Shadows & Sorcery #19
Welcome to the nineteenth edition of Shadows & Sorcery! This is is a paid subscriber post, but if you’re a free reader and are interested in more, or think a friend might be interested, as of writing I still have a few free paid subscriptions to hand out! Just go to my profile here on Substack and shoot me a message, or DM me on Twitter.
Below you’ll find tales of secrets: some of which are best left forgotten, and some which may be found by those who dare look…
Today’s tales are:
Tomb Dungeons
Offering of Night
Harvest Sacrifices
Memory of the Shadow
Earthen Church
Tomb Dungeons
Beneath the castle is a honeycomb of royal crypts housing the remains of no less than twenty-seven different ruling families. The castle, which sits upon a high knoll overlooking the majestic sweep of the golden savannah, has been a place of immense strategic importance for well over a thousand years. Because of this, every noble house who has taken control of it has interred its dead in the subterranean catacombs, ironically as a sign of their eternal sovereignty.
It was a crueller hand than most which decreed the stately crypts transformed into a prison. The commander, later known as the Usurper of Lys, had ousted and slain the decadent and negligent royals of the day. However, in the violent upheaval, it would appear his heart had grown hard with bloodshed, and he threw his remaining enemies into the very burial vaults of their ancestors.
The castle never recovered.
Once the commander had himself been ousted and a small series of conflicts were fought over succession, the new house made the castle their seat. They almost immediately continued the usurper's practice, and there was more than enough room for decades to come. No more did the dead of the rulers rest under the castle as a symbol, instead royal graveyards were established in secret gardens that soon became forgotten corners.
A royal tomb is a small mausoleum, a room in which the deceased in placed in a sarcophagus and surrounded by arms and trinkets, sometimes portraits, sometimes even faux living arrangements. Even the smallest examples can house up to three prisoners. It would seem that, in a desperate bid for escape, some inmates resorted to despicable acts, the remains of which still litter the floors of some vaults. Royals of past ages were all but above reprisal, and many were able to indulge certain tastes and interests of an occult nature.
A single diary entry records the day in which an assassin was discovered and taken to the tomb dungeons, only for the doors to be thrown open on the sight of golden-robed corpses shambling towards the light. After this, a new shaft was dug, and the dungeons became instead an oubliette: a hole in the ground into which certain problems might be thrown and forgotten.
The castle and its surrounding village are no longer inhabited. Years ago civil war erupted and the reviled keep was left to rot as one of many now slowly vanishing reminders of something that must never happen again. But the tomb dungeons are still there, under the great hill. In their halls walk the fruits of desperation and madness. There will come a day in a far off time when that castle is raised back up or ignorant minds tunnel too deep, and the combined blights of a dark age will stalk once more the lands of men.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Shadows & Sorcery to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.