Shadows & Sorcery #118
The spell has been cast, the rites performed, and from the billowing smoke of the summoning circle, the one hundred and eighteenth edition of Shadows & Sorcery is conjured!
Triple dose of stuff this week. What kind of stuff? Honestly don’t know, genuinely couldn’t tell you. It’s up to you to find out, and report back…
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This week, we delve into the streets of the Ritual Outskirts, we bear witness to a Defiled Sanctum, and we encounter the frightful form of the Castle Shadow…
Ritual Outskirts
The suns rose high behind the veil of an overcast sky, yet their heat came through, and the air was restless, but never cool. Just the kind of dour day you didn't want when you had to drag a cart past the Eryx wall of the Ritual City.
The small but deep cart was carefully packed with common, basic ritual materials. A lot of short, thick candles, pungent incense sticks, uncut lengths of chalk and charcoal. But it was going to the long district just outside the first inner wall. Still several miles from the Great Chamber itself, considering there were twelve inner walls. But it was supposed to have some measure of prestige to it, being trusted enough to deliver this close to the city and not be a citizen. He took it as intended.
Along a bustling street of mercantile chatter, raucous laughter, and droning prayer, near the drop point—so close, and yet just far away enough—the courier pulled in to a small, open air winery. The dead heat of the day had taken its toll. Setting his talisman-plastered cart against a wall, defense against almost any thief, the courier approached the barman and ordered a carafe of wine. Enough for a nice sit down, not enough to make his client irate. He had practiced this well.
"Half coin if you offer prayer, friend," said the barman as the cooled decanter was uncorked and the precious water-of-life slowly poured.
The courier stopped and thought for a moment. Man must be a pious fellow. Well, he certainly didn't begrudge a few minutes of recitation for the sake of a cheap drink. Some people got very strange about it, though. He knew other couriers who believed speaking even a single word bound you to the cult of the city. But the courier had never met a god he didn't like, and part of him like the idea that it all bought him some share in the world to come, the one born from the finishing of the great ritual around which this entire city was built and populated.
"Will you be around next week?" asked the barman as the courier took a seat and began to drink. The place was empty, conversation was expected. "It will be eighty years! The one hundred year rite comes to fruition soon, big celebrations planned."
"Maybe, friend, maybe. Here's hoping the ritemasters need more candles, eh?" The barman laughed and spoke of the city while the courier drank. Things did seem underway, he said, lots of commotion, lots of nightly sounds, very exciting. The courier downed his last gulp and pointed to the eastern wall.
"That your altar, yeah?"
"Aye, go on, I shan't bother you."
The altar was a small, rectangular alcove set about chest high in the wall. In it were four statues—these were, he believed, the images of the eldest ritemasters, who it was said were still conducting the ritual itself in the center of the city. The walls of the alcove and around it were plastered in faded and frayed devotional posters of stylized ritemasters, flowing, flowery prayer script, and symbolic imagery common to the city—squares and circles, conjoined and concentric. Below all this, a silvery bowl of water. The courier placed a finger into the bowl, and spoke under his breath the three decently long prayers he knew. He then took his finger from the bowl, touched his forehead, bade the barman good day, and took his cart.
Back in the heat of the day, the restless winds carrying the heady scents of incense and spice from afar, the courier spared a thought for the city, as he always did when he came here. These outskirts were pretty ramshackle, lots of pious and devout wanderers set up homes around what became the twelve inner walls. Hard to think nearly eighty years ago this was nothing. Just bare badlands. The place had risen into the skies so fast, rivalled some of the much, much older cities to the east in scale. Maybe there was something to this ritual after all.
The city was a voracious consumer of countless materials, each one crafted to exact specifications. Some of the foreign cults felt uneasy about the ritual, but the merchants and princes certainly didn't. A lot purses and coffers had become and remained very fat thanks to it. That included the courier's—ritual courier was a good way to make a living in these regions, especially if you knew the spots where cast-offs and used materials wound up. Priests, sages, and sorcerers in other lands were intensely fascinated by the ritual, and believed the secret was in used materials, as if some mark would be left behind. The courier didn't know if this was the case, but he was paid either way.
A purple-robed magistrate strode from a low arched doorway, shielding her eyes from the diffused but strong light of the suns. The courier gave a customary bow and accepted quickly his pouch of thin gold coins, counting them idly as the candles and incense and things were unloaded. Maybe he'd grab another drink before he went to collect the cast-offs he'd promised the sorcerer in Zaragok.
Defiled Sanctum
A corpse was found in the sanctum this morning. A murder. A deliberate sacrilege. Already the gold had begun to fade, the pearl become dull, the crimson grow faint, the azure darken. For the sundering of a tenet of sanctity, for this most heinous of criminal blasphemies, for this and this alone is reserved the punishment of defilement.
Defilement exists only in opposition to purity and sanctity. There must exist at least a small core of purity in a defiled subject for them to be defiled. This is the true punishment, for the total effacing of all that one is, is simply death.
The culprit is tracked down and finally found in a cursed nest. Dragged screaming obscenities into a court of pale marble, the solemn and dire rite of defilement is prepared. The books are unbound from their weighty chains. The bells and hammers taken from their cells. The tall candles lit with fire from an eternal flame. The vast courtyard is silent as it begins. It must be remembered by all present that we are pure by virtue of the Seven Blessings.
Recite the legend. At the beginning of time, an angel blessed the first seven humans seven times. Those humans carried those blessings, and themselves blessed their kindred, and so on until all the world was peopled by a blessed race who begat a shining golden world, but who, for all its deep warmth and calming coolness, kept within its heart a fear that was the first defilement.
The blessings make us human, keep us human, and are the only bulwark in a universe of sorrow that every day is a battle to overcome. This is the eternal mantra of every human, the light in the darkness. The crushing judgement made upon blasphemers who lost that battle.
One by one are blessings stripped from the human form until only the first remains. Or, perhaps, as some dare only to whisper to themselves, the blessings are not removed, but defilement is set upon the transgressor. Whatever the case, that which was brought into the courtyard does not leave the same. The withered sanctum is sealed, and its grounds shunned. The defiled being is sent into the maw of a great black cavern leading to the inner earth, where the weight of its cursed nature will draw it ever downwards. The sanctum, like all defiled places, will, in time, sink into the very ground, seeping through the earth, where it will eventually reappear far below, in a lightless gulf.
There is no power in defilement. That is what they say, and what we say we know. But the underworld is a silent chaos of wretched beasts and blighted ruins whose incalculable defilement sometimes invades dreams, and sends dreamers fleeing for the gentle warmth of a sanctum. The dream speaks in a broken tongue. There must exist at least one small core of purity in a defiled subject for them to be defiled. But, too, there need be naught but a speck of defilement in a subject otherwise shining and golden for it to be defiled, and fear yet dwells within every human heart, of the rising tide far below.
Castle Shadow
Two figures sat within the shadow-laden study. The storm lashed fresh sheets of muffled rain against the old window. Wind howled outside, snaking and whistling through minute cracks in the antique stone, giving the house a dire chill. The dying fire in the cavernous, dull green fireplace did little to combat it. One of the figures, loose skin sagging upon a thin frame, hair of pure silver, eyes of lightest gold, clad in frayed, antiquated raiment, looked up at the crest and arms of his house. Old knights, his family, watchmen of the coast, guardians of the kingdom. The shield which their crest adorned was battered and dented from many battles. The cruel battle axe below it was no different, and had known gallons of Macha blood.
He spoke then to his guest.
"I have kept my family's oath to the Lundermen kings of old as best I could, though no duty has been expected of us in some centuries. I am not long for this world, you see, and I have no heirs, no kin of any kind. They have all long gone to the Serpent's protection. Save for one who remains here still, with me, as it has been since long before my great-grandsires. This ghost is one piece of sorrowful business I can at least tend to in a life of loose ends."
The keep was a relic of an age when raids along the coast were common. There was a time when a regiment of soldiers dwelt in a stone barracks and manned the tower's turret to keep close eyes on the ocean's span for the dark, fleet forms of Macha ships, and to rush to the village below in aid. But such ships hadn't come in many years, the village was long abandoned, and the barracks was little more than stones in a field. The last of the mercenaries remained until the dwindling pay gave out. The house staff could not bear the poverty. The keep, its stone weathered, stained, and sunken, didn't seem as if it would itself be around much long either.
"But alas, I fear the World Serpent has taken its protection from this place."
"I can assure you, Rudek," said the red wizard Carloman as he sat up from the dusty leather armchair, "my presence here means quite the opposite."
The scion rose silently and took in his hand a candelabra, whose four golden arms were dulled from decades of dripping wax. He turned to the shield and axe once more, and stared, and the wizard let him think.
"Tell me, Carloman... What could befall my ancestor that would leave their shade in such a state? Is there naught for it but this?" The wizard sat forward and held his great silver-gold beard while he tapped his chin with his thumb.
"The spirit is susceptible to influences. More so perhaps than aught else in the world. Things from its own life, and things around it. Some of these influences can cause a spirit remain. Not all of them are bad, mind you, countless spirits forgo release to relay a final message, or a goodbye, or to reveal a secret. But most remain because of bad deaths...terror and trauma in those final moments make a monstrous impression upon the spirit. Your family must have had an idea why this shadow remained, and in such a form."
Rudek turned to Carloman but looked down in thought.
"Did you know this tower was taken only once? Seven hundred years ago, before the Lunderman kings, the only stain upon our history. Sacked by a great Macha raid, badly burned by their flames. We told stories of that desperate fight for generations. I think it comes from that time. From that failure."
"And that shield, and axe..." Carloman gestured, "they continued to defend the tower, and the old village below afterwards, did they not?"
"They did. My sires bore them alongside the soldiers whenever Macha feet tread the beaches."
"Leave the candles, Rudek. I shall light the way." Carloman stood and set a small orange gem into the top of his staff, and breathed upon it, sending a gentle radiance into the study's corners. "Clad yourself now in the arms of your house, and let it be kin which makes the final impression on it."
Through sleeping stone corridors went the scion as the wizard followed, to the wide entrance hall whose high shadows were animate with slowly whirling dust. A wide central staircase led into the dark above, and beyond this they went until they reached the steps leading to the uppermost level of the old tower. They were slick with long sitting damp. There was a deep mustiness to the air, unhealthy, stagnant with settled darkness and slumbering bloody memories. The worst kind of place for anything to dwell, but especially a naked soul in desperate need of surcease. The wizard's light bled along the old sunken doors, the wet-stained walls, and ragged hangings, all the while the tempest outside had redoubled its fury, and trickles of cold, clammy air brushed past the two figures.
Rudek held the old axe near the head, and the shield, which still had its untreated, decaying leather fittings, hung heavy on his skinny arm. Their feet plodded flatly upon the bare stone as the wizard thrust his staff into the passage beyond them, where at any moment, he expected to see something lumber from the ashy shadows. Instead, in the gem's strangled circle of pale illumination, they came suddenly upon something large which stood with its back to them, hunched, shivering, draped in pure blackness.
Carloman heard Rudek's sharp, stifled gasp.
It was as a shadow cast by no object, with no flame to throw it upon the air where it freely stood, and yet it heaved as if from the wan light of a guttering candle. And then it turned, and showed what manner of thing it was. Carloman sent a hand to the scion's arm to stop any motion he might make. A huge, impossibly large and distended mouth gaped open, the kind of which a broken jaw might create. From that maw there lolled a massive swollen tongue over yellowed, jutting teeth, and surmounting this grotesque visage were two eyes pale with cataracts.
And through this sudden glimpse, the ghost made a sound like those of a human that was being strangled to death.
Carloman was not a person easily fazed. After all, he had looked into the face of limitless darkness and had come away with fury where most come away with madness and despair. But neither had he ever let his emotions become dulled, and in the middle of this lightless tower of rotting stone, this icon of suffering and rage made his skin crawl. And yet, was a this not a human soul wracked in age-weighted agony? Beyond his feelings of disgust and pity, there came to him the brief notion that this ancestor's death must have been unspeakable. The Macha raids of old were brutal, after all. The wizard brought forward the faltering scion.
"Address it, Rudek, your blood, your oath, your house—go! There is naught stronger in this house, in this moment, than you! I am by your side!"
From the pillar of the darkness which constituted this thing's form, there issued forth two hands, great sallow things with long straining fingers. Carloman braced for the defense, but did not move. He let Rudek Halman walk forward.
"Sire of old," came his tired, reedy voice, "you bore these arms in life, and I bare them in the last of mine, as last keeper of the tower at Halmarch..." The thing came forward, shuddering, hacking in its throat, and straining its hands, seeking, or it seemed to the wizard, some target upon which to vent its ancient anger. "The Macha have been driven off for an age now..." his voice was rising, swelling with emotion, "our duty is done, sire." Rudek stood firm, and held the shield to his chest, and the axe above his head. True to the old scion's words, there was nothing of fear or vengeance in his words or actions. Just sorrow. "Feel it, and know."
Rudek brought the axe down upon the dark form of the ghost, and in a mere flash, the shroud of black which had been its body was torn away, and for a instant, like a carnival mask, the gaping maw was too cast away, and before a trailing shape rose into the gentle shadowy air, there was the image of a noble, peaceful human form.
The warm, reddish sun rose in the south, sending a lively ruddiness across the western Voerlund landscape. The sky was clear and bright, and the air scented with the pleasant freshness that comes after a heavy rainfall. Carloman looked back only once at the tower of Halmarch, and thought, in the morning it light, it looked sturdier than the night before.