads will frantically attack each other, biting on and refusing to let go. The
beast will inflict massive damage on itself and usually be open to attack. Stabs to the body
can finish it off. Most Hydra-Moray will attempt retreat before it loses and re-grows too
many heads.
It can live and thrive in seas, freshwaters and on land, but must be fully submerged for
several hours a day or its toxic skin will dry and crack, causing it terrible pain.
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ICE AGE EYE
“I named her, knowing at once that she was a sentry, or observer for an un-suspected distant
age of Ice, hidden in deep time.” -Leptoblast
There may be only one, rarely seen, making long looped pilgrimages from out the icy zones,
seeking limits yet to be found. It may be the same individual, scattered a little through
time like dust on a page, or a handful, or a herd, distantly arranged in adjacent epochs and
unconnected continents. They are rarely seen and always singly so, one at a time.
The Ice Age Eye is large, bigger than an elephant, she walks, slowly and with care on
elephant-like feet. Her body is robust indeed. Wide, round with flesh exceeding dense. The
fur of the beast is thick, black, woolly, prized very highly for its holding of heat. Her long
hands reach down to around her knees, her fingers almost trail along the ground. Where an
elephants head would be is a round dome, without feature save the eye.
The eye is white.
The blank white gaze of the Ice Age Eye expands and narrows like a pupil facing bars
of shade and light. The head turns back and forth, a lazy but attentive surveyor, noting
everything she sees. The Ice Age Eye will amble into canyons simply to look at the walls,
she will turn over huge but irrelevant rocks to see what’s underneath, she will stop to look
at single flowers. She takes account of everything.
The eye is terror in a storm. Those who have met its gaze describe a depthless landscape,
inverse, eternal, falling endlessly away or a roaring storm of ice without end, or a doorway to
a world of frozen death. They say there is another world inside, looking at this one, waiting
for it to die.
The effect of her gaze is always the same. It squeezes the fire at the core of the heart. For
anything that has a beating heart, looking into the eye causes that heart to slow. Leading
more usually to sleep than death, as the gaze-meeter blacks out, they close their eyes and
their heart skips into life.
Even if the gaze is not directly met, its touch still chills. The engine of combustion slows.
Fire shrinks to a torch, to torch to a candleflame, the candle to a spark, the spark goes
out.
The eye may open very wide and bring forth chains. Huge and delicate slim fingers reach
into the white void as if it were a gaping mouth and tease out like a rolling tongue, linked
chains of ice. Sometimes huge blue-black links the width of wrists, to bind up rivers, lakes
and seas, freezing them in place, or tiny spiderworks to lock unfolding flowers. A fallen leaf
is not beneath her notice, nor a world-girdling sea beyond her reach.
Most chains are testing-chains, made to bind rivers and streams. Built to test the strength
of the warm lands and the servants of the living seas. Such chains will melt, eventually, in a
warm summer or when made subject to fire. Failing this, lightning is the key to break their
links. But they will melt eventually, inevitably: their time is not yet come.
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“She does not hate the world. Nor intend its destruction, or to bend its seasons out from
their allotted course. But she is a creature of slow enthusiasm, and loves what she does, not
hard to persuade towards her own ingrained desires.
Ice is her rapture and it is love, not hate, that makes the chains. Love provokes her, love
and fear of loss. Even an annihilating waste can know desire, the storm can love what it
destroys, an eye into an age of ice can still see beauty, strange and inexplicable to it, to love
the growing leaf or rivers flow must seem perversion to her, but, sometimes, she does. These
chains can be so strong and hard to break that only by the deepest Art, or the will of the
Ice Age Eye itself, can they be undone.
Little sympathy is borne by her towards the fire, or small, quick thinking, quick acting living
beings which, from her perspective, are simply temporary mistakes. Avatar of some ancient
sovereignty, now sleeping, waiting to return. Sending out its scouts and sentries, walking
the earth, testing the rivers and seas, prospecting, planning the glaciers and encompassing
sheets of ice, measuring the strength of the fire at the heart of the world.” - Leptoblast
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IMPERATOR APE
or EAGLE-APE
The tales of the Imperator Ape, or ‘Eagle-Ape’ are so like violent fictive dreams that many
have assumed them to be so, and sought the beast expecting something less than was de-
scribed.
Few who have, return, and the stories of survivors have only added to the trail of dead.
The Imperator prefers deciduous hilly woodlands where the shadows gather thickly in the
trees. In the gloom between the branches, its azuline down seems darker, almost black. Only
in direct sunlight can the beautiful sky-and-petal blue of its small and downy feathers be
observed.
It lairs either at the highest point, or in some dominant and overawing feature of the land.
A tall and lightning-twisted tree, a black and looming crag, a spire of impossible rock. If
the forest has a landmark it is there and over time the name of the land and the nature
of the Ape will be tangled up together in the warnings and the stories of that most tragic
zone.
Here it nests and keeps a careful watch against the trespass of its realm.
The Imperator stands nine or ten feet high, from its bent and apelike legs to its shoulders,
sloped and corded enormously with muscle, tightening into chains of strength towards its
arms and hands. It’s body is like that of a gigantic ape. It climbs well and swings easily
through the trees, should they support its weight, most branches are too thin. More usually
it employs its incredible explosive strength to jump directly, and almost silently, from trunk
to trunk above the ground. It can knuckle-run across the forest floor at the speed of a
cantering horse, a little faster over open ground.
Its ‘fur’ is down. Feathers, very small and closely arranged. (If you could stroke an Imperator
Ape and live, it would feel very soft.). Through these grow a smattering of longer, hairlike
feathers in testaceous red. They are sparse enough to be almost-invisible against the blue,
but, when the creature is aroused, they rise. Light catches, bestowing on the Ape an almost-
halo, glowing red.
The feathers around its head are utterly matte black. Its huge square-ended beak is also
black. Its tongue and inner throat are black. Its eyes are like an eagle’s eyes, but black of
iris, black of pupil and with no surrounding white. From afar the head of the Imperator
seems like a featureless black axe, relentless and blind.
It’s sight is famed. “Should the creature spy you, from however far away, if you cross even
one toe into lands it claims, it will race towards you like an arrow, stopping for no fear or
force, and tear you apart with the speed of the wind.” - Leptoblast.
From its perch the Imperator can see, clearly and in detail, everything the light will show.
There is no distance-limit on its sight other than the clouds, the night and the horizons
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edge.
It regards its chosen territory with a fanaticism beyond that of any other natural beast. “To
the Imperator, space, is mind. Within its world it is the only true living thing. Nothing
else can be. To trespass in its world is to trespass in its mind, to be an unwanted thought.
Thusly it destroys without remorse that which it knows cannot be: any other living thing.”
- Zenithal
The size and strength of the Imperator Ape are small matters compared to its overwhelming
ferocity. It fears absolutely nothing under any circumstances and is almost impossible to
stop.
The Ape employs its hands, feet, body and beak with an explosive and aggressive force.
It strikes like a knife fighter gone berserk, producing impacts of such speed and power and
mass combined, that they have been known to snap the necks of armoured warriors who
took the blow upon their prepared shield. Its beak can tear through any armour made by
mortal hands.
Attacks and blows hammer down with such relentless speed that few living things can reliably
survive the rain of harm. Even creatures very much larger than the Imperator, a fully grown
Griseous Boa Constructor for example, will often willingly leave its territory to avoid the
uncertain result of such a battle.
Attempts to crack the creature through its mind, quelling its spirit or its drives by Subtle
Art, have always failed. Those who try report an overriding will and self-belief that shines
like an arrow of burning gold. Irreducible and unstoppable.
The coat of the Imperator is the most valuable in existence. It has been recovered, whole,
on only three recorded occasions. The two remaining coats are kept securely as regalia for
the crowned heads of opposing states. Every other attempt has ended in death, or in a coat
so torn to shreds it can no-longer be identified at all
The Imperator cannot be tamed, enslaved, persuaded or subdued. So it is claimed. But
returning a live specimen to Jukai Turret Prime is one of the Seven Theoretical Conditions
in which the constitution of that city may be changed Without Reprove.
95

JUKAI CITY
It may be that the spores exist everywhere, waiting for the return of the ancient world that
shaped them before allowing themselves again to feed and grow.
Jukai bay is fed by many rivers, most notably the Or, running through the Melanic Moors
like a thread of gold in black silk. The Perse and Virid also end their journeys there, slowing
into sandy archipelagos before they reach the bay.
Each brings some strange combination of taints, soaked up when passing through their
shaping lands. The shallow waters of the bay evaporate quickly, making it a dense, strange
chemical stew about four to sixteen feet deep, glimmering chlorochrous under the high sun.
Out where the riverwater fades into the surrounding sea, are the Reefs of Chrome, gleaming
aurulent, formed by altered coral from the strange substance of Jukai. And in the centre of
the bay: the black, burning towers of the city itself. Black, Silver and Greenish-Gold still
make up the heraldry of Jukai and any house or faction of that place can make their symbol
only with those three.
The bay is waded easily at low tide, but the thick alkali waters slowly burn and poison living
things. Fish do not swim there, birds do not land there. There is no form of life except for
man, and what man brings.
The first records name the towers as black mounds, just poking from the bay. Primitive
tribes found that the waters of Jukai stained the hulls of their canoes dead-black. Once on
the islands, settlers were safe from the enormously numbered terrors, animal and unearthly,
that filled the strange surrounding lands. There was no food or water, except what could be
brought, but there was safety on the black, crackling mounds, textured like scabs, and they
were warm and shivered in the night.
Man learnt the calcinating aspects of the waters of the bay. The chlorochrous stew of Jukai
impregnates textured materials with a black encrustation, like pumice or black limestone,
brittle, light and strong. A fabric, or woven mat, left overnight emerges black, solid and
textured like a scab, resistant to heat or cold, strong enough to build a wall and sectite
enough to cut or carve. With this, those tribes began the first simple shelters of Jukai and
built the first black canoes with which they reached the Reefs of Chrome.
The mounds grew. They widened slowly over generations, but their height grew faster,
noticeable even in a single life. Sometimes they shivered and quaked as the pressure of the
thing within forced the inner cavity to breach. One day the tip of the tallest mound sparked,
a tiny red flame emerged, no bigger than a match-head at first. The tribes of Jukai now had
fire as well, and small towers from which to view the surrounding lands and the seas beyond
the Reefs of Chrome.
Centuries drifted as they grew, mounds to hills, hills to village to towers to town, the black
shapes slowly building from within, each lit by a separate-coloured fire upon its peak. Homes
and fortresses were hung, the first bridges built between the self-assembling towers.
The people of Jukai were poor, but very safe. No invader could easily reach them across the
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bay, or climb the black towers in which they dwelt. Here at a far unbidden corner of the
world they slowly built and thrived
Then came the docks. The leaders of Jukai essayed enormous risk, both financial and physi-
cal, Jukai became briefly home to an engineer of monstrous size. A Griseous Boa Constructor
curled around the reefs of Chrome and began construction of Jukai’s first deepwater dock.
Carved into the coral of the reef, reinforced and with a tidal gate.
For the first time the Chrome docks made Jukai easily accessible to the outside world. And
with Jukai, the strange surrounding lands, distant and effectively cut off for so long, home to
untold wondrous forms of life and treasures strange. From the Docks of Chrome, explorers
could take the Black Canoes to Jukai itself, from there they could travel up the Or into
the Melanic Moors and what lies beyond, or take the Perse into the Citrine Hills, the Virid
to the Pyrrhous Plains, see the forest of Rhodopsin, Aun: town of Rumours or any of the
storied lands which still await.
With movement and the trade came wealth, and power, Jukai City was born
The Second-Born of the families of Jukai, know that inside each spire is an impossibly huge
being, slowly growing and waiting to emerge, that their city and their culture is a shell.
They know one day a cycle will complete and the gods will break free from their chrysalis.
If anyone else knows this at all, they give no sign.
On the day that they come forth to walk the earth, the city beings will be amazed to find
the world (to them) freezing poisoned waste, and will die slowly of starvation and disease,
but not before stride the land as impossible gods, laying waste in wrath and madness to
Jukai.
Until that day, Jukai city stands.
97

KINDERGNAW.
Hate them on sight, for they hate you.
All who see the Kindergnaw dislike it and feel that they are meant to dislike it. They
daydream of causing its death and choking off the hate which fills it to the brim. They
don’t. They should.
A troubling bat-hominid, bipedal, with wings, an exceedingly round face and a dangerous
manic grin. Its head holds a pair of ears, exceedingly sharp and tall. The Kindergnaw is
black and the size of a child.
Malice makes them, mischief shapes, and cruelty is their meal. Fine servants they are, and
cheap, lending assistance to any so long as they may hurt. Small, and not strong, but
cunning, immortal and invulnerable to harm by mortal hands. With sharp sharp teeth.
Only magic makes an end of them or damages their flesh. And only on flesh, on living flesh,
may they feed at all.
Each Kindergnaw is cursed, and each curse, or code of life, is shaped a different way. It binds
the creature and compels it. They may not break it, to do so even once is death. The curses
turn to justice, or fairness, right action and decent conduct. For instance; a Kindergnaw may
be cursed to feed ‘only in defence of the weak’ or ‘only on those who abuse their powers’.
This bond of action limits the feeding of the beast. To no avail. They starve, and rage, and
plan and scheme. In every case the result is much the same. The hateful Kindergnaw flits
back and forth in the night, seeking out secrets and shame, telling tales, inflating wrongs
and actively causing the cruelty it was cursed to amend.
They seek out the oppressed and whisper of wealth, of the prideful and privileged lives of
those who rule and mock, tempting them into revenge. They roost upon the roofs of bullied
children or beaten wives, speaking secretly of violence and contempt. Always in the night
they come, privately, concealing their presence from all but one, whom they torment. These
people cannot run. The Kindergnaw does not want to rescue them, it wants them to seek
revenge. Through it. Once the order is given, the Kindergnaw will fly gleefully into the
night, or break into the house, bite up the bully, gobble the mayor consume the violent
husband over hours. But then they will come back.
Once its target succumbs to the Kindergnaw’s promises and lets it feed, tales of their choice
will soon find their way to those affected by their deed. The brothers of a husband eaten in
the night will hear whispers of the curse his wife put on him, the parents of a bully child
taken from his bed, will hear about his victim strutting through town the next day. The
Kindergnaw will visit them and offer them revenge.
Kindergnaws will ride the cycle of loss and revenge for as long as they can. They are
extremely clever and difficult to catch, though they may be temporarily driven off from, for
instance, a sad and bullied boy, they will not forget him and the middle aged man that boy
becomes will one day hear a whispering outside his window in the night, reminding him of old
wrongs, or new ones recently suffered. The more petty and vindictive someone is the more
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Kindergnaws they will attract. In rare cases, huge flocks can gather. It is rumoured that the
city of Nyctopolis was almost fully de-populated by a murmuration of Kindergaws.
But this is fanciful.
99

LUNARAPTOR
The Lunaraptors lope crazily across the plains, eyes rolling in their heads, the scales of
madness flowing endlessly across their sides. Occasionally you hear a ‘thump’ as one falls
over then clambers to its feet and joins the rest.
The creatures are bipedal lizard-things, yet unlike any kind of lizard known. Similar, instead,
to the rumoured contents of long-preserved abandoned isles where the creatures of a latter
age live on.
They are taller than a man, with strong legs and smaller hooked hands held before the
breast like a spinster clutching wool. The heads are fearsome, huge toothed mouths with
jaws designed to tear and rend.
“The racing, rending body of the Lunaraptor, so clearly shaped for acts of harm, threatens
speed, ferocity and danger in the extreme. Its behaviour, however, is laughably inconsistent
with its flesh. They are ridiculous and futile things, not, I think, a true species at all
but some diseased or degenerate strain lingering through the trickle of its extinction.” -
Leptoblast.
“A relic, not a fragment of a larger whole. This is the core species, careful observation
makes it clear. Scaled, in the manner of the crocodile. Scales that seem to move. Unstable
in thickness, position and shape. The surface of a scaled sea, at night, under a bright
moon. A slow wind against the scales, pushing them hither and yon. Causing them to grow,
separate, spread out and recombine like clouds. This movement of scales across the skin
is fast enough that, if observed closely, it can be measured with the naked hand. (Such
agonising patience I have shown!)
I left them after only a few months, half driven mad. Incoherent Swine! These creatures are
the product of no natural scheme or cause. Not only that they behave strangely. They have
no pattern-of-action. Of all living beings I have observed, they are the only ones in whom
time and change have worked no regularity at all. The Lunaraptor will do simply anything.
They will hunt, flee, approach, climb trees, dance, dig furrows in the ground, watch stars, try
to gnaw down trees, excrete, come towards human beings waving their arms and gnashing
their huge jaws in a parody of speech, roll around in the dirt, stand on one leg, try to swim,
sleep, or any one of a hundred ridiculous things. They will do all this in no particular pattern
or plan. The one rule is: they tend to stay together. Other than that all is chaos, perfect
chaos!
As to the relative safety of being near a Lunaraptor: they are utterly unpredictable. Even
inconceivable.
I have never seen them breed, neither did I ever see one harmed by direct force.
A strange aspect of their madness. Immunity to deliberate strike. Attacks by sword, arrow,
hammer, pick and mace, weapons of every known kind, simply glance off the shifting scales
of the Lunaraptors hide. The more closely observed a blow, the less harm it does. I confess,
I did experience a moment of fugue. After several months amongst the Lunaraptors, at the
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end of a long day, on witnessing some typically deranged and senseless exhibition (I forget
what it was), I lost my head. I ran amongst them, verbally condensing my upset into a series
of high, sharp sounds. I flailed madly at them with a pick, intending to do harm. The blows
glanced off. I knew they would. The Lunaraptors rolled on their backs like dogs and, eyes
wide, formed a counter clockwise spiral on the ground. I sank weeping to my knees. I threw
the pick away. And this blow struck.
Now I suspect that it is directed harm that will not strike a Lunaraptors hide. Undirected
harm, indifferent, blind or not observed, may work. They seem to fear fire and drowning, as
well as falling. I have not the Subtle Art or would experiment with its Fires.
I have been lead to wonder then. Since these creatures seem to neither breed nor easily die.
Since they have no aged or young amongst them. If they are not, perhaps entirely original
beings. Immortal, unassailable, insane, impervious to life and time?
They have in their movements and the staring of their eyes, something I have seen in the
soldiers of forgotten wars. I wonder, what cataclysm would be so great to alter such a
creature so? How long have they been thus?” - Ashkott
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3KROGOR3
Unbottled 3rogor0 are never seen. It’s possible some world exists where they roam free,
wearing their own skins. When they come here, it’s in a skin of glass.
The 3krogor0 is huge, the size of a small elephant, but more slender of limb. It moves
lightly and quickly, stepping soundlessly over the dark earth like a gigantic long-limbed dog.
The wide-muzzled hyena-head is directly set without a neck to intervene. An apes square
teeth. On its shoulders and the upper spine, the skin bunches and spikes, rubbing against
the glass in sharp and ruffled furrows. Perhaps with its skin on, it has a ridge of bristled fur,
or quills.
The glass covering will split around the teeth for the 3krogor0 to take its prey.
The strange beauty of the 3krogor0 is the sheen of its transparent shell of glass, slower and
smoother and stronger than skin. The 3krogor0 runs and even leaps, reaching incredible
speeds as it bounds smoothly on its long legs, but it accelerates slowly and takes time to
stop, it must ease itself in and out of speed. Its movements are somnambulant and vague.
If it jumps it leaves the ground for a little too long. The glass is pearlescent and gleams
beneath the stars. 3krogor0 come at night and fear the day. The sunlight upsets them,
skinless as they are and when it rains upon the glass the water slows and cascades off in long
slow sheets, like a silk dress falling to the ground.
The stars rippling in its convexities, its slow somnambulant indifference, the stretching of its
tendons, the movements of its muscles and the endless shiftings of its flesh, cast a transfixing
rapture, like a nightmare brought to life. A sight hypnotic, which can freeze observers for a
vital second that they could have used to run away.
“It was a flat black pool upon the mountain’s top: a Tarn. The night was cloudless and
the stars reflected in the tarn like gleaming pins. They grew, each point of light expanded
slowly, joining with the rest until the pool itself was full of light. The 3krogor0 climbed
slowly forth and made its call.
“3rogor0!”
A long low moan from deep inside the chest, vibrating through the glass. I was transfixed,
but hidden still, the only sign was a pale pennant of starlight catching in my clouding breath,
I cupped my hands and breathed through them in shallow pants while my heart hammered
in my chest. The 3krogor0 waited. Then from some distant mountain came another call,
faint to me, but clear.
“0krogor0. . . 0krogor0. . . 0krogor0”
Then another, and again. The creature stepped silently and smoothly down the hill, down
to the plains where it would hunt and kill.” - Zenithal
3krogor0 eat people and seek them in the night. The first warning you may have could be
a glass-clad limb kicking down the wall or tearing off the roof, a glass-masked face of meat
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with apes square teeth reaching down inside to gulp you up. They will lope silently through
the starlit streets snapping up those who run.
3krogor0 know what harms them and avoid it if they can. They solve problems and dodge
traps. They are careful and aware, as they must be with a skin of glass. The pearly glass
that makes the 3krogor0’s hide is much tougher than earthly glass, but shares some of its
vulnerabilities. It is hard to cut or scratch, but can be smashed. A hammer does more
damage than a knifes keen edge. Those workers of the Subtle Art who influence by touch
have found that touching the 3krogor0’s sheeny skin will not affect it in the least. Yet to
those who work through light or rays the 3krogor0 is vulnerable indeed. Fires can harm
it with their heat, and if large enough, can boil it alive, but it feels little and is impaired
neither by trauma or by pain up until the point where the glass breaks.
When exposed directly to air, a 3krogor0 blackens and burns without heat or flame. The
flesh darkens and chars, the blood boils into a cool blue steam. If only a single crack appears,
the 3krogor0 howls in agony as the air touches its naked skin, it flees immediately, heading
for the closest mountain top. If the shell of glass is smashed it goes berserk and twists like
bacon in the pan. An awful and regretful sight.
A berserk 3krogor0 destroys everything it can, spraying its burning blue-grey blood and
razor-sharp fragments of glass. The boiling 3krogor0 blood is cool and does no harm, but
turns to soft blue steam that has a soporific effect.
After its madness has past and the beast has finally died, the corpse of the 3krogor0 is
dangerous still. Its heart is burning in its chest and its arteries are boiling to a critical point.
A minute or so after its death the blackened corpse explodes, scything down anything nearby
in a radiating wave of broken glass.
103

3ORN OWLS
The 3orn owls, named for the forest of 3orn, named itself for the god who died there and
from whom the black trees grew. Dark were the dreams of 3orn and dark the trees and
darker still the Owls who flit between their branches in the night.
3orn owls are three feet high or more, grey-faced with eyes like gold infections infiltrating
coal. Black their feathers are, darker than the night almost, black on black like stains of
ink upon a black cats back. Only when their faces turn and catch the light, or when they
spread their wings in flight can they be clearly seen. But still not heard. 3orn Owls step
silently and rarely move, in flight they make no sound. The grey down of their under-wings
muffles even the movement of air. A flag shifting gently on a still summer day makes more
commotion than a 3orn owls swoop. They could be right above you now, criss-crossing in
the dark.
Silent are the 3orn owls, except for the single word they know, and watchful and aware.
Sharp, their talons are, each inches long, and strong the claws that swoop upon you from
the dark. A +3orn owl plummets like a brick being thrown at the base of the skull from
the top of a tree, landing where the shoulders meet the neck. The talons bite, the prey goes
dead, 3orn owls don’t stay for long, they kill and leave.
3orn Owls are intelligent, they understand your words yet speak but one themselves. The
one word known to that whole race, the only one they ever speak: the name of 3orn. The
owls make of this single name, the silences between it, its intonation and the movements of
their head and wings, a basic medium of speech amongst themselves. They know each other
well and work in tribes, there is a Parliament of the Owls, though few have seen it and no
speeches there are made, except for the one cry of “3orn”.
Instead the 3orn owls sit in silence and attend upon a government of Subtle Art.
If an 3orn owl, watching from its perch, sees a spell and hears it cast, it can speak the name
of 3orn and cast the spell again. Each owl can only recall one spell at a time, and they must
see it done. No two owls can memorize the same spell if they see it cast, only the strongest,
the cleverest or the closest can. It is a dream snatched out of the air. They cannot make
spells on their own, or transmit them, most cannot use a spell more than once a day. But
there is little of that Art they cannot learn.
The owls use these magic’s to communicate with each other. They manipulate the spell to
form messages. An illusion is used to represent a clever plan, a magic mouth may speak a
proposed law, a dancing rope may spell out other words. The 3orn owls are inventive in
the extreme. Whichever owls command the fluent spells are rated first and rule the rest.
Therefore 3orn owls hunger for contact with illusionists and the readers of minds, these
magic’s can be turned to grand media of the owls. An owl that can show others visions in
a spell, gains power. One who can merely blow things up or summon fogs or raise the dead
is less well respected by the rest, they are sent to haunt the forest of 3orn and uphold the
midnight empire of the owls.
In the forest of 3orn, or any place where 3orn owls come in force, nothing lives or moves at
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night unless they give it leave. There are no predators of any kind except the owls. The trunks
are bare, the dark-grey trees spread green-black leaves upon their intermeshing crowns, but
further down nothing reaches out to catch the 3orn owl in its flight. At night they swoop
and spin between the trees at speed. Or watch silently from the distant crowns.
By day none of this applies. While the sun is in the sky, anything can enter the forest of
3orn and do there (almost) what it wills. Some of the more intelligent predators make lairs
outside the forests edge and hunt there in the day. So long as they leave before the sun has
left the sky - they will be safe.
As evening comes, the black shapes of the 3orn owls can be seen emerging from their nests,
gathering in the dark crowns like spots of deeper darkness, heralds of the night, watching
and waiting for their empire to begin. Someone who sees the sun set at the forests edge
would be surprised to see a wolf, a fox, atrocious crows, all exiting at speed before the dark
comes on. Once day flees and till it wanders back, the forests is the owls.
3orn Owls travel far to seek out spells to learn, far from the forest of 3orn. The more an
owl can overhear, the greater chance it has of learning one of those most-valued spells that
give it status amongst other owls. Some make alliance with the workers of the Subtle Art,
some simply war upon them without cause. It makes no difference to the 3orn Owl how it
hears its spell.
Wherever they migrate, if they have the numbers and the power, they institute their empire
of night.
More recently a bold adaptation has taken place: the urban 3orn owl. The owls have good
reason to seek closeness to mankind, the chief source of their magics. But the owls desire
for domination during the hours of darkness is a hunger they cannot set aside. This leads
to brutal conflicts, silent midnight wars wherever the two species overlap. At night the owls
hold the advantage, striking silently from the darkened sky, and the Subtle Art of man is
quickly countered, whatever spells are used, the owls can use them back. And this may
sometimes be the only reason for the war at all.
But there are some places in the human world so chaotic and bereft of law, that even a
government of predatory owls is an improvement. In the slum-towers of Jukai, and perhaps
the slums of other cities, the 3orn owls bring an unexpected peace to night. For the first
time the weak and defenceless can sleep safely in their beds knowing that no-one will assault
them in their sleep, that no criminal, or even the forces of corrupt law will come for them
at night. They are completely safe. So long as they do not leave their home. Under any
circumstances. People say the 3orn owls can’t be bribed. But they still hang gifts of mice
or voles upon their doors at night, just to be sure.
3orn Owl feathers are popular with thieves, nobles and pretty much anyone who isn’t an
3orn owl. They absorb minor sounds and those who wear a cloak of 3orn owl down go
silently indeed. And must hope the 3orn owls never know.
105

MEDICTOR
“The East! Where spice-crammed caravels drift slowly through the rivers vast sustaining
coils, rolling in infuscate gleams under a tyrannous sun! Where Indigo trees crowd the bright
hills, and happy peasant girls pick the Vermille Worm from burnished Jessel leaf with silver
tongs. Where sweating cities squirm with overwhelming life! Where naked Oligarchs lounge
and sweat on cushions of mouldering silk, cooled by nubile slaves with silken fans. Yes, the
mysterious and unknown east! From thence comes the Medictor, strangest of its breed.” -
Leptoblast
The Medictor’s form is something like that of the Medusa, but affecting a species unrelated
to man. The base body is a human-sized slug standing upwards on its tail. The torso-colour
is of Pearl, not matte-grey but shining, sometimes translucent, marked or scored with swirls
or vectored lines of unknown source. Its hands are simple, its face one of distracted charm.
Like the Medusa: always female but with hair of non-dangerous snakes in a state of rapture
or whispering fugue. An alien beauty.
“Here! Here in the cities of the Merchant-Lords where flags of finest multi-coloured silk
hang limply in the listless heat, or spring forth like drawn blades in the wild wet wind of
the oncoming monsoon! Where perfumed hands count coins of octagonal gold, torn from
tombs and fingers of bone! Here they live, a race if intelligent aristocrat slugs! Of all that
caste-riven nation, the highest and most sacred. There they grimly smoke from golden pipes
the nightmare Herbs of Thaum, and see within the tangled webs of unfolding air the patterns
of their plots and endless schemes. Does the fabled rare Medictor spring from that decadent
stock? Or merely counterfeit their form? No man can say.” - Leptoblast
“She saw that I (not uncommonly, being familiar with the tales of the Medusa) was nervous
of her gaze, and was quite considerate in her attempts to put me at my ease. She handed
me a drink and mentioning the closeness of the crowd (more for my welfare than hers, she
seemed quite enlivened by the vibrancy of scent and sound) she lead me to a balcony where
a light curtain of Oriflamme separated us from the party. Here we could look over the waters
of Jukai and see the golden strand of the Or weaving its way onto the darkness of the Melanic
Moors. She enquired very considerately of my position and welfare, and on learning that
I was, or aspired to be, a Natural Philosopher, she warmly accepted my numerous queries
without any sense of tiredness or irritation.
She informed me that her ability to create life applied only to statues of living things, that
it usually applied only to stone and that it took some effort on her part. She was not at all
certain if it would work on the black pseudo-stone of Jukai. Apparently such creatures act
simply as they would in life although she did admit ‘they might bear me some affection’.
Her third eye was closed and she asked, I think teasingly, if I would wish to hear my fate. I
must confess that I was quietly intimidated by the possibility, however, after due consider-
ation, I decided that as I seek’d to claim the path of knowledge as my own, it was not for
me to decide which data were either of danger or irrelevance. ‘There is no bad knowledge’
I said inwardly and agreed that I would hear her fortune. She thanked me, told me not to
worry and opened her third eye. A remarkable transformation took place. Her snakes, which
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until now had seemed languorous and tired, stood straight up from her head as if shocked.
A susurrus filled the air, like the murmurs of a distant crowd. I realised that each snake
was speaking, in a quiet low hissing voice. Though nearly overwhelmed by the strangeness
of the situation I began to grasp that each snake was describing a series of events, in the
third person, like someone relating a half-remembered story. The subject of the story was
a ‘she’. It was almost impossible to discern what ‘she’ might be doing at any point. Sev-
eral of the strands seemed to conflict, some mentioning journeys in one direction, others in
another, some mentioning matters of great personal sensitivity (which I will not relate here
but suffice to say that no field of human activity was ignored) others seeming quite dry and
professional. I realised that these stories were my own, that all were somehow, or could be,
true. I remained stunned for. . . I regret I am not certain of the time, until I realised that
one of the snakes had stopped whispering and had curled back to sleep. I understood what
this must mean. That story had ended, and ended soon. Before another snake slept after
recollection I gathered my courage and reached out to touch the smooth pearl of her skin. It
was warm, unlike a slug, and very soft. Her two primary eyes refocused on me, she seemed
to come out of a trance. At first she smiled at me in a most intimate and dreamy way, we
remained there for a few moments, my hand upon her shoulder and her gaze searching mine.
She must have seen something in my expression, her third eye closed, the snakes fell quiet
and slept. Thankfully I did not hear too much.” - Zenithal
An individual can possess many fates, the crowd has but a few. And so Medictors can give
the futures, not of people, but of states. If allowed to look upon a mighty throng within one
view, each snake will whisper, not alternate futures for a single name, but true predictions
for a general mass. Brought to a hill or a tall tower, the Medictor will look upon the city as
a whole. Each section of a cities life may be addressed: trade, crime, art, faith, the rich and
poor. The highest ranking members of each aspect gather round and listen carefully for the
snake that whispers what will come for them.
A city with Medictor in residence will often know good fortune as its rulers use their knowl-
edge of its future path. Cities compete strongly in tempting and persuading a Medictor to
reside within their bounds. All kinds of subterfuge and espionage are used, except of course,
against the Medictor herself.
“The semi-mythical and much-admired ability of a Medictor to bring the heroic statuary of
an ancient city to life, thereby preserving it in times of war, is vastly overrated. Consider
for a moment the enormous cost of carving lifelike soldiers from stone, in comparison to that
of simply training and equipping living men. The creatures, once imbued with life, possess
only those qualities they are shown with in their sculpted form. A mighty hero shown lifting
an enormous rock will certainly be very strong, but, other than that, they will simply be a
man of flesh and blood. A mythic beast shown breathing fire will still do so, but how is it to
be made loyal or controlled? The same is true of any other unnatural beast. The poetical
vision of a nation fighting alongside its own heroic past is all very well, for the writers of
fiction or the illustrators of fairy tales, but think of the relative costs and poor chance of
success!” - Ashkott.
If a perfect statue of a single person is carved in utter darkness, so that its stone eyes never
see another being, and if a Medictor should bring it to life in the presence of that person
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only and none else, then when questioned it will speak the true and single future of that one.
But this would require a sculptor of extraordinary skill, one who can work in the dark from
touch alone. Perhaps one blind, or one forced to blindness. And when the thing is done,
and the ritual complete, other than the Medictor, only one person ever leaves the darkened
room where it is done. Where is the copy? Or if the copy lives, where is the first?
If a Medictor dies violently, every statue of a living thing in a miles radius will spring into
life and go mad with rage.
108

MEREMAIDS
The Meremaids are pale and still and hang like the bodies of the dead in the vault of dark
water where it arches into the open sky.
They are unlike Mermaids in several ways. They have the tails of eels, not fish, and seem
younger than a woman, like a teenager or child. They are slender even for that, almost
famine-thin. Though both are simply other forms of life that only look like human be-
ings.
The eel-tail is long and coloured in the same glaucous green-grey, their human skin is very
pale. Their hair is dark but skin and hair are almost always stained with mud and grime.
The Meremaids root continually in the silt of the riverbed or mere where they live.
They love still water. Not-quite-stagnant but almost unruffled pools and bends where the
cambers loose their surge and water oozes past slower than a deep breath. There they can
dig their grimy holes below the banks. The slowness of the force and the long decay silt
up their holes, they are continually re-digging their residence, which irritates them. These
rivers also move though caves, and Meremaids live there too, staring and wrapped numbly
in the timeless dark.
They prefer to do nothing, lying in the still water staring up through the surface at the
changing light. They can stay there, sleepless, for hours, or days, or weeks. Hunger comes.
Then they grub through the mud for shellfish and scraps of food, which they devour. It
billows up, blinding them and clinging to their hair and skin. Still waters do not wash it
off.
Meremaids are often filthy, usually grimy at least, they rarely comb and their hair becomes
matted and rank with weed and bits of shell.
They hunt fish in a listless way, or anything else. Birds, beavers, otters, people, frogs.
Meremaids love lure men and devour them raw but they are not very good at it. They are
lazy, dirty, distinctly alien-looking and they smell. People find them frightening and strange.
Men tell stories of the Meremaids around peat campfires or in the long dark night watches
of riverboat crews. The stories always end with laughter and the men in them escape. The
Meremaids sometimes hear this, drifting sadly in the murk.
Their song is a wordless lament drifting over the surface of the swamp. Like the song of the
Mermaid, it is magical, but it provokes not desire, but sadness. Though men will often feel
the fingers of sorrow plucking gently at their souls, they do not find it hard to turn away,
moving easily to their drinks and banter and the light of the fire. But men do fear this song
above all because it steals from them their mothers and their wives.
This sadness strikes more powerfully on the female kind. They find it difficult to break its
spell. Overcome and carried by deep piteous floods they go to the source of the song to aid
and comfort to whomever sings it. This works even more powerfully on women who have had
children, for whom the urge to find and comfort the Meremaid will be almost overwhelming
in its ferocity.
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Men will often have to physically hold back their daughters and sisters from walking off into
the darkness towards the song, but if the woman has borne children they must fight and risk
violence to prevent them disappearing into the night, wrestling and restraining, the woman
weeping and clawing at him as she tries to escape, desperate to aid the lost soul she hears
singing in the moors.
The moment the song stops, the compulsion disappears.
The Meremaids are not very interested in the women that come to them. If one finds them
without drowning or dying of cold, they will allow her to mother them somewhat. If the song
ends soon and she comes to her senses, the woman in question can sometimes find her way
back home, or reach those who have set off to rescue her. But more usually, they die along
the way, or are drowned or frozen attending to the indifferent Meremaids. If the Meremaids
are hungry, they eat her.
But, not all those who come are old. Very rarely a girl before the age of puberty will hear the
Meremaids song, and something deep within her will respond. Not sorrow, but something
else, something almost alien and strange. Perhaps simply a refusal of the changing flesh, of
time, or of a world not shaped for them.
Lebtoblast: “In the holes in the mud in which they sustain whatever passes for a life, the
Meremaids horde treasures of only one kind. It is the image of a living being they seek, an
individual’s unique face. Coins are acceptable but they prefer each person pictured to be
different, so will usually have only one of each type of coin. They also love portraits, lockets,
drawings, ceramics with human images, even the hilts of some swords.
If anyone steals even one of these images, they will disrupt the imagined world and ruin
dozens of carefully constructed plots. The Meremaid will take leave of its senses and pursue
this stolen ‘character’ or ‘player’ even to the risk of its own destruction.”
The Meremaid names each of these images and builds a complex world inside her head in
which they each play a part. She lies in the water endlessly re-arranging this created drama,
living through it again and again and again, altering the positions of the characters and
fine-tuning the plot. This fiction can often be more real to her than the dull underwater
world in which she actually lives and he may refer to her creations as if they were real people,
forgetting they are not. This is how we have come to know of the Meremaids treasures and
their use.
When a young girl joins the Meremaids of her own desire, she will often go into the dank
depths of the Mere holding a portrait of some kind. There, she will meet with the Meremaids
and talk, entering into their imagined world. She will live there feasting off leeches and eating
frogs. Slowly, over time, the cold will touch her no longer, her legs will fuse, she will change
but never age again. A new Meremaid will be born.
110

MINOCHOIRON
“MIN-OH-CHEER-ON”
The Minochoiron is a creature of myth and urban-myth, possible product of a union betwixt
man and pig.
Its appearance is ghastly.
It stands six or more feet high. Its strong and powerfully muscled shoulders are its highest
point, for its clever piglike head is located almost half-way down its torso where it smiles and
leers. Most is covered with a rough, apelike black fur, but, like the vultures head, several
of its parts protrude pinkly from the covering. Its clawed feet (sized like a mans), its long
large hands and its head are all flesh-cloured, fringed and free of hair.
Its piglike head is big. Bigger than a mans is, sized more like that of a large boar. On either
side are asymmetric horns, one curved upwards like a bulls, the other crooked, or any other
strange combination there could be. The skin here is pink-black like bruised meat, with
liquid sympathetic eyes. When it smiles you see snaggled teeth, sharp like a pigs, its bite
can take off hands. Its snout twitches, the Minochoiron has a keen sense of smell.
The creatures legs are squat, strong and bent, positioned like a crouching mans. It seems to
shuffle about well enough, and awkward though it seems, it moves only a little less quickly
than a man does, leaving tracks just like a naked human foot.
Its arms and hands are very strong, precise, like the hands of a strong-man, stage magician
or card sharp. One is a little too big and the other too small, but the Minochoiron works
with them together well enough. It can tie a single hair in knots, shuffle a deck in one hand,
shave a face blind or throw a key into a lock across the room. It loves to demonstrate these
crafts and skills and also learn and pick up more. It gestures fluidly with speech, highlighting
and sculpting words inside the air, these gestures are a part of its unnatural charm
It could smash or choke you easily enough, but is as likely to stroke, caress or play on you a
trick, perhaps filching an item from your pocket before ostentatiously handing it back with
a joke and a smile. (Minochoiron have a sly and subtle wit.)
The Minochoiron speaks in a steady river of well-constructed thought. It is never at a loss
for words. Fluid and correct, it never slurs or shortens words, uses slang or interval sounds
like ‘uh’ and ‘um’. It knows a number of languages and is learning several more. The
Minochoiron is learning always, it has a drive to live and know.
They love cities, sewers, slums, rookeries, abandoned palaces and forgotten roofs. There,
they slowly build their labyrinth. The Minichoiron makes cleverly and secretly, it burrows
into walls, makes false partitions with its clever hands, it saws through ceilings and through
floors, it clambers around in tunnels under the ground, it builds from trash and local stuff,
anything it grasps with its two hands can be incorporated into the maze. And the labyrinth
winds within the city like an embroidered thread, in secret places, behind locked anonymous
doors, the sounds of feet in the attic at night, something moving behind the walls, eyes in
the grate in the crook of the street, a secret second city squeezed into the cracks of the first.
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It never stops adding to its labyrinth while it lives and the longer it survives the deeper
creeps the maze. In the centre is its lair.
There it piles its treasures. The Minochoiron watches from its hidden halls, observing lives.
It likes to know things. Secrets. Rumours. Where people go in the dark. Who they speak to,
who they see. The labyrinth is in the mind as well. The dark spaces, between things, hidden
addictions and covert desires, second lives lived within the first. The monsters favoured
treasures are mementoes of just such secret lives. Letters, rings, syringes, chemicals and
whips, cash stuffed into envelopes and left, forged certifactes of birth, deathbed confessions,
warrants for arrest. It’s true that blackmail occours, but this is not the point. The Minocho-
iron hates waste and it would be a horrid waste to hold a secret without use. But this is
not why it wants the secret. It wants them becasue it wants them, the labyrinth in peoples
lives, to match the labyrinth it builds, both together and made one. The open civil daylit
world, slowly strangled by the crimes it keeps inside itself.
It can go on for a long long time. People notice things, but separately and alone, a door
opens the wrong way, a passage broken into, a lost child’s tale of wandering for hours between
the walls. The rumours grow, the PickPocket Pig, the Man-In-The-Walls. The Minochoiron
walls off its passages and retreats, for a while nobody quite puts it together. Even when
discovered, it takes a lot of effort to extract. The authorities have a great deal on their hands,
the zones that it infests do not have a high priority. And the creature has allies and spies.
The Minochoiron charms the local dispossessed, homeless, beggars and criminal gangs. It
can be quite a reliable ally for these groups, so long as it remains well fed. The Minochoiron
is an excellent cook, but sometimes forgets that people are not food. Around the labyrinth
grows a web-work of helpful human eyes to see and mouths to give alarm.
Apart from its remarkable charm, the Minochoiron has one other other-natural power. It
can reach, with its hand, into the slit-open belly of a corpse and burrowing down, thrust the
same hand up into the pocket, or bag, of anyone within a mile.
If you feel a squirming in your knapsack, leave it closed. If you sense another hand within
your pocket when alone, don’t look inside. You will see the Minochoirons ghastly hand,
reaching out of nowhere, feeling around for something to steal.
If you are brave or very foolish, you may try to grasp the Minochoirons hand. Nothing could
be more unwise. It will take tight hold of you and pull you through.
A frightening thing to witness in the street. Someone looks down at their pocket quizzically,
reaches in, looks shocked, and before the can cry out they are wrenched bodily inside. All
that’s left behind is a coat turned inside out and some shoes that come off as the legs kick
around. On examination (if you have the nerve), the pocket seems entirely normal. Certainly
not big enough to do what you just saw it do.
The Minochoiron may eat the individual in question, or use their body for new pocket-slits.
But, the charmer can be charmed, and it does love conversation, and to learn, a well as
culture and the accoutrements of high estate. With quick thinking, charisma and courage,
perhaps the creature could be persuaded to put aside its hunger, temporarily, in return for
some service or act.
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In combat, assuming the Minochoiron does not simply flee into its maze, it will reach into
any one of a dozen nearby bodies and steal items from the pockets and bags of those opposing
it, even as they fight, then use these things against them straight away. Most often those
wishing to destroy the creature must also contend with a gang of thieves, beggars or even a
group of pickpocket children charmed to its service.
113

THE MOBIUSNAIL or ‘SAILSNAIL’
The Mobiusnail is engaged always on its first step, the moment of first passing the portal
of its nest into a world of discovery. Since it is still taking that same step it responds to
everything with a sense of delirious optimism.
They do not live long.
Most of the body of the Snail is concealed within a large lozenge-shaped shell coloured in a
charming range of varied shades. The shell is about four feet long and about two and half
high, or wide, at its thickest point.
Along the length of the shell are a series of holes, from within comes the singing of the snail.
A looping chuckling like wind passing rapidly through irregularly shaped tubular bells, most
evident when it is moving at high speeds
The snails seem to move upon a vertical ‘sail’ of flesh, giving them their common name
‘SailSnails’. The ‘foot’ of the snail is a gigantic, slender, yet strong loop or ribbon of flesh
in a state of continuous movement like a flood of pink silk in a strong wind. Technically it
only takes one continuous step throughout the whole of its existence, its curling megafoot
looping round in a muscular ripple, one peak, like the peak of a wave, held above its head in
the manner of a swimmer. The other, lower peak pressed into the ground like the bent leg
of a man mid-sprint.
When seen from side-on, it does look as if they are ‘balancing’ on a narrow ribbon. however,
if seen in profile from above it can be observed that the snails megafoot curves sinuously like
a snake on its point of contact with the ground, which gives it a more secure footing than
might be expected.
The Snails come in vast seasonal migrations and move quickly together across the plains.
Sometimes the gigantic herds travel from breeding grounds in the dark dank depths of
cyclopean forests, looming ruins or cave systems, to the feeding areas of vast shining estuaries,
long crashing tidal banks or the silver beaches of richly-fished inland lakes. There they
wiggle into the sand or mud and dredge slowly through it day by day, feeding on nutrients
and microfauna. If the season has been unusually bountiful and the snails feed well, they
may set of en-masse on journeys that seem to have no purpose other than the joy of travel,
swooping in their hundreds of thousands across fields and through woodlands at a speed of
about sixty miles an hour.
Most civilised people know not to try to outrun the Snails and, should they hear the snail
song in the distance, simply to drop face-first onto the ground and let them pass over. There
is no risk of being trampled by the snails delicate megafeet, but sometimes, very rarely. the
unlucky have been suffocated by being drenched in the slime of an especially densely packed
herd.
A small and obsessive religious order (the Order of Saint Cephalos) worships the snail and
seeks to die in this way. They believe that being mummified in the snail-slime will preserve
their souls through the burning fires of hell and help them reach heaven. The rarity of a
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herd of this density, and the speed and unpredictable nature of the Snails means they rarely
achieve this and have to settle for purchasing recently recovered snailslime from peasants
near a migration route and embalming dead monks in that instead.
In its liquid state it acts as a low-friction oil. But away from the snail it dries and hardens
quickly into a hard and brittle translucency. In either state it is a very effective heat-
absorber.
The monks of St Cephalos are assumed to be former criminals and sinners trying to escape
a well-earnt hell-bound fate and though this is by no means always the case they do have
a slightly dark reputation and are not always well trusted. In a small number of cases
they are truly evil men engaged on active wrongdoing under the cover of religion and either
pretending to ‘seek the slime’ or doing so only to escape a divine judgement they full expect
to find them guilty.
Nevertheless most of the Monks are peaceful, though troubled folk, valued for their extremely
fast foot-pace (banned from using horses, they are all very good long-distance runners). This
has given them their common name ‘the panting pray-ers’ since many of their prayers are
designed to be panted out one breath at a time whilst running.
The Mobiusnails are so fast that most predators become exhausted simply chasing them and
their soft and rippling megafeet do so little damage to the ground that humans and others
depending on agriculture are usually not overly offended by the snails moving quickly over
their property. The silvery strands of snail slime can extend in a ribbon sometimes half a
mile wide and stretch off into the distance, coating everything in an annoying, heatproof
non-toxic crust. The strong and heavy shells do sometimes bump and bang into vertical
walls, stupid people or animals unwise enough not to lie down when the snails come.
The ‘singing’ of the snail is actually a kind of invertebrate laughter. . .
115

MONSTER MAIDEN
A Monster Maiden is a bag of skin and flexing tubes. Most often met with standing up and
ambling around like a thinking human being, which they seem exactly to be. Inside they are
composed of peat and soil, twigs and branches, ooze and puddlewater and slowly growing
monsters which breed relentlessly under their skin.
Very slowly, over several years, the monster grows inside. Its shape presses against their skin
from the inside like a face pushed against a sheet. When big enough, it breaks through, a
hard birth, and harrowing-long as the flexible skin distends and freshclaws taste the air for
the first time. She hits the earth like a burst bag, turned partially inside out, her simple
digestive tubes sprayed like dropped rope. She is still alive and in very little pain, her eyes
can roll and her mouth can move.
This pile of skin will writhe, then gradually, in little claspings, pinch itself back whole. Her
empty finger-tubes can mash back the torn wounds of her skin like wet clay. Soon, there will
not even be a mark to show the tear. The maiden slithers round, swallowing things to fill
up her insides. First she will suck the dirty mess from bogs and pools, then gulp twigs and
branches, arranging them inwardly to provide a crude skeletal frame. Big branches make
spine and limbs, little twigs are fingers, nuts are toes. Sometimes bits of the old wooden
skeleton are still spread around where the birth took place, stained black and preserved by
her peaty innards, and can be swallowed down and used again. Of course, human bones can
also meet this use.
The Monster Maiden stands unsteadily up, her body looks like a wet scarecrow made of
bags. She will seek out peat and mud, clay and little stones to eat. She will fill herself up
and plump herself out, arranging herself internally. She will eat a special reed and with this
she can speak and sing beautifully in a low soft whispering voice.
Then she will return to her strange life. Inside her, the next embryonic monster will form
slowly and go about its growth. No-one knows what it will be.
Monster Maidens usually try to go on sanely some distance from people, so no-one gets
hurt when the monster inevitably bursts. They live simple lives in bogs or deep in the dark
forested reaches where the broken columns of rotting trees make natural caverns in the earth.
A Monster Maiden is a person, no more or less likely to be good or evil than a human being.
Their very long and tragic isolated lives, mean that some seem very wise, as wise as witches
or muttering gusts of old wind, and others come rank with madness, bestial as starving
dogs.
Intelligence is not always the survivors friend, some forget and learn the self a hundred times
across the marching eons of their life.
At times, consumed by loneliness, a Monster Maiden tries to live amongst humanity, moving
to the edges of a distant village or isolated hamlet. They can pass quite well and the smell
of bog is barely detectable from the outside. They can love and be loved, their skin is warm,
but sexual relations do not go well. They are full of cold ooze, and a monster lives inside
them.
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Eventually it grows big enough to press its shape against their skin, if they are still amongst
society when their tetra-pregnancy begins to show then things can go badly indeed.
The Monsters from a Monster Maiden are of any kind: mundane, destructive, cruel, unique,
friendly wild and strange, sometimes with the wits of beasts, or minded like a man, some-
times exceeding wise. A Star-Nosed Brole, Flantagnet, Moon-Ape, Quarynx or Guile-Toad,
anything could grow within.
If the things born are at least semi-smart and know what loyalty is, they can be socialised.
The Monster Maiden may live out in the wilderness with a kind of semi-family or omnimor-
phic tribe. It’s not too bad. It is the closest thing to safety that either she or they will ever
have. A brilliant, compassionate or very controlling Monster Maiden can end up collecting
monsters over time. And Monster Maidens have a lot of time. If the Maiden has a mind
that’s cold and eyes that see, she may organise monstrous hierarchies of control, and make
of them a force.
“I have seen ancient scratches in the margins of still-more-ancient texts, half burnt by fire,
which hint a primal Tetrarchy. An Empire of the Maidens over which they ruled as Mother-
Gods. But all reported observations of more local times, speak only of wanderers, hermits
and those lost. If any still recall that ancient world, or how they came to be, or came to fall,
none speak.” - Zenithal.
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MOON APE
There are pale Titans of some higher world between the sky and stars for whom the open
skies of mortal lands are but a dungeon-tomb. They fall from there in death and come,
high in the air, in something like the forms of clouds. They drift from world to world,
not recognising, even in eternal sleep the borders of realities beneath their own, the spaces
between mortal worlds to them like the gaps between our dreams to us.
These corpses, composed of ethereal decay, come in many sizes, some as small as houses,
others like great cities in the air. Oddly shaped, dark, heavy and rank polluted storms, but
still clouds nonetheless. Only birds observing from above can clearly see the shape of the
titanic corpse, curled or splayed in death, alien and strange.
The clouds-corpses are dark black and fuscous with loops of yellow and caesious smog. There
are flecks of more vibrant shades, chemical corbeau and fiery red, shining like pollutant’s,
trailing rags of nacreous vapour, leaden in the sky, their undersides like the ripped open
bellies of beasts.
And inside these predatory clouds: parasites of that godlike race, fat and hungry and grown
large: Moon Apes.
The Moon Apes are black and hard to see, with a fuzz of red fur that gives them a bloody
halo when they pass before the light. They walk with legs bowed out, ape-shapes with the
frog-muscles on their bones, their long arms held up and swaying side to side above their
heads. Their bent black legs can leap huge lengths, they reach and climb and grasp with
inordinate ease. You are rarely as far as you think from a Moon-Apes hands and their long
and lipless mouths.
Moon Apes guide and hide their cloudcorpse homes. They linger behind storms and weather
fronts, they come at night, and often when the moon is full, they use its light to hunt.
When the wind is still and the night is dark, they drift above the scattered lights of some
isolated inhabited place. The corpse they ride lets down thick vaporous loops, dark and
burnet, spooling like slender tornadoes, yet without wind. They clamber down out of the
sky on their black limbs, highlighted against the moon. They reach the ground and run
amok. They kill and eat and bite and steal. Moon Apes love havoc and theft, they kill and
steal with glee, abducting all manner of things, some valuable, some useless, sometimes pets
or animals, sometimes children. Before dawn comes they climb back up the loops of cloud,
taking the fruits of their theft.
The bite of the Moon Ape is vile in its effects. A simple and quick death would often be
less cruel. It does not bleed, the edges of the wound lie raw and red, and caused little pain,
leaving only a dull uncomfortable ache. Designed to feed secretly on gods, anybody bitten
will deny wound. They will simply not notice the missing limb or body part or chunk of
flesh. The more of them is consumed the more lethargic and deranged they are. Victims
with all four limbs bitten of by the Apes vertical mouth will simply sit there, smiling, making
inane conversation and excuses as to why they cannot move.
This means that the more flesh the Moon Apes take from you, the harder it is to fight them,
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after you have been bitten more than once it is even hard to believe they exist at
This allows the Moon Apes to escape just retribution for their horrid crimes. If everyone
is bitten several times then no-one will remember what went on. Victims will simply sit
around, saddened and bemused, mourning what they have lost but not knowing where it
went. Families friends and goods all disappeared in something like a dream.
Should an outsider happen upon this terrible scene, and query what they see, that is what
it sounds like, a nightmare come to life.
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MURDER MEN
or OTHERMEN
THE MORTAL THINGS
The Murder Men are other selves from some other place. They have no ecology and know
system of existance. They simply are. There is nothing they want that they are not about
to take.
They come naked or wearing rags. They use no clothes unless freezing brings them close to
death, they wear no shoes and have no scabbards for their swords. They can use tools only
if they hurt.
They cannot speak except to repeat back what you say in mocking form, or to laugh.
The Murder Men live inside a pool of shadow, cast in every direction as if they were sur-
rounded by invisible suns.
When the sun is overhead the pool shrinks and hangs around their feet, when the sun is
low the shadow grows like the long ones sketched on midsummer afternoons, but in every
direction at once. A prism for darkness.
Their features seem familiar, like the faces of friends seen in shade or far away.
There can be differences between them. Some have skin in negative-image black, their pupils
are white dots. Some have a fire inside them. Thick poisonous melanic smoke spews from
their mouth with each breath. The hands of some are tendoned curves of razorsharp bone,
all they can do is harm. Some have pin-prick sized black faceted insect eyes. Its hard for
them to see you if you dont move. Some ooze an oily mist through which only they can see.
Some have one horrid yellow encrusted eye that weeps and sees in total dark. Some cough,
sneeze and vomit blood, then laugh. They do this and the blood runs down their face.
But more often they look almost like someone you know, or someone you used to know.
The Othermen can be summoned very easily by just about anyone, but sometimes they come
through on their own.
The Murder Man ritual is a reviled and hated form of suicide. It kills the initiator, and
places everyone around them in extreme danger. Though it can be a final form of nihilistic
redress for those assaulted and abused by an uncaring world.
To summon one, take a mirror bigger than your head. Look into it. Say “Murder me.
Murder me. Murder me. Murder me. Murder me. NOW.” Then smash your naked face into
the mirror hard enough for it to shatter. A Murder Man will hear this sound. They will look
for you. They will come through at a time and place that they decide. They will come out
of the corner of your eye. When you are alone in the empty field and you have not seen a
human movement for too long, then, behind you, where nothing was, the Murder Man will
be.
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There is no changing of minds. If you take steps never to be alone then they will take longer
to come, but when they do there will be more. There will be enough. This can be very very
bad.
Noted, is the case of Emperor Huezong, who, after an opium fuelled depression, awoke to
find a broken mirror in his room and cuts all over his face. He commanded an eternal festival
within his palace walls, endlessly renewed so that he need never be alone, and had the codes
of privacy changed so that anyone of high status required multiple partners to go to the
toilet. The story is well known and the ruins of the palace can still be seen today.
Sometimes they carry simple clubs or hooks or pitted blades, sometimes nothing at all.
The Murder Man will murder you. Obviously. Then it will cause terror. They like to kill,
especially people, especially weak innocent people. They love torture and destructions of all
types. They luxuriate in fear.
Sometimes groups of Murder Men come out of the wilds and the dark. They move in troupes
and merry gangs. No-one has yet has found their source. Some whisper of an evil maker of
spells who lairs within a shard of stone upon a frozen lake, and every winter captures people
passing through. They make their captives polish with their rags, the shining surface of the
ice. Then force them to recite the ritual and drive their faces through
But the Othermen cannot be controlled or negotiated with. They cannot be aimed or ordered
or enslaved. Why would anyone do such a thing?
No-one knows their origin. Investigators suffer daymares in which they imagine a world of
murder on the mirrors other side. They begin to suspect that perhaps everything we do is
being watched by laughing men with rusted hooks and blades. That perhaps their world is
our own and they are reflections of us, or we of them. Once this imagining has taken place
it can be very difficult to shake off. Few take things any further.
Once they arrive, the Otherman must eat and breathe and shit like every other living thing.
They can be starved to death, they can die of hypothermia or fire. If killed their bodies look
like ours. It is not wise to attempt eating one. They only effect human communities and
only humans can summon them, no other race or species suffers the same way and some say
that perhaps this is a curse of man in payment for some ancient wrong.
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THE NAVARCH OF AA3T
Lost blotches on the map, abandoned names, tales of kingdoms lost to time. A sense the
world is shrinking even as it is defined, lost in its own discovery. All quite correct, Hell
took those nations and those towns, hells thief, or bailiff, did the work: The Navarch of
Aa0t.
Hell is growing endlessly, growling at its boundaries with every passing day. Hells servants
toil, chipping at the grey chaos on each side, carving it into torture-halls, ziggurats and
waiting rooms.
Never fast enough.
The means the Navarch uses, and the lands it claims, can vary a great deal. Sometimes
nations just go wrong and earn a place in hell all on their own: that’s method one. Other
times Kings make a shady deal, that’s nice and legal: method two. Enchantments can go
faulty, to hide a place or keep it safe “Oh take us far from here!”, a grey area: method three.
Abandoned places, who owns those? Methods four to sixty are essentially theft. It all ends
the same way.
When the Navarch takes a place the world seals around the wound, the edges knit together
as if it had never been there, leaving scars and memories, legends and bad maps. Inside the
lost land chaos briefly rules. The stars turn on one side as if the world itself capsized. A new
sky rises, pillars of raw darkness and red fire interlock across a void where black stars madly
whirl. Oceans die suspended in the air like helixes of murky light. Eons old storm-vortexes
that haunt the skies of other worlds careen between the tangled zones. Extinction meteors
swoop by, then curve and turn back, hunting like hawks for ages to wipe clean.
Then earth meets earth and the mad sky is thankfully blotted out. For those within the
taken land, it seems as if the world curls over above itself and joins like paper turned into
a tube. Far above can be seen land like your own and even people there you know. The
Navarch has wrapped its prize into a cylinder to sail it through. If the taken place is a city
with tall spires, the spikes of tall towers may intermesh.
This is now Aa0t .
The only light now comes from fires and from the open ends. At the rear, or now, the stern,
reality is gone. At the prow stands the shadow of the Navarch, stark against chaotic light.
There it plots the incalculable realities, grasping a gigantic wheel of slender bone just inside
the wheel of the world itself. This wheel hangs just inside the open prow of Aa0t and is
nearly as wide, the Navarch plays endlessly upon it, building and re-building it.
The Navarch has little time to regulate its prize. It leaves that to its crew. The crew of Aa0t
is made of every kind of evil thing. It is a meritocracy of harm, whose ranks hold titles won
in ages past.
First amongst the crew is the Ark-Eater Prime, who stands by the Navarchs side and gazes
back into Aa0t. Then come the Fistulix, from First to Third, the Grist-Things, the Mid-Ship
Souls and then the standard Souls. There are many ranks to Aa0t and though the holders
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change continually, the titles never do. An order given downwards to the next in line goes
with ‘Mister’, regardless of gender, species or form. To the Navarch its Ark-Eater is always
‘Mister Ark-Eater’.
The mortal population is now cargo, fuel and food. The Navarch is always hungry for rations
and bones. The order goes forth ‘Mister Ark-Eater, bones for the wheel!’. And so it is passed
on from mouth to mouth until hordes of Midship Souls rage throughout the land to fetch
what Aa0t requires, or else feed the wheel themselves. Sometimes the order is for a very
particular kind of bone, a good chance for promotion. (And anyone and anything can be
promoted, be they monstrous enough and fulfil their orders well.)
Many times Aa0t has reached Hell with no population left, and with a much reduced crew.
It matters little to the Navarch, so long as they arrive. It knows how dangerous the journey
is, in the ungoverned spaces between worlds are dangers so strange and so great that even
it, with its incredible power, must avoid or go around. The list of threats is without end,
an Elder God, a Nightmare Sun, Dreamon Convoys many millions strong. Moon-Apes can
infest the hull and crawl in through the stern, and so can other things, the Rational Souls
may mutiny, and there are often powers ‘upset’ at losing pieces of their worlds to hell who
may be in pursuit, angelic interdictors, Heavens revenue-men. The Navarchs mind is an
ever-evolving map of an unmappable abyss, updated continually with every fleeting sight or
sound.
To thwart the Navarch is a deadly game. Almost no other entity at all has the skill and
wisdom to successfully pilot Aa0t. And should the Navarch die? Aa0t may be lost forever,
utterly destroyed or, if very lucky, crash into some utterly unlikely world or place.
The Navarch will never surrender Aa0t, but, it is intelligent, perceptive and willing to
negotiate if the alternative is death . Quite cosmopolitan as daemons go. It might be willing
to let its opponents off somewhere. Why fight to the death and risk Aa0t itself when it can
get rid of them right now by giving them what they want? So long as hell is reached.
The four eyes of the Navarch, if torn from out its head and used as oracular stones, can
glean a path through chaos. But even someone with the eyes and with the wheel of bone
would find it incredibly difficult, perhaps impossible, to steer Aa0t anywhere other than to
its destruction
123

NAVIGATORS OF NOTHING
They are creatures of isolation, possessed by loneliness, repression, anger and the road it-
self.
A Navigator of Nothing, ‘Tellerman’ or ‘Grumbler’ is about seven feet tall. It’s face is huge
and chinless, with the mouth just above the centre of the mass, there are no teeth inside,
but thick, tough corrugated lips stretching a foot or more across, that serve the same design.
The nose is long, the eyes are widely spaced. It looks like a mangled body conquered by an
oppressive imperial face, features have burst their bounds and swept over the torso plains,
embedding features of the face in any place a face can be.
Strange thick arms come out from middle height and hang down about the length of human
arms
The Tellermen tend towards a pale and sunburnt pink, spiderwebbed by popped red arteries
like those of drunks. These are thickest around the fists and forearms, its hands, stained
haematic-red, continuously clench. This red may be that of the Navigators bulging and
tortured arterial pipes, or they may just be blood red from blood, Navigators like to beat
things to death.
‘Like’ is the wrong word, they just do it.
Leptoblast: “They are but men! Men tortured by long travail and altered so by the procession
of inexorable fate! Beware this fate. For no man is immune from the Navigators Curse. The
transformation takes place thusly: First, you must walk for many miles beneath the open
sky, yet with no aim, you must travel constant and intent, by foot, yet to no locatable place.
Second, you must be alone, never speaking to, or even thinking of, another human being.
Not even a memory of a face may pass your mind. Third and finally, you must speak,
continuously, without end, of, and to, yourself and nothing else. Then, slowly, inevitably,
you will change, becoming something else, becoming as they are, possessed by purposeless
purpose and directionless drive.”
Ashkott: “No record has confirmed this transformation, and no eye has seen it half-complete.
If true, it must take years. No one I have spoken to has ever claimed to see the transformation
of a man to one such as these. Nevertheless, it is popularly believed by all that it is so and
almost everyone I spoke to claimed it happened in a village some distance away or to a
distant ancestor of theirs. There are no ‘young’ Navigators and it is unclear if there are any
female navigators, or any male Navigators, they all seem male, but what does that mean?
I suspect these creatures may not be a species at all, but some kind of forced mutation or
supernatural effect.”
The Navigators always walk. They walk through the day and the night. They cannot be
stopped. They stamp or shuffle forward with their eyes down and red fists going back and
forth. They grumble and mutter and whisper to themselves about ancient wrongs done to
them. Sometimes very ancient wrongs, sometimes the language is not known.
The Navigators of Nothing are never going to any particular place, they have no destination,
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they simply keep walking. But some strange power must illuminate them because they
always seem to find a path, regardless of the environment or conditions. The path has no
destination, but it will cut effectively through whatever terrain or obstruction lies before the
Navigators path.
So if a Tellerman walks into a swamp, or a cave, or a labyrinth of stone, there is a way, and
they know it. This makes them very occasionally, exceedingly useful to a variety of people.
If you are lost and see a tellerman and can follow it then it will lead you somewhere, not
necessarily anywhere good, but somewhere different than you are.
Sometimes people have been lead out of danger by subtly shadowing a Navigator, sometimes
clever armies have been lead through impassable swamps, or noble lovers through storms of
snow, or innocent children through the forest dark. But more usually they are killed.
Zenithal: “If you see one on the road, mark this above all else: Avoid Its Gaze. Navigators
loathe the human gaze. They do not wish to be followed, or looked at or spoken to, never
seek out contact. Luckily, since they ignore almost the whole of the world at all times, it is
difficult to attract their attention at all. If you obstruct its path, get directly in its line of
sight (they generally look down) or speak directly to it, it will stop.
Having traced and discovered a Navigator, I found also perusing it, a man who claimed
to be a fellow scholar, though he seemed somewhat inebriated and was accompanied by a
handful of friends in a similar state. This gentlemen informed me that he had been covertly
listening to the Navigators muttered speech and had heard distinctly the name of an ancient
and well-storied king of this land. After perusing his hastily scribbled notes (we were all
walking, at this time, after the Navigator, following some distance behind) I became quite
excited, though sparse and difficult to read there did seem to be scattered references to real
events and ages over a vast period of time. The gentleman informed me that intended to
attempt communication and asked if I would be willing to observe from a safe distance and
take notes, should any successful exchange of information ensue. I did attempt to dissuade
him from this rash course, but, his mind being irrevocably set, I agreed and fell back some
distance, observing through a glass. He ran ahead and, moving directly into its path, hailed
it in a friendly manner.
I noted the subsequent progression of events. First, a silent and intense vibration running
across its whole body, the Navigator turned, facing it’s the gentlemen directly for the first
time. Its fists clenched. Its face, formerly vacant, became distorted, evincing an expression of
extraordinary rage. I began to realise I had made a serious mistake. The creature screamed.
I am uncertain (the glass was shaking somewhat at the exact moment) but I believe I saw
a new artery burst or bulge under the creatures skin, tracing a new red line upon it. The
Navigator ignored any attempts at further communication. I am afraid it beat the gentleman
to death at extraordinary speed. It was very fast and very strong and I hope that its first
blow did in fact, as it seemed to, break the gentleman’s spine. The screaming and the motion
of the creature continued for some time. I am not certain for how long as at this point both
I, and the gentleman’s friends, fled the scene. From later reports I belive the Navigator
eventually simply continued on its way. After a day had passed, we returned and were
able to recover, with a shovel, large parts of the gentleman’s body, the bones were utterly
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impacted and the flesh ground into the dirt over a wide area. His notes, irrecoverable”
The Navigators are not hated or hunted because they are not very dangerous unless you
specifically try to get in their way. They can walk safely through villages and towns so long
as people are quiet and look away. As soon as the creature is past, life can go on. And
perhaps because they are sad, and terribly alone, and few who look at them fail to think of
what dark constellation of events it might be that drives a thing to such an orgy of loneliness,
they have at least a measure of respect, or its shadow at least. We are glad its them, not
us.
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NIVEOUS DREAM AXOLOTL
Amphibious through dreams, salamandrine in the human mind, this eau-de-nil Axolotl hunts
men through fantasies of snow. It is a lithe, light-green ambush beast, as large as a leopard or
miniature lion, watchful, supple. Strong. The head is wide and split by shining needle-teeth
that gleam as if a smile. Large limpid eyes on the side, shifted a little towards the fore in
order to parallax prey. The body curls and weaves, deftly compressing, cat-like, snake-like,
binding force for springy leaps, attacking by surprise.
The Niveous name is gained by the collapsing temperature of dreams. It lives inside your
mind and eats your random thoughts. The loss of these small scurries of the mind and dis-
connected flaps of thought, is chill. You dream of snow and Axolotl. The longer the Axolotl
lives within the mind the colder grow your dreams. At first, frost writes its unexpected
words, then ice cracks beneath your sleeping feet, the dream-sky closes-in a veil of polarised
white. Snow comes and the hills and cities of your dreams are cloaked and changed by a
sourceless winter without end. Through all of this, the Axolotl stalks, pale green, glimpsed
in distances, watching and circling. An assassin carried in a work of art.
The Axolotl does no harm to you. To it, you are its world. You are the forest that it stalks
through, the river in which it swims. It is watching through your eyes, looking for its target
and waiting for a chance to strike. But as it eats your thoughts, you focus more and more on
the green dream. You obsess monomaniacally on snow and the pale stalker that you imagine
that you see. With no random or unlikely thoughts inside your mind, the Axolotl slowly
starves.
“I have identified, (tentatively), three means by which the Axolotl enters and escapes the
human mind.
Firstly, through a work of art. As dreams of snow and Salamanders-green intensify, not
knowing what impells their monomania, many individuals are driven to compose works
on this theme. They may create a painting, poem, story, song or tapestry in which the
Axolotl plays a part. If this work has quality enough, it may provide a ‘bridge’ to one
who contemplates it deeply and alone. To be absorbed, emotionally engaged or moved to
transport by this work can make you the next host. Hence the tales of paintings ‘come to
life’ or songs killing in the night.
Secondly, it may exit or gain ingress by main force. (This method is preferred whenever
the Axolotl wishes to surprise its prey.) The pupil of the eye opens and opens like black
water filling a black pool. The head tilts back. The skull warps momentarily to compensate.
(The host screams, usually.) The Niveous Dream Axolotl leaps out as if from water. Gen-
erally the eye involved in this goes back to normal afterwards, although there can be some
distortion.
Thirdly, I am almost certain that the Axolotl can creep in and out in the night without
waking you up. Frustratingly, I have been unable to confirm this. I have arranged for teams
of watchers to observe me secretly in my sleep, though gaps bored in the walls, so far without
sign.
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The dreams intensify. - Zenithal
When it grows hungry enough, the creature will emerge to feed. Striking where it can and
retreating into any accessible brain.
“A relic of an ancient war fought in, between and with, transcendent conquering dreams.
Many of the ruined things and strange abandoned places seen in dreams are simply ancient
fortifications of this war, long since collapsed, fragmented into comprehensible ideas.
Once hunting-packs trained to specific scent, or assassins made to hide in minds, they are
now feral things, hunting where and what they will, emerging to take meat then slinking
back inside the brain to get away.
Slim rumours tell of words or rituals or spells which still command the Axolotl, directing
it towards specific prey. Of Radical Dreamons who trade death for an unexpected price.
Though, one need not have such fine control in order to make such a use. A mighty work of
art, a painting perhaps, of extraordinary beauty and rare device, something to be treasured
and viewed alone away from prying eyes. This could bring a deadly predatory beast through
walls and rings of guards and spells of Subtle Art where no other deadly thing could safely
pass.
A poem, whispered to a king, of snow and eau-de-nil, may spell an empire’s end.” - Lepto-
blast
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ORANORN
The Oranorn reigns absolutely over those who fear the futures in its polyphonic song.
These evil beings are greedy, and hungry for pungent expendable wealth. They like spices,
incense, orchids, perfume, the shavings of tropical trees, flowers and ripening fruit. And
music, all the time, music without end.
They lair in caves and ruined halls thick with searching tendrils of smoke that waft from silver
censers, constantly refilled. It stinks, and smoke-stains darken the abandoned silks of many
colours left to rot upon the earth and stone. Hunting through the smoke-dark halls comes
music, played by terrified and enslaved bards, starving, manacled in silver chains, piping
through broken lips and weeping blood from fingertips upon the tortured frets. Sometimes
the Oranorn joins in, its many voices soaring like a choir.
At the top of its body, about fifteen feet high, is an eye, a single sad-looking eye in a small
round head. Below this is the mouth, and little else. The mouth is vertical and huge,
running right down the Oranorns centre like a slice in fruit. To either side are meagre wings,
non-functional, in which it takes enormous pride and which it can manipulate at will. The
whole rests upon four froglike legs, bent at the base, like an idol sits upon its stand, (though
the Oranorn scampers easily enough). Two childlike arms make up the rest, right at the
bottom of its mouth, low enough to stroke the ground.
An Ornaorn will not die, or live, by natural law, it is tangled in the web-work of consequence
and time. It speaks with many voices, all tumbling and cascading from its mouth in a
waterfall of polyphonic sound. If it so chooses it may pronounce the fate of those nearby.
Each Oranornic voice will speak of a specific deed and be heard by one specific nearby soul.
If those who hear their spoken fate do not relentlessly pursue its fulfilment, they will be
cursed. These curses come in many forms but each intensifies in strength the harder someone
struggles against fate. A favoured tool is metamorphic charm, friends transformed to beasts
inherently opposed: Mice and Cats, a Wyvern and some Cows, Snake and Marmoset.
The Oranorn can never kill directly with its voice. It cannot order you to jump off a cliff or
fall on your sword. Its cruelty is more tragical and indirect than that. Its voice commands
multiple acts that are impossible to mutually fulfil. For instance, it might require of one
opponent: that they kill the Second Chancellor of Jukai, and of the second: that they guard
the Second Chancellor from harm. Or that the first must hold a certain quantity of gold,
that the second steal it always from the first and to a third decree that no laws be broken
at all.
So friends become each other’s executioners. They must follow fate or be transformed, those
who fulfil their fortune must thwart the future of their friends, either doing them direct
harm, or condemning them to the consuming curse. To live is treachery and it is charity to
die.
The Oranorn can be killed only by a group who have matched their contradictory fates. It
must be a group who have been cursed as one and met the stated deed, and lived, who strike
the Oranorn as one. If this is done, then every blow will penetrate and land, the Oranorn
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will die. But this has never been achieved by anyone at all. If anyone else attempts a blow
or spell, the strike goes wide, rebounds or mysteriousoy misfires.
Oranorns gain access to the luxuries they love by lairing near a populated place and using
the fear of its many-fated song to extract the services and sacrifices it desires. Oranorns
each have a particular taste in flesh, some will only eat young girls with yellow hair, others
only men with one leg, others only pregnant women. If threats are not sufficient, it will
simply walk through town, pronouncing fates. After the horror is done with, the shamed
and self-loathing survivors will usually do whatever they are told.
There is one potential weakness in the Oranorns power: the fates if gives are literal. Only
the exact wording of the prophecy must be obeyed.
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OZIMANDRIAN
or ‘THE GHOSTS OF STONE’
Crawling unbowed from the wreckage of their world. Hoisting itself out of the sand to scream
at the sky with a tongue of fire. Dragging itself, gnashing, after justice and an honourable
accounting for the forgotten past.
Imagine a gigantic stone head, lying on its pack, looking up. The stone, crablike has grown
legs, spindling limbs of jointed obsidian. The legs are very slowly dragging forth the massive
burden of the stone. Behind it is a furrow in the earth, a gouge where the head has pulled
itself for mile upon uncounted mile.
The rock has been consumed or corroded from within by an incredible heat. It has fallen
away into a burning void leaving a mouth-like rim of broken stone that billows smoke and
waves of heat.
The Ozimandrian can thrash with its limbs, it can slowly tip its head up and down and from
side to side to breath gusts of molten fire. It can chew and destroy anything it gets inside
its mouth.
They are ruin-relics. Born from the destroyed corpses of cities lost to time. The stones
brood deeply and long over the aeons, considering their wrongs. A slow anger and a deep
sorrow grows, condenses, like thick syrup moving to a point. The rage of the rock and the
abandoned place seeps and coagulates in one particular stone in one particular place.
(This is the process by which ruins become merely areas of dead rock. As the sadness seeps
out of the place as a whole, a sight that might have previously awoken poets souls now seems
only a field of broken things, no more or less than a desolate part of the natural world, or
some rubbish left in a forgotten place. The luminosity and sense of tragedy and time has
left.)
In that one particular stone in which the sorrow does condense, (often a statue or foundation
stone) a strange reaction starts. It heats up, glowing from within. If the desolation around
it is wide and tragic enough, and if it is all brought slowly and surely to a single point, (not
too fast and not too slow) then the rock will incandesce from its core, it forms a screaming
mouth, facing up towards the sky. The melted stone seeps down and forms the limbs that
ring the rock, crystallised obsidian. Sometimes tiny eyes are formed above the mouth. A
disconcerting sight if the stone in question happens to be a huge sculpted head, in which
case the position of the face of the sculpture and the face of the new born Ozimandiran can
be quite different.
The birth howl of the Ozymandrian, the cracks of breaking stone that accompany it and
the horrible grating and gasping as it slowly drags itself out of its entombment (should it
be born underground) are quite frightening, especially since they echo round the ruins of an
empty city where nothing should live at all.
From this point on its purpose is defined by the dream-like memory of the stones themselves.
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Their memory of the cities death. If the destruction was the product of one particular deed
by one particular group, the creature will seek revenge. It starts to drag itself towards the
closed city of that race.
This can be problematic. The culture in question may have merged with another, changed
its identity or even disappeared since the city of the Ozimandrian was destroyed.
Nevertheless, the creature is rarely dissuaded, no matter how little sense it makes to anyone
else. It will go towards this city or town and gnaw on its foundations, causing it to collapse.
Though the Ozimandrian is very very slow and has limited offensive capabilities, it is capable
of this. Being made of solid rock and immune to most forms of magic, there is very little
that can stop it.
As horrible as this seems, the destruction of an urban zone may be the least disastrous result,
since the Ozimandrian will rest once the deed be complete. If the cause of the destruction
of the original city is unclear, mixed, complex, or lost to time, then it will be wrathful and
horribly confused, more like an angry and sorrowful ghost than any other being.
Its concerns are justice and an accounting for wrongs. If this cannot be easily accomplished
by a giant stone fire breathing head with obsidian spider limbs (and history being what it
is, usually they cannot) then the Ozimandrian becomes like an angry spirit haunting the
plains, directing its rage on whatever foundations and architecture it can find.
Even if expertly dissembled by teams of Special Forces Masons, if its rage is not assuaged,
the spirit of the Ozimandrian may simply pass on to another block or piece of stone and
begin its exceedingly slow rampage all over again. The only way to stop it is to somehow
assuage its spirit and convince it that justice, in some form, has been done. Not in the terms
of lives and individuals, but in terms of history, culture, and especially, architecture.
132

PALADINS OF THE FALL
The Paladins are insect-men, about five feet tall with their ‘antlers’ adding another foot and
a half. Commonly a russet red, rufous like Autumnal leaves, but they vary, sometimes all
the way from sombre gold to a dark dark midnight-green.
They have thick strong bodies, low hanging arms, and nearly featureless faces with two
widely-spaced eyes. They are exceedingly tough and strong. They dig fluidly and fast.
They are calm and silent, speaking rarely and with difficulty. They do not enunciate, a
deep strong buzzing-voice comes from somewhere in the thorax, but they comprehend. But
barely. Time and words or concepts directly relating to time seem to slow and confuse the
Paladins Of The Fall. They must stop and buzz amongst themselves to translate them at
all.
Their city is not far under the earth, only a few foundations-length down beneath the grass.
It is no abyssal realm. Still, you should not go. Leave it be until the seasons turn. When
the snow lies thickly on the ground, then delve into its ruins and echoing halls and see the
golden signs of a culture long since gone.
No-one is certain how the Paladins know time or feel its touch, but it is not as we. They
build huge and beautiful soil-cities in tunnels beneath the forests and the borders of the
plains. Sometimes these cities intersect with or lie below, expanding human lands. There
is no cause for concern. The Paladins rarely interact with the surface world at all. They
occupy their time performing strange rituals under the earth in caverns and palaces they
have made there.
We know this by the very occasional signs. The sound of a sombre procession moving slowly
under our feet, with the low hum of their voices in time. The ringing of deep bells and
unearthly chimes from under the ground. A waft of incense issuing from the bole of a tree
as something passes deep below. In Autumn, those looking on the plains at sunset when
the shadows pool thickly on the ground, should they view it from a height, say they see
strange patterns in the earth stretching for great distances. No doubt the displaced mass of
the cities under the soil.
In Autumn, when the cities are there, they have always been there. They have been there
for thousands of years and the land has adapted to them.
We do not go to the cities at this time. The Paladins protect their rituals. No-one who has
gone returns, or has so far.
As Autumn turns to winter and the snow begins to fall, the ruins of this underground world
may be sought out. They are smaller then, much of the earth has fallen in. There is no point
in our time when it falls, there is no movement we can see. A day passes with the last leaves
of Autumn rotting on the ground: the city is a ruin, and has always been. Before that it
was new and whole, now ancient, broken and collapsed.
They are difficult to reach, flooded, wet and dark, sometimes infested by the lesser horrors.
The tides of time run thick there, you may not return to the year when you set out. But
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there are strange reports and they speak of great beauty and hidden majesty under the
earth.
At first, gloom on the snow, winter shadows, openings, air pressing cold fingers against your
face, still clean and old, holding the scents it carried when it died. Simple tunnels, walls dark
but clean as bone. So silent that the unexpected hitches in your breath seem like footfalls
in another room. The reflection of your lantern in the hanging ice dies slowly, persisting
once you leave, reluctant to go. Your path is tracked by that repeated gleam echoing pale
lamplight in the places you have been.
Then deeper, complex more and more, the curved soil of the walls is textured, dark, like
teak. Your breath forms mazes in the air, you are not meant to be here. Then, at the
deepest points, huge boulevards and cathedrals and temples and processions of carved and
columned soil and stone. The earth black and without scent. The ghosts of bells ringing in
the dark.
Vaulted fungal gardens, utterly overrun with ruined and decrepit life, but clearly once both
beautiful and strange. The music of falling icicles tracks your steps. An ash leaf frozen in
ice, one span extended upwards like a sail, gently skeletonised to black in the still air, the
frozen remainder gold. Snow-carpeted rooms far under the earth where no snow should ever
fall. A woman, dead, whose tears are frozen on her face in mazes running down her cheeks
webbed in tiny chains of ice on which a single spider crawls. Life here breeds frost with its
touch and its tears.
Great vaults of darkness, made with such care and guarded for such long ages. A dark
reflection in the ice. Flurries of old un-melted snow laid out in waves upon the floor. The
insect shells arranged in circles round a silent bell. The sound of a leaf falling, but there are
no leaves.
Signs of a deep-thought mighty people long lost to the world. Disappeared, never to return.
And of the things or dreams or spirits of the dead which guard them still.
And treasures - great bells of gold, trees of bronze and silver mounded round with fallen
autumn leaves of platinum and polished brass. The horns of the empty paladins are hung
with bronze, bells shaped like branches, leaves and sycamore seeds. They are still in the frost-
pregnant air. Then after you have long passed on you hear the ringing of their movement as
they stand and march.
Leptoblast unwisely dug for them in Spring: “Nothing, nothing at all. The soil is virgin
and untouched as if nothing has passed but worms. Yet, I did discover, about a hundred
feet down, a natural fault or cavity in the earth in which a man could stand. My guide,
an apparently ancient man whom said only that he came ‘from the winter’, whispered to
me that here, in six months or so, would be a palace of a line of priests that ruled for ten
thousand years and that in the snows of late November, there would be a dark infested ruin,
fearful, yet, still with the memory of greatness. He would say no more. I will not wait here.
If the palace is denied me, what could the ruin hold?”
Those who dig in summer report. . . Signs. Suggestions. Intimations. A small tunnel, quickly
collapsed, a chattering in the earth. But nothing more.
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The Paladins have an isolationist culture, but there are sometimes things they need. Com-
munities nearby keep ready supplies of incense, gems, rare silks and other unusual, beautiful
or useful aspects of the surface world. In Autumn, when they are there, and if they trust
those with whom they deal, the Paladins may consent to trade. They appear always in
the woods, surrounded by falling golden leaves. They will exchange their strange fungal
foodstuffs, unusual rocks and minerals from below and weird insects with specific medical or
chemical properties, for things they may require.
They are not without mercy and if a community is starving they may drop their price and
provide enough for the people to live on.
The most secret thing they trade, one never mentioned to outsiders, is the dead. They will
only do this for very young children. More likely if the child is innocent, dead by natural
accident or disease.
If their price is accepted, they will come from a veil of golden leaves, holding the hand of
the one who died. They are restored in full, with no memory of where they have been,
except, sometimes, they speak of a burning world enfolded in black promontories and a dark
phantasmal shore against a grey sea.
If an unwise parent should dig up the body of the child they buried, they will find it still
there, mouldering in the earth, as well as alive and sleeping under their roof. Both real, both
true.
135

PARADUSA
or NODEUSA
The Paradusae are beautiful, but sad. Relics of a mythic past. There are many in the world,
but they are always found alone, no society exists between them.
An attractive young woman in her late teens, her hair is lank and unwashed, her clothes once
fine, now old, stained and poorly arranged. There are two snakes where her arms should
be. She will live forever, never sicken and never die, unless it is by the sword. She can be
killed.
Bound by curse, almost no Paradusa wants to be where they currently are. They are well
respected by the lower orders of life, who often seek to serve them simply out of instinct, but
they are loathed by civilised peoples in exactly the same instinctive way. None will permit a
Paradusa to live amongst them. Zenithal claims this loathing must be part of the Paradusa’s
curse as: “it can be altered neither by evidence or time.”
Non-settled people such as nomads and most adventurers, feel none of this disgust.
Paradusa commonly find themselves lairing in some draughty and unpleasant ruin, waited
on and served by Goblins, Anemone Men, Strangels, Thug Bugs or simply criminlas and
refugees.
Paradusae are cultured and perceptive, with the wisdom and awareness of the normal human
range. They are not particularly sociopathic and either natural inclanation or the long ages
of life, have lead them to a perspective of calm neutrality. Many seem to hold distant half-
forgotten memories of strategy, deception and war, some inner access to a faded record in
the mind, making them better than average tacticians and leaders. This means they are
often effective rulers for these groups, certainly compared to the murderous thugs that tend
to end up in charge.
These collections of semi-competent waifs and strays hold the Nodeusa in a nearly-queenlike
high esteem a love which in its processes seems, again, like a memory of some other place or
time. “Like children imitating, in their own simple way, an adult ritual after the event.” -
Zenithal. A near-worship of her (to them) irreducable beauty and incredible powers. They
wait upon her and attend her every whim. She will never deny their service. The Paradusa
needs at least some active servants, as she can neither pick up, nor manipulate objects on
her own. Without them she would be reduced to running naked in the fields and using her
snakes to hunt mice.
What the Paradusa really wants are the pleasures of civilisation. Art, music, fashion. Charm
and wit. The attention of the educated mind. Courtiers, books, handmaidens and social
grace. Her servants love her so, they may try to steal these things. But this is the wilderness,
and such activities bring down the wrath of any nearby settled peoples.
Lepdoblast has claimed: “The powers of the Paradusa are born from her origin in myth. I
have confirmed with my researches, they are the product of a divine curse, (though no-one
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knows exactly which one).It was forgotten long ago.” (Typically, he leaves no record of the
scources he consulted, making his claim useless for any future researchers.) The Paradusae
make no comment either way.
Most notably, her gaze can, with some effort on her part, turn the eyes of any meeting it to
stone. This affects only the eyes, not any other part. The eyes solidify into marble spheres
in the head, then usually fall out and roll clattering on the floor. She cannot turn them
back. This is not easy for the Paradusa and can exhaust her if done repeatedly.
Her two snake arms are both vicious and only partially under her control. To force them to
obey takes enormous concentration from her, most of the time they simply attack any living
thing that they can see. Their colouration varies but one will always have some element of
griseous grey and shadowy black in its scales, the other bright aurulent gold and incarnadine
red.When angered, the teeth of the red-gold snake will seem to drip fire.
The venome of the red-aurulent snake is an ichor which bursts into flame on contact with
the air. When this kills it does so in an extremely dramatic way. First flames burst from
the puncture wounds, then, as it flows throughout the body, from any recent battle cuts and
finally, as it reaches the lungs, the victim breathes out flames.
The teeth of the shadowy snake hold a toxin that converts all flesh it meets to twilight. If the
victim ‘dies’ from the poison they are pushed slightly into the world of shadow and become a
kind of mild shade. They can interact with this world as a ghost would, sliding under doors
and oozing through cracks, floating around, yet able to take no physical action. They gain
none of the rumoured remarkable powers of these more-famous undead beings. Again, she
cannot reverse the effect.
A Paradusa will have in her service several of these twilight shades. These are members of
her group who were very old, sick or injured. She converted them to an intangible form and
they keep watch and spy for her. This means she is often very well informed.
Nodusae are close, somehow to shadow, they see into it and through it as if it were light.
wherever their eyes rest the energy or motive force of light drops off by slow degrees, this
turns light into shade, sunlight into twilight, shadow into darkness. She leaves a river of
twilight wherever she looks. She can see invisible and intangible things.
She can, by concentrating very hard, produce a brief flurry of rain, even in desert conditions.
In addition, their presence in an area usually improves the fecundity of both crops and
animals. Since she carries no particular desire for conquest or harm, her existence on the
borders of civilisation actually has a stabilising effect, tying up populations that might
otherwise raid and destroy purely on their own initiative.
The end result of this is that over many years, civilisation usually expands around the
Nodusa’s lair, forcing her to move on to still more distant ruins.
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PARROGUANA or POST LIZARDS
Once heralds of an ancient empire, now all they carry are whispers and fragments over-
heard.
The most common Parroguana is a lizard about the size of a medium dog. They have
unusually straight legs, the drooping stomach typical of their kind, a thick tail and a beaked
head with two large widely set eyes. All Parroguana’s have a frill around their neck which
they raise when they are memorising words. They listen. Not only as animals do, but like
secretaries and spies, they record. And they can speak their message with the felicity of an
intelligent bird, in the voice that delivered it.
Zenithal: “Whatever race or empire bred the ‘Parroguana’, worked its alterations well.
They possess a perfect memory for sound and voice, they can mimic and repeat exactly
what they know and can store long strings of sound precisely over deep stretches of time.
Most remarkably, if a message goes unheard, the creature can breed, and repeat the message
to its children. In this way, the information encoded in the memorised voice can live much
longer than a single beast. And so we see that flesh can outlast stone. They are the only
remnant of that ancient race, even the stones of their cities are dust, but their voices live,
dulled and garbled by time, issue from shadows and the branches of trees.”
Almost everything we know about the Parroguana comes from Ashkotts painstaking and
years-long investigation:
“I believe they were bred to prefer and recognise the taste of certain highly specific insects.
These would then act as ‘postage’, being bought and sold separately, and as triggers for the
creature to record its sound. This explains why Parroguanas are still known to randomly
record sounds they hear, especially conversations. Should a creature carrying no message
happen to eat the correct insect, it will be primed to record. If there is a conversation or
voice nearby when this occurs, the creature will attend. It will go on, carrying this message
until delivered, to someone, somewhere.
Some sub-species are easily triggered to both record and speak. Whenever they eat, they
record, if they later see a human being, they release what they know. These cheap and
common messengers have degraded over time, their voices no longer sound human and the
voices they hold are garbled and strange. They hate to be seen and will commonly speak
from shadows and behind corners. These are the source of the ‘voices’ and ‘ghosts’ that
frighten people so.
But numerous varieties exist. Much more important, are the specialist and pure breeds.
I believe noble houses each had ‘signature lizards’ with complex aspects of defence. Some
spit blood, others have toxic skin or poison bites. The Royal Family had a breed which can
both glide and swim, the semi-mythical Gold Parroguana. The military bred huge pony-
sized Parroguanas to carry vital secrets in safety. These can still be found in the deepest
forest.
These rare and more expensive breeds have not decayed. They were ‘locked’ each responding
to a particular combination of colour, scent and action. They will not, cannot, give their
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message to any simple passer-by and they have passed on and preserved their communiques,
from parent to child, even since that distant time. They speak still in the language of the
Auralent Empire, and each will speak but once. These creatures explain the strange reports
of voices speaking in an ancient language from the trees. If by some freak of chance, a
Parroguana experiences that rare combination of sensations that was bred into them as a
‘lock’, it will give its message.
I have dedicated years to capturing these creatures, learning their language and decoding
the locks that loose their tongues. Through a combination of masks, incense, drugs, a kind
of stage set and various other paraphernalia, I have been able to hear the tongue of the
Auralent Empire. I have even uncovered a little of its language.
Each particular family line of these rare breeds carries one particular message, and each
message is a vital communication between high status members of an ancient culture in the
months and years before it fell. By analysing and compiling these messages, we may look
through time to a sliver of living history.”
Ashkotts major work on the Parroguana and the language of the Auralent Empire made his
name, and broke him. It was clear to several of his readers, if not to him, that in the dying
years of the empire, many of its elite, foreseeing the coming collapse, put significant energies
into stockpiling and hiding financial and magical resources which they intended to recover
later. Many of the‘ rare-breed’ Parroguana messages relate to the location and nature of
these still-hidden stockpiles, or to other useful secrets of that ancient time. The creatures
were hunted savagely and any rare Parroguana from a previously unseen line still commands
en extremely high price.
The species-wide catastrophe broke Ashkott. He never engaged in field research again.
139

PERSPECTIVE DOGS
They are mistaken most often for flies. A circle of black beings, buzzing and rotating in
mid-air above the body of a rotting corpse.
But they do not circle in the hectic promenades of insect kind, but flow and spiral like the
paths of sharks. And they do not fly, but seem to tread the air somehow on three-toed feet.
The buzzing is a low alien growl, heard from very far away.
Perspective Dogs have access to a single direction in space that no-other form of life can use.
The Dog Dimension. This is where they live and lair, the base from which they hunt.
You can see them there. They look as if they were simply very far away. A couple of hundred
yards in the distance. But, should you walk around the space they’re in, and see it from the
other side, they still seem very far away, and so it is if you see them from below, or above,
they are distant from you in a direction you cannot go.
Then, if they notice you, the circling stops, their flat heads raise up, the blank white eyes
roll. They run towards you. Like something rushing down a tunnel along tracks, getting
bigger and bigger, they plunge into reality and attack.
Whatever Perspective Dogs are they are certainly not dogs. They are about the size of a
very large greyhound and have the greyhound’s speed. The upper teeth are just like pins,
the lower teeth are edged. They pierce and saw. Their jaws cannot move side-to-side so they
must grip and shake their prey madly like a crocodile to tear of chunks of meat.
The eyes are blank, white pupil-less circles located oddly on the side of the head. They have
no ears. Each has a short stubby scorpion tail. Far too short to threaten anything at the
front of the animal, most fighters forget about it, dealing with the front. Then, unexpectedly
and almost randomly, the Dogs kick up their back legs high into the air with the front legs
on the ground, and sting their enemy right in the face. The poison can be deadly.
They do not act like mammals, or even work very intelligently as a pack. They will happily
eat each other if one is wounded. They move more like deep sea predators, in curves and
smooth lines. Each acting as an individual. Circling circling circling around you, then
quickly swooping in to nip off flesh.
No living being has aver accessed the Dog Dimension, even by being dragged into it by a
school of Perspective Dogs. The Dogs must always kill first, and then pull in the corpse.
People who have seen this happen say the body they drag, gets smaller and smaller, as they
do, but seems to hang in mid-air, as if it was being pulled underwater, the blood seeping
from it does not fall or flow, but billows in red clouds. The Dogs do not look as if they are
swimming through water, but stepping on solid ground.
When the Dogs are done with their meal they will drag the corpse out of their dimension
and leave it, often circling ‘above’ it.
When seen-as-small, they are at a distance to the world. They cannot be reached physically,
but magic can touch them. Magic-Users can see this strange direction more fully than others
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and can direct their spells into it exactly as if it was simply a normal distance away.
So, a bowman firing arrows at the dogs as they ran towards him in mid-air would find the
arrow simply passing through, bending around, or rupturing in mid flight as it interacted
with the Dog Dimension space. But a Sorcerer casting some uncanny curse, could reach
them directly.
In addition, the dogs cannot use their dimension to bypass things like solid walls or locked
boxes. They can disappear ‘up’ so that they seem like flies circling above your head, but if
they exit the Dog Dimension over a chasm or a deep pit, they will fall exactly like a normal
being. They always orient to gravity as it is in this world. So if they are circling above your
head then you will see their tiny three-toes paws and bellies as if they were on a glass sheet
hundreds of feet above you, they must spiral down to get to you, as if they were running
down a helix of glass stairs.
If you locked them in a tightly sealed room, they would have to come out of the Dog
Dimension and try to chew through the doors. But if there was even a small gap, they could
go so ‘far away’ that their relative size was small enough for them to squirm through it.
They can hunt you from inside the Dog Dimension, but if they can see you, you can see
them. Their sense of smell and hearing is not that good. To interact with you in any way,
they must enter the world fully and become vulnerable to human harm. It is rumoured that
magical swords, spears and arrows can also enter the Dog Dimension, though the hand that
wields them cannot.
They can be trained in extremely crude terms, at least to not instinctively attack a certain
person or group of persons, but they must be constantly fed. They can learn the command
‘kill’, probably, It is unclear if the Dogs really learn it or if that’s just what they want to
do most of the time anyway. Some intelligent and evil beings have tried to train packs of
Perspective Dogs to hunt their enemies. The results have been. . . irregular. Though at least
they do not require much space, as they have a small, strange world of their own in which
to live.
141

PHOENICEOUS WINGS
They are beautiful to look upon, with the grace and ferocious indifference of an annihilating
star before it dies. Each wing is an incarnate fragment of burning artistic inspiration.
Some flit like moths, others are as large as birds or bats. The greatest challenge eagles in
their size. Wings, linked but torsoless, hinged like the leaves of a book partially split from
the pagehead down the spine. The wings are always different, jagged and ragged and razor
sharp, no two shapes the same. Tails wave behind them like the tails of kites, marking their
own sines. They loop like motes of light behind the eye–trapped flies or sycamore seeds
falling through cold air–dashing back and forth, fast and semi-random.
“A feudal battlefield with torn and magisterial flags; a meadow of mirrored flowers in spring;
the shockingly gory remnants of a recent corpse: none match the colours of the Wings. They
exceed in range, intensity and variety-overidden, the words employed to pin them down. And
they are Bright. I have seen flammeous sights: griseous like the dying dawn, flavescent-yellow,
gleaming zinnober, heliotrope and gold. Circles–symmetrical, mirrored on each side–make
common patterns on the Wings. The colours of the circles and the surrounding wings are
oft opposed and it is rare to see a monochrome device–most vary finely, counterposing shade
and tone. Could it be they grow with age? Some Phoeniceous Wings have one, some two
and a rare few have rows of up to six. But what meaning could time have in a place where
time will never pass?” - Zenithal
The Wings do not fly like any creature of this world because from this world they do not
come. They come from the ferocious world of dreams. There uncounted thousands of them
flock and squall, trying desperately to get inside and infect living beings.
“Perhaps a motile stage of life for forms of thought, that, colonised, make up the concious
mind.” - Zenithal
“A tome. A thing whose shadow cast is thought. As men might look upon their own
description in the written word, and smile to see themselves so coded in this chain of sounds
and see their shadow overlook the page, so something higher up may look upon the thoughts
of men, its shadow bright, not dark.” - Leptoblast.
“A fungus of the mind. Overawed by colour? Why? You look upon a parasitic thing.
Organic and derivative of something else. A spore. No more, I have no doubt, in the world
where it is from.” - Ashkott
The Dreamons are the shepherds of the Wings. They guard the vast and churning flocks,
keeping them back from the borders of our understanding. There is no shortage of inspiration
out beyond the walls of space and time; there is enough to burn the heart of the world and
drive every living being insane with the hunger to create. A plague of Phoeniceous Wings
can lead to cities going mad or villages starving to death as everyone tries to create the
artwork burning up their skulls from the inside.
Sometimes, artists sharpen their minds enough to briefly cut through the surface of the world
and the guard the Dreamons set upon it. They let through a Phoeniceous Wing, one that
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enters so swiftly and violently it is scarcely noticed. The Wing gets inside its victim and
expands fractally, taking up as much cognitive space and action as it can. If the sufferer
can encapsulate the idea in material expression, in stone or colour or wood or words–at
speed–then they will freeze the Phoenicean Flame in their head. They can then access the
complex surfaces of its decaying corpse inside their mind as it slowly fractalises into splinters
and dissolves. If they are not fast enough, or cannot catch the form, the Phoeniceous Wing
expands inside their mind, unfolding and colonising their interior thoughts. They become
little more than a living puppet of the art they are to make.
Only when the Dreamons are enraged, or need desperately to find someone that they can
find no other way (if for instance they refuse to sleep), will they deliberately release the
Phoeniceous Wings. A single flock, no more. Somewhere, an artist dies. The Phoeniceous
Wings explode out from their body in a storm of colour, flesh, and blood. They hunt the
Dreamons target. When they find it they will try to enter in. The victim is consumed by
the desire to make the art embodied by the Wing. They will do this above all else, making
them easy to track down–but should this fail to work, they may be simply sliced to pieces
by the wings of the flock.
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PICEOUS PUCCOON
A fat albicant bug, white and slathering. All desire the silk of the Puccoon.
Like a big caterpillar, holding its head as high as you are tall, but fat, the mass of multiple
cows. It’s snow-white body longer than a man can leap. The torso vertical and lined with
three dark-umber psuedodactyl flipper-limbs per side. It uses these to gesture, grasp and
squeeze. Its head a pure nigricant black.
Intelligent, unpleasant and economically-aware, the Piceous Puccoon is primarily a merchant
and maker of deals. In the tips of ruined towers or the dark boles of vast and ancient trees,
it makes its lair, a market-fortress strewn with silken flags. For those who live beyond the
law, or those feeding extra-legal hungers and desires, the place of the Puccoon is one of few
locations safe to meet and make exchange.
The Puccoon itself ensures order with its debt-guards. These are thieves, killers and scoundrels
of every kind, trapped in webs of intersecting debt. Their service signed away, cleverly traded
by the Puccoon so that, should it die, each of its employees will find themselves suborned to
those they hate the most. So they obey and kill in mutual contempt, richly attired in rented
clothes, feasting on borrowed luxuries, slowly sinking deeper into debt, desperate to protect
the Puccoon and avoid their service being traded to their foe. Over these, the Puccoon often
sets Hex Dragoons to strike at its opponents and see its will enforced.
The main protection of the Puccoon is not its strength in arms, but exactness, the bond of
its word and the fact that nothing else can do what it can do. The Puccoon produces its
own silk, squeezing it from a secret gland. Silk in many colours. This keeps it in the black.
Even robbed of everything, it still has something left to trade.
The Piceous Puccoon has one thing it loves more than keeping somebody in debt, more than
it loves gold, its hardest currency of trade, a food it hungers for above all else: the hair
of young girls. Very young. The girls must not have reached puberty and the hair must
be actively growing from their heads. The Puccoon grabs these girls, grasps them in its
pseudodactyls, and gnashes madly at their hair. There, enveloped in the belly flesh of the
Puccoon, they cringe away from its vile mastication and cry out when, in its passion, the
Puccoon cuts and scars their scalp with its hungry jaws. The blood drips down their face
and mixes with the Puccoon-drool.
The Puccoon does no particular damage to the girls. (Other than the trauma of their
captivity and contact with it.) Once bald, it has no interest in them and they are cast aside.
This still leaves them in the middle of wherever the Puccoon is, surrounded by whomever it
is with, and with no gold-price keeping them alive. A poor fortune indeed.
All the silks squeezed out by the Puccoon are beautiful, but some are more-than-normal.
They hold strange colours and fall in folds around the body without reference to their weight
or the position of the ground. To make these silks, the Puccoon must eat the certain-coloured
hair of many girls, (at least a hundred with locks of the same shade to make a useable amount
of silk).
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Girls with red or ginger hair produce erythaen silk, which holds the power of flame like
glass holds light. Fire can be reflected and absorbed, then shaken out like dust flung from a
caul.
Dark girls stripped of hair can fuel Melanic silk. This, when woven as a cloak and hung
upon a wall, cuts open a dark portal, a gate through which no light may reach, that leads to
the closest wall darker than the place that it is hung. A dangerous escape, for it goes always
into greater depth or deeper night.
Blonde girls make Xanthic yellow-golden silk. It holds always the light that shines from gold,
no matter what gates or density of dark and lightless earth may bar the way. The closer
to gold it is, the more it shines, and the greater gold awaits, the brighter is its glow. In a
paupers hands it would be nothing more than dull cornflower faded in the sun, yet when
near or in the midst of a great horde, it burns like a golden dawn. This silk is of most use to
those who have the least, but desired more by the rich. Wealthy potentates may keep their
gold locked safely out of sight, yet, clad in Xanthic silk, still gleam or glow in its reflected
light.
The hair of one hundred sick and dying girls makes a grey cinerious silk which makes the
wearer invisible to death so long as it is worn. Some have claimed this silk, once worn,
can never be removed or torn, making those who wear it loathe their horrid fate, crawling
through the long centuries, seeking for a death that will not come. Others say that if even a
single girl is saved and does not die, the garment so produced will have a flaw, a tiny warp
that only death can see, and that death will enter through this flaw, not fairly or by chance
as death might have come before, but angry, vengeful at the attempted slight, arriving in
such a way as to crush the wearers hopes before their eyes.
Those who wish to trade with the Puccoon for its magical silks must provide, not only the
one-hundred girls of the type required, but a significant cash-payment.
Or a debt.
145

PICKCHICKEN
or THIEVES-EAGLE
The Thieves-Eagle is so stealthy that it may not exist at all. The adults have never been
captured or clearly seen, it may not even be a bird.
Leptoblast: “They appear most like a big black chicken, but slimmer, with a clever head
and feet like chicken hands. And also like a dog but not.”
The eggs of the Thieves-Eagle are illegal and born locked. They are hard and very strong, the
chick inside is so secure that they are simply left lying about in the glens, often in exposed
and obvious zones.
Zenithal: “The challenge of the Pickchicken chick in escaping its own egg is the means by
which the species secures and sustains its unnatural intelligence and stealth. The deliberate
exposure of the egg may be an additional test. The Pickchicken wants its offspring captured.
To escape first the egg, and then whatever lies beyond, ensures that only the most able
young survive.”
The egg of the Pickchicken looks much like a large, white, chickens egg. On closer observation,
a gleam can be seen, of etched and intersecting lines, like the laminated surface of a puzzle
-locked box. And this egg is indeed sealed by cunning art. It is a prison for the chick inside.
To access yolk and grow it must master and solve a series of puzzles and tricks and to be
born it must understand the mystery of its construction in full.
If the egg of the Thiefbeast is kept cool, it can remain quiescent for months, when warm,
they chick wakes up. So, if an egg is placed, for instance, in the armpit of a human being,
the embryo inside will wake and try to escape. Someone pressing their ear against a warm
egg will hear a series of very slow clicks and shuffles as something inside is quietly worked.
(No-one has ever solved a Pickchicken egg from the outside.) Eventually the shell falls neatly
and elegantly apart, like a cleverly designed toy. The baby will emerge.
The young look an odd combination of things. They have small tails, two things which are
probably legs and two more things which might be wings. Its head seems big for its body,
like all young. There are two huge and staring birdlike eyes and a beak. It’s tongue, with
which it does its work, is slim, strong, long and black, with a trident tip.
The Pickchicken will imprint on the first person it sees as it leaves the egg. If that person
then picks up the Pickchicken and gently puts its beak against the keyhole of a lock, the
Pickchicken extends its trident tongue. It will then pick the lock. There is no material lock
it cannot pick and it has a fair rate of success with magical and supernatural locks as well.
It always avoids or deactivates traps.
The Pickchicken is intelligent, independent and matures quickly, over a number of days. It
will not imprint on a person for long. After a short time it will cease responding to the urge
to pick locks, then, without warning, it will disappear. It is also hard to keep alive as it
eats only stolen food. Cultists, spymasters, enthusiasts and many many thieves have tried
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to keep and breed a Pickchicken. In every case the cage is found empty, unlocked from the
inside, and the Pickchicken gone. No cage or cell can hold them.
The egg of the Pickchicken is used most often to aid in prison breaks. It can be smuggled
quite easily in to a cell, is quite robust, and looks to most people like nothing so much as a
big egg. A prisoner can take their time hatching the egg.
The eggs of a Pickchicken are enormously valuable, and totally illegal. Few know of them,
and those who do are either criminals or agents of the law. In either case, possessing one
can be as dangerous as useful. If an owner of an egg does manage to execute a sale without
being arrested or killed, they can become very rich indeed.
147

POIGNANT MEN
“Fear the deadly sadness of the Poignant-Men and fear again their twice-terrible speed.” -
Leptoblast
The Poignant Men are living spikes, as half as tall again as a giraffe, which is a very tall
creature indeed. Slender-black, their skin is leathery and smooth, their feet are hooves.
Their tracks can be mistaken for a horses track: spaced impossibly wide. (“Check for the
missing intervening marks and if you find them not then check above. Look up! Look up!”
- Zenithal.) The limbs of Poignant Men exceed in length, they have a single-jointed leg
which makes up at least half their bodies length and triple-jointed arms that can reach down
almost to their feet . Their sad sad hands are spikes as well, sharp and slender at the tip.
The hand-spikes of the Poignant Men have no true end, growing narrower and sharper as
they go yet, if measured, never truly running out.
Where the arms and body meet is a featureless red pit, the eating eye of the Poignant Man.
They feed sometimes on fruit, but more usually on little living things which they spear easily
from the branches of trees, often at night. They can javelin a bat in flight on nights without
a moon, they can find men in the dark, and other living things as well. But they do not eat
men, or anything larger than their mouth , they cannot tear or chew. Any food they catch
is simply brought up to the eye, it closes once, the Poignant Man stays very still, the food
is seen no more
It’s not clear if the Poignant Men have gender or how they reproduce but mated pairs are
sometimes seen in spring with a gaggle of man-sized rapier-babies running after them.
“I have seen them living quietly in their narrow homes. They like to stay in dried up wells,
deep vertical holes and sometimes in ruined towers. They sleep standing up, the mouth-
eye closed like curtains drawn and when they wake they climb quite slowly out. It is a
sight indeed to see a Poingnant Man emerging from a well. Though the Poignant Men are
speechless and by habit make no sound, it is the silence of attention, not contempt. To
my surprise I found them sensitive, even gentlemanly beings. I never offered even small
consideration but that it was returned with grace. If I bowed, they bowed nobly too. No
hands were shaken but should I doff my cap they would perform a brief salaam, a custom of
the eastern lands I think, most elegant, one hand to the heart then swept out in a graceful
curve, accompanied by a nod. Though they never spoke I do believe they understood and
one never left whilst I was speaking, or took any action to interrupt, but attended every
word with calm restraint. Once, I was offered an apple, which I ate, mistakenly I think
as I later realised that it is their custom to communicate through the complex patterns of
piercings left on various things and that the apple, now I recall, seemed to have upon its
skin a network of tiny holes. How I regret this embarrassing faux-pas! I wonder what the
apple said?” - Leptoblast.
They have a written language of eighteen symbols made of dots. These can be inverted and
re-arranged to give different meanings, the blind can often read these by touch.
They make pointillist art of fine silk of paper sheets, if provided for them, of sunsets or cities
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seen by night as if the living folk were lamps of light, or maps of invisible stars .
It is rare for them to acquiesce to teach the blade, they take no payment and whatever
quality they seek cannot be reliably reproduced, but on rare occasions it has been done.
The student must climb into the branches of a mighty tree while the Poignant Man stands
near. They must leap from branch to branch and deflect their tutors blows as they strike
with lightning speed. The speed and precision of the Poignant Men is a swift and dangerous
lesson. Not all survive, but those who do are famous for their riposte.
All the Poignant men can do is pierce, and this may be the source of the slow madness that
can consume them as the year winds down.
They are known to stand and look upon the dying sun, pausing in whatever they do to turn
and watch it as it falls.
But they keep watching even once the sun has left the sky, as if, for them the sun was slower
or blurred in its endless path. They will stop for a long time and stand motionless, simply
to look upon old or dying things, even sometimes, leaves. This urge increases as the days
grow short.
As Autumn ends and nights close in, some Poignant Men break into a kind of madness.
They may stay very still for a very long time, then pierce people and run away, or dash
towards a crowd and pierce everyone very quickly, often leaving a field of dead in a handful
of seconds, in the centre of which they silently stand. Some stay motionless for months, till
snow falls all around them, then burst into frantic violence.
If you see one standing silently in the winter light, stay back.
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POTEMKIMEN
Potemkimen lie. They hunger for simulation. They hunt men with wooden ducks and fight
elves with drowned knights. This hunger has no beginning and no end, it is a quality of their
life, endlessly re-applied.
Their skin is not their real skin and their face is not their real face. They make costumes.
Each one has a kind of overall of rags and reeds and whatever they can find and each one
makes a mask which only they can wear. In costume, they are about five feet high, with
webbed hands and feet. The masks are of monsters: huge-featured faces with wide white
eyes, earlike frills bursting from each side and a mouth made up of, or hidden by, slack and
slimy tentacle frills.
If you tear a Potemkiman’s costume, or rip off their mask, you will see underneath it, the
features of a Potemkiman. A different one. You still can’t work out how the mouth works.
The Potemkiman will flee madly. They never fight or hunt head-on but only in disguise.
They are freshwater creatures of mist and moor and boggy cave. They lair in the centre
of marshlands or under distant islands in the centre of grey tributaries and deep forgotten
lakes.
They make things. From reeds or mud or wood or anything they can find. The things they
make are simulations of the real. They commonly build ducks. They use the ducks to fish
for men.
They hide just under the reflecting waters of a mere or marsh and allow the wood or wicker
duck to float, tugging it gently to simulate life. The moment anyone tries to catch or grab
the duck they will snag on hidden hooks or be looped in a noose that rapidly snaps shut.
This done, they will be yanked down under the dark and drowned.
Ducks are common, but Potemkimen will fabricate almost anything to aid in the lure and
capture of prey. They are good sculptors in reed and wood, clay and mud, and add a wide
variety of natural materials to create specific effects.
They can built a deer with its head bowed to drink, the half-submerged body of a drowned
girl, a treasure laden cart that seems to be sinking into the mire, a pale human hand reaching
from a hole, and many other things. Anything they have seen they can simulate.
On islands of reed or moss, they build villages of wood and thatch. Though difficult to see
from a distance as they are made entirely from natural materials, their small houses are
neatly and carefully assembled and all different, each baring some particular touch of design.
They stand in a regular circle around a central cooking pit.
They do not live in the village. They never live in it. They hide in hidden holes scraped
from the mud and watch, carefully observing the simulated homes in case somebody comes
the check them out. If anyone tries sleeping there they hunt them in the night. If no-one
comes, the Potemkimen people the village with manikins of people doing people-things, then
they watch some more.
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When not building elaborate lures or empty homes or Potemkiman costumes the Potemkimen
just build things. It’s what they do with their free time.
When they get bored with a ‘village’ they build another one. The centres of desolate swamps,
where no-one would ever choose to go, are populated by densely packed empty homes of reed.
Intermixed ghost villages, some decaying into the water, some still fresh. If preserved and
undisturbed they stretch for miles or empty pseudo-necropolis where the normal living action
of the swamp goes on in the never-lived in streets.
To fight, Potemkimen build great war-puppets which they hide under the surface of the bog,
yanking them vertically into place with hidden ropes in the face of danger. These range in
size from a knight on horseback to gigantic bog-puppets as high as a house which they hoist
laterally out of the muck, streaming with black water and dribbling eels. They are moved
and manipulated by teams of Potemkimen working together with rods and ropes. Often, the
structure of the war-puppet is made from the remains of a real version of whatever it was
that drowned in the bog, so a giant puppet may be made of a real giants bones, or a knight
puppet may be made from a real knights armour, and skeleton inside.
These constructions rarely act with anything like the effectiveness of the real version, but the
Potemkimen move freely and well over and through marsh and lake and so the war-puppets
they wield can act with more speed and effectiveness than the real, heavy, solid version could
in the same conditions.
They swim well and need not come up for air. Victims can be mystified and frightened by
the sight of a dead knight on a dead horse with false thews of reed but a real sword, looming
from ripples of a lough and galloping across its still surface as they try to get away.
The Potemkimen are trapped in a brutal and long-standing territorial battle with the Bog
Elves. A war difficult to either execute or resolve as no-one involved is entirely sure what
is happening. Nevertheless, the two sides are firmly convinced they are at war, the exact
shape or execution of that war being something of a mystery to both of them.
151

POYAZUKA
A flock of pigeons swoops through the broken windows of a city house and becomes a corridor
full of naked blood-streaked men holding razors in their teeth.
They were Knights, once, in whatever home they once had, a silver land with ringing silver
chimes and silver fish shining motionless in slow black streams under the light of the moon.
That home is gone. They are a landless people now, clinging fitfully to life in the shadows of
alien cities and the unwanted corners of towns that are not theirs. And those who were once
knights, and trod the air in starlight on their quests, are knights no more. Much has been
forgotten, and what has not been lost, lives on in dark corrupted form. Chivalry is profit
now, honour is fear, duty is extracted on the cutting edge. Those who sought to serve now
rule in secret with the threat of force. Once, the knights were guided by those somewhat
more than men, voices out of legend, hearts unbound by shape or human desire. Now, there
are are whispers of mutation, of terrible crippled inhuman things wheeled out to bark orders
and spectate tortures, of little voices, things in curtained cages, obeyed to the letter as if
they were the word of god.
The people, trapped in an alien land, voiceless, futureless, with no way home, cried out for
their protectors. And some came. But changed, lessened, with much knowledge lost and
the greatest heroes dead. They tried their best. They made the choice to live, to remain
themselves regardless of the cost, not to sputter out or blend invisibly into this new world.
They resurrected the old forms as well they could and called for a new generation to risk
great sacrifice so that their people would be safe in these strange lands. But time worked
on them, and power, once held in public, now became a secret thing. Wealth, once cast
laughing from the silver spurs of chevaliers, now became the very web of life, always slipping
away and desperately held. And the old ways are not what they were. They have been
branded criminals in every city where they live, but in their own tongue the name they use
is ‘Knight’.
They rule invisibly over certain sections of the city streets, and seem to know more than
they should. Their intelligence networks are famed and feared, few things escape them and
those who betray them die wherever they hide. The attackers are never caught, no witnesses
ever come forth.
The method of the ritual is this:
The loyalty of an initiate must be proved, a monster must be killed. There are no monsters
in the cities now, but there are enemies, many many enemies. Policemen, Judges, witnesses,
those who would betray their people. A single death will do. They are brought to a secret
place at a certain time, it must be underground, with walls of bare earth, and lit by the light
of a gibbous moon. They are stripped, smeared with pigeon blood and placed in the centre
of a circle in the middle of the room. The Knights gather and begin the whispered chant.
During the whole of the ritual, no-one may speak above a whisper or make any louder sound,
or they must die. . .
The head of the clan comes forth. They are always horribly changed. They traverse the
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circle, whispering. (If immobile they are carried). A flock of common pigeons flies down out
of the light of the moon and lands. They will not leave. The initiate must silently catch a
pigeon and shove the whole thing, alive, down their throat. A special silver stick is allowed
to assist with this. (If the stick is not pure silver the initiate will die horribly.) This is the
only other thing allowed in the circle other than pigeons, whispers, moonlight and blood.
The initiate will convulse. The whispering must not stop. They must not leave the light of
the moon. After several hours the initiate will transform into a common city pigeon.
From this day on, they will have the power to transform themselves into a pigeon, and back,
at least once a day. As they grow more powerful more frequent transformations can be tried.
Neither the human, or pigeon form have any special magical qualities. Nothing the Poyazuka
wear will change with them. Many carry small razor blades on elastic neckbands, hanging
down the centre of their spine, or, more traditionally, placed in their teeth whenever they
change. The pigeon carries the razor either between its wings, or in its beak, when it changes
back into a man he emerges with the razor still attached or carried. The ability to carry the
razor in the mouth through the horrors of the transformation without cutting yourself is a
respected one for Poyazuka, and indicates high status. The classical Poyazuka honour duel
took place in flight, the first to touch the ground would bow their head. More recently they
fight as men, naked, with only razors for weapons.
Some do not pass cleanly. They emerge changed. With the forms, or scale of bird and
man horribly blended. They might be a pigeon with human arms and a human mind, a
crippled man with the skull, face and eyes of a gigantic bird, a woman whose flesh tears
open, revealing feathers, a hairless gasping pigeon chick at human scale with the voice of a
thinking being. These beings are always exulted by the Poyakuza. They are always more
cruel and violent than the rank and file, daring and forcing their subordinates into new
acts of violence and fear. For them there is no way out, they can never leave and human
pleasures and a human life are now denied to them. In most cases they can never fly or taste
the freedom of the air.
Ghastly rumours grow around the Poyakuza wherever live. It is said they have a lust for
dark violence and deviant and troubling sexuality. That they twist the culture of that place.
That they entrap the weak and wicked strong in acts of disturbing bestiality. And some, or
all, of this may be the case.
153

PREDATOR SAINT
This is the dream of the thing watching you from the dark. It has followed you since the
beginning and it lives within you now.
There might be a reason for it, a starving madman runs into a group of hunters far from
home and thrusts the bloodied skull of a beast into their hands, a terrible accident take place
or a dark deed is done and then concealed, leaving a scar of secret guilt. Sometimes there
can be no reason at all, the Saint just comes.
They come to places cut off from the world, isolated, locked in conflict with the encompassing
wild, and it begins with a disappearance. Someone walking in the woods does not come back.
And the animals attack. Vaguely at first, without a pattern: songbirds hurl themselves at
children, a family pet goes mad, a farmer is found trampled by his Ox. The natural animals
of the surrounding land become inimical to man, they lose their fear, no matter how small
they may be. Rats do not flee the light or dogs cringe from thrown stones. The apex beasts
now exclusively hunt man, the pyramid of life inverts. This happens slowly, like a slim wire
spooling round a sleeping neck. The forest tightens round the glade, the people now are
trapped. They cannot leave.
Fear rules now. Faith in gods and local spirits dies. A worm of thought is cast, and finds one
particular mind. This person skins a skull, flenses a beast-face, and the blood never dries,
it stays wet, drips, and gleams darkly in the light. They rip an idols head, smashing it from
the shoulders of an old familiar god, and there they place the skull. The village wakes from
tortured sleep to find a new god watches through black eyes. Sometimes the local priest is
killed, sometimes it is the priest that builds the saint. The darkness has a focus now and an
embodied self.
The people turn to fearful worship of the skull, a thing now cloaked in potent supernatural
fear. Only those who serve the Saint are suffered to approach, any other coming near is
flattened to the ground by overwhelming dread. As the community attends, it looks on
them with empty eyes and one-by-one it puts itself into their hearts.
But, though real, the Saint still cannot kill, it has little power to physically affect the world.
It can drive animals mad but it cannot pick up a knife, close a lock or spin a top, it must
work with what it finds within the human heart, and it must feast on flesh in dreams.
Each night after the idol is raised the Saint will get into a sleepers dreams and hunt them
down. It chases them to death in the shape of their darkest fear. As the dream-self falls,
fear stops their hearts. Sometimes the doomed one flees dreaming, racing blindly from their
bed, still asleep and screaming. Sometimes wounds of an impossible death appear upon their
flesh once life has left.
Those who serve the Saint well are always left till last. Those who disobey or fight back are
killed first. This creates the impression that worship of the thing can succeed, that loyalty
can buy life. It cannot. Everyone will die, in time.
In daylight the chief threat comes from the cult of the Saint. Those who serve it freely are
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always the worst. Now they rule the people through reflected fear, taking everything they
ever wanted and were denied. They will fight to maintain the structure of power to which
they have sold themselves. Sometimes the entire village will join them, tying newcomers
down for the New God’s food on in hopes of escaping another night.
To take on the Saint, either its idol must be smashed, or it must be fought and defeated in
dreams, but when the Saint hunts you it does so with every weapon of your own rebellious
mind and few have ever won. Those who can find a way to share their thoughts in sleep
may stand a chance; the Saint can only be one fear at any time. Some say the most cunning
thieves can find the gaps in their own dreams, and escape their own mind in the night
to burgle those of nearby friends, allowing them to share the same dream, and the same
danger
Usually, all that remains is a lone murderer running through the forest, clutching a bloody
skull, listening to a pounding voice that only they can hear, ready to press the smiling thing
into the first fresh hands they find.
155

PRIEST-OF-HOOKS
Like a Priest they come in sunlight, in the middle of the day, and know your name.
“The Priest-Of-Hooks A name bestowed by regular observance of the time. It’s visits lie
along that point of day when many faiths hold their services and gather in their prayers.
When they arrive they come destroying in a whirl, yet their enquiries are familiar. Much
like the Priest of some alternate forgotten faith, waiting violently just out of sight. And of
course, because of its halo of hooks.” - Leptoblast
The Priest is large, ferocious, bright bright red (the mass of three bears end-to-end - L) and
long, worm or snake-like with no limbs and a single head. The mouth inside the head is
huge, with rows of sharp serrated teeth. Arranged around its mouth are eyes shining wetly,
up to nine or ten, and though generally roughly evenly arranged their spacing does seem
somewhat slapdash for a sensing organ.
“I think its transit through the world so rapid, careless and without thought, and its battles
so continuous and fierce, that it loses eyes a-pace, one or two at a time, and that they
continually re-grow as shark-teeth do. No doubt a Priest-Of-Hooks that goes too long without
some chaos and a fight would simply be bestrewn with unwanted and unnecessary eyes.” -
Z
This means the Priest-Of-Hooks has no real ‘up’ or ‘down’ as such. It can be hurled onto
its ‘back’ and go directly on. Its orientation can be described as ‘hooks up’, with the
halo of hooks running above its mouth, or ‘hooks down’ with the halo running below the
mouth.
The Halo of Haeimatic Hooks runs all around the creatures in a line. They are a kind of
unknown bone, metallic, strong and sharp, as well as light. (Haeimatic Hooks are valued
highly by fishermen seeking legendary prey, or hunters hunting quarry strange and wild.
Nothing can escape the hook once caught, or so it’s claimed.) Each hook is crook’d and a
little less than a foot long.
“All the hooks orient the same way, either clock or anti-clockwise. They can spin in an
instant, shifting as one to reverse their run. The means by which they move is a source of
speculation and debate. Like the true position of a running horses hooves, they are too fast
for a human eye to see, generally perceived as a murderous blur, unless they momentarily
pause when their direction shifts. They move like limbs, twisting and turning, skittering
quickly but never truly changing the position of their joint. - Zenithal. Like a loop of rope
or a spinning cartwheels rim, they are simply shifted at enormous speed around the body
from head to tip in one long continuous flow.” - Leptoblast
Whatever its means, the hooked halo gives the Priest-Of-Hooks a murderous weapon and
mode of transport in one. It can move in the sinuous manner of the snake, looping its long
body with several points of contact with the ground, but, should it roll onto its side, its
hooks meet the earth and the Priest can dash rapidly side-to-side by changing the direction
of their flow. The fluid mixing of these modes makes the movements of the Priest almost
impossible to track. It may approach, shift side-to-side faster than the head can turn, looking
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for a flank to take. The hooks protect it from all directions, they can tear a man apart, let
it rip into wooden walls and rage through bushes and trees, fountaining wood as it ruins its
restraints. It can climb via hooks as well, in rather an odd way.
The Priest is shameless, fearless, regular and never stops. It is moving or attacking all the
time. Or moving and attacking. It may be that it has no lair and never sleeps at all, that
its apparent regularity is simply a consequence of its never-ending death-to-death migration.
Though, it has never been recorded as attacking in the night. Only in the day and preferably
also in bright light. It must go somewhere, and do something in the night, but nobody knows
what.
The Priest-Of-Hooks is always making sound. Moaning, screams, a list of chundering sub-
verbal names like a madman reading from a note. It knows the people it attacks somehow
and speaks to them by name in words choked out from its deep, black, broken-bear voice.
There may be simple questions about basic things, shoes, or food, travel or the price of
corn, never more than a few words long. This quixotic social intelligence seems to have no
other use. It never does anything else subtle or complex, but just attacks. The answers to
its questions or its calls have no effect, it goes relentlessly on, no matter what you say or
do.
No-one knows from whence this social information comes. Many suspect the Priest is in the
service of some darker power, but, no evidence for this has ever been found. Its assaults
have no particular pattern or plan, except their meaningless clockwork regularity.
“I strongly suspect the creature is covered with hooks. Not just the hooks we see, but more.
Many many more. The shifting of the hooks we see is a simple re-arrangement of the hooks
we don’t. And these hooks. The unseen hooks. Catch thoughts, or fragments of them. Only
a handful of flakes from the blizzard of thought. But what do people think of Themselves.
But each person only has one self. Not a great enough density of flakes to trace.
Each other. There we see the key. When many think of one, in one location, at one
time. Then a few random fragments of thought might give a time and place to hunt”. -
Ashkott
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THE QUARYNX
A fearful thing, rare, magical, more dangerous and desired than the Unicorn, but promising,
in its way, a symbol of white purity. Or death. It is a counter-hunter, only able to prey on
those who hunt it first.
Lion-sized, a quadruped, with black or blue-black melanic fur. It has two tall and slender
ears that stick up like two spikes, straight from its head. These ears hear many things.
The Quarynx is strong, its torso and shoulders muscled enormously, the rear tapers to slim,
powerful legs. The rear feet of the Quarynx look almost like simple human feet. Its front
feet look like black-furred human hands. It rarely grips with these or uses them to wield,
but only walks, graceful, silent and fast, its fingered feet gently and purposefully finding the
path. It’s touch caresses the earth like a sculptor feels their clay. The tracks of the Quarynx
can be easily mistaken for those of two men walking strangely, one going forwards on their
hands while the other, behind them goes on bare feet and holds the feet and body of the
first off the ground. The hands can strangle though and that is how the Quarynx kills its
prey. With its hands around their throat, face-to-face, at the end of a long hunt.
The head, and face, are a strange and frightening sight, if your luck is running thin the
creatures face may be your own.
The thickly muscled shoulders of the Quarynx bear a head shaped and sized like that of a
man. The head holds a face. The eyes are always dark, the lips are slightly parted. The face
is always still and its expression does not change. The face is always a blank niveous white
and looks as if it might be bone, or a stiff silk mask. The features on the face are not its
own. They belong to someone else, a particular person.
This person is often a hunter, usually, but not always, a man. They are always a character
of potency. They are strong and brave, or fierce and driven, violent people. They are one
whose capacities imprint themselves on those around. They are one who enters first the
room. They are those who dare. They are respected by the many. They are held in esteem
by the simple people of the town.
The Quarynx is a living expression of the inner darkness of that one whose face it holds.
Anyone who sees their own still white face staring back from the head of a Quarynx is
instantly consumed with a passion to hunt and destroy it. They know, in some deep unspoken
way, that to hunt and kill the Quarynx is to chase down and annihilate the darkest aspect of
their own selves. The more forthright and heroic the individual in question is, the less able
they are to tolerate the darkness in their own soul, the more obsessive and ferocious their
chase will be. They simply cannot tolerate its existence in the world. One or the other must
die.
Even for those of a calm and neutral temperament, the knowledge of the Quarynx nags at
them constantly, a kind of living wound they can never let go. Like an important memory
hovering on the edge of thought, yet never cohering.
No-one knows what evil people feel on observing their own, white, death-mask face of the
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body of a savage beast. Perhaps it makes them laugh. Perhaps the Quarynx never has their
face. It might be that knowing that something in the darkness mimics them, and draws its
power somehow from their own soul, enrages them and draws them by a different lure to the
same doom.
Even news or rumours of the Quarnx carry some of this compelling drive. Those who hear tell
of a beast holding their face are hooked by curiosity, at first, and then a nagging worry which
grows and grows and can only be released by seeking out the thing and seeing, first hand, if
it does indeed wear their seeming. Some try to escape even knowledge of the Quarynx. The
moment the stories start, they flee to another district, another country, another life. But no
matter how far they run, the Quarynx will follow, at a distance. It will never chase them,
it will let itself be seen and the rumour and story of its face drift after them and surround
them, and eventually, they will come to it.
The Quarynx is deadly, but it can only feed on the flesh of those who hunt it out of choice.
Which makes it completely safe, so long as the meeting is an accident. The moment you
actively seek one out, your flesh becomes palatable to it and the longer your search goes on,
the more delicious you become. The Quarynx can survive on those prideful or stupid enough
to seek it even though theirs is not the face it wears, but the one it truly hungers for is that
particular person whose features it counterfeits.
To kill the Quaynx is to kill the darkness in the human soul and when a Quarynx dies the evil
in the heart and mind behind the face it mimics will die too. Anyone who can successfully
hunt and kill a Quarynx wearing their own face, will destroy the darkness within themselves.
And anyone killing a Quarynx bearing the face of another, will change the soul of that person.
They will become Good. The evil they have done will remain within the white empty head
of the beast. But the face will not decay. This person may walk the earth if they wish, doing
good deeds, but the white mask of the Quarynx will remain as a symbol of all they are not,
of all they deny. Are they truly good? Or just half a person that persuades themselves they
are a whole?
To own the Quarynx mask of such a one is to hold a strange kind of power over them.
If they place the creatures face upon their own, they are restored. In this case they gain
complete self knowledge. None who do this remain unchanged, but its results are impossible
to predict. Many great Saints and great Monsters have been blamed on the hunting of the
Quarynx and its consequences.
But more usually those who hunt do not return, the Quarynx is fierce, silent, cunning and
fast, and it holds all the capacity for harm of the one whose face it wears.
No-one knows if there are many, or few or one. No-one knows if the Quarynx changes its
face, or if each is born with only one. It is a creature of myth and terror and to encounter
one is to slip into the world of legend and tales.
159

QU3RST
The flags of Qu0rst are tongues licking the air. It is alive, horribly, beneath the soil. Its
walls are cartilage and its foundations are of bone, its limbs are bridges and its corridors are
open throats.
Qu0rst is one of the Horizon Towns, the towns beyond sight, each different and each found
by secret ways. Qu0rst is an open secret, everybody knows it is a living thing. Opinions
differ on what kind of living thing it is. Some say a gargantuan worm, projecting miles under
the earth, with only the tip of its town-shaped nose exposed. Other stories claim that Qu0rst
expands from somewhere else, its flesh folding impossibly from some other zone, carried away
then pressed again into the surface of the world in a different place, that Qu0rst circles the
world continually, nosing against it like a wolf chewing at the corners of a door.
Some say Qu0rst is growing slowly over time, others say it shrinks.
How it works is this:
A red flag curls up through the earth and tangles in the air. The flag is wet and moves
against the wind. A bulge forms in the soil, it crowns and breaks, the tallest tower of Qu0rst
emerges slowly from the ground. The towers of Qu0rst are coloured like a butchers shelf,
red striated muscle, pink meat, pale cartilage and gleaming bone.
Then a second, then a third, all around emerge and extend the revetments of flesh. Doors of
bone and sphinctered portals crest the broken ground. The towers thicken from their narrow
points. The suburbs clamber out: tumescent slums that thicken round the Qu0rst-towers
base. Not every home-cyst has a door of bone. This close to the ground, some portals are of
wood, carpenter’d like normal doors, adapted to the walls of flesh. Not every home is fully
part of Qu0rst. Some are weird survival-sheds, attached to Qu0rst with chains and hooks
like hovels stapled to a whale. Some of the wooden doors have breached, cracked and broken
in, the empty rooms are scoured within. Some of the chains are empty, hooks have snapped,
attachments broken off. Wherever Qu0rst goes beneath the ground, whatever dark chthonic
sea it rides, it is not safe.
Something carried in the towers, behind the doors of bone, in Qu0rst-proper, will survive
the trip. Something hanging onto Qu0rst, or only just attached, may not.
Finally the shaking earth subsides, the towers scab and dry in the cool air, or bleed a little
in the rain. The limbs of Qu0rst extend, bridges snapping open like saluting arms to link
the towers above the ground. The doors of bone unfold, the Qu0stors venture out to see the
world. They beckon happily. Within are rib-cage halls and winding tracts, black eusophageal
rooms where stolen wealth of every kind is stacked.
Qu0rst is a city of thieves, the ultimate escape no outside law can reach. “There’s always
Qu0rst” they say, whenever things go wrong, and they’re right, there always is. If you can
find it, you can stay. The only government of Qu0rst, is Qu0rst.
The economy of Qu0rst is theft and extra-legal things. All thieves have heard of Qu0rst
and as soon as it emerges from the ground, the messages go out. Soon, from every compass
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point, in ones or twos or caravans of crime a cloud of scoundrels closes in on Qu0rst. Dark
pavilions bloom around the slums of meat. A raucous market grows where anything at all
is bought and sold.
And soon, as if shadowing the thieves, comes law.
All governments loathe Qu0rst, home of untrappable radicals, traders in slaves and con-
temptible drugs, and want it dead. As soon as its location is found out, forces muster,
promises are made and aims are set to trap and wipe out Qu+rst for good.
It never works.
Before the siege begins the Qu0stors will announce “It’s time to leave!”
You have second now to choose, escape, or stay?
Outside Qu0rst thieves scatter like a flock of frightened birds, amongst them swoops the
oncoming arm of the law. Within, there are the built cysts, the manufactured homes attached
to Qu0rst, or the rooms with wooden doors. The prices there are steep and the journey may
be long, and dark. Or will you try the doors of bone?
Qu0rst takes no taxes and it has no entry fee. To ride with it beneath the earth, is to be
safe forever more. Few mortal powers can touch you, inside Qu0rst.
The Qu0stors, those who ride, will welcome you. They seem happy, whole and well fed,
oddly attired, as if woken suddenly from bed. All are enthusiastic about Qu0rst, “A beacon
of liberty” they say. Though they are somewhat short on details.
And they have something extra too. Each Qu0stor has a grey-pink tube of flesh which
grows out from their neck and disappears down down beyond the doors of bone and below
the sphinctered gates, no non-Qu0stor has ever seen its end. If you ride beyond the doors
of bone when Qu0rst sinks below the ground, when you emerge, you will be a Qu0stor
too.
161

RAPTOR CHEVALLIX or VALKYRAPTOR
The titian Centaur-Saurians arrive come like sunrise on a burning field. They hate nothing,
fear nothing and are immune to all the petty evils of mankind. Greed, jealousy, envy and
contempt find no purchase on their souls. And they do know that all living things that
walk upon the earth are their rightful prey. They are truly noble beings. Nothing could be
more beautiful, more glorious or more feared. Savage, wonderful and more bloody than a
conquerors dreams.
These astonishing combinations of form combine the toughness and aggression of a predatory
saurian, the speed of a galloping horse and the wits of a far-seeing long-lived amoral amazon.
They are extremely intelligent, ferocious, highly skilled and they eat people. Sometimes. Not
as a matter of course, but, maybe if they were hungry, or there were just too many humans
around.
Ashkott adds this: “Though they all claim to be carnivorous, in fact they can survive on
fruits and vegetables for some time. This is considered extremely embarrassing low-status
behaviour. ‘Fruit-Sucker’ is a common insult.”
They are the height of a mounted man. The main body and legs scaled and shaped like
horse-formed lizard-beast of ancient times, and from its neck, the naked torso of a woman
grows.
This flesh is armoured. The thickest plates along the back, gradually tessellating smaller
moving to the feet and arms, on the human form the scales become so small, they are almost
indistinguishable from skin.
Each has strong bony ridges rising up directly from its spine, and running up in smaller
shapes onto its human neck. These defensive plates are longer than they are wide and rise
directly up, like flames. The more violence a Valkyraptor survives, the larger and sharper
its spines.
The tail has at its end, a savage cluster of sharp hooks or spikes which sweep easily with the
force of a two-handed mace. The feet are all clawed and can be used to stab or kick.
Their hands are small, sensitive, exact and clawed. Their incisors are spiked and all their
other teeth are sharp, but flat-across, like human teeth. They sometimes file these into
points.
Their faces are always beautiful and scarred and the hair of their heads is hundreds of
ultrafine feathers like the tail of a tropical bird. This hair can twitch independently, raise
or lower when aroused, making it seem alive. It comes in every pigment of the plumage of
birds and every Valkyraptor is exceedingly proud of her feathered mane. The scales of each
Valkyraptor are differently coloured but most common are variations of flammeous red and
aurulent gold. Whatever the base colour the tonal variations look like the discolouration of
living flame.
They could read and write if they wanted to learn, but few do. They can make and use
weapons and tools, but rarely need to. They sing, in voices deep and soft, and their culture
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is written in their songs and passed this way. They love beauty, especially of worked weapons
and young men. Often on meeting especially beautiful men they will caress and whisper
to them, offering to carry them off for unknown purpose. They are oddly indifferent to
women.
They come carrying bows, which they wield with skill and a far-seeing eye. Just as common
are spears, javelins, bolas, nets and long piercing blades which they drive into the torso from
behind as the target flees, hoisting them high and shaking the shaft so blood rains down,
mingling triumphal singing with the victims screams. Shields are not used and armour rarely
worn, but some older Valkyraptors clad themselves in fine brigandine and sweet examples of
the armour-makers art.
They move restlessly across the plains, in war bands or small tribes, fearing nothing, regard-
less of the numbers or the size. Rarely, they combine and league in awesome hordes, striking
terror into Empires, Titans and invincible beings. They do not build themselves, though
could if they desired. Instead they sack or extort cities, demanding gold, gems and the most
beautiful young men. These they seize and carry of whooping and laughing, they are never
seen again. No-one knows how the Valkyraptors reproduce.
Should they happen upon a battle already begun, their spirit and contempt for fear may
lead them to side with the losing side, purely out of joy and the danger of the deed.
Lebtoblast remarks: “They do recognise and respect, to a degree, qualities of Virtu, in the
ancient sense, physical courage, élan in combat, grace as well as politeness and process in
war, though this is more common of older leaders, young Raptor Chevallix are more irregular.
If these qualities are combined in a male subject of unusual beauty, they can become quite
engaging, though I find this puts the man in question in a privileged, frightening and rather
dangerous position.”
Ashkott takes a more practical approach: “They are killers. Fast, smart, ferocious and
skilled, with a strong warrior culture and imbued with many natural tools of death. Do not
fight them on their chosen ground. I recommend at least three experienced fully armoured
knights against one Raptor Chevallix to guarantee the possibility, not the certainty, of a
kill.”
163

RIVER-SURGEONS
The River Surgeons will always negotiate, life for life. Yours, or another’s.
They are probably fish. Bipedal, with a thick tail that turns smoothly into its torso like
the tail and body of a newt. Short stumpy strong rear legs and exceedingly long sinuous
forelimbs that reach from the shoulders all the way down to the ground.
The upper face and head are primitive, composed of one large bony plate, an un-refined form
with a simple and savage-seeming jaw. Expressionless, the lower jaw moves only vertically,
up and down, they cannot chew. There are sensing pits on the upper skull which could
be ears and further curls on the back of the head that could be horns or strange organs of
perception. Between the low shoulders and the bony head are a series of plates that shift
like layered gorgets.
When you see them it’s difficult not to imagine them in the water, the strong pointed
head facing directly forwards, the forelimbs stowed smoothly along the sides, the whole
thing rippling and curving fluidly fishlike as it swims. From a distance they look like giant
primitive bone-headed newts. Then they reach the shore and stand up and waddle towards
you and you see the face, and the jaws.
They are excellent healers and trauma surgeons. No other signs of culture have been
found.
It is a great mystery. How, or when, or where did they learn this art? Many answers have
been given. ‘A race of corrupt Doctors forced as punishment into bestial shape’ say some.
‘Animals’ say others, ‘raised up by an ancient culture to doctor to its slaves’. Or ‘just mutant
newts with a weird cultural quirk’.
To summon the River-Surgeons, simply bleed into a river where they live. Before it hits the
water, mix the blood with honey or with salt. Many living things bleed into the rivers and
the Surgeons smell them all, blood alone is not a summons, the deliberate mixture of blood
with honey or with salt is rare and distinctive enough that when they taste it they will know
exactly what it means.
Depending on river and its flow, they will come within a couple of hours. They will expect
payment upfront. Payment consists of a large living warm-blooded thing, about the size of
a large pig, or man, alive and tied up at the waters edge, incapable of fighting back. The
Surgeons will snatch the creature away to the centre of the river, but keep it afloat, then,
one or two will approach and climb out of the water.
They will commit one act of healing for each life offered. Their primary skills are trauma
surgery and they will accomplish this quickly with their sharp front claws. Infections are
dealt with by their saliva, which they drool all over any wound. More complex problems
will require more thought. When thinking, the River-Surgeon sits, very still, at the patients
feet, looking at them and doing nothing. If a cure cannot be created from nearby plants and
herbs, or delivered easily in a handful of grunted words, they will simply leave and return
the ‘price’, still alive, to the river bank.
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It’s a good idea to bring a range of herbs and medical supplies to lay out by the patients
side. The Surgeons neither make nor carry tools, but they know what they are and how they
work. They can smell or taste the medicinal properties of any organic substance after one
exposure, even those properties so far unsuspected by man. Though their claws are scalpels
they can use a needle and thread if one is presented.
Once the cure, or surgery is complete, they will return to the river, pull the ‘price’ underwater
and eat it alive. The surgery always works.
As well as being doctors-for-hire, the River Surgeons are also apex predators for the fresh-
water environments where they dwell. They have no compunction at all about preying on
intelligent beings. They will never take more than they need to live and are always willing
to make a deal. If a group finds itself cut off and outnumbered, they can buy their way out
of trouble the same way they could buy healing. One living warm-blooded being, the size of
a large pig, or man, tied up and helpless. give them this and they will let you go.
Those who make their living by the river have a complex relationship with the Surgeons.
Useful, fearful, monstrous, rational, reliable and savage. Everybody knows it’s a good idea
to keep the Surgeons fed, and everybody knows to keep back the fattest pig in case of
sickness.
165

RUBIOUS FLUKE
A happy parasite on the nasty crackles in the human heart.
Intelligent and magical, they can change their size at will, though they prefer to be about an
inch long and a fingernail-wide. (“It is well that they do for they live inside the brain.” - Z)
A rubious ruby-red they are, as the name suggests, with a ring of azure eyes, evenly spaced.
Their mouth opens like a five-petalled flower. Inside are layers of tiny teeth. Despite the
odd articulation of their jaws they usually seem to be smiling. They can speak if they wish,
in a high piping voice that echoes oddly in the listeners mind.
They eat emotion in its rawest form and make their homestead where it grows.
“The human brain! From reported conversations with the Fluke, and from reassembling
regrettable exploded heads, I have unveiled the seat of primal passions in the mind. They
prefer, and curl around, a small nutty protrusion at the base and centre of the brain. This
they call their ‘feast’, their cornucopia of nourishing thought, their ever-replenishing meal.
And from this I deduce the self-same nodule is the source of those emotions and overwhelming
primal drives: fear, disgust and rage. For it is on these they feed.” - Leptoblast
The worm requires these emotions to survive, so quietly encourages the host to acts and
situations where fear, rage and disgust would normally be felt. It then happily eats these
feelings as they run through the mind but before they are expressed. The sensation is
quixotic. The host experiences something that should make them angry, sick or scared.
They feel. . . something, perhaps a memory or ghost of the old drive. Then the worm finishes
its meal and they go numb, numb at least to these primary emotions, the host of a Rubious
Fluke is no longer afraid, no longer disgusted and generally not very angry. Other feelings,
not eaten by the Fluke, usually expand to take up the mental space.
The Fluke-effect on human minds is difficult to predict. It depends on inner nature, on
what’s left inside the head when fear, disgust and rage have left. And on the opportunities
to act. These are different for us all.
Very generally, good people get better, bad people get worse. The peasant does not fear their
lord, those who hate the other no longer feel disgust. Some do good for sake of love and
some from fear. If somebody’s morality was based on fear then that morality is gone. The
inner nature is pursued without the goad of fear or its restraint. Some become great heroes,
others eat their neighbours. Potentially dangerous and horrid situations are sought out, and
if they are not found, and if the base character is amenable, they may be made.
The Fluke is reasonable and can be negotiated with. It can hear and see everything the host
can hear and see. It will make a reasonable defence of its position. It cannot control the
mind, only suggest. With a huge amount of self control the host can lock themselves into an
utterly boring series of events in which no fear, disgust or rage are felt. If they keep it up
for long enough then eventually the Fluke will starve. If a situation is very desperate indeed
the Fluke will sometimes exit through the nose, grow to its full size, and battle in the hosts
defence, before trying to get back in its head.
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The Fluke prefers to live inside potent and capable types, they are more likely to survive the
dangerous lifestyle that in quietly encourages them to have. But it can also enjoy fearful,
angry or easily disgusted folk as they make a good meal. As it grows inside the head, the
Fluke magically adjusts its size, but this has limits. Should it survive long enough its lifecycle
ends in one of three ways.
It can explode out of the skull in one go, killing the host. This is not preferred, it puts the
Fluke in danger and deprives it of a home. Though it can happen by accident if a host is
exposed to staggering levels of other-natural fear, disgust or rage.
It can come to some agreement with the host, leaving it and sneaking off to crawl inside a
bigger head. Something huge and mythical perhaps.
Or it can enter its reproductive stage.
In its reproductive stage the Fluke impels its host to produce a particular effect. It seeks to
create a grouping of images and ideas so distinctive and intense that they are carried into
dreams. By tracing these dreams in the night the Fluke can find the sleeping brains it needs
to mate.
This grouping must be something that would never normally be thought. For instance: blue
burning giraffes. Or: a broadsword made entirely of eyeballs, stinking of mint.
It’s means of producing the effect are various. It will influence its host to mention, create,
build, display and act out the idea whenever they can. When the host is sleeping, the Flukes
desire to breed may be so great that it can take them over in their sleep, sending them
stumbling about at its command.
When a target is consumed to much by this idea that they dream of it the Fluke will find
their sleeping mind. In their dream they will see a gigantic continent-sized worm with ruby
eyes. The worm will ask them if they wish to live without fear. If they say yes, or agree in
any way the Rubious Fluke makes love to their brain in the night. After a few days a new
small fluke is born inside the cranial folds.
Naturally the Rubious Fluke wants to find the brains of people who will say yes. Its means
of doing this are various. It may cause the host to haunt sewer workers, soldiers, surgeons,
prostitutes. Or, if the host has become dangerously immoral they may simply inflict intense
and negative emotions upon a captive mind, taking care to link the horrors to the Flukes
idea-key. The more horrible the tortures and indignities become the more likely the captives
are to say ‘yes’.
167

SANGUINE CRANE
The Sanguine Crane is very beautiful, it drinks only blood and sucks secretly at wounds late
in the night.
It’s about four feet high, like a large conventional Crane, with translucent feathers and
transparent skin. They glitter wonderfully in the evening or the dawn and the veins and
inner organs of the Crane are clear to see. Though it stands exceeding still, its blood can be
seen pumping, and the fluttering of its heart. To catch its prey the Sanguine Crane makes
use of just one claw, which it keeps poised and bent while it rests on the remaining leg.
It strikes small targets, then takes them to its sharp, slender syringe-like beak. It ducks
its head to quickly pierce the heart and drinks the bright-red arterial blood, which can be
clearly seen getting sucked up into the Crane.
The secondary weapon of the Crane and the means of its secrecy, is the single, long and
motile feather of its tail. This translucent almost-invisible whip, weeps a numbing poison all
the time, which condenses at the tip, dripping slowly while the Crane awaits the movement
of its prey. The Crane can cut a small animal with the edges of its tail, numbing them
completely while it feeds. With larger targets it can numb a section of their body while they
sleep, preventing it from waking while the Crane pipettes its liquid meal. The speed and
translucency of the tail make it hard to dodge indeed.
As the sun rises, staining the horizon white, the Crane alights soundlessly, seeking animals
who are asleep. A stroke of its poisoned tail will numb the flesh, the needle beak is driven
in, aiming for the artery or heart. The Crane drinks deeply. Sometimes the pale bloodless
bodies of large mammals or men are found un-waking on the ground before the sky turns
blue. If the Crane has gorged too much it may be hopping fatly away, toored and swollen
to escape by air. Cranes generally hunt alone, limiting the damage they can do, but mating
pairs are common in the summer months.
The Sanguine Crane is much admired by those with too much money and those for whom
too much is not enough. Cloaks and dresses of its feathers fetch a high reply in golden coin,
wrangled into risqu translucent fashion trends and subverting, elegantly, codes of modesty
designed to suppress vice.
Considered emblematic is the Crane, through its vampiric habits and the grotesque beauty of
its living self, of certain kinds of gorgeous and contemptuous wealth. Badges of aristocracy
in all its aspects, good and bad. (“Source of the popular Jukai malapropism ‘Aristorkracy’” -
L) They show up in the heraldry of recent noble lines and are burnt in effigy by revolutionary
mobs. Possessors of a live and captive Crane are among the elect indeed, and often among
the despised as well.
(“Crane eggs are translucent as the Crane itself and beautiful indeed, the foetal crane can
be seen developing in the reflective deeps. I observed this, (from a distance, I was unable to
get very close to the lady in question) in a living egg, incorporated into a piece of jewellery,
made to set off an outfit of translucent Crane feathers and flammeous silk. An impressive
social coup and a rather depressing waste of natural wonder.”- Z)
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Walking a pair of Sanguine Cranes on a golden leash is a sign of not only the greatest wealth
but the least possible shame.
The toxin that seeps slowly from its tail can have a secondary effect on larger creatures
that survive its touch. They may find themselves imbued with a kind of irreverence towards
danger and death, and a hunger for the violent act. Violence is beauty for them now, until
the drug wears off. This quality exists so that, should the crane miss its mark on the initial
strike, the target will find itself drawn back into the danger zone, to gaze upon the crane
once more, caring little for its life.
The sale of Crane feathers or their toxin as a drug is illegal, and commands a high price
from the aristocrats that make up its primary market. More vital in the eyes of some, Crane
toxin opens social doors to scenes that would otherwise be closed.
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SARCOLINE REDEEMERS or NAVIGATING CRABS
These creatures have been cursed by the sea from which they spring.
Redeemers haunt the shore. Found on stormy cataclysmic lines of broken stone, cliffs and
caves attacked by waves and the punishing tide. They hang, clambering and leaping happily
from perch to perch while the sea broils its wrath, attending to their steps and waiting for
a mis-timed slip. Fearless of the storm and spew, tsunami-bound they drop and slide into
the sea-swell, hugging the curve of the carrying wave, letting it dab them back onto the
rock-ledge where they leaped, clinging on, then falling more for fun.
Often they migrate. They cannot let the sea catch up with them for long. Before the seasons
done they will move on. They will swim from shore to shore, or even range long pathways
over land, seeking out a living spot where the tide bites at the rock.
They seem semi-intelligent at first, and sometimes use improvised tools, but, clever and
suspicious, they are not easily observed, and will dumb-play to delude the viewer. Hard to
trap, distract, fatigue or fool, they are a grim foes to those whose cold inner eye decries their
smiles and childlike masks.
In their accustomed crouch they are the size of big fat boys, but upright they can reach five
feet in height. They are shelled in sarcoline-pink, whose vividness varies from cooked lobster
to temperate-skinned mankind, but their body shape is that of a short-limbed dog. Or a
thickset ape, squat and strong. The tail is newtish, running directly along the bodies length
and poking out a bit behind.
The limbs along its front are long like arms of apes, articulated like a careful crabs. Two
fingers grasp. The legs behind are short and strong and curved. It walks upright like
kangaroos do, but even in this position its arms are long enough to touch the ground.
Everything above the waist is shelled, the tail and lower legs flex freely and are bare. When
swimming, they stow their long front limbs along their sides and, head down, use their tail
and legs as flukes
The head is like a baby’s, large and round, with a high crown. Two huge blue fishlike eyes
are placed on either side. The mouth is crablike, troubling to observe and utterly blue inside.
If and when it bleeds its blood is also blue. The construction of their smooth shelly domes
of the head and the interlocking plates of their mouth makes it look, to human eyes at least,
as if they smile.
The Navigating Crabs are loved by sailors and loathed by natural creatures of the deep.
Opinions on their origins are wide, but, typically, Leptoblast reports them all as verified
fact: “True, once they were other than they were now. True, by crime, mischance and dark
heroic act they have offended that immortal power. True! Cursed they are, enchained in
durance vile in this strange form! And true, yes also so, that they are exiled to the margins
of their home, searching without end for some forgotten subterranean zone that once was
theirs! Only to be found again at the end of days when the seas give up their secrets and
ancient lands rise once more from the deep!”
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The Navigating Crabs are predated heavily be natural creatures of the ocean and the attacks
of these creatures grow in intensity and aggression the longer the Crabs stay in one place.
After several months their position becomes untenable and the local ocean, now home to
numerous sharks, octopi and various other dangerous oceanic predators, is now a hazardous
zone. After the Redeemers leave, the ocean will slowly calm, the predators will disperse and
relax, storms and tides abate.
The precarious life of the Navigating Crab has dulled their spirit not at all. They are often
seen leaping and gambolling about on the cliffs, playing for no reason.
They take some significant pleasure in rescuing intelligent creatures from the sea. They will
pull swimmers out of rip-tides, assist trapped climbers on ocean cliffs, they hurl themselves
onto ships in storms just before they hit a rocky reef. Helmsmen know that when a crab
lands on board it is time to steer aside. They have been known to bring food to shipwrecked
sailors trapped on isolated isles. They have guided lifeboats home. Their location on rocky
storm-swept shorelines puts them in an excellent position to do this kind of thing and because
of it they are loved by sailors and communities that depend on the sea.
Omnivorous and clever predators, they will hunt small animals and men if they think they
can get away with it. They will rescue people from the sea, but not in general. Anyone lost
or trapped on land is as likely to be chased and eaten alive.
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THE SHAMEFUL BEAST or WRETCH APES
The Shameful Beast is known and loathed. Most dangerous when not provoked. Drive them
off with curses but aid them at your own risk. If they achieve anything at all, they may tear
you apart in a rage.
The creatures look almost like people, with thick central trunks and long limbs, both thin
and strong. Their teeth are huge, triangular and pointed like a sharks. At rest their snaggled
interlocking teeth are exposed in blunt letterbox mouths. The jaws don’t work like human
mouths. When they become excited or especially ashamed, their mouths form perfect circles
ringed by pointed teeth, through which they hoot and moan, a disturbing an inhuman sight
and sound.
The eyes are large and round, nose snubbed, they go naked but for splatterings of rough
black fur.
They are roughly as intelligent as a man, and many think that if they wished to they could
do everything that mankind does. The fact that they refuse this enrages a certain kind of
person. The Scrapulents live low degraded lives out in the wilderness, without technology,
tool use and the wit or will to even seek a cave in which to lair. In storms they simply curl
up on the churning ground, hooting and moaning. When the storm has passed perhaps some
Beasts have drowned or died of cold, the rest move on. Their stocky bodies and difficult
lives make them tougher than the average person.
Vile creatures of extraordinary and poetic awareness, they have been cursed with perfect
self knowledge. They know exactly how horrid they are. They choose to live in the most
degrading and awful ways possible because any gesture towards bettering their lot would be
a terrible and unforgivable pretence and hypocrisy. They are awful and they know they are
awful, that is all they can ever be.
They have a keen sensitivity to the beauty of the natural world. Sometimes they will go
en-masse to very beautiful places just to sit there and feel the deep discontinuity between
the overwhelming harmony of nature and the basic horror of their lives and forms. Then,
out of shame, they will foul the place. Then, seeing what they have done, they will feel even
more shame. Those visiting out of the way beauty spots, or enjoying the grandeur of a silent
woodland or abandoned temple, will often be disturbed by the howling and ruination of a
pack of Shame Beasts.
The Shameful Beast is usually non-harmful towards most beings, but becomes dangerous in
a few circumstances.
Firstly if treated with respect or kindness by, for instance, big city liberal doo-gooders.
In this case they will brutally assault the person in question. Unless the do-gooding is
exceedingly and obviously hypocritical, a mask of sentimental compassion laid over a core
of secret contempt. In this case the Scrapulent will play along, acting in ever more shameful
ways to bring out the false alarm of the self-appointed educator.
It is a given that if Shameful Beasts are seen sharing company with anyone, that person
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must loathe them as much as they loath themselves. This is obvious to everyone except the
person in question.
Secondly, if the chance arises of a violent act that would show the Shameful Ones to be
truly and unforgivably awful. (Assaulting a lone child crossing the moors with flowers for
its mother, breaking into the house of an old widow and shitting in her bed, pushing over a
bride at her wedding.) Then sometimes the Scrapulents will attack simply because they feel
they have to. They do not want to do these things. But they are terrible creatures and feel
they have no choice.
Children are taught to drive off the Shame Beasts with simple but inventive curses.
“Die in a ditch you shit-of-the-womb!”
“Sky pukes, earth weeps, to see your face!”
“Scream for your sorrows you vomit of dog!”
The more shame the shame beasts feel, the less danger they present. At the height, or depth,
of their shame, they will collapse to the ground writhing their filthy bodies and howling their
terrible howls.
But, they have a strong survival instinct and living as they do in the darkest wilderness, it
is difficult for them not to occasionally achieve something, whether something as simple as
living through the winter, or bringing down a beast of prey. It is at these moments that the
Scrapulents are at their most dangerous. the cognitive dissonance within them causes them
to act out in the most (shamefully) violent way.
People hate them.
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SHRINE-OH
In the crook in the hills behind the town the temple is burnt down. The sacred pillars written
with the names of saints are ash and the idols are cast into the dirt, what once was there is
memory now and whatever peaceful god made that their home is lost and gone forever.
Never to return.
Only mist, and a cold billow of ash in a warm wind, and a dark serrated shape drifting
through the blackened spars on heavy legs, traceless, weightless and soft. Its eye like a
polished coal.
Born of fire and loss and a memory of peace, yet not quite gone. Not yet. Something still
remains to cast up the grey ash and the cold air, up into a shape like cupped hands moulding
clay, forgetting even as they shape what they do or why.
The creation of an absent mind, a curlicue on the earth, a thing of smoke and hidden thought.
The air that drifts across its back pulls up flickering rags of mist like a grey flame burning on
its spine. Its body thick and massed, distinct, impressed with power. Its feet tread slowly
on the earth like those that bear weight should, but the soil resists all mark or print, holding
itself traceless, smooth and flat.
If the final temple of a forgotten god is unjustly torched by evil hands, as its memory passes
from the world, it can, as it departs, sculpt the air and the burnt flecks of its home and the
dark smoke that makes its only creed into a living shape. A shape that moves. Not much
more than a child’s figure.
Something like a rhino, something like a dinosaur. Black and grey and made of smoke.
Moving against the wind. Disappearing into shadow. Drifting stealthily. Evaporating now
and then into pools of murk, then, once the seeking eye has past its view, combining once
again.
The Shrine-Oh is motivated not by rage but by a hunger to protect. It is purpose embodied
in smoke, and not much else.
Usually the Shrine-Oh will track whomever burnt its temple down, hoping to undo or frus-
trate their future harms.
The families run from burning homes, the burners biting at their heels. A shadow, gigantic,
flows out of the dark, with a featureless animal face and a winking carbonised eye.
Suddenly, a sea of darkness tips above the sky and takes them in, they are wrapped in ash
that does not choke, couture’d in black and grey. Given visions that they cannot understand.
Emerging from the dark they find their hunters momentarily scared away, and themselves
caked in a covering of smoky muck which makes miraculously good camouflage until they
wash it off. Pursued now by a vision of fire they are unable to forget.
Those who pass through the Shrine-Oh’s enfolding smoke are often changed. There in the
darkness of the memory of a forgotten god, many things are seen:
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A panther, anthracite black or eyes of flame, related to no living thing, faceless matcheads,
beckoning old mistakes. A copse with trunks of ash and leaves burning like the light from
a disposessed moon, a moon falling through its own reflected light to harrow its companion
world. A peaceful Oxen, belly full as the yellow curve of a fat candle flame, motionless in a
draughtless room.
Hooded figures in the billows, each holding wreaths of smoke-bouquets clasped in spiralling
hands, they bow and look long upon encrypted trains of secret thought. An armoured man,
the steel that wraps him; the gleam a fire makes whitely on its own smoke and the eyes in
the red mask of his face are a brief blue like pops of unexpected gas and he knows why you
are there and can name the things that bought you so though you could not.
A ship upon a sea of fire with sails of lighter flame, mast bent in heavy press, running before
the cold coal-black storm that feeds around the tongues and perimeters the fire in fjords of
dark. A plain of fire, flattened as if on a driving wind, yet endless, wide, expanding from no
source, its sky composed of floods of blackbodied soot pregnant with carried heat, emission-
dark, but lit by a river of stars: uneternal sparks, dying as they flurry constellations wild
against the carbon sky.
And those who see these things do not forget, the dream stays with them and some claim
strange changes and new ambitions. Some say they read the smoke from burning things, a
trees opinion from its burning leaf, or the treasured knowledge of a book from the flag-like
pennants of its soot, that they hear the music of flame and understand the inner selves of
burning things by listening to them die by fire.
Some, smoke will not touch or raise above, it bows around them, never rising above hip height,
moving higher only as they pass. Some form a strange white wood from ash, persuading
it with words. Others change in other ways, less visible, but of strange power. They are
infected with the memory of places they have never seen and which they must seek out,
or with knowledge of old crimes, or laden with strange debts to impossible beings to be
discharged
The Shrine-Oh can hold itself together for some time, tracing its creators, hiding from the
wind in ditches, moving through the forest like a living labyrinth of smoke, patiently waiting
for its act.
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SMILING BIRD
This fat, waddling, stupid-looking bird hunts the teeth of people and puts them in its mouth
to find a mate.
“How I hate the Smiling Bird, it has something ancient in its form. At times it seems to
me more like a lizard than a bird. They are flightless, turkey-sized, thick-set and strong,
verging on plump. Their thick short feathers in dull greys and greens. Stealthy Devils!
These feathers make effective camouflage, if it hides its smil and stays still it is very difficult
to see. The wings are stubs and waggle stupidly to help it balance as it walks. Its tail is rich
and fat, delicious. Though, the pleasure derived from consumption of the Smiling Bird is less
to do with taste and more of sweet poetic vengeance as you drive your still-attached teeth
into their flesh. The tail moves like a lizards, not a birds stiff feathers. Beware its claws, for
they are stronger than they seem and can strike a nasty blow. But, filthy cowards that they
are, the Smiling Birds hate combat, they tend to topple over when they fight. The head is
disturbing, with a low slanted eye, liquid and warm, almost human. Its beak is remarkable,
with unique nodular serrations for it to fit the teeth.
If you see one, kill it.” - Leptoblast.
The Smiling Birds are scavengers and thieves, famous for scratching at graves in the night.
In some areas corpses are buried with iron braces or headbaskets to stop the teeth being
taken by the tunnelling bird. Some dig their warren-homes near the lairs of deadly creatures,
monsters that prey on man, or bandits. These groups and creatures allow the Smiling Bird
to live nearby–like them, it wants people to die, and all it asks for in return is teeth. Smiling
Birds may keep watch from their concealed holes, allowing intruders to creep close. When
they have come far enough to make retreat a challenge, the Smiling Bird gives the alarm, it
follows as they try to creep silently about, issuing squawks and making their position clear,
running away on its fat legs if they try to stop it, then later coming back.
Like a Parrot, Smiling Birds can stupidly mimic human speech, or natural sounds. They will
try luring travellers into steep defiles, deep fogs or swamps or frighten them into running off
a cliff in the night. Starving, falling, eaten, trapped, or lost: so long as someone dies the
Smiling Birds don’t care.
When you are helpless, then, the birds approach, sometimes fighting for precedence amongst
themselves. The one with the fullest smile is always first. They clamber onto you and reach
inside your mouth with their strong claws. One by one, starting with the best, they wrench
out your teeth, the bird dexterously tries each tooth in its own mouth, aiming for a specific
fit, throwing the rest away.
The Bird with the best smile will lead the flock, and be certain to find a mate, so competition
for teeth is fierce.
Not everyone this happens to is dead; the victim can still be alive. Which explains the
usual call of the Smiling Bird, the call they make most of all, when following and waiting,
approaching and fighting amongst themselves, or simply watching as you die.
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It is a call in a human voice. It comes from the throats of a dozen birds in a discordant
shout.
It says “MY TEEFF!”
And again and again like the callings of birds, “MY TEEFF, MY TEEFF, MY TEEFF!”
177

SNAPKEG
Priests and ranting madmen have named the Snapkeg living portal to the afterlife, which it
certainly will be if you get too close to it. Sometimes they puke up saints.
As a mode of self-defence it’s hard to beat.
They hang in the water like smooth sleeping stones, the arcs or their razor sharp beaks
piercing the reflection of the sky. A huge round bluegreen body with three short legs per
side. “Like a gigantic dachshund, violent and obese”, claims Leptoblast. It’s flat tail drifts
behind it, slack. A pumice-rough and mobile tongue protrudes through the blade of its
mouth, trailing in the water like a mat. A river-dwelling, hippo-sized omnivorous thing,
feared, respected and scrupulously avoided by all.
It’s jaws are strong, its beak is sharp. If anything awakes it by mischance the Snapkeg will
rapidly retract its tongue and bite violently at whatever it is. Often other Snapkegs. This
can lead to bloody fights and dominance displays displacing enough water to drown a small
boy.
At night they wake and wander, feasting on watery weeds. Or anything they want. Crops,
fences, doors, dogs, trees, boats, goats left tied up or people drunk and wandering in the
night. Snapkegs do not like chasing things, and plants tend not to run away, so most of its
flesheating is by chance or in response to threat.
Their slowness and general indifference to man means they are ignored too long. If a Snapkeg
herd drifts through the rivers and the warm swamps, gradually migrating closer to a town,
it’s easy to avoid. Most travellers can simply go around. But, should they come by midnight
to the centre of the town, and settle down, there is not much people can do. Everyone is
terrified of the Snapkeg and they should be because they will bite your legs off if you get
close and it takes a small army to stop a herd of them once they become riled up. Added to
this difficulty, pilgrims may arrive, waiting for the Snapkegs to throw up.
They possess a special duct.
The Snapkeg cannot pass iron. Metal of any kind can be poisonous to it, it does not traverse
the Snapkegs tract and the Snapkeg, as is well remarked, can disgorge but once in every
hundred years, and only in response to Mighty Fear. Since its indiscriminate feeding leads
it inevitably to snap up scraps of iron and gold (a ring on a finger, a blade in a hand), it
diverts them internally. Anything containing metal is coated with a remarkable slime and
stored within a tertiary stomach where it stays. Maybe in perpetuity, no upper limit to the
Snapkegs age has yet been found. Legend says they live as long as the river in which they
swim. Snapkegs that have snapped a lot of stuff, or simply those too fearless to easily throw
up, rumble slightly as they walk, the slime-stored tools and knobs inside them grate and
churn. But the slime of the Snapkegs gland preserves not only metal, but flesh, and keeps
it in a delayed state. If a living being is somehow swallowed whole, it can, perhaps survive,
adjourned from natures flow, for an unmeasured period of time.
Sometimes they puke whole ancient men swallowed long before, with swords of iron. Some-
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times these men are still alive. Some faiths think there is a timeless world inside the beast.
A world like ours, but frozen, still, and quiet, where life can wait, preparing for its urge.
The Snapkeg plays a major part in the myths of life, and after-life, for several nations and
faiths.
Several ancient story-cycles start with the heroes regurgitation, or end with their swallowing,
perhaps to be re-born. The common folk believe that anyone thrown up by a Snapkeg who
still lives, has a deep destiny to fulfil. Though mainly what they vomit up are human hands
and nails from boats.
Only a true King can ride a Snapkegs back, or so they say. There is certainly a fashion
for being painted so. The corridors of Jukai Turret Prime are lined with oils in which past
Chancellors ride the backs of snapping beasts. (None of them actually rode a Snapkeg, most
never saw a Snapkeg, the meaning is symbolic, showing the Sovereign mastering the cycles
of time and re-birth.) But still-active is the law which makes successfully riding the beast
one of the Seven Theoretical Conditions in which the constitution may be changed Without
Reprove.
Others say the rumbling and clashing jaws of the Snapkeg warn of danger. They do, they
warn of the danger of a Snapkeg.
The skin is highly resistant to harm and the curing of its hide a process known to only
one surviving man. But clothes and armour made this way provide exceptional protection
against the slashing and stabbing of blades.
It’s jaws can be carefully honed into a pair of Scimitars-Of-Bone, incredibly sharp. The Bog-
Elves and swamp-drunk nomads of the Melanic Moors exploit the the Snapkeg’s storied rep
by using these bone weapons on their raids, they are said to be ‘one with the swamp’.
In fact the Bog Elves and swamp drunks are as terrified of the Snapkeg as everyone else.
The swords are mainly metal painted white. Even the real versions are often recovered from
bodies killed by some natural event.
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SPECTRE-WEB BEETLE
A large and thoughtful creature of the insect kind, which feeds men to its young.
The beetle is about three feet high, coloured in carapace-black and spats of hoary gridelin.
The legs are slender and project directly down from its thick and bulbous body making it look
like a rather radical coffee table when it is standing still. Its frontal features are disturbing
and complex, consisting of a tightly-nested and symmetrical series of plates, some moveable,
some not, a series of jaws like a watchmakers fever-dream and a pair of unusual insect eyes.
The vertical arrangement of its legs, opposed to customary insect-form, only increases the
sense that it waits, not simply present, paused in scuttling, or frozen in mid-movement, but
calmly and quietly aware. Intelligence, awareness and alien malignancy imbue themselves
into the mind whenever it is seen.
The Spectre-Web is skilled in sound. It counterfeits them: storms and the creaking of doors,
the fall of metronomic drops, steps on rotten wood, anything it hears it can repeat. And
words, but not the meaning that they hold. Scream “help me!” and you will hear it echoed
back. It knows this signals danger. But repeat the same word calmly at another time, ‘Help
me’, and it will not connect the meaning to the sound.
As well as mimicry, the Spectre-web can make a counter-tone. This strange opposing noise
can veil and mute one single other type of sound. A shout, a scream, a speaking voice.
It’s most mysterious skill is the buzzing projection of panic and fear. A dull dense barely-
perceptible throbbing in the air that pricks up the skin and ripples water in the glass. Dogs
bark angrily in response, people become troubled and afraid certain they are observed by
something that they cannot see. A presence, living, just beyond the corner or the door,
something in the walls or in the room behind you now.
Unlike many insects, Spectre-Webs watch over and preserve their young. These number
in the hundreds. They are energetic silk-producing grubs that eat fresh meat and make a
colony shaped like a ghost.
Young grubs first form a colony in something like a webbish shape, this web is unlike others:
it can move. Each grub can eject its tiny strand of silk at high speed and reel it back in.
They can also cause the adhesive end of their silk to loose its hold at will. This means a
single grub can move about by ‘firing’ its silk-knot ahead of it, letting it stick to something,
reeling it in, releasing it and then repeating the process.
The Spectre-Web waits by her young, singing to them in tones so high and wild they cause
nearby bats to go suicidally mad. The grubs are singly unintelligent, her song shapes their
actions for them. Under her direction, they form a structural web, about the size of a
doorway. With the continual attachment and reeling of hundreds of tiny strands of silk this
web can move about. It is not fast, about the speed of an old man tottering, but in an
emergency it can be retracted to a single point very quickly and stowed in a very small
space.
Since all its children love to eat is human flesh the Spectre-Web prefers a densely-populated
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place. It is visibly horrific though and needs somewhere that it can safely hide. The most
likely location is a dark and mazelike, near people, but desolate itself.
The Spectre-Web lures food with whatever noise it can. Anything that draws people towards
its lair. Not too many, single people or small groups are best. Children are excellent. The
aim is to bring the prey into closed space where the larvae-web can block them off and fall
upon them, devouring them utterly. The baby bugs will clean a human being down to the
bare bones in a couple of hours. It mutes the screams.
“Why do the webs have faces and why do they seem to have hands? A slow adaption perhaps,
to hunting human beings. Any potential victim who escapes and speaks of being hunted by
a pale human figure, cloaked in fear, is less likely to be listened to, less likely to deliberately
return and if they do come back, their tactics will be much less effective than they would
otherwise be.
Certainly most people encountering a Spectre-Web believe they are in contact with a ghost.
I imagine their relief on finding themselves wrapped in nothing more mysterious than a web
is short-lived when they discover the web is full of thousands of flesh eating grubs, that
their screams produce no noise. And that a beetle calmly watches from across the room.” -
Zenithal
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STAR GROOLS
The Grools themselves are black, like the centre of a pencil, and made of the same stuff.
They live in miniature suns. The suns have cores of blue with red coronal rays, an adult
man could just about grasp them in spread arms.
The Grools live curled up inside as the suns float tamely like a child’s balloon. The blue
stars of the Grools do not burn as hot as our own Sun, or even as hotly as fire. They scorch
like cinders or ash just scraped out of the grate, making it very difficult for anything to
penetrate the star and drag out the Grool.
In the day the Grools direct their stars high up into the sky, they cluster around the Sun
as it moves across the heavens, the pale light of the Grool stars is invisible next to that of
the sun, or mistaken for a poor fortune, some minor planet out of place. This hides them
from observers on the ground. On cloudless nights, camouflaged against the starlit sky, they
hunt. Anyone could see them and no-one thinks to look or dare suspect that a constellation
tracks them through the night. The Grools are only a few hundred feet above your head.
Looking down, waiting for a moment to strike.
For unobservant prey the Grools will simply wait until they sleep or stand distracted on
open ground. Then spiral-swoop down, surrounding their target with a spinning circle of
suns.
They have noticed though that some prey creatures will willingly seek them out and even
separate themselves from their fellows, wandering off into isolated areas at night, staring
up onto the sky, following the beckoning Grool. Some Grools have learnt to form signs and
strange constellations in order to lure idiots, prophets and philosophers out into the empty
wild. They bring them to a distant peak or isolated hill then they slowly slowly sink towards
the earth. Closer and closer until the amazed viewer finds themselves surrounded by a group
of orbs rimmed by slow petals of red fire licking out in every direction. Closer still, until
they orbit around the prey. Nearly burning.
Then, as one, they leap out and attack.
The Grools themselves are child-sized black frog-ape things with round faceted black eyes
and long frog fingers. They are no stronger than men and will try to pull their target down,
biting them with their small black teeth and strangling with their black froglike hands. If
they are successful, each will quickly drag back part of the prey to feast on sun-cooked meat
inside their private star.
“Some secret essence of the Grools keeps them in strange equilibrium with the substance
of their sun. If the Grool is gone too long its fiery cyst begins to fluctuate, fluttering like
candleflame, palpitating like a bag blown in and out. What happens next can vary a great
deal.
Most Grool-Stars cool to a pineapple sized chunk of white flame then drift gently to the
ground. They leave a core of iron about the size of a clenched hand, an iron of extraordinary
density and strength. Star-Iron is highly valued and both blades and armour made from it
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are said to dull magical effects.
Other stars without their nesting Grools can quickly grow, they produce a flaming orb the
size of a small house. This fire is relatively cool and can be survived, though it may light
clothes and scorch flesh
A very small number of Grool-Stars explode like fireballs with staggering speed. So rare is
this that I have only confirmed the phenomena by observing its remains: a strange multi-
coloured ‘fog’ which persists in place, glowing slightly in the night and dispersing slowly over
half a year.
There are tales and rumours of a fourth and final Grool-Star state: a black pinprick hanging
in the air, whistling madly as a vortex forms around it. Workers of the Subtle Art seek out
these strange black spots and must do so with some success for I have never seen one in the
wild.” - Leptoblast
Grools have minds and aims and can be allied with. Tales tell of madmen on the tops of
towers who take council from the stars themselves, and hence know all things, and of ruthless
desert tribes who hunt by night staring at the sky, but whom not prey escapes.
183

STEGALOSWAN
Long and light-footed, it trips through the glades, sought by schemers, dreamers, poets and
the mad. Few can claim to have seen, to have gazed on in rapture, the subtle and peaceful
Stegaloswan.
All are absorbed by its beauty.
The base arrangement of its form is very like a terror-beast or mega-thing of ancient times,
quadrupedal, huge, the mass of multiple horses, with bony plates pointing up directly from
its spine. These run down the top of its long swanlike neck, gradually becoming smaller,
ending just above its small, calm face. An evenly-sized tail at its other extremity gives the
Stegaloswan what Leptoblast called “a wavelike symmetry, most pleasing to behold”.
The colours of the Stegaloswan are much remarked, it is pigmented like the hummingbird in
iridescent shades. The fine scales of its body shine in cinnabar, citrine, cerulean and smalt.
Often with the centre scale being a deep yellow or red, fading towards the cerulean rim and
the deep blue smalt joins of between the scales. The scales arranged in alternating patterns,
strange yet harmonious.
The protective plates of the Stegaloswan are, even more vibrant. They ripple like shining
mother-of-pearl. Not white but hyacinthine, ianthane, modea and Or, the colour of heraldic
gold. So luminous and perfectly-arranged are the shining colours of the Stegaloswan that
those who see them directly for the first time are momentarily paralysed with sensuous
rapture.
Also like the hummingbird, the Stegaloswan feeds precisely from the orchids and the brightest
flowers and, in fact, will never crush a flower. Far from a brute and the blundering beast, its
daintiness and fineness are renowned. It moves delicately through its forest home. So light
is its careful tread that it even leaves no track upon the ground, the steps of an ant in the
sand leave deeper marks than the passing of the Stegaloswan.
As light-footed, secretive, shy and aware as the Stegaloswan is, few who seek it out will ever
catch sight of one. Sightings are so rare that they are ritualised in many nations with those
lucky enough to have seen the Stegaloswan directly often singled out for unexpected fates.
Multiple religions claim that to touch one is to change your fate, and that should someone
be cursed, or dammed to a particular sorrowful end, then stroking the Stegaloswan once,
will loose the chains of time and let them seize their own result from life. Aptly is it said
that when the Stegaloswan is stroked, death blinks and a new story begins.
Some claim that the creature itself is a myth or a hoax. Leptoblast bagged a sighting in Aun,
Zenithal confirmed multiple encounters through interviewing witnesses and states:
“the concurrence of detail in both appearance, habit and visual effect across multiple indi-
viduals of varying cultures and languages, many of whom are too simple to have even heard
of the Stegaloswan before encountering it, leads me to believe the creature is real. As to
its mythical power to un-knot fate, I am not sure what evidence would prove or disprove
the claim. But every individual who met the beast first hand was certain that it could, and
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those who failed to stroke it wept on speaking with the sorrow of their loss.”
Ashkott has only examined parts of the creature, illegally obtained, and has so far refrained
from any judgement on the issue.
Those who deliberately seek the Stegaloswan report the creature as shy and elusive when
pursued but witnesses lucky enough to simply blunder into seeing one all remark on its
exceptional friendliness. Leptoblast himself was in Aun hunting Curseling rumours and
woke one day to find himself face-to-face with en unexpected visitor:
“I opened my eyes and found, directly before my face, another. This one: strange, narrow,
brightly-hued, lizardlike and unmistakeably friendly. It seemed to hover in the air. Only its
extraordinarily playful and bashful expression prevented me from reaching immediately for
the weapon I keep always by my side whenever I sleep. Well that I did for as I looked down
I saw the face was on the end of a long and brightly armoured neck which was poking in
through the entry to my tent.
Baffled, not knowing what to do, I simply said ‘Good Morning’. The face slowly receded and
I felt a strange sense of loss. I hung for a moment, thoughtless in the still early-morning air
inside the brightly lit walls of the tent then, recovering my wits, I leapt up and threw myself
outside.
It was still there, the brightest and most wonderful creature I have ever seen, like a rainbow
caught within a swelling wave of clear water. Its calm face turned to me once more, then it
walked swiftly and utterly silently away into the enfolding green.
I was stunned for several seconds, by the time I recovered my wits and summoned my
colleagues it was gone. There were no tracks, none at all.”
The plates and scales of the Stegaloswan are incredibly valuable and incredibly illegal in all
markets. Dealing in them, or being known to hunt the Stegaloswan is regarded as a loathly
and vile pursuit. But very well paid.
Various powerful, and perhaps evil creatures and people have been said to pay enormous
sums simply for access to a live Stegaloswan, seeking to evade a fate vilely earned. If they
have been successful, none have spoken of it.
185

STRANGELS
Strangels come from somewhere far above the surface of the world and touch the earth only
in remote but wonderful zones far from the eye of man. They stay for a single moonlit night,
eating the night-blooming rose, and licking its petalled dew. Then, before dawn, they are
gone
Plump insectile-centaurs, about three feet high, with the heads and faces of children or small,
beautiful androgynous girls. They have two dexterous humanoid arms and a beetle-like rear
running parallel to the ground. Hairless, yet when content they are crowned by a halo of
wild silver fire. This fire is the fire of their beautiful thoughts. The skin of the Strangel is
snow and maggot-white, tactile and attractive.
Few see the Strangel-skin without imagining its touch, like fine silk pillows or fresh ice cream
it cries out to be tasted and caressed, stroked and felt.
Strangels tolerate this only if the person stroking them is also very soft, and a little bit fat
like a maggot would be. They love extremely plump people with warm soft skin and, if
approached carefully, will crawl all over them cooing and nestling, like a cat circles and sits
upon a well-loved couch.
They walk on moonlight and this is how the Strangels reach the ground from their celestial
home, by riding the light of the moon. But they are not without assurances of their own.
(Who would fully trust the Moon?)
To focus the light of their rapturous thoughts and cut open the throats of their foes, the
Strangels wear curves of pearly white bone, like crescent moons, through which they poke
their heads. The beautiful silver dreams of the Strangels burn like white phosphorous, they
can melt through bone in the time it takes to scream. The Strangels collar-moon lets it
project these thoughts and bring them to a point, like the tip of a burning torch held by
spectral hands before the face. Since the silver thoughts are like the light of the moon,
Strangels can hold them like a rippling river of light beneath their feet, and race into the
sky, even when the moon is gone. Finally, its edges are exceedingly sharp and can be used
as a weapon in emergencies or situations of unlikely guile.
If Strangels are forced to defend themselves they will often do so with their eyes closed, and
by using annihilating conjunctions of silver fire that removes all evidence of its own use. As
a last resort a Strangel may offer itself to its captors for a single kiss.
Few can resist the aching softness of its lips. If the person kissed is beautiful (to them), the
silver Strangel-thoughts will incandesce and the Strangel will make its escape from beneath
a veil of silver fire. Should an ugly one lean in, the Strangel twists its neck to cut their throat
with its collar-moon, then, with its eyes closed, runs away to scamper through the air on a
path of its own silver light, thinking beautiful thoughts.
Strangels can only incandesce their own ideas if they are very beautiful, noble and good. So
deep and sensitive are they, that this is usually not too hard, but, it does mean that should
the moon be absent from the sky, they can only migrate home by a continuous and deep
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dwelling upon the most wonderful ideas.
As well as this, they must have their crescent blade of bone to focus thoughts into a silver
path on which to walk the air. If this blade is stolen, broken, lost or taken away, or if they
can no longer dream of beautiful things, the Strangel may be trapped on earth. At least
until the next bright moon.
This is part of why they only come at night, so they cannot see too much of the horror of the
world. Their silver light bathes everything in softness, and the dark around the Strangels
glows like the darkness in a pleasant dream.
If a Strangel does become trapped, this can be very bad. All are deeply attracted and drawn
to adore the pleasing whiteness of the Strangels, and powerful and avaricious souls hunger
to control and possess the Strangel flesh. They are worth staggering amounts as pets, or
slaves. Many wealthy people keep a caged or collared Strangel, too depressed and ruined by
the world to fire its thoughts, they stroke and obscenely caress, collar it in gold and give to
it a name that’s not its own. A dangerous pet indeed. For though a Strangel can be kept
prisoner by despair, beauty can release its sliver fire.
Strangels are rumoured to both prey and to be preyed on by Star-Grools in the upper world
between the stars and us.
187

STUMBLEWEED
A copse of green-black trees, leaves bare and fruitless, cradling bones and bodies in the sharp
spikes of their moaning pipes.
Stumbleweed have slim black trunks about fifteen feet high. Beyond that spray the leafpipes:
thick, stiff, green-black tubular leaves radiating outwards from a central core. The leafpipes
are long and strong, sometimes crooking slightly, their edges curved like organ mouths,
sharper than knives.
The legs of Stumbleweed at rest are bound together in the ground, still and seeming deeply-
rooted in the earth, so someone unfamiliar with the weed will be surprised when it begins
to move.
“They are simply pneumatic trees. Wind drifting across the plains is picked up by the pipes
of the plant. (This is the source of the Stumbleweeds ‘music’, mere air across a vibrating
pipe.) The tree diverts the pressure of this air, moving over multiple mouths, to work its
barky limbs. At first the rootlegs crack as joints accept new impulse from the diverted boreal
flux. If the wind increases, the ‘legs’ separate and take tiny shuffling steps. The plants shuffle
slowly at first, but should the winds break out in gale or storm, they will begin to run, tacking
back and forth in long arcs against the direction of the wind.” - Zenithal
Stumbleweed can’t see so when it moves, it stumbles and often falls. Not a problem for
the tree as it is very tough and simply staggers to its feet and carries on, but amazingly
dangerous for anyone around. The leafpipes of the stumbleweed are sharp, should a tree
impact your flesh you will be riddled with leaves and utterly run through. If the tree then
raises up and starts to run again, you will remain. Trapped. Screaming. Bleeding to death
and disappearing from view as the Stumbleweed races off into the oncoming storm.
“It was upon the Pyrrhous Plains. At the time I knew little of them but dark uncertain
rumour. Seeing only a forest of green-black trees with knobbly trunks, I ignored the advice
of my guide and decided to investigate for myself. A choice I was soon to regret.
As I entered into the shadow of the softly moaning trees, the breeze picked up. The sound,
at first gentle, hummed from every pipe, it seemed as if the air itself was seeping sound, an
otherworldly choir echoing from some alien inaccessible zone both near and far. Then, as
the breeze deepened, the black limbs cracked into life! The walk of the woods began!
The choir became a deafening torrent of black organic noise, the trees begin to step! At first
slowly then in steady repetitions. The woods became a shuffling crowd, like the markets of
a city, jostling and tightly packed. Beginning in semi-random motions, the trees upon the
forests leading edge, closest to the wind, moved first. I ran, heading as much as I could across
the direction of the trees. I was knocked and battered by the black limbs but thankfully
retained my feet as I fled madly through that moving labyrinth of living death, each crowned
with spikes! Only now did I fully perceive the bones and dried out bodies of cattle, sheep
and even men, adorning the tops of these murderous plants like necromantic crowns! As
gaps opened up amongst the plants, some jogged aimlessly. Then, a spume of surging air!
The trees began to run. A few moved in either direction across the motion of the wind,
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but soon, by whatever dark communal mind they have, a single course was made, and, by
sheer chance, this brought me to the forests quickly-disappearing edge. I dashed downwind,
clutching my ears to somehow ward away the screaming torrent of sound from the forest as
it ran away into the rising gale. I turned once, to see the trees begin to crown some distant
ridge, skylined against the storm-wracked sky, the land itself was flowing like a tidal sea.
Neither of my guides was ever seen again.” - Leptoblast
“There is no proof at all that the Stumbleweed possess a communal mind based upon the
exchange of pollen or spores, that the strength or intellect of this mind increases as the wind
rises or that Stumbleweed deliberately hunt animals and men, using the nutrients of their
decaying corpses as a kind of moveable store. I will state this as simply as I can: THERE
IS NO PROOF OF PREDATORY TREES.” - Ashkott
Stumbleweed pipes are eagerly sought, renowned for their rumoured musical and magical
properties, and very difficult to retrieve. Stumbleweed are also hard to cut down. The wood
is tough knotted, harmful to the axe. It is very difficult to predict where they are going to
be at any time. Burning them can create a much more aggressive problem, as the city of
Kal-Shush notably discovered when they tried to eradicate a Stumbleweed forest that had
moved dangerously close to their walls. The resulting pack of burning, racing, spiked trees
resulted in significant loss of life.
189

SUNSET STORK
The Sunset Stalk is a creature shaped to live within the aurulent palaces and luteous forests
of golden fire which make up the surface of that distant sphere.
There, on the surface of the sun, testaceous feathers camouflage their shape against the
blazing trees. Storks dip their beaks into rivers of burning light to snatch up the shattered-
diamond fishes of the sun. Sometimes, desiring change of scenery or diet, they ride the suns
red rays down to the surface of the world. There they stand swathed in ash on the volcanoes
edge, or cloaked in boiling steam where the lava-rivers meet the sea, picking their way, knee
high in fire, eyes locked on the earths oozing molten blood. There they fish for the secret
obsidian fish of the deep earth which they swallow whole, and sometimes for those aberrant
snacks thrown up from the dark entrenchments of the sea.
Scattered rumours say they ate a Geyser Lord when one popped up. Difficult to treat as true,
but certainly no Geyser Lord has yet been seen when the Sunset Stork stalks forth.
“Stratospheric godlike Storks have been claimed to be observed. These are delusional dreams.
They are only as high as a house. Or perhaps a giraffe, no more. The environmental
conditions on the surface of the sun and the unsteady nature of its red rays make it impossible
for any creature larger than this to ride them effectively and well. They would fall from the
sky. And, in fact, do. This being the true source of so-called ‘meteors’.” - Ashkott
Like all the creatures of the sun, the Sunset Stork cannot survive the night. To it, even
the mildness of the moon and the soft light of the stars is an oceanic bath of utter dark. If
it is caught on earth after the final rays of light have left the sky it will blacken and burn
mazarine, horribly reduced to ash and to a small iron heart.
Since they can only ride the red rays of sunset once it starts, and as they must ride them
back before the sun is gone, their window of survival in the mortal realm is short. The Stork
is constantly aware of time and will not be delayed.
“I contracted, at some expense, a worker of the Subtle Art to help preserve my body in the
burning fields where I must climb. This done, I timed my ascent to match the slow fall of
the sun, hoping the reach the caldera just as it was touched by the suns red rays.
I found the Stork herself polite, refined and not indifferent to my words, though rather
pressed for time. She seemed impressed with my willingness to brave the wild and fiery pit
in which she fished (flinging up droplets of iron as she snatched something out of the deep). I
explained my purpose and related my not-undistinguished bonafides. The lady seemed more
amused than impressed, though did say she would answer whatever I asked. There was no
price to her council it seemed, except my good behaviour and willingness to seek her out.
(As well as the ability to survive doing so.)
I asked if it was true that her kind ‘know everything the sun can see’. She said to some
degree it was. I found her wise and well ensconced in the polity of the sun (information for
which I have since found no practical use at all). She did know much (though not all) of
what the sun can see. But hers was the wisdom of fire, giving little thought to slowness,
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preservation or time, but only transformation and destruction, immediacy and change. She
had rather radical opinions. In her words ‘The sooner one thing becomes another the better.
Why wait? Do and do now.’ Those who wish to preserve and sustain will find little to
enlighten them here. And, of course, she knew nothing at all of anything that occurred at
night or in the dark, that side of our existence was a strange mystery to her.
I did ask her how long her journey home would take. She said ‘Roughly eight minutes, to
you observing. In flight of course it takes no time at all.’ Which I did not understand.
I found her words frustrating and our time too short.” - Leptoblast
Not all who approach the Sunset Stork do so to seek its wisdom, some want its feathers and
its beak. If it can be defeated and plucked before night falls then any feathers taken will not
burn. They will provide a fearsome protection against flame if formed into a cloak.
The beak of the Sunset Stork is famed for its sharpness and its legendary power. It can
pierce any evil. A full beak can be converted into a pair of weapons, one made from the
upper beak, one from the lower. The blades made are usually large, halberds, broadswords
or some other hefty cleaver-like thing.
But those who do hunt and kill a Sunset Stork must fear the vengeance of the sun. If the
suns light touches even the smallest part of the dead body of a murdered Stork, then it will
stop for a full minute in the sky to consider what it sees. Any involved in the murder will,
from that point, face the ‘Curse Of The Sun’.
The curse takes many different forms. Some suffer cancers wherever the sun has touched,
thick mole-like growths knotting and gnarling the flesh. Some feel its light as burning pain,
as if the sun were needles passing through the skin. For some the sunlight will refuse to meet
their eyes. To them the world is endless night.
For a few offenders, the Sun sends out warrant to its thanes. Nothing that lives or grows by
the light of the sun, or which lives on that which lives on light, may surrender any sustenance
at all to one so cursed. The result is a terrible starvation. No plant or meat or product of
anything that lives by the allowance of the sun will feed them. They may gulp it down but
shall starve none the less. Only a few dark-growing mushrooms, or the lichen in caves will
sustain them now. Some seek out the Trench Heralds or Geyser Lords to beg alms of the
dark, some food grown deep below that owes nothing to the sun. But the price for this is
high.
So the sun-cursed set forth, sometimes moving only in the night, swaddled in thick cloth
or with their path lit by a lantern even though the day is bright, seeking out some act or
penance that may salve the wrathful judgement of the light.
191

THUG BUGS
Thug Bugs get bigger when they ride a bigger beast. And they like to aim high.
They range in reds, from clotted scab to bright haematic bleed and are composed primarily
of shell. A tough cartilaginous carapace that grows as they do. Limbs poke out like those
of crabs or spiders huge, more versatile than both, adjustable, multi-directional, dexterous
and each with opposable three-fingered claws that work much like a hand.
Its eyes hide in two dark and recessed slits, angled in a scowl that cannot change. Though, if
bugs did have faces that could give their mood, they would scowl too. They are angry-happy
almost all the time, pissed off, raw and gleeful to be so.
Hexapedal bugs make up the norm, but oddly limbed arrangements can be found, it’s rare to
see a bug with more than eight. A bug with only three can move around, but is considered
crippled by the group. Tipodism carries a dark glamour in Thug Bug culture. In the same
way that for us, the one-eyed are considered rogues or the blind thought to have gifts of
sound. A clever tripod bug may be exulted by the group and thought even more cunning
than they actually are as every Thug Bug knows “Three Legs - Thinks Ahead”. Platoons
are often lead by tripod bugs. Bipeds are quickly eaten by the rest since they are no longer
considered ”real people”. The position of a Tripod Bug in Thug Bug culture is precarious
and ensures that yes, they do in fact, ‘think ahead’.
“Neither Arachnid or Crustaceans, they carry qualities of both. To be a living ancestor
to both such ancient lines seems unlikely, though, the scoundrels do possess a squirming
vital survival-urge. More interesting to note: before about five thousand years ago the
red carapaced bugs are shown in ancient records as having no more self-awareness than a
dog. They are depicted in hieroglyphs and stele as simple animalistic opportunistic group
predators jumping out of holes. When I queried briefly captive bugs as to how and when
they gained their wits they would answer only that they “stole it” and would say no more.”
- Leptoblast
Whatever their origins, the Thug Bugs now clearly possess both speech and use of tools.
They can steal and craft weapons, tie knots and understand machines. They use this gift to
pursue the only treasure they love: hijacked megafauna are their aim, the bigger and badder
the better they is.
The bugs take animals like pirates taking ships, sometimes by stealth, sometimes by raw
assault. (And once or twice by siege.) Once boarded, they rig the beast with bridle, hooks
and goads and use these to ride it around. All Bugs seek to do this. The larger animal
commanded, the greater status bugs possess. Ferocity also counts, but size, raw unforgiveable
mass, is the crown of the experience. It takes a quixotic bug indeed to trade down from cow
to Wolverine. Bugs will leave their steed and home only if they can board and take a bigger
beast, but if the possibility exists, they will not falter. Thug Bugs are exceptionally brave,
they eat risk and shit death.
As bugs grow in size they conquer larger things (or possibly the other way around). They
start about the size of a big tarantula and will try to take over a goat, then move on up
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from there. They are aquatic and can breathe equally well under water and on land. The
bugs that hijack and ride whales can be about the mass of a small man.
(They do often attack ships from the backs of whales but this is usually an overconfident
mistake on their part as, the ship not being an animal, it gains them no status and they find
it complex and difficult to understand, sometimes simply riding the sailors instead.)
Bug legends speak of gargantuan and ancient beasts slumbering beneath the earth, all bugs
dream of finding one and riding it around as kings, it is the ultimate ideal of their culture.
Bug heaven is just a beast as big as the world.
It’s not hard to spot an animal captured by the bugs, they will board a bear and put flags
on it, ride it around shouting and looking for trouble. They love violence and brawling for
its own sake. On the ground, without a prize, they are quite cunning and stealthy but the
bigger the ride they manage to control the more confident, loud and boisterous they become.
(And the more disastrously deranged and hubristic their plans).
Though not evil, Thug Bugs love to fight more than they like to live. They seek to battle
anyone they hate, or anyone they like a lot, if ambivalent they will battle you to find out
what kind of person you are.
Thug Bugs don’t know or care what gender is and are pretty sure they don’t have one, which
makes breeding difficult for them. One day a Thug Bug will suddenly realise it is female and,
startled, run off to squat out secret eggs, then shamefully come back. Another realises it is
male and sneakily follows, creeping to the eggs and ejaculating all over them before running
back to where it was before and pretending nothing happened. If either of the bugs catches
the other doing any of these things, they will all deny everything and come up with crazed
excuses for their actions.
Once done they will never speak of it again.
193

TRENCH HERALD
The Herald has the spine and skull of a man, or something like a man. It adopted these for
your convenience. It is an Ambassador.
Heralds are about seven feet long, or high, and swim-drift in mid-air as if moving slowly
through a glutinous sea. Don’t come too close, the atmosphere around them becomes thick,
unbreathable and dank. Two long flagellum reach out of this murk and act as waving hands.
Down each side a handful of lesser flagella beat slowly in the liquid air. Its eyes are shocks
of colour, living coral fills the skull and bursts out through the ocular gaps. The lower jaw,
and sometimes the upper too, have been replaced with needle-trap mouths of some infinitely
patient deep-sea fish. The body is translucent pearl, the human spine leads visibly down
into a nest of organs gathered round its base. Strange movements can be seen, and the
suggestion of a circulatory flow perceived.
Heralds make their Embassies in locations with familiar feel. Great declivities with mounting
darkness and brief cradling lights. Half way up inaccessible cliffs, behind a waterfall, in the
gouge of a fault in the earth surrounded by eternal sulphur clouds, above a rushing torrent,
lava flow or seeping toxic mire, these places seem like home to them. Vapour hides the
sun, which they prefer, but also veils the stars they love to look upon. At night Heralds
may venture far from their hidden homes for no greater reason than to gaze upon the night
sky
The Embassies are spirals in the stone. They carve the rock in curls, embedding smoothly
shifting flows of empty space linked by halls whose walls and floors are gentle helices. Imagine
walking through, at tiny size, the cast-off clothing of a growing Nautilus, the empty shell
made rampant, silences engorged and intersecting spaces multiplied, the shadows pierced by
single points of light. The Heralds love light. Not too much. Not sunlight or burning fires,
not heat or desiccation, but cool, calm single points, each with its own character and tale.
The Embassies are always dark, with single sources of azure, virid, incarnadine or starlight-
white light in every room, each source different and unique. No two lights are ever quite the
same.
Here guests are received and treasures kept. Most especially. collected spines. The Trench
Heralds chief desire and primary currency is spines. These spines must be diseased and
strange combinations of creature and disease are valued most. It is not the body part
itself that they require, but the products of stilled combat between disease and life. Each
sickness provokes certain responses from a living thing, each living thing reacts in its own
way. Unexpected and remarkable reactions can take place, things impossible to simulate or
copy in the deep dark under the sea. This is why the Heralds are sent, to seek out and trade
for this strange currency.
The curved spine tubes are made of gold, a pure and durable casing that will not react or
stain the chemistry inside. They are ranked up like the cases of strange musical instruments.
There are lesser treasures too, jars of cold black glass with tumours kept inside, slivers of
the flesh of brains, brains of remarkable beings, infected with remarkable things. Gold, of
course, stained with the silt of the abyssal trench where it fell so long ago, gold with which
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the Herald pays, exchanging it for the rare organic treasures that it seeks.
And Light. The light is a personal trade, it plays no part in the Heralds assigned task
but they do love it so. Few Heralds return to the deep without some private light-emitting
treasures stowed away. A thing they love most is a permanent, unique and inexhaustible
source of gentle light. For these they will make secret trades. Some carry magical things, lost
in eons past, caked in black trench mud that cracks off showing gold and strange pearlesance
of an ancient time. Items of power. They will swap them happily for less-significant rough-
equivalents if the traded item emits an unusual light.
They do not fully understand what death is and this makes them dangerous to be around.
In the culture of the Heralds, each being is made of many kinds of interacting life. They
live and die in a cacophony of birth and death, fading and renewing all the time. They are
a colony of things. They assume that everybody is.
If someone dies around a Herald, they will keep speaking, addressing the microfauna consum-
ing the corpse from within. If not prevented or advised otherwise, the Herald will ‘garden’
all the forms of life upon the corpse into a coherent whole, inhabiting the old form. It is
the polite thing to do. Like helping someone who falls sick at your home, or offering new
clothes to someone who has spilt their soup. They will educate this colony of things in how
to consume the remaining chemical memories of its former host, how to walk in its body,
then politely let it go. This may take time, but the time of the Heralds is not ours, they
wait, in the dark reaches of the sunless deep. To wait an hour, a month, a year, a day, it
makes little difference to them.
Though the Heralds are by no means evil beings, they are so alien and strange that to most
people they may as well be. They prefer to deal with intelligent Undead, or other very
long-lived and indifferent individuals. Unprejudiced: the surface as a whole is strange to
them, they value calm, politeness and a discreet hand. You can never be sure how someone
will react when you ask them for a spine.
195

TYCHOCLASTS
Patient gamesters. Ruthless destroyers. Masters of strategy. The Tychoclasts wait and
watch from behind faces scored and cross-hatched with unwinnable games.
They stand like black impassive knights. Roughly humanoid, arms and forearms heavy
and long, extending almost to the knees. Along the arms are lined organic spikes. Their
shoulders and upper back spattered with black ventricles, eternally spewing gas, hot and
cold, equalising the Tychoclasts relationship with the world.
The fumes wreath them in boiling steam, dense icy fog or unknowable varicoloured fumes.
The surface of the Tychoclast can be warm to the touch, then cold, then warm again, all
within a seconds flow, with no pause or shift between the extremes but only a constant
flickering, like a shadow moving fast across the wall. The natural world rebelling from their
shape and slavering off them in strange microphenomina.
Their movements are steady, deliberate and always to a knowable aim. Their voices are like
screams choked in the throat, each syllable forced through by strength of will.
(The Tychoclasts have a surplus of willpower, they cannot be frightened or distracted. They
can be confused.)
They are creatures of chaos, bonded and supressed by their own free will. Angels of madness
and transformation in self-designed black straightjackets formed like human beings, traitors
to a centreless cause. Inside the armour is an intelligent, unknowable spume of raw chaos,
fluctuating and boiling, twisting like a man held underwater reaching for air. The substance
of this chaos being feels as if it is drowning. Locked here in a world of rational action where
its nature can never fully be expressed.
It is in pain. It will not die. It chose to be here and become this thing.
The sheer randomness of those impossible worlds or shimmering after-lives where chaos rules
mean that of all the creatures which come to being there, a few, a very small few, should
wish not to be what they are. In a place where everything is possible, however briefly, the
only impossible desire is for stability, certainty, rules. Iron rules.
So a small trickle of these other beings leave that place and come here. They bind themselves
in these forms, for reasons of their own, they score their own featureless faces with deeply
abstracts representing the negation of chance, the futility of randomness, the necessity of
fate. These marks are their true name now, they can no longer be summoned by their
old.
Some of these being are what we might call ‘Daemons’ or ‘Monsters’ others are Spirits or
incomprehensible knots of space and time. it doesn’t matter what they were before, they
are Tychoclasts now.
They live primarily in deserts, sometimes on freezing fields of ice. Always it is somewhere
still and quiet, where not much goes on. Somewhere predictable. They build their spires
of the same semi-organic material as their suits. They aim for straightness and perfection.
196

Always they fail, the spires are strange, twisted, asymmetric and disturbing. Sometimes
they soak up the colour or aesthetic of the surrounding lands, or oppose it. Sometimes they
look like burning glass.
The Tychoclasts can often not percieve this. Like the victim of a stroke, they cannot see the
curve in their own line.
Sometimes the sky above the spire shows alien suns and altered light shines down.
Best not to mention this.
The Tychoclasts will always act within a reasonable set of rules if they have been rationally
agreed, they regard the ability and desire to set rules and live by them as a basic necessity
of meaningful life. So, to them, an ant has more meaning, a bird has less.
Few things drive them to rage, but they are deeply angered by artists, bards, storytellers
and the conception of story itself. A narration is simply a list of things, it is never its own
thing, attempts to live as if it is are a sign of evil and must be destroyed.
And they hate randomness, unpredictability and chaos.
They are not fond of adventurers.
Tychoclasts can use the supressed chaos of their bodies to shape small zones matter in almost
any way they wish. They hate doing this, all of them attempt to learn the physical skills of
craft. Tool use, design, blacksmithing, anything in which they can use their hands to make,
without releasing the pure power of chaos.
But they will do so if they must. A Tychoclast can alter a chunk of matter roughly equivalent
to a large box that can be held between both hands. More powerful Tychoclasts can alter
greater volumes depending on thier native power. The rank of Tychoclasts (they are ordered
in carefully recorded hierarchies) can be reduced for making use of this power. It is always
a sorrowful thing to fail.
Breaching the surface of a Tychoclast suit to kill the thing inside is obviously very bad for
anyone near. The raw chaos escapes, causing mutation and alteration of any nearby living
thing, as well as the landscape itself.
(Conspiracy theorists suggest that the Tychoclsts are not true enemies of chaos, but engaged
on some eons-long double bluff. That they are subjecting themselves to the stress of ‘reality’
to put their core of anti-causality under enormous pressure. That they are building something
from it, a new god of chaos. A demon plane. A city of reflecting flame.)
197

UMBRA-TECHNICAL ELEMENTAL
“How to write of shadows is a question worth asking. A shadow is a very beautiful thing and
there is a treasury of shadow, accounted over time, that fears its losing.” - Zenithal
The world itself breeds shadows as it turns, but these are shadows of the world, they share
the long low life of stone and sleep. All shadow is a dream of something else and dreams
themselves can rarely wake. The darkness curled behind a waterfall while sunlight chatters
through the falling veil might murmur to itself like people crowded sleeping in the dark, but
still, it cannot talk, not quite aware, it dies with every setting sun, enfolded back into the
encompassing night and is born again each day, washed cleaner than a beach, with no more
memory than the sand.
From gloom to dark and back again, like tides of light and silence easing vision from the
world.
But mankind breaks this chain. Man builds and those built things have shadows and the
shadow of a building is both more and less that the shadow of the water or the stone.
Less because no man-made thing, no matter how strong or long preserved, can measure much
against the great life and the deep slow cycles of the earth. A pyramid is delicate, compared
to the continent on which it stands, a stone tomb is more fragile than the rain that casts
along its sides.
But more as well. More for their complexity. More for regularity; straight lines! Geometry!
Perfect arcs and perfect circles interacting in one thing. For its nested symmetry, for its
layers, for its sculptures; stone shadows of life themselves birthing new shadows on the
ground. For its glass, that unearthly frozen liquid, cradling an invisible dark. And lit. By
lamps, by candles, by burning sacrificial fires. By light reflected from a relic’s gold, or an
idols ruby eye. Lit and shadowed from within, from outside bathed twice daily in advancing
and retreating gloom. A nest of wild complexity, of lines and forms and natural shapes, of
sacred words and coloured glass, of images and messages and continual slow ritual. Shadow
upon shadow upon shadow over decades, over centuries.
Here, in this incubator of near-dark, in this experiment of shade, the shadows learn.
This still takes time, for shadows learn quite slowly, often forgetting what they are. Most
shadow believes that it is light, it runs towards the rising sun and dies. Some thinks itself a
deeper dark and flees endlessly into the night. Many shadows think that they are stone, or
living beings, or manufactured things. You can see these clinging to their objects, hiding in
their cracks and hurrying at their heels. A certain kind of shadow believes that it is beauty,
it hunts women and hides in the centres of gems. When it finds a certain women that it likes,
it adores her, softly embracing her face with the gentlest touch, stroking under her cheeks
and chin, erasing signs of age, transforming eyes to burning pools. When this shadow falls
in love it often falls for life, it will cling to her through old age, into death, and tenderly hold
her bones in the dark.
But shadow does not name itself, not straight away. It is relational, it springs from something
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else, to know itself takes time.
“By my analysis the light outside must wax and wane at least one hundred thousand times,
while inside there must be continual, or semi-continual light. Neither total light or darkness
may prevail. So: a large building (very large is best), of great inner complexity, inhabited
and in use for at least three hundred years. At this stage we stand a small chance of the
catalysation of shadow into life. A shadow-elemental, but one created by the shadow of built
things. Teche-Umbra, or Umbra-Technical if you will, the living shadow of made things.” -
Ashkott.
The form of an Umbra-Technical Elemental can differ a great deal. It learns shape and life
from its environment, and so often begins by mimicking those shapes and those small lives.
A bird is common first, plumaged in gloom, composed of rippling darkness like the tangle
in the centre of a wine-knot as it pours into a glass. A young Umbra-Technical Elemental
will generally do versions of the thinks its living double does. It will nest and peck, swoop
and flutter, simply a dark bird amongst the rest. In southern climes a bat is also a common
initial form. It haunts and possesses one particular building, or a very closely nested group of
buildings. It never leaves the shadow, avoiding both absolute darkness and direct light.
At any time this living embroidery of night can fly apart, disappearing into the shadows of
its home and reappearing wherever it so desires, so long as shadows lie there.
At first it is unlikely that anyone will realise that the shadow in the rafters is alive. But
as time trickles by and centuries pass, as the shadow grows in size and power, it becomes
intelligent and self aware. The Elemental will often retain its initial shape as a kind of theme-
of-form, but it gradually learns new shapes from what it sees and the things its shadows
enfold. If it grows inside a religious building, then it will learn the forms sculpted on its
walls, or painted there. Eventually it will be able to assume the shape depicted in any of
the sculptures or images in the building, and act as they would, physically at least. It can
also choose to look like anyone inside the building now. It can learn languages, but speaks
only in a whisper, sometimes appearing to those who are alone, wearing a human shape,
communicating some vital message that it hopes will ensure the buildings survival. It may
give its name as that written on some ancient tomb, or the name the building had in ages
past, in another language, in another time.
When angered or enraged, it can attack, doing physical harm. It can also bring blindness,
or even madness with a touch, though neither blindness, harm nor madness will last long
outside the buildings walls.
And they can charm, seduce and love and fall in love. Beauty and its love was often worked
into the stone that gave them birth, it is command and vulnrability to them. They can
appear as people of great beauty, charming some to service and taking lovers if they wish,
but they can lose themselves as well. Should they charm a person to their service, if they
are beautiful there is a chance that the Umbra-Technical itself could fall in love, and when
it does it falls forever, till its lover dies, then loves their bones.
The more time drifts past, the more powerful the Umbra-Technical becomes. Ultimately,
it can enfold all shadows in the building onto one great organism, compressed and folded
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under the roof like an eagle packed into its shell. It is every shadow, everywhere inside that
space.
Umbra-Technicals are neither evil nor good. What they care about is place. They are
connected to the walls that birthed them, to the pillars and the stones to the windows and
the lamps that burned. Acting to defend the shadows of that place, protecting them from
too much dark or too much light. This usually leads it into a symbiotic relationship with
the mortal guardians of its home. They both want the same things. Slow permanence,
repetition, gloom, and for the stones to never fall.
200

UNGULIX
“I am glad that the Ungulix, (that spine’d malevolence) is rare, but sadder still to find it
rare enough that no-one will believe it real!” - L
(I have never claimed the Ungulix a hoax, I say only that there is not proof. A single
data-point is not enough - Z)
“Although there is no record of them anywhere, although never seen by anyone but I and
that rarely, I swear to you the Ungulix is true!
A compressible, winding creature, with the size and height and strength of limb of those very
large hounds used for hunting wolves, yet squirmish and tractomorphic like a cat or mustelid.
Ungulix combine the aspects of the Lizard and the rabid dog. They stand four-square with
their backs arched in a curve, but can also slide and slither, curl and twist, they can fit into
any space that might hold a slightly build contortable man. The back is ridged with slanting
triangular spines. Though sharp, these spines cannot be bone, for they can bow or lie back,
permitting Ungulix to better hide and crawl through cracks and narrow gaps.
Its feet are clawed, a little like a dogs, the claws extend and rasp when the Ungulix is
hungry and help it walk upon the ground. The head is maddening and crazed, its eyes
are coloured pearls, oddly sized and never the same shade. Its jaw is an uneven mess with
grating triangular teeth, designed for ripping flesh. A lashing tail rounds off the end.
Ungulix are an ugly, irregular, black-columbine, like a diseased and dirty dove and when
they come they bring a kind of ruined air; A blotchiness or spattering, not of the vision, but
of space itself, unnerving inversions of light, dark fireflies burning inverted flame, spinning
and winking in and out.
Ungulix come always from below, they live under things and can be under anything, under
tables, under chairs, under wardrobes, under beds, under carpets, under logs under sheds or
sleeping dogs. Perhaps not under dogs. But anywhere you see an under-surface out of sight,
from under there the Ungulix may squeeze, rasping its teeth and rolling its eyes.
Most unpleasantly, the Ungulix is upside down. It advances slowly, claws gripping the
ground. If distracted, it falls upward to the roof. Once up there it leaps happily about the
ceiling, but if the roof is high and it wishes to seize upon you it must carefully climb down
the walls and creep to you across the floor. Rugs. Rugs are happy things and key in defence
against the Ungulix.
It is rare for them to continue pursuit outside the house, the sky is deadly to them. (Though
once they did venture to chase me through a densely wooded copse, leaping across the
bottoms of the interlaced branches). If they should ‘fall’ outside, I have seen no limit to its
fall, they disappear into the sky. Lure them outside!
As much as Ungulix can appear underneath anything at all without warning, they can also
disappear the same way, which they will quickly do should circumstances turn against them.
They are frustrating and devilish opponents! As soon as any sign of help arrives, they leap
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away and squirm back under the bed. If the bed is overturned, nothing is found, the Ungulix
are gone.
I have pointed out the claw marks on my ceiling, the scratches on my rugs, my cuts and
bruises and the gnaw marks on my lintels upside down, all to no avail! I have described
the blotching in the air and been prescribed pills. Everywhere I meet a doubting gaze. An
old, deluded, drunk, once-famous man, lonely and traumatised from a lifetime of wonders,
obsessed with monsters, either desperate for attention, or simply mad, chasing myself through
my own house, ruining my things and chewing on my own lintels. It is true the Ungulix
come mainly when I drink, but this is part of their design.
I believe they prefer to take by ambush, hunting lone people, appearing under the bed, then
snatching the victim and carrying them off to their upside-down world. Surprise, I venture is
the greatest weapon of the Ungulix. Nothing could be more reasonable than for an ambush
predator hunting intelligent prey with an inflexible tactic to spread out its attacks over as
wide an area as possible, taking only lone individuals, making sure that no message of its
presence ever spreads. Imagine secret wolves, or what a tiger could achieve with clothes and
a key to the house!
This explains why the Ungulix hunt me still, and why they do so in such careful secrecy.
I have exposed their scheme. It was only my preternatural awareness and unusual state of
ever-ready preparation, gained over long years of adventure and danger, that allowed me to
survive the first Ungulix attack at all. They must have thought me a tempting target, an
old man, past his prime, sleeping, perhaps somewhat drunk, alone, unarmed.
How wrong they were! The rogues took a taste of my duelling stick and I escaped through
the window into the snow.
Their hunting of me will not cease. As long as I live and speak the truth I am a danger to
them. They must destroy me, and they must do so secretly, without evidence or witnesses
to watch. If they can do this then my lone voice may go unheeded, lost in time, and the
Ungulix may continue their predations without restriction.
And so my lonely duel goes on. I know they will come for me. When alone, from somewhere
underneath. What if a bookshelf falls? I am old now and I can stand neither company nor
too many nights outdoors. It is only a matter of time. They seek me from their topsy turvy
world, and I would have this done.” - Juglansing Leptoblast
202

VITELLARY
A bright cyclopic fly that crawls upon your skin and can’t be touched. It turns the world to
words.
If a fat and well-fed Glyphapillar is burnt in a hot orange flame, it leaves black segmented
chrysalis upon the ground, like seeds of living coal. These lie in the ashes for a day or so, then
as tree-ash cools, they crack and bright Vitallary clamber out, gold from coal, an alchemists
trick fulfilled.
Vitellary have a smooth round thorax and a headless abdomen which holds both eye and
wings and from which the legs descend. The Vitellary’s eye is blank, white and perfectly
round. The two sharp swept-forward wings move far too quickly for an eye to see, a
hummingbird-blur. The spiked legs hang straight down.
The horror of the Vitellary is: it cannot be struck at or removed. As the hand comes down
to swat it off the skin, it freezes in mid-air or swerves to strike around the mark. Pinched
fingers sent to pick it off will likewise turn aside, pincering flesh or empty space. The fly
runs along your arm, you flail, it skitters up your chest, you beg for help, it runs across your
face and lays against the corner of your eye, feeding on your tears, you scream and clutch at
empty air. It may do as it wishes with your body and your skin, you cannot take it off.
Methods of removal are dangerous and few. If only one or two Vitellary are present then
containment: (throwing a wet towel over the offending limb) and rapid amputation do the
trick. Teasing the fly onto a smaller finger and rapidly striking it off at the joint with a knife
can work as well.
Non conscious animals can swat the flies, as can people-asleep who do it in a dream. A thin
sheet of acid or flame, indifferently applied, can drive them off.
“Simply roll your child in fine flour, the beat them till only a thin sheen remains. Tell them
to close their eyes and apply a living flame, make sure to turn away. A swift and harmless
conflagration will ensue, its end: mild singing and harmless murdered flies falling to the
ground like rain.” - Leptoblast
Pushing someone underwater can sometimes cause the flies to leave. Debate rages over a
sharp un-prompted dunking works the best, or slow immersion, causing the Vittelary to
gradually migrate to the top of the head or tip of the nose. Hopefully to fly away.
But there are dangers, for the Vitellary only land on human skin to mate. When you see
them dash in circles on your flesh, you know the end is soon to come. Once impregnated,
the female fly injects her eggs directly, driving them under your skin to gestate. And just as
with the fly, the eggs cannot be deliberately removed. If you frighten the Vitillary, it may
panic, injecting unfertilised eggs that will rot under the flesh, or burrowing itself. Either of
these grim events might be preferred to that of host to Vitellary young.
The maggots crawl towards the brain. Slowly, over several days, they burrow through the
body underneath the skin. They move up the neck and when they reach the skull they
disappear, diving like cetaceans. Spiralling into the mind.
203

Whatever they do there, whether by consuming some hidden organ of thought, secreting
an unknown oil or radiating cryptic waves that jangle the glands of the brain, it alters the
cognition of the mind.
The first sign often comes with blood. The host, if cut or wounded in a minor way, will look
down at the tear, and see, instead of liquid, a stream of tiny crimson words. The words are
‘bloodbloodbloodbloodblood’, running in a river of red words. From this point on the effect
intensifies and expands. Single fingers are replaced by long thin words reading ‘finger’ and
jointed to the hand which slowly becomes ‘hand’, still living at the end of the arm.
This change encompasses the world. All things are named and seen as their name. The
Vitellary-Blindness.
“An inaccurate and unfair name. The Vilellary victims are not blind, they can see and find
their way about well enough. True, many do go mad and gouge out their own eyes, but this
does little good. The fresh Glyphapillars are still slowly growing in their brain and cannot
be removed. Most learn, somehow, to adapt to this brief world of words instead of shapes.
And in fact there are advantages for some.
The words are always literal and more than one doomed sufferer has claimed that the Vitel-
lary blindness lets them see things as they really are. I heard a story of one man who saw,
walking towards him, the word ‘bandit’ in a human shape, who then addressed him as a
friend. It’s said this secret knowledge saved his life, such as it was. Others have discerned
the letters T.R.A.P. where friends saw but a boon.
For those who work the Subtle Art the Vitellary blindness holds a special fascination of its
own. Many are the tales of certain spells and mysteries exposed by those who could watch
their effects or lens their secrets with a verbal eye. To see the secrets of the world unfurled
in words, a tantalising proposition for scholars and philosophers of every kind. If only there
was some way to survive the worms. But so far there is not.” - Zenithal
Eventually the victim goes into seizure, their skull cracks open and shining Glyphapillars
wander out and crawl in search of wood to eat and trees in which to sit.
The Vitellary is feared above all other insect kind, the sight of one can empty rooms and
send families fleeing into the street. A swarm can empty villages, a plague can make whole
cities refugees
Few can stomach the nightmare of seeing a loved one covered with the yellow flies, both of
you knowing the flies will soon lay eggs inside their flesh. Some leap into bonfires in despair,
and should they survive, no matter how mutilated or burnt, may think themselves fortunate
indeed.
Dark stories tell of those who use the Vitellary for deliberate and evil ends. Of swamp-drunk
tribes who cover certain members in the flies, making them utterly immune to attack. For,
if you cannot strike a Vitellary off the flesh, neither can you strike flesh where it is. Someone
covered in the golden-yellow flies, or riddled with the bumps of their eggs, cannot be directly
harmed.
Other legends tell of Shaman deliberately infecting themselves to see with world in words,
204

or of wealthy workers of the subtle art abducting innocents and giving them the blindness,
forcing them to look upon strange mysteries and speak of what they see.
205

VORE BULL
“A hecatomb empire, endlessly sacrificed. A kingdom of cattle and the wronged, obsessed
with justice and revenge, where nothing is forgotten and all things are accounted for and
measured in the eye of a merciless god. An old culture, whose faith is a cult of mystery,
holding light but taken through dark places. A place of hunger and renewal, civilised and
savage, cultured and self-consuming. Cannibals? Possibly, very possibly. Though I doubt
if they thought of it that way. For them, it was a cycle, endlessly renewed. Silent though,
nothing written by them has survived the years, only images carved far from the sun. Perhaps
they built and said much more than this and all their greater monuments are lost or worn
away. Perhaps they simply liked to carve within the dark. Only these deep, secreted places
have survived. Passions in stone, similar images flickering under the lamplight. Always the
same figures, though the carvings may be a thousand miles apart. The Bull. The Judge.
The Sacrifice. The Army of the Bulls. The Consumption. Then a long darkness and the
hints of a rebirth.” - Zenithal
“The process is a complex one. There are emotional aspects. I will skip over those and get
to the point.
A kind of micro-hecatomb is made. I will refer to this as the Activator.
A bull must be found and named. The name must be an anagram of the seeker’s name. It
must be marked somewhere on the bull. Carved, cut or branded.
The bull is skinned. It is helpful at this time to prop the animal upright with the head tilted
back. Strip naked, grease yourself, swallow the Activator and let gravity ease you into the
bull. DO NOT cut your way in. It must be through the mouth.
It is helpful to be slight of frame. If you are large of body then the bull must likewise be
great in size.
The bull then animates. It stands and walks. Some transmorphism takes place. The rear legs
are re-worked, the front transformed to arms and hands, the eyeballs fall away, light comes
from within. For as long as the process goes on the bull is virtually indestructable.
A sign or symbol of the bull’s new name will appear somewhere on its surface. The exact
pattern of this cannot be predicted. It may be a symbol, or string of symbols, initials, or a
single word. In some way they relate to the contoller of the bull.
It is entirely possible to survive the process. The bull will commit some lethal violence on
animation. This is unavoidable. But with effort this can be focused on particular individuals.
(To avoid general mayhem.) Beyond this point it can be governed somewhat. On finishing,
the controller can simply climb out and vomit up the Activator. Dangerous for the unskilled
and unprepared certainly, but not necessarily lethal.” - Ashkott
“Stammel is a rogue with her sources: she notices everything, never footnotes, and compul-
sively translates everthing into Ancient Auralent regardless of the original language. Never-
theless, I offer here my translation of her translation of the original, found who knows where.
206

(She certainly did not write it down.) Probably dredged up from the recollections of some
ruined elder from one of the Horizon-towns.
“The wounded ones work first
Those fate has hurt
Angered by the World-Engine
Hungry for the vengeance-meal.
A small thing take they

Mouse or minor beast
Candle-hearted creature, living fast.
Give they their rage,
give it to the beast in whole.
Now anger’s fire is pure,
seperate from its maker
Burns high in the mouse-heart.
Fierce becomes the beast
wrathful and small.
Let it not escape
For it will kill if it can.
Now the heart is still.

The wounded one looks on their anger
Burning in the tiny heart.
Sees it in its whole.
The wise will end things now,

let be what is and was.
But some
will not.
Call they for the Bull.
Down in the dark belly make their home

eaten by ecstasy
the pure white hatred, stronger than before
the indivisible joy.
moaning in the Bull Belly.
The three are one

till harm is done.
Spirit of revenge
in belly of the man.
Dreaming anger-mind
in belly of the bull.
And bull itself
engine of ruin.
207

So long as they are linked in chain
not gods not men not death
will cease what comes.”
A rather sinister fragment I think you’ll agree!” - Leptoblast
208

WHIRLWIND WURM
“What mystery lies beyond the Wurm? Many seek it out, yet few return.
The Whirlwind Wurm is pitiful indeed, desperate for friends but cursed by a nightmarish
ever-consuming maw.
For the Whirlwind Wurm has teeth in infinite degree! Teeth without end! One grows every
second in its mouth! Its circular lip stained red with the soreness of the ever-growing teeth
poking through its gums and abrading its flesh.
The Wurmz are roughly the same size as cows, but simple beasts. Lozenges! Mere cylinders,
closed at one end, and weightless in our world, like balloon’s bobbing along, carefully working
their way about on spindly black limbs, clutching at the ground. If it were to loose its grip
upon the earth, the Wurm would float momentarily, and then be caught by a gust or bullied
away by a breeze to land who-knows-where?
Beyond the passage of the Inner-Wum, the ‘Road Of Knives’, lies a limbo-land, a grey and
formless waste forgotten by all. This griseous void sends forth its meek tendrils, hungry,
endlessly hungry for existence, for life! Where this questing pseudopod of nullity meets
our more-vital zone it is bound in flesh, a rude simulacrum of the life it finds. This is the
Whirlwind Wurm, a meek and stupid simulated thing, dangerous, but without an aggressive
will, endlessly hungry, devouring what it can.
Should you visit that cinereous plain, you will find there a thin and desperate skin of being,
a ghostlike pencil-scratch world with paperthin soil and beings of shadowy bone. This is
the world built in painstaking slow degree by the grim consumption of the Wurmz. The sky
above it is a cathedral void of grinding teeth, like upturned funnels, each leading up into
the long vortex of a Wurm, somewhere in the lands we know. And from these Wurmz come
vague irregular showers of stone and flesh, mud and soil, sprinklings of matter to feed and
sustain the thin world hanging in the void.” - Leptoblast
“There were six black eyes equidistant round it’s perfectly circular mouth.
The teeth were very like a sharks, but curved inwards slightly with both serrated edge and
point. The teeth grew in a spiral, leading ‘in’. I am not certain if a new tooth does indeed
breach ‘every second’ but they do appear at quick and regular intervals. As new teeth grow
in around the mouth the rest shuffle back inside the Wurm. The sound of the teeth growing
and adjusting is quite loud, like a washing basket full of ceramic knives slowly churning
round.
I was reluctant to stand directly before the Wurm itself as anything that goes into its mouth
does not come out, but a brief glimpse showed teeth, arranged in endless rows, spiralling deep
into the distance out of sight. On a wild impulse, perhaps doubting the evidence of my own
eyes, I spun my lantern in my hands and hurled it onto the Wurm. The light disappeared,
as if falling for a long while before going out. It seemed to do the Wurm no harm, but the
creature did let go of the ground with its black limbs. It bobbed a little, frantically trying
to regain purchase, but was already a little too high to clasp on. It began, slowly at first, to
209

spin along its axis in the air.
Possibly I should have rendered aid at this point, but I was still wary of the creatures mouth.
Seeing that it was taken by a breeze, I seized this opportunity to investigate its lair.
The cave was utterly utterly smooth, any projections of stone had been chewed and scoured
away. The area nearby was free of life, animal or vegetable, the soil had been stripped and
the rock beneath likewise worn down to a smooth plate. This was part of the reason the
Wurm had such difficulty keeping its footing on the smooth stone.
As to the ‘mystery of the Wurm’, I am afraid I have no idea. The seemingly infinite inner
gullet of teeth must go somewhere. If it is a means of feeding for some being or place then
I think it must be a poor one. The Wurmz themselves are aimless, hungry yes, but poorly
focused, seeming to know little of what they do. If it is a gateway then it is a strange one,
made to allow access only in one direction and to make any attempt at moving the other
way as painful and damaging as possible.
They remind me of the logic of prisons and divine torture more than anything else, a long
entry with the exit theoretically within grasp, yet always out of reach. Though poetic, the
conception of the Whirlwind Wurm as a gateway to Hell, and that to escape, the hell-bound
must simply crawl all the way through the worms tooth-ed throat, is not entirely without
cause.” - Zenithal
“They are social. I have deciphered a voice (a voice for which no-one else (typically) even
sought to listen). They modulate the grinding whirlwind of knives inside. It is ineffective.
But they are social and they are lonely as nothing will come near them willingly at all. It
was happy to do what I wished so long as I spoke to it.
The only thing they can do with anything is consume it utterly. When they sleep (they find
it very hard to sleep due to the noise) they sometimes loosen their limbs. They are dragged
around their lair by the suction of their mouth, eating everything without realising.
Obviously a means of permanent disposal is a thing of use. Valuable and dangerous.
More dangerous than valuable really.
I did not ask where they went to or what they were. Why should I care where they lead? I
will not be going and all that matters is that what I put in does not come back. Probably
a magical experiment gone wrong. Or a hunger elemental perhaps. It matters little. The
teeth are not infinite and (it turns out) there are, in fact, limits to what can be disposed
of.
The only thing worse than being near a live Whirlwind Wurm is being near a dying one.
The twisted space they capture falls apart. The teeth eject. Very very quickly. Anticyclone
reaping machine. The local area is flensed. The space nearby ends up knee-deep in teeth,
with the body of the Wurm in the centre like a bad flan. I was forced to leave quickly but
by assessing the rough volume of teeth and guessing the average amount of teeth-per-foot
inside the Wurm, I would estimate the Wurm itself is no more than five or so miles ‘deep’.”
- Ashkott
210

WOUND WHISP
Every time a wound is healed by some other-natural art there is a small chance that a Wound
Whisp will be made. By some mistaken craft, the wound itself is not repaired but removed
to some other imperceptible, inaccessible space. The remaining flesh knitted directly side-
to-side, ignoring the now-missing intervening gash.
The place where they are sent to, throbs, overfull with timeless living wounds, abstracted
from their hosts, slowly growing sentience and going mad. They are half-completed things
like rivers in mid-flow, whose life is often death, born in violence and descending towards the
long low sleep of a scar or the transforming rapture of decomposition in which the wound
becomes the world. Here the wound can neither sleep nor change and sometimes one escapes
and finds its way back to the world of men.
The Wound Whisp is a ribbon or curl of flesh, sometimes bloodstained skin, sometimes raw
meat. It is around eight feet long and floats vertically in the air, its tip and tail curling and
lashing in spirals. (This is not the size of the wound as it was made nor as it would be if
returned, it is magnified, intensified, by its abstraction from the world.) Two strips of blood-
black body serve as hands, they are textured like black pudding, composed of coagulated
blood. It’ weird eyes float around like badly boiled eggs or fruit that has gone off, there’s
something like a nose, and a terrible mouth, a deeper, darker, blacker place within that span
of active damage. Its maw is black inside, like the unseeable inside of a wound, somehow
hinting of liquid. Triangular and long, it is lined with razor teeth.
The Wound Whisp is always frightened, tired and angry. It is an incompleteness in the air
and it can never sleep. Healing is the wounds rest, death its dream, without these they go
mad.
Composed of pure harm, the Wound Whisp need fear no harmful thing. Any weapons made
to hurt will simply deepen the wound, swords and knives expand it with each blow. It can
sometimes be restrained, or bound by Subtle Art. Curative magic’s can damage it and drive
it off, fire can cauterize it into a floating scab, but it cannot be fully killed. It is neither
diabolic, evil or undead but simply incomplete. All it wants is a body in which to rest and
finally sleep. It does not know or care whether moving into a body will kill the host or not.
Healing slowly over time, or simply bleeding out and decomposing in the ground, both are
equal in its mind.
The Wound Whisp would prefer to return to its original mother or father. Its mother is
whoever suffered the wound, its father is whoever dealt it. These people may be very hard
to find, but if they live the Wound Whisp knows where both will be and can track them down
with an unerring sense. If dead, the Wound Whisp wanders the world, sometimes hiding
in the dark and weeping tears of blood, clenched around the absence at its core, sometimes
bursting into manic drive and setting off into the wilderness to encounter who it will, asking
for its parents in a ghastly voice that sounds like tearing meat. If it finds someone enough
like either its mother or its sire, or simply becomes wracked by its long exile, it will seek to
weave itself into any being of flesh and blood.
211

The wound may rest for a while in rocks or trees, hiding as a seeping crack, or trapse around
in animals, but it is never happy there and will not stay. It needs a person to bear it like a
mother bears a child.
A Wound Whisp can bite terribly with its gawping triangular mouth, and is hard to stop. It
can slowly worm its way through walls and doors, creeping like a slow crack then breaking
out into itself again. Once it nests inside your flesh it does only the damage of the wound
it originally was. A knife wound will produce a stabbing gash, an axe wound will produce
a furrow and perhaps a broken bone, but beyond that point it does no more and will heal
naturally on its own like any wound. (Of course a decapitating strike will take off your head,
it is hard to know ahead of time exactly what kind of wound it will be.)
A Wound Whisp wound remains intelligent and self aware, even in your flesh, it can perceive
and speak, flapping the torn skin like a mouth, until it becomes a scar. Even after then some
dull dreaming awareness is retained. It is surprisingly well-disposed towards the one that
bears it, it has, from its point of view, found a new mother and will offer what assistance it
can from its limited perspective so long as it is allowed to follow its natural course. It may
speak to its new parent advising them of things learnt over its strange existence. It can tell
them about its original parents, it can cry out to warn them of danger they can’t see. Even
when become a scar it may wake them in the night with stabs of pain if it perceives danger
near.
If any attempt is made to heal a Wound Whisp in the body by Subtle Art, it will scream
with the bloody mouth it made from their flesh and burrow deeper in, becoming an internal
wound. This can be dangerous indeed.
212

XAXAVRAZNAZAK
The Xaxavraznazak is fast and black. A long body like seahorse, serpent or an eel used as a
dangerous flag. Big mad spider legs, galloping like clockwork bursting from a broken clock.
Taller than a tall tall horse, but shorter than a small giraffe. The Xaxavraznazak is flickering
and cantering, turning in one place to look around. Huge eyes like white moth-holes in dark
cloth, and a black Mohican spray. The Xaxavraznazak is late (it is always has a schedule
planned) and it is worried and afraid and it is talking to itself. It is thinking thoughts and
talking to itself about its thoughts, and sometimes talking to itself about the thoughts it
had about its thoughts. Its thoughts concern it very much. But the Xaxavraznazak is late
and it must go. Go now. Go now. Go now now now.
But wait. A thought about a thought occurs.
The Xaxavraznazak is very fast. It is as fast on the ground as a plummeting hawk just
before it takes its prey. It is fast fast fast, the Xaxavraznazak. And it does not feel inertia,
which is good, for the Xaxavraznazak goes often the wrong way and needs to stop and turn
around. This makes it later still! The Xaxavraznazak would like to lose less time. If only it
were faster. Just a little. Just a little faster, think what could be done! What plans revealed,
what schemes achieved!
Its horde is swift enchantments. A quick device, some shoes that fly, a key that opens any
door, a spell that crosses worlds, a horse that springs up from the earth. The treasures that
it loves the most are those that give it speed. It does not use the rapid tools: instead, it
ponders longingly and dreams of their design.
It wants to understand. It is a scientist, the Xaxavraznazak, (or says it is), which is a
philosophy-of-hands (that’s what it claims), it has a method which few things survive.
The Xaxavraznazak makes claim that magic is not real; it is merely mathematics, poorly
understood. It compulsively confiscates spellbooks and spells of any kind.
“It’s for your own good.” says the Xaxavraznazak, as it races away at the speed of a plum-
meting hawk before it takes its prey.
It takes the spells back to its lair, translates them to equations then bakes them into little
men which it then eats. It gnaws the raw mathematics right out of their baked bones.
This is diet of the Xaxavraznazak, and not a wise one. Equations are a spiky meal and
sometimes the Xaxavraznazak lies on the floor and moans and curls in shapes that look like
mis-spelt words with its big mad spider legs kicking out and breaking prison pots and jars,
shaking the shelves of its quick machines. But it will eat no other food than spells translated,
baked in little men.
Its weird meals give the Xaxavraznazak a special power. It breathes Prismatic Fire, just like
a dragons fiery breath, but not. No nothing like that, not at all.
The strange breath of the Xaxavraznazak can do no harm. It is a holographic flame (that’s
what it says, though what it means no-one is sure), it breaks things into fragments of
213

themselves, each whole, each real, just very very small. Things caught in the breath of the
Xaxavraznazak are splintered into lots of tiny versions of themselves. A wall becomes a
dozen tiny walls, a sword becomes a pile of tiny swords and people turn into piles of living
dolls.
Where before there stood a man, now, after the prismatic fire, there stands, in the shape
of the man, a pile of living dolls, each a perfect image of the whole. Then the pile slips
and slides and the dolls go skittering all over the floor, waving their tiny arms as it comes
down. The Xaxavraznazak runs madly round, collecting all the little men, (it’s front legs
have extremely discreet claws), talking to itself about its thoughts. It puts them into little
bags and takes them to its lair.
There, in the lair of the Xaxavraznazak, it sorts its treasures, the things-of-speed, the magic
books, the bags of tiny people. It puts the people into prison-pots and jars. Sometimes
it builds small villages and lets them run about. Some Xaxavraznazaks create gigantic
labyrinths which take up almost all their space. The maze has tiny gates and complex
permutations and no end. Each gate divides in two, forcing the runner to choose. The
Xaxavraznazak dumps crowds of tiny people into the complex maze and watches as they run
its branching paths. Then collects them at the end and starts again. Making notes.
Often tiny folk escape in ones or twos, they break out of the lair and try to journey home
for help. It is a mighty odyssey. There are hawks, commonly, nesting above the entry to the
lair of the Xaxavraznazak, and they feed well. Their nests are strewn with tiny skulls.
It’s possible the Xaxavraznazak knows how to reverse the action of its breath. It’s said that
if you can pull out its stomach, full of half-digested maths, cut a slit, force in all the tiny
people and cook it like black pudding, then the little versions of the whole will distil back
together and emerge as whole again.
But if that is not the case. . .
Then you just killed the Xaxavraznazak and cooked your friend.
It is a complex situation.
The Xaxavraznazak would claim its breath is merely a technique that anyone could learn,
and that gurgeling its stomach in a pot will do not good.
But who could trust the Xaxavraznazak?
There are some Subtle Arts the Xaxavraznazak might sometimes use in shame instead of eat.
It does love portals, or things that let it move from place to place. If it hears of something
far away it thinks it needs and is certain it can’t get there any other way, it may, nervously
and half-unwilling, use a spell to get there. Then it races back at the speed of a plummeting
hawk and lies lies lies in its thoughts about its thoughts about its thoughts. . .
214

YAMMAN
Yam Man are creatures of the desert and dry scrub. They live singly, buried up to their
noses in the desert sand, looking carefully through narrowed eyes, breathing slow, listening
to the wind and the chatter of the owls, in dense impassible patches of cacti and thorns.
They can wait there for a long long time.
Yam Man have a symbiotic links with certain owls; tiny and nocturnal things. They burrow
in its head, making tunnels in the hard rind amidst its spikes and sleep there in the day. At
night the owls hunt, or sometimes carry messages from Yam to Yam in the distant places
where they live. The Yam Man have learnt the language of the owls and mutter of them
constantly, whispering complaints of the scratching and gossiping birds. Secretly though
they are fond and ruthlessly protective of their tiny friends.
At night, the Yam Man walks, followed by the sound of its muttering and a flock of tiny
birds.
The Yam-man can be a combative people.
Fatalism plays a large part, the rains can be irregular and years can pass without a drop,
the Yam Man waits. Waits in the sand, hoping no-one comes. Continual attempts of various
dehydrated passers-by to ‘tap the yam’, and drink its sustaining juice, breeds a defensive
pugalism.
The Yam-Man box well, a little slow on their feet but very observant, and skilled with a
counter-punch. The starlit boxing matches of the Yam-Man are spoken of by aging fighters
in the backs of bars all over the world, but few have ever seen one done.
Two Yam-Man who have come to occupy the same patch of scrub will formally agree to
fight (only so long as they are roughly the same size, no Yam-Man would fight an unsporting
match against a much smaller or larger opponent, in this case they will simply sit in the dirt
and endlessly argue.)
Once a match has been formally arranged (by owl) the Yam-Man will heave up from their
rooty nests, shake free the soil and rocks, and ponderously stroll towards the zone assigned,
somewhere deserted, unobserved and deep in the wilderness.
They will meet, greet each other and ask their owls to perch in a ring around the fight. The
boundary of the battle will be occupied by softly hooting owls, and other small noctural
mammals which also gather in the brush and scrub.
There they will begin the Yam Man Slam, a slow yet brutal boxing match which can last
until dawn. Yam Man will usually fight in rounds that last about an hour, with intervals of
fifteen or twenty minutes during which they will check on their owls and look silently at the
stars. A Slam is rarely abandoned unless an Owl is hurt.
Their unusual level of strength and martial skill, Yam Man strike as a monster much larger
and more dangerous thatn they seem to be. Due to their extraordinary toughness and
resistance to crushing damage they rarely do signifigant damage upon one another. Most
215

matches end before dawn due to exhaustion, often with the agreement to a re-match at some
future unspecified date.
Yam-Man regard edged wepons as tools of monsterous cowardice and will react to them with
wrath and anger.
However those using only blunt weapons will be treated neutrally while those who fight with
thier fists will recived cordial, even friendly respect. Especially if they display a high level
of puglalistic skill, and sporting honour of course. In these cases, and if it is night, the Yam
Man may even agree to spar a little, although this is, of course, not a true Slam.
Each older Yam-Man knows a few unique tricks and moves related to bare-handed fighting
and a handful of legendary wise fighters, (or brutal thinkers) claim to have been trained ‘in
the Hand of the Yam’, wandering from Yam to Yam, slowly earning their friendship and
respect and learning the secrets of their martial skills.
216

ZEN BEAST
It’s mouth is always gawping, like a lidless eye. Huge, perfectly circular, it collapses like an
iris in the light to bite, and jam irregular black teeth through bone and punctured flesh like a
folding hydraulic machine. Inside the mouth is nothing but absorbing dark, things consumed
are never seen again. It stands twelve feet or more, armoured in a matte carapace of dull,
dark shades. The armour-colours shift like grimy oil: a frost-bitten blue, sick chartreuse,
browns, blacks and the virid of an ignored wound. Its milky, stormy pupiless googly white
eyes boil always and emit a moonlight: pseudo-pale. The arms hang like an apes, tipped in
knifehands, which look like complex cutlery of bone. They can pierce things and bring them
to the creatures mouth, or else they simply slash and stab at what’s around.
It comes always at night, smashing down trees and biting the heads off bears, aimless in its
wrath, seeking destruction and harm. It likes to stamp on heads, to slash, smash, pierce,
murder, bite and swallow whole. To ride raw ruin over the world, targeting no particular
person, place or group, but assaulting everything that is. And then, beyond the peak of
horror but before the dawn, it turns, and walks away, seeming to disappear. Those who
follow it do not return at all, or find naught but a rumour of monks. Monks in black,
tracking the creature silently through the dark.
Some seek perfection in a state of thought. They meditate to find it, diving ever deeper inner
seas, the selves lagoons, wild, empty and far from the cognitive sun. There to offer battle.
To fight the other impulse in the self, to purify the soul and rise heraldic and inwardly lit.
Many centuries this takes within the dream of thought, and the horror must go somewhere.
As the monk meditates the evil seeps slowly out of their skin, a viscous muck that coats
them, layering and building over time. There is more inside a person than you’d think. If the
monk can meditate for long enough, as darkness falls the seeping pile will grow and wake,
its milky eyes will open, the limbs crack wide and it will walk. The monk is still silently
waiting in the belly of the beast, hanging in inverse-lotus, aware but not-aware. They know
this is the final stage. Soon they will become a perfect being. First they must resist the sly
temptations of the world: the urge to wake and halt the gleeful murders of their refugee self.
This is merely a distraction.
These are the Tenebrous Monks, and this the highest aim of their dark faith. They trace
the Zen Beast through the night, doing everything they can to keep it safe. The Ascending
One must not be lost. Anyone who threatens it must die. Those who hunt the Zen Beast
must face not only the thing itself, but its hidden protectors, stealthy, cunning fanatics who
have spent lifetimes training for their task, covering tracks, hiding evidence and killing any
witnesses.
217

ZUG-ZUG
“A soulless man or clever beast, with no society and entirely without fear. I thank the gods
they come in but ones and twos.” - L
Man sized, more slightly built, but dense and strong. You need a hammer to break Zug-Zug
bones and their joints can dislocate to absorb deadly force. The Zug-Zug flexes once, arching
its cantilevered back and its sockets pop back into place. Zug-Zug skin is rhino-thick and
dark dark red with slightly darker rufous fur across their face and back. Barbed pucoon
quills lie thickly down its spine, and provide the single weakness of the Zug-Zug: it cannot
crawl backwards down a hole it itself has made. Their ears are very tall and stick straight
up, their eyes are sly and deeply set. The face is flat and noseless but the muscles of the
jaw extend down into the shoulder blades and spine, its neck is hard to break and its bite is
strong, it can eat a human femur without tools. (“Zug-Zug never use tools, although they
know enough to gnaw on bowstrings in the night.” - Z)
They move, hunt, think, attack, escape and sometimes go around, moving forwards all the
time in a low continuous lope. They are extremely fast, moving quickly on all fours, climbing
well and digging through the dry earth Pyrrhous Plains. Each night the bone claws at their
fingertips and feet extend and they dig a burrow in the ground. This is almost the only time
that they are still. Twelve feet down, in a different place each night, the Zug-Zug sleeps. If
its home collapses in the night the Zug-Zug just burrows out and carries on its way.
Though it has no home the Zug-Zug has a territory whose borders it patrols. For an active
male this can be up to a thousand square miles. Everything within belongs to it. If there are
people in the Zug-Zug’s zone, then from the Zug-Zugs point of view it owns them too.
A Zug-Zug is not generally very interested in solving problems with other Zug-Zug’s. To
them, other Zug-Zug’s are the problem. When they wish to breed, a male Zug-Zug must try
to outwit a female Zug-Zug, or possibly the other way round. Since Zug-Zug’s are highly
intelligent, fiercely independent, solitary, covered in spines and hundreds of miles apart, the
greatest threat to their population is their difficulty in mating.
Female Zug-Zugs bear a single child. A Zug-Zug kit is the safest mortal being, the only thing
to ever be protected by not one, but two Zug-Zugs. Other than their ownership-of-zone this
is the only protective instinct Zug-Zugs have, though it is strong.
The Zug-Zug diet is everything. They chew bones raw, eat honey, fruit, grains, insects,
carrion and vultures, (“Zug-Zugs will hide inside a rotting corpse to eat the Vultures that
come for it” - Z) animals of every kind, people, hair, the bark of trees and sometimes rocks.
They do love honey. (“Bee stings won’t penetrate the Zug-Zug’s hide.” - Z)
Everything is worried by the Zug-Zug. Relentless, fearless, tireless and very very smart, they
can outwit human beings and take on creatures many times their size. If utterly outmatched
they will still deliver harm before they die. The Zug-Zugs parting gift is often wild castration,
or a femoral bleed, then death.
They speak. Very very rarely, since they don’t care what you think, but they can grunt out
218

words, and they can write, scratching letters in the dirt. And not just single tongues, they
can learn many languages, simply by listening in the night, beyond the circle of the fire.
Since they have no real desire to communicate, their language use is minimal, consisting
mainly of the low guttural call of ‘zug-zug-zug-zug-zug-zug’. They have no relics and no
crafts, they do not believe in anything they cannot sense, so no religion is found amongst
them.
Like people, Zug-Zug’s can think in time, planning and predicting events sometimes years
ahead. They can solve complex problems, something discovered by humans as soon as they
try to imprison one (“An almost impossible feat” - Z) They can identify weaknesses in armour
and guarded perimeters, but also in hierarchies and cultures, and families.
Large cultures of organised human beings are one of the few things that can potentially
threaten a Zug-Zug. Not one-on-one, a person is stupider, slower and weaker than a Zug-Zug,
and the Zug-Zug can generally evade or outwit groups, but people alter their environment.
They can burn trees, salt crops and frighten game, and this can change the Zug-Zug’s
zone. An uneasy truce often prevails with the Zug-Zug generally not eating people from
certain communities and those communities generally not doing things the Zug-Zug would
not like.
And, oddly, human cultures in a Zug-Zug’s zone rarely rise above a tribal state. Those
bold individuals that forge the cores of kingdoms tend to die, or disappear, with alarming
regularity. Likewise, prophets, or religious leaders who might unify the local tribes into a
larger mass, either never occur, or simply ‘go away’. Strong workers of the Subtle Art either
leave the zone rapidly, or go missing in the night.
It is a disturbing possibility that the Zug-Zug knows quite a lot more about us than we know
about it.
Though most peoples living in a Zug-Zug’s zone regard it as a powerful and crafty predator,
some begin to suspect that their culture somehow ‘belongs’ to the Zug-Zug. That the Zug-
Zug allows them to exist, manages their growth, sometimes protects them and sometimes
thins the herd. And that it understands them, not just as a group of animals, but that it
knows their culture and internal factions. They look at the regular inter-tribal wars, the
dearth of peacemakers and unifiers, the disappearance of certain useful people at certain
useful times, and they worry. But they do not speak their fears out loud. Those who do
often do not see the dawn.
An odd twist of the Zug-Zug’s other instinct, its desire to preserve its young, is the accidental
protection of children. Though a lone adult facing a Zug-Zug is in terrible danger, a lost
child will often be protected, sometimes against staggering odds. But the single mercy of
the Zug-Zug is unpredictable and strange, no parent seeks its limit.
219

I am like no other thing.
A gem not famed for brightness.
Dead, but only listen and I live.
Voiceless, I speak.
Thoughtless, I lie.
Deeper than dark water,
Sharper than a swift sword,
Stranger than a drugged dream,
I serve in ordered ranks that never
change.
Till night,
When a gallery of shadows paints your thoughts,
with more colours than a careless artist’s hand.
Lose me or be lost in me.
I am a place you may not go,
Once there I will not let you leave.
Though made of broken things I am
yet whole.
And guard one hundred murders.
Let’s kill your friends for fun.

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What are Abhorrers and what is their nature?

What are Abhorrers and what is their nature?

What creatures are mentioned in the table of contents?

What creatures are mentioned in the table of contents?

FIRE ON THE VELVET HORIZON

Written by Patrick Stuart

Some pages proof read by

Patrick Stuart would like to dedicate it to his parents

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0

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Terry Hintz (Order #32174893)

Terry Hintz (Order #32174893)

Terry Hintz (Order #32174893)

Terry Hintz (Order #32174893)

Terry Hintz (Order #32174893)

Terry Hintz (Order #32174893)

Terry Hintz (Order #32174893)

Terry Hintz (Order #32174893)

Terry Hintz (Order #32174893)

Terry Hintz (Order #32174893)

Terry Hintz (Order #32174893)

Terry Hintz (Order #32174893)

Terry Hintz (Order #32174893)

Terry Hintz (Order #32174893)

Terry Hintz (Order #32174893)

Terry Hintz (Order #32174893)

Terry Hintz (Order #32174893)

Terry Hintz (Order #32174893)

Terry Hintz (Order #32174893)

Terry Hintz (Order #32174893)

Terry Hintz (Order #32174893)

Terry Hintz (Order #32174893)

Terry Hintz (Order #32174893)

Terry Hintz (Order #32174893)

Terry Hintz (Order #32174893)

Terry Hintz (Order #32174893)