Shadows & Sorcery #167
And we’re back
But we were never gone!
This week’s triple bill of weird stuff is something of a spring cleaning. I have no filing system for ideas, I literally have one single plain text file which contains every single in-progress title and sketch of ideas for this thing, and it is as unwieldy and unreadable as it is full of interesting stuff. The following three are ideas that have been festering and gathering a fine patina, finally put to good use and released into your inboxes (or however it is you read this). How shall they fare in the wild? Let’s find out.
Now, did you know last week was the triumphant return of The Path of Poison? After ten thousand years on hiatus, Sepp and the gang have immediately fallen headfirst into another Situation—check it out HERE!
You can also check out the previous S&S, where delved deep into the savage world of the Codex Barbarion HERE
And please, let the stories know you enjoyed them!
This week, we hear the dread Call of the Sacrifices, we bear witness to the rise of the Emperor of Iron, and we get a cautionary tale against Royal Saints…
Call of the Sacrifices
Three people sat off to the side in a grimy little tavern in a grimy little town taking slow sips of some darkish liquor from stained and chipped mugs. They sat at the edge of several waning lanterns which were all that supplied the sprawling, smoky chamber with illumination, where a tambourine and flute droned dolorously on, for the opaque panes had long since ceased to serve a function. They sat hunched over their table, their hoods up. It was that kind of establishment.
They weren't alone, however. Several other equally shadowed figures sat either alone or in pairs at tables or at the short bar, but one of these shapes stuck out like a sore thumb amidst the dark cloaks, dulled leathers, and downturned faces: a thin, reedy chap whose entire bearing screamed of suspicion. His sharp cheekbones, sallow flesh, scraggly hair with long peak, and his filth-hemmed, certainly not road-worthy navy robe were unmistakably foreign. And thus had they eyed him up as an easy mark the very moment he'd entered the tavern just a little over an hour ago.
But no one would be leaving soon. The night was foul, an unceasing drizzle having pervaded all the air with its chill damp, making the stone treacherous and much of the earthen paths and roads nigh untraversable. More and more thin sheets of rain came from the dark coast inland to the hills, and it didn't seem like it'd let up any time soon. The sky was one vast sprawl of slate, and no star shone. So, they'd decided to settle in and throw an eye over every so often to see if the foreigner looked like he might make a move—this place didn't have beds, so he'd have to go somewhere else. They were careful not too keep too close an eye. Some people know when they are watched, and some thieves mistook their marks for people.
Mug after mug of watery liquor passed their lips, so thinned it had little effect, but it was cheap, kept them looking busy, and numbed them just the right amount. The night hadn't gotten any better. The wind had come now, and every so often a gust made a door or old shutter rattle. The tavern keeper wasn't throwing anyone out, the weather was good for business. It was as the last dregs of the last mugs were downed, and the storm made itself known with a fresh blast of icy sea-wind, the foreigner suddenly nearly started from his seat. A few faces looked around, stirred from the murk. He was visibly tense. He shot one look behind his hunched shoulders, and after a few moments, slid up and beat a hasty exit. The three thieves followed him a few beats later. They knew they didn't have to hide their intentions. Not in this place.
They followed him through the small town's decrepit streets, through thin passages formed by the rotting bulk of teetering dens and tenements, through two spacious courts which may have once housed monuments to a long abandoned past, through winding thoroughfares, finally leaving the town through the small passage gate, and at every juncture he had cast an eye over his shoulder when the wind blew with its eerie storm howl. They guessed he knew he was being followed, that he must've had the gut for it. Well, he wasn't going anywhere he could get help, but all the same, best not let him get too far ahead. They made for a well-known rent in the timber walls which led to the wooded embankment aside of the road, and trailed him from behind the thin trunks.
The wind had caused the slate clouds to shift, though not to clear, so that sections broke up and mixed back together as invisible currents cast them about far above. The night's moon which shone through those tears in the darkness was unusually strong, perhaps merely by contrast, though it did seem to bear a curious cold blue hue that sent portions of the landscape into a weird light that didn't so much illuminate as it did keep dark, but give definition. Weird enough to work on the imaginations of three petty footpads.
What was even stranger was that someone else seemed to be on the road tonight, coming down the long, half-paved road that passed around the town walls. That only slightly complicated matters, most folk won't interfere in a robbing, and especially not on a night like this. But then again, they thought, one never knew what sorts would be out and about in such weather, a brooding thought confirmed by the foreigner casting another glance behind him, only to scream and break into a sprint. Shunt it, had they been seen? No, they thought, ducking into a low run, unwilling to let him escape, wasn't them—no, wasn't them, it was the other shapes which now lurched from the thickets and the shadows, accompanied by bleats and baying they had, until that point, assumed was only the worsening storm. What in the hells was this? Four of those shapes encircled the foreigner now. He pulled something out from around his neck, and in the uneasy darkness they could seem him moving his free hand about in the air.
And then, in perfect, horrible unison, the four lumbering, shuddering shapes bellowed out as they closed in:
"FINISH WHAT YOU HAVE STARTED"
The thieves shared a look then. In their profession, folks learn to communicate wordlessly, with the angle of the head, or width of the eye, or swiftness of motion, and what they said was in perfect agreement. They burst from their vantage point, short swords drawn, and down the rain-slick bank, headlong into the crooked shapes, which turned, and were shown bare in the cold blue lunar radiance which bled from behind the dark sky as not the rival bandits they had expected.
They wasted no time in swiftly butchering whatever they were, even when they had to throw off the fool sorcerer who begged them to stop, screaming that they were "going to let it in". Was either them or him, one of the thieves barked. But when they'd slit open throat and stomach in those savage few seconds, and saw upturned eyes and loose grins that glared up into the rain, they stopped, and looked to the foreigner who stood shivering, hand on his forehead, swearing.
"Here," one of the thieves said, grabbing the sorcerer by the collar, "we saved you! I think we should get a reward!"
The look the foreigner gave her seemed to question the validity of that statement. And the slow look to the sky refuted it entirely.
Something wrenched the foreigner from her grip that she could not see. The corpses which lay slack on the earth convulsed and arched back. The thief closest to the foreigner swore that, as he was pulled into the air, a single word escaped him before he was torn limb from limb in a single motion. The word, she would only whisper later on, after they had fled the scene, their hearts not in the exercise anymore, was "master".
Emperor of Iron
We once stood as tall as our towers, but even they now are stunted, humbled, and hidden, like us. All we have now is our pride. I bet they'd laugh at that, looking at us as we are. But they are not so numerous, and they have not yet pushed back our world so much that they can laugh.
Whence came we? From the mists, the first steps of a sea fog upon the land, or from the deep clouds which enshroud the mountainsides, or as an exhalation from the deep. We stepped, a thought fully formed, into a young land in flux and warping with life, whose greenery was only beginning to stretch its fingers upon the stately grey stone. And so we met it, and thus wore its shade, and have partaken of it and returned to it ever since. It kisses the stones of our towers even now.
Whence came they? From the dark. From the filth. From what putrid admixture of heat and mud they formed, we hope never to know. They are a writhing sunward of slime. They have no maker, nor were they born full and perfect, but mimicked to suit themselves. Naked and bestial they loped and lumbered through deep forests, howling, bleating, slaying, devouring—not like us, not like we ever did, and not like we do. They have no hunters, they have killers. It can be counted on two hands the times we have raised arms against our own. The times they have raided, pillaged, and murdered each other can only be counted on the hands of their numberless dead.
And that was how we learned of their true horror. They do not die like us, we who descend back into ichor. They rot like sick trees. They spill open into putrescence. But worst of all, deadliest of all, is the sharp, hot, bitter stench of the sticky crimson which oozes from them, and the red-flecked black metal which it hardens into: iron. Know that name and fear it. Iron.
How came the world to be as it is? How came the green to grow into anger and madness? How came the towers to crumble, and we to be stunted and bent? In the beginning, they worshipped and called upon our oldest number, and the oldest green. We could work wonders by way of green, but they had no connection to anything on the land. Not even the slime which bore them held aught in it. Flesh they gave us, and flesh they buried. At first. When they began to kill each other before us, with blades of iron, spilling their blood over our stone and our green, and driven away, that was when, I think, they made of us an enemy.
One day, on the horizon, something appeared. But we dwelt so far from it that it took two more to appear for us to be shaken from our reverie. Towers they were, but ours they were not. Built not of sombre, dignified stone, they were plates of black flecked with red, and from them came black smoke, and from them came shapes clad in black and armed with black. The bite of iron is cold, weighty, and leaves a wound which will never heal right. Iron does not yield easily, and its most cruel device is that killing its wearer only creates more iron.
A war was waged the likes of which will never be seen again. They learned the true worth of their iron as they struck us down and we withered from its touch, as the green shrivelled and died from the spilled blood, as our wonders began to wane, as the presence of iron drove us away like the point of a sword, and finally as one of their number rode out to conquer and unite through iron and blood, whose smoke-wreathed tower looms as majestic as it is terrible, a beacon of death of the green and the goblins.
Royal Saints
City officials smashed another shrine up this morning. That's the third this month. Same story every time, this was no different: some Old Crown magistrate starts getting ideas, head filled with notions of glory from the sagging wretches in the elder councils, who are probably all doing it, too. Doesn't bode well. And every time one of these things is uncovered, the broadsheets and pamphlets invoke again and again the name of Emperor Tsakho. Guaranteed, the statesmen who surreptitiously take after him raise a glass every time they see a proclamation plastered on a temple side wall with that name.
It all began in the spring of the Zeian Ascent, as per the old calendar, when the deeply unpopular, even reviled, yet feared Minister Sacho of the Eastern Office suddenly died. The manner and reason of his death was never recorded, at least not in any official chronicle, but can be guessed. With a sigh of relief, seven fellow Ministers quickly and with little ceremony struck his name from government, removed his title, set his body in the veilyard, and got back to business. That was, until the tenth day after his entombment when a violent storm shook the very walls of the urban sprawl south of the veilyard, and a torrent of frigid, unceasing rainfall left the burial grounds a slurry of mud-drowned tombs and floating corpses—including that of Minister Sacho, staring and hateful.
The placation of vengeful spirits was something Ministers of that day were trained in by necessity, for the imperial court and its various offices were seen as earthly extensions of the celestial court, and every Minister was, essentially, as a priest. It was decided that they who had laid Sacho to rest would be best suited to the task of placating his spirit. Oh, it was certainly his spirit, of that they had no doubt. Once the legions of veilkeepers had set the place back into some kind of order, the Ministers moved in, building incense gates, a parting way, and making sure they bore as powerful amulets as they could afford. Government Ministers dwelt amidst divinity, even if it were on a somewhat lower level, and as such, were invested with a certain power, and they made sure to use it.
For three days they returned amidst new lashings of icy rain, howling gales, and low, looming skies, each day parting the veil for hours at a time so that offerings may be made to appease Sacho's raging spirit. But no amount of burnt money, gold coins, foodstuffs, or libations had an effect. It was only when one of the Ministers, in a fit of exhaustion after a long day of arduous, esoteric ceremony in the biting cold and clinging wet, finally fell to his knees and begged for the rotten old bastard to please just cease, did the rain stop, and the wind lessen to a mere breath. They left after that, and reconvened in secret to discuss how next to approach the situation.
Enshrinement is still practiced today, in the home, in the veilyard, and in the temple. Back then, though, it may as well have been a daily occurrence. Cities back then were verminous with gods, there was nary a street without a tutelary deity, and each and every house bore a multitude of guardian ghosts. It was decided they'd find Sacho a spot in a government court and give him a shrine where some dedicated priests might be paid to give him the praise he seemed to desire. Only it didn't work. In fact, the priests made it two days before abandoning their post in the tucked away little corner of the Hall of Scribes, so utterly oppressive was the almost tangible darkness which hung about the corners and floors, whispering horrible things none of them dared repeat. What was done next wasn't entirely within their authority, but neither would anyone really fight it. In a small but officially overseen ceremony, Sacho was granted back his title, his authority, and perhaps most importantly, his divinity.
A week later, late into the evening, an archivist seeking a misplaced record in the Hall of Scribes found a Minister on his knees before Sacho's shrine crying, hacking open the carcass of some beast. Before realizing he'd been seen, the archivist recalled that the Minister had been saying through his sobs "Is this what you want, Sacho? Blood?"
Within a month, Minister Sacho had been promoted to the status of Hall Guardian, a role none involved actually expected him to fulfil, although by turns he did, while also raining random dooms upon anyone and anything in the vicinity. There were days when the sun seemed to struggle to break through some cloud of gloom above the city, residents complained of shapes in the dark, and of persistent nightmares, to the extent that several government officials resigned, wanting nothing to do with the situation. They have yet to return even today. The growing mood of the Hall of Scribes, and of its neighbouring agencies and dwellings was that something was watching, always watching, that every shadow was an eye, every breath of wind a hand upon the throat. Everyone knew what he wanted.
In the end they acquiesced, and in a pompous and very public ceremony, Guardian Sacho was heaped with mostly empty honours, but among them was one of substance, perhaps more than anyone realized at the time: to be counted among the pantheon of guardian deities of the imperial court, which numbered in the hundreds, with secret strictures against his overt worship...that would soon prove fruitless, for mere days after his ascension, the first member of the royal family came down with a sickness which first crept, then strode throughout the court, leaving few in its wake not wracked with fever and weakness.
Mass placations and offerings were made by a massive task force of Ministers and priests throughout the entirety of the city, with an elite cadre devoted to an elaborate and antiquated ritual much beloved by the honoured elder members of the guardian pantheon. All of it did little to stem the tide. Many deaths were prevented, but the sickness ran rampant and unabated. Half the city was half dead two weeks later, and every morning, a new shrine was found destroyed by some unseen but well known force. Questions began to spread with the sickness, wondering just what in the nine hells Sacho even was at this point, what he had been in life, what he must have done to result in such a tyrannical spirit. There had been bad spirits, vengeful ancestors, but they had been human. Some began to wonder if Sacho hadn't killed himself for the sake of this abhorrent transformation, the imperial city itself on its knees before him.
But there was little foresight in that day, and though future historians have lamented their later acts, none hold them to any blame, not when all was a growing chaos with no end in sight. Storms, horror, disease, and the looting, thievery, and banditry which rose up in their wake, these were the hallmarks of the final years of the Zeian Ascent period. Worship me or despair was what Sacho said. Lands, titles, powers were bestowed upon his foul spirit, imperial provinces saw his name, now bearing the altered and forever reviled form Tsakho, added to those they owed obeisance and tribute, but the more they gave, the worse it got. What manifested in the city in those bleak days has never fully left, and traces of lingering shadows lurk in the middens and sewers and old wells. In a fit of hopeless rage and sorrow, the emperor gave Tsakho his title.
There is a woodcut by a famed provincial artist of the period which depicts a symbol of the imperial city, the beacon of a united world, held between two fingers with crooked, wicked talons, with two massive staring eyes peering from the background. It has been remarked that the artist may have been drawing more from the life than was intended.
One night, when the city, which had never know the march of any invader or civil conflict, seemed on the brink of genuine collapse with riots and fleeing, a number of Ministers met in secret with the emperor. The ruler of the Zeian Ascent's name was struck from every single record across the entirety of the empire. It was done as a sacrifice, and the blasphemous rites unearthed from a sealed vault were committed, too, as a sacrifice.
And it worked.
Come the dawn, which seemed to arrive much later than it ought to, the opulent, grotesque shrine of the nascent God-Emperor Tsakho was found by trembling supplicants in ruins. Ministers convened that entire day and long into the next morning while guardsmen and soldiers set the city to rights, putting out fires, getting civilians to physicians, and throwing looters and would-be gang leaders in cells. It had been bad out there, and the chance that none will ever know the extent of it is great. But most today don't want to know. They want to forget, but wisely, they won't be allowed. Even if it gives less savoury characters ideas, even if shrines need to be smashed to pieces with hammers and their creators exiled, and watched, lest they begin speaking names under the guise of saints.