Shadows & Sorcery #32
Welcome to the thirty-second edition of Shadows & Sorcery! This week’s post is a paid one, but the first tale is free for all.
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Today’s edition is filled with demons and the undead, from great striding elemental horrors to extraplanar invaders, from holy corpses to those who wander under the power of strange gods. We also take a quick trip to a dark city where the night is not what it seems…
This week’s stories are:
Demon of Winter
Consecrated Undead
Demon Dungeons
City of Night
Undead Village
Demon of Winter
They tell some odd stories out west. Very grim land, it is, but not stark. It's the kind of place that makes the imagination run, and there's leagues upon leagues of it. I suppose they need stories out there, huddled about their great log fires, holding back the night that never seems to want to lift. That's one of them - that the greyfolk of the west are the ones who push the night away, and that before they came, all was dark, and crawling with horrors. In fact, one of those horrors is the subject of probably the most famous story to escape the western borders.
The second you step outside of the village walls, you feel the weight of the benighted land upon you. Everything seems to know you've entered its domain. That's the funny think about the greyfolk, they've been here thousands of years but they're not at home. Their presence almost feels like duty, and it is opposed at every turn. No greater enemy have the greyfolk than the Demon of Winter.
The woodsmen, who spend weeks in small groups in the forests, sometimes tell tales of their expeditions. There is no moment they are not watched, and a sense of hostility meets every action they take, but restrained, waiting. The woodsmen say the Demon lives in the forests. A rake-thin giant, its legs are like slender tree trunks, blackened and cracked from the ancient cold that never ends, reaching into the blearing, foggy air, from where it looks down. Woodsmen often spy twin trunks too close to other trees to be natural forest, and they leave that spot well alone.
The fishermen, who spend days alone on the cracked icy waters, sometimes tell tales of their outings. One can't really help but feel they're rowing and dragging their boats out over a great open maw. The Demon of Winter lives in the lakes, they say, pressing its face up against the ice, and slipping its long thin fingers between the cracks when you aren't looking. It's so big, they say, its sits crouched and hunched deep under the surface, and creeps from lake to lake when the waters thaw in brief summers.
The shepherds, who spend their lives on the wind-blasted mountainsides, sometimes tell tales of their mountain life. The place seems to want to lead you astray sometimes. Like it shifts so the paths don't meet up, or the roads wind somewhere deeper into the valleys. The Demon of Winter doesn't live in the mountains, they say, no, it is the mountains. A colossus as old and vast as the night, and stirring from primeval slumber every so often with the movements of humans on it. Sure, farms sometimes end up missing, don't they? Not abandoned after a harsh season, just...gone. Shepherds share looks when it happens, and only share words far off the mountainsides. Almost unanimously, they'll say something vague that’ll end with the words "eaten up".
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