Shadows & Sorcery #102
Alright what’s all this then? Ah, it’s the one hundred and second edition of Shadows & Sorcery, move along, move along!
Yes folks, it is time for three tales of indulgent sorcerous lore, we are leaning HEAVY into the weird magic this week, so I shan’t keep you.
But I will keep you, to say two things:
Firstly, if you’ve just hopped onboard, please check out the 100th edition, there’s a whole ass short story in there and also a really important announcement
Secondly, as ever, if you liked what you read here, let the stories know you enjoyed them and leave a like!
This week, in the depths of an old mansion we learn of the Sinner’s Sigil, we delve down to seek a Deep Rune, and we uncover the curious history behind the Ritual Pit…
Sinner's Sigil
The house was a confused jumble of interconnected draughty antechambers, deep interior chambers, cramped side chambers, and vacuous main halls, the kind of awkward, antiquated construction which had been done away with more than three centuries ago for a more reasonable, imported style that had taken firm root in the tastes of the high families. But the presence of such antiquated edification also meant it would have had all kinds of secret chambers in which all kinds of rites had been performed.
There was a tumultuous sensation from just beyond the wood panelled wall. Both a kind of sound and feeling, but not really either. The kind of sensation one feels when a fierce gale batters against the windows, but this came, it seemed, as if from far away, suddenly assaulting the wall in waves before receding. That was almost certainly where the old man had been doing what had condemned him to an eternity in the netherworld.
The book was an unwieldy thing, with wooden plates and iron hasps, thick woven binding holding together heavy leaves, and a short link of chain hanging from its ribbed spine, telling plainly its origin as purloined from a chapter library. The monk clasped the hefty tome to him. He still didn't fully trust the two siblings. No reason to trust heretics, even if he himself now peered over the precipice of treachery to the faith that had heaved him from the mud and squalor.
When the wooden panels were finally ripped away, the essence flowed outwards in grasping tendrils. The monk bet even they, unattuned and uncultivated as they were, could feel it. Powers above, the old man must have formed himself a spirit of great magnitude before he was caught, and forced into the eternal dark.
Everything in the world had an essence, shared across time and space. The stones, the trees, the birds and beasts, they all had it, but only mankind could cultivate that essence. When trees rot, when beasts died, they seeped back into the quintessence, to rise again in new life, but man could, while alive, focus and condense that essence into a spirit. And a spirit could exist forever. But this was the domain of the saints and holy hermits who made up the vast pantheon of the world's overarching faith, the adepts who gave to the world paragons to follow, and wisdom to heed.
Some people, though, weren't content with "scraps from the master's table", of semi-formed spirits doomed to melt back into the formless aether, entire lives, memories, experiences, and legacies lost to the flow. Into the stolen deep esotericism of the adepts did such folk plunge, seeking mysticism of wizened initiates beyond the ken of the blindly faithful masses, to make for themselves, on their terms, immortal spirits of the essence.
These people had been, throughout all history, regarded as heretics, and the old man had been the latest member in a long line of condemned sinners.
The hidden chamber was much taller than it was wide, with space just enough for the three of them. Perhaps for one more. It was of a bare, unworked wood, unpolished, covered in a skin of dust and ancient, hanging webs. The floor was clear, however, though a new film of detritus was beginning to grow over it. The other two stood behind the monk as he knelt down and opened the book on the floor, the wooden plates making a dull clack, the iron hasps jingling, the sounds all too distinct in the silent house.
The book was a chronicle of sinner's sigils. The corpse of every sinner and heretic is branded upon death with a sigil that tells their name and sin. It's a symbolic name, a brand of shame, a weight placed upon the unnatural spirit so that it sinks into the underworld. At least, that's what the faith said. The monk had long guessed there was a different truth to it, and he wasn't terribly surprised to learn why these sigils were hidden away, locked tight in chapter library cells, chained to the stone floor.
The sigils weren't weight. They granted passage, both down, and back up. But the secret of it was in the surroundings, for the forced spirits of heretics wander lost for eternity, and only familiar sights can bring them back.
Though it mattered little to an immortal, ethereal entity, they had spared no expense in procuring in the finest cuts of meat from the personal butcher of an admittedly lesser but still decently influential high family. The spirit was not physical, but it did form within and pass through flesh. One of the siblings behind the monk dragged in a sack from outside. The monk pulled from within a shapeless mass of beast flank, and then removed from his robes, a long, thin blade and began to carve with utmost care the old man's sigil from the book.
It was rectangular, and composed of two interlocking sections that were the name and sin, joined as one. The signs were intricate, and absolute caution had to be taken in their formation. The monk had made that clear, yet he couldn't help looking over his shoulder once or twice. When a single stroke was that was left, the monk let them know to prepare to themselves. Only a sharp, suppressed intake of breath belied the shiver of excitement that passed through them both.
Had this not been his faith's goal? Was he not now taking the teachings of the adepts into his own hands? If so, why then did a tremble of disquiet take root in his chest as he completed the sigil?
The monk shuffled back the little he could, and began to rise to his feet. But as he did so, he beheld something rising with him. Filthy, blotchy, discoloured skin, a giddy rictus grin, and deep-set eyes hidden in shadow. For all it resembled a ripe corpse, there was a perverse vitality to the spirit.
Within the depths of an old house, in the midst of a confused jumble of interconnected draughty antechambers, deep interior chambers, cramped side chambers, and vacuous main halls, the kind of construction which had been done away with more than three centuries ago, there was a secret chamber set between two walls in which three figures grovelled in obscene worship before a risen, immortal spirit, and became the latest members in a long line of condemned sinners.
Deep Rune
It goes something like this: the gods spoke this world into being, describing not what they saw, but what would be, and then what was. In the beginning, there were words. They did not describe what was seen, what was described was then seen. This is not an abstraction, nor it is an allegory, or an intricate symbolism. It never has been, and it never will be. This too was spoken.
What would be...what was...and then they left us to speak what could be. But to do that, they had to leave us not just language, but the capacity for speech, and the ability to set it down into stone, clay, parchment, and metal. It must be wondered, too, that if the gods spoke, and they gave mankind the power of speech like them, then there must reside in humanity some divine imprint or aspect, something which approaches their speaking. We must be like them in some way.
We haven't been alone in this. In elder times, they guided us to places where their primordial whispers could be heard, could be felt, could be seen. Graven into the world in runes from which all human language, in all its forms, derives, runes that may very well be the images of the gods themselves.
Runes form in beams of sun, star or moon, or appear when certain nights passed over certain lands. From the mist in a cool, green glade they might appear. In the wake of thunder in the sky they might flash and dissipate. Upon a mountainside might they surge forth after a rockfall or avalanche. In short, it is in times or places of energy or sublimity they emerge.
But the gods spoke, too, the multitudinous temples in which what they passed down would be adored and studied. Just as language has expressed itself in a thousand forms, so has each temple of countless make, each one striving to reach the absolute truth presented by the echoes of a divine tongue. The runes that manifest upon the altar, or central circle, or high dome, or great pillar, or whatever it may be, scratched down with zealous haste for generations of study.
Runes are fleeting, grand or subtle though they may be. People seek them out as a pilgrimage. The world, however, is densely packed with intense harmonies of described creation, and so it is only in moments that whispers in the form of runes escape and are expressed. Not all the world is like this, though.
Man is yet new, though a thousand thousand generations have passed since divine speech coalesced its concept. As such, there are deep places, the oldest strata of the world, where the first words were spoken and which cascade as leagues of scintillating, whispering runes even now. The clearest expressions of the gods' spoken words, so clear that they are almost like speech themselves.
It is no mistake that every temple, church, shrine, sacred grove, or archive across the entire world sits above a void in which runes glimmer in the dark, leaking into the minds of sleepers on the most silent nights. Few know it, even fewer have seen it, and it will be an age or more before man can speak its way down to the holy deep where whispers make the world mutable.
Ritual Pit
A curious practice in the far south, which has fallen off considerably in recent times, is the tradition of the Khor'su'uhnn, which translates, when its contractions are expanded, to "central-space of the ritual power deposits". Most folk of that region generally refer to them in foreign words as "ritual pits".
The south is host to many sparse landscapes, which quite barren for long stretches, and the arable spans are fiercely defended and cultivated. In such desolate lands where the golden deities of the south did not reach, or did not care to reach, these people turned to a pragmatic, uncomplicated, communal sorcery to survive the sometimes harsh conditions.
What might look like a refuse pit to most eyes is in fact a locus of ancient power for the villagers. Contained within these deep, slender, stone-lined sinkholes, are centuries' worth of votive offerings in the form of clay and stock statues, food, drink, tablets with names and spells, and even blood and bones.
Gods and ancestors and spirits were cast aside for these self-made miracle wells. The pits are fascinating time capsules of the history of a village, with layers that speak to the experiences of the people, the disasters and times of bounty they lived through, the drought and war and floods and harvests, the loves and deaths, are all described by the layers of congealed offerings that have been excavated from "dead" ritual pits.
But while the pits, for the most part, have survived, the methods by which the villagers drew from them have not. In fact, the surviving members of the people of those regions are extremely reticent to discuss it, despite stating that some still do practice.
Naturally, however, little bits of it have gotten out, collected in fragments through the journals and accounts of interested, individual scholars, and compiled in various incomplete forms by academics and sages through the centuries. A picture emerges for the rare few who seek these tomes out, and they begin to understand the difficulty descendants of those villages face when speaking of the unique rites of their homeland.
Understand that the pits were part of the village's life, they supported their villages almost entirely over time, their condensed power being channelled into everything. And as a living part of the village, it had to be upkept and dutifully maintained. Or in other words, it had to be fed. The greater the offerings, the greater the power that could be drawn, but this compounded over long ages, until no longer were the year's harvests boosted by the power of the pit, the harvest was grown by it, for it, with the scraps left over to keep the villagers alive for further offerings.
And as time went on, less mouths to feed meant more scraps for the rest...and potent, sizeable offerings to the pits in place of produce and livestock.
As new faiths struck out into the desolate south, the villagers gladly accepted their coming, and quietly left for brighter climes. Not all of them stayed with those faiths, indeed most strayed and took to low sorceries and godlessness, remembering well that it was living in the shadow of distant gods that bade them turn to the ritual pits in the first place.