Shadows & Sorcery #122
It’s happening! Again! Shadows & Sorcery, only this time there’s now one hundred and twenty two of them!
Someone must deal with this, and I can think of none better than you, reader. Gear up and head forth, there’s a helping of dark lore and a two-part chronicle of a forlorn world below…
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This week, we get a heavy dose of lore on the Sorcery of the Dark, we glimpse the creation of the Storm Rune, and witness the birth of its grim descendant, the Rune of Madness…
Sorcery of the Dark
Gnostic sorcery wasn't hard to figure out. It was blunt. It required none of the subtlety, emotion, sentimentality, or even really intent of the magical arts practiced throughout the known world. It spat in the face of the intricate and esoteric workings of the world's symbolic metaphysics. But Serpent's Breath was it detailed. That's what made it work, really, the detail. The sheer descriptive potency of every little blasphemy that could possibly be crammed into whatever spell, curse, or conjuration the gnostic intended.
And what's worse, it wasn't sourced in any act of will, not like that of the material world, it was sourced in beseechment, bargaining, and sacrifice. Begging for scraps was how Carloman so often put it, trying to please whatever nameless thing they had the ear of. That's what kept resounding through his head as he pored over the reports and chronicles the burgomaster had handed him. Some months worth of hideous doings and findings. The bastards had been well and truly scattered, but still, best to keep up to date on wherever these people might crop up.
This world was unnatural, and that was a fact. The stone beneath the wizard's feet, and the dirt and rock it sat on, was itself a spit in the face of a cosmos whose reason for existence was enslavement, oppression, and domination. And that made them angry.
Them.
The numberless swirling clouds of demons which infested the Outer Dark.
The vast Aeons which peered from afar upon the guttering ember that was the material world.
The Godhead which sought to actualize itself by total self control.
It was the kind of thing that had driven countless poor fools to madness and despair. But S'eth, could anyone really blame them? Carloman himself had personally experienced this truth. Yet for him, in place of horror, there was rage. How dare you, he had thought. My creator, the thing of which I am incontrovertibly of, and a part of forever, made me to suffer. I exist to be beaten down and subsumed. How dare you? That's what he thought then, and what he thought now.
Gnostic sorcery was the very power of the creator itself. Such was the attraction, he supposed. Every expression was bent towards suppression, pain, weakness, and breaking. In a word, control. It did not seduce, it dominated. The wizard had himself felt those powers against him, the sensation of vast crushing weights and unseen grasping limbs, the creeping agony, numbness, cold or weakness in a limb or in the brain, the flood of invasive thoughts when a curse wanders by—curses, gods above and beyond, perhaps there was no greater joke played on the world than those wandering malignancies.
And so many aspects of the universe—demons and roving spirits desired these things in whatever measure they could attain, and as such, come quite readily when called. For even just a taste of power they would promise anything, as would the madmen who called them from beyond. Pathetic, wretched, vile, but dangerous beyond compare. Powerful. Gnostic powers thrived on the expression of defilement and desecration. It showed that which lay beyond where their loyalties really lay, hoping for favour, or at least to be spared punishment.
The wizard sat back, and stared at the dripping wax and long tongues of flame on the candelabra beside him, and sighed.
It wasn't good to think on all this too much, Carloman reminded himself. It made the mind wander. It made things notice you. It called them by sympathy. Even your thoughts could make a little darkness by which something might peer in. Or get in. That's how this stuff got in in the first place. The dreamer in the dark, in the far wastes of the north.
But these were his thoughts and he had them of his own free will. He swore again under his breath and got up.
Storm Rune
They rode from on high, their hammers raised, and the first rune they struck was the storm to carry their feet into the unfashioned realm below. With every singing arc there rose mountains, and seas rushed to fill leagues-deep voids. Winds were thrown out with the swings of their hammers and it raced across a dark landscape lit only cascading thunderbolts. The howl of the storm, the crack of thunder, and the crash of the hammer were all that could be heard. Parts of the world stirred then, and the first humans took tentative steps from the caverns left in the wakes of hammer blows. They saw, as they met light for the first time, the storm rune's brilliance above, and would remember it thenceforth for all the time.
Other things also arose in the wake of they who came from beyond. Such were the towering giants, who stalked with lumbering gait and horrifying hunger from the great canyon crevices they squeezed their crooked forms into, like mile-high spiders. Such, too, were the wyrms that crawled from the darkness, their frightful writhing forms entangled like masses of hair. Things upon mountain summits peered with pin-prick eyes and let out limbs to fish for and beckon errant men on lonely roads.
The slaughter of these horrors and more, like the finger-headed hydras, or Great Mimic and its False Humans, became the basis of epic legends sung and chanted by the men that crowded about the feet of the great ones.
And then, one day, as the newly struck sun rose high, cradled by the storm rune which as yet still shone, and setting the seven chromatic moons to rest, the first kings of men came from their gilded keep with tears in their eyes. They came to the wisest and most powerful leaders of all humankind and entrusted to them and their councils the runes, so that they may be the stewards of the whole of the world and its working. To every High Lord was given, with utmost reverence, a hammer, fashioned by the old kings themselves, and the art of striking runes.
And then they left, riding high into the pearlescent heavens, back to their ancient homes.
But bereft of the guiding hands of their kings, of their power and majesty, the runes turned from a source of divine experience to a means for power. With the right knowledge, a rune could be struck, and stone be raised, rain made fall, thunder crash, and fire blaze. As stewards of the world, the lords of men began to see themselves as like the old kings, until they learned that like their flesh, their runes were mortal, and would fade and die. They must be struck again and again into the earth and the air and the water, and no subtlety of art could prolong a rune.
The greatest inspiration for all runesmiths was the storm rune, which hung even into the latter days in the sky, visible where most others were hidden amongst mountain roots, ocean depths, and within flesh. The storm rune, the first rune, dwelt in the collective memory of mankind, but its reproduction was impossible. Upon the highest peak in the world did lords of all breeds gather to strike again and again new storm runes, sending forth rain, wind, and devastation, until the whole of the mountainside was inscribed in dead runes, calls to power consumed and silenced.
Rune of Madness
In that age, long lines of grimoires filled the shelves of priest and lord, were the prized possessions of hermit mystics and sorcerers, and were even kept in locked chests in the houses of certain peasantry. The knowledge of runes had come to dictate all dynamics of power. Their form and the tools for their striking were jealously guarded and hoarded by the priests whose cult had formed around primal images of the gods and the mighty arts they had graced mankind with, and the many lordly houses, who deemed their kind the rightful heirs of the world and the runes which wrought it.
The world had at last settled into a cycle of turbulent centuries as the commonfolk trembled under the vast shadows of their masters and their threats of wrath and vengeance. Amidst long wars, the desperate flights of lords and high priests, and assassinations, the knowledge of runecraft leaked into the world, and peasants pored over the yellowed parchment pages under guttering candle flames on storm-laden nights, when it was certain no stranger might call to their door. And so, one could not turn their head in even a small village without seeing the silent remains of dead runes plastered upon every available surface. Even on lonely roads did the trees and the stones and the earth bear old, faded rune marks. The very air and rivers shimmered with them at times.
Several of the First Runes had been uncovered for veneration and study over the ages. The storm rune still sent forth its power, and the lands which dwelt under its gaze were mighty and blessed, and wracked with eternal invasions from pilgrim armies and hostile nations seeking to usurp their seat of power. But the runes of man were small things, often twisted. They were pale imitations of godly art. If one, however, could be said to approach an ancient rune in any measure, the opinion among high wizards and elder lords was that it would be, though they shuddered to speak it, the the rune of madness.
It was a curse that had originally seeped from the howling palace halls wherein it was first made, palaces whose stark dead gaze overlooked burnt lands now forbidden to walk. The rune of madness crept across the world and into the hands of the poor, the wretched, the desperate, and those who had been born with hearts of an uttermost blackness. Those seeking to spread chaos in war or rebellion would use stolen and faulty arts to strike runes of madness in places where it could be seen by as many as possible, themselves driven to gibbering insanity by its mere creation. It didn't matter at that point who saw it, be it lord, priest, neighbour, friend, lover, or kindred.
The runes began to spread like a plague. One could never guess where they might appear next, their destruction was an immense undertaking, and more often than not, invading or defending forces would use their appearance in their favour, no matter the losses they suffered. During these years, the priests of the innermost sects across the world cast aside their theological squabbles and held convocation. A new rune would be formed and struck in the old mountain where the first runes of men were struck. This rune would call the gods back to the world for salvation, or, they admitted with tearful shame, likely destruction for their transgressions. None spoke it, but more than a few welcomed that prospect in their hearts.
Twelve priests set out under the cover of both night and assassin's runes, on beasts invigorated by brands. To a far place did they ride, losing five of their number along the way to passing mercenary bands looking for sport, deserters driven to madness, and the degenerate descendants of old horrors the gods had forgotten to slay so long ago. With a hammer nearly three thousand years old, dating back to the first members of primal priestly lineages, they elected one among their number to strike the rune of calling into the mountain, and so it was done.
They came not from the heavens on rays of gold, nor on azure thunderbolts, nor on roaring winds, but as a procession of shadows from the deep of the night. They appeared, in general outline, like human beings, but their proportions were greater, and perhaps stranger than most, and their faces were hidden within voluminous, flowing shawls, from under which they seemed to be keenly, and with haste, studying their surroundings. Well, the priests knew then that man walked at least in some pale likeness to the gods, as had been debated for five centuries now.
One of them—one of the gods approached the seven priests, and made a kind of sign over its face—the shape, it almost seemed to be, of a rune. It spoke then, and asked, in a tongue like that of a human: "Was it thou who struck the rune of calling?" And by the—the gods, there was some measure of fear in its voice. The others behind it were whispering to each other, pointing and gesturing to the bare landscape. They were, the priests answered, the very ones who did so. And they beseeched their gods for aid or judgement, telling what had become of their world and their holy art in their absence, or distance, they were quick to append.
And then there was a wailing unlike any sound of despair the priests had ever thought possible in that moment. The gods fell to their knees, they stamped the earth, they clutched each others arms, and lamented the oppressive thirst for power, and the runic abominations that had been wrought. Another realm doomed, becoming thin with rune striking, its power uncontrollable. They saw in this meagre dimension a bleak reminiscence of their own shattered world. They had failed again—was nowhere home to a race who could surpass them? Who could truly control the runes?
With mournful voices, the gods tore the hammer out of the hands of the priests, and said:
"If you must do this under the edict of your gods, then so be it—we command it. But whatever may come, we beg of you: cast each and every one of these things into the deepest abyss this realm provides. Rend and sunder every tablet, burn every tome and scroll, and slay without mercy those who hide the knowledge of this alien art. Start with us. No more worlds must know the mark of the rune."