Shadows & Sorcery #34
Welcome to the thirty-fourth edition of Shadows & Sorcery! In a fit of weekend Walpurgisnacht/Bealtaine madness, I have made this one free for all to read!
But I’d also like to mention that I’ve gone back and made sure that the first story in every single previous paid post is free to read, so all you free readers, go and take a look!
This week’s edition takes us to two rather dire burying grounds (the generator loves giving me graveyards!), the seat of a secret cult, a mercifully hidden fortress, and we hear the story of defiled oath…
Your tales are:
Graveyard of the Pilgrims
Graveyard of Dream
Cathedral of Lords
Castle of the Mountains
Sunken Sanctuary
Graveyard of the Pilgrims
No one has ever completed the journey. The ancient path has long since been reduced to a symbolic, wandering hermitage, a path upon which one is expected to die. Only mystics and masters contemplate the path, and it is those who, in shame and weakness, strayed from it that tend to the graveyards of their fellow pilgrims.
In truth, the graveyards are coincidental clusters of places where pilgrims met their end, either on the journey or in tending to their brethren. They are wide and diffuse, as the place where a pilgrims falls marks the attainment of their end, and to move them backwards into an enclosure, or to carry them further than they had personally made it, would be sacrilege.
However, what is permitted is what the temple calls, when translated from the sacral tongue, consultation. That is, necromancy in all but name. The temple is a decentralized and shifting body of monks, learned sages, respected elders and young thinkers. It is also profuse with mystics and hermits, who command a level of reverence on par with the most beloved masters of history. Indeed, they can be considered the bedrock upon which the temple is founded, for the temple in question refers to the community of believers. The temple keeps track of mystics and their revelations, studying and disseminating their knowledge in communicable ways to the layfolk so that they may benefit.
The mystics were the ones who came upon the idea of consultation, but the temple was slow to accept it. Reports of rag-clad mystics calling up shades from the billowing smoke of a roadside grave did little to calm the more superstitious folk who were convinced wizards lurked in their midst. But any mystic worth their salt could tell you there was little difference between themselves and a wizard. Only after temple sages themselves consulted the dead did they discover how eager, perhaps even desperate the departed pilgrims were to rise and help others walk the path.
The journey must end, they said. By any means necessary.
Graveyard of Dream
The world is composed of cycles, and sleep is one of them. Each night we die, each day we are reborn, along with the world itself. This is quite literal, though it is only in extremely minor degrees. And because sleep is a small death, the soul can slip out and travel to astral realms. Dream is an old term for the soul's sojourn when the body is at rest. This is why the sudden jolt into waking is so frightful and shocking, because the soul simply hasn't time to return to the body properly.
This, too, is why fully dying in one's sleep presents a unique problem.
It isn't a particularly common occurrence, but when it happens, it's something that needs to be addressed with the utmost severity. Even if one were to die through accident or malicious intent, such deaths are natural, as at these points the body and soul are still conjoined. But for the body to expire in sleep, one half is missing, improperly severing the link between body and soul. The human spirit yearns to return to where it should be, to complete a cycle.
The problem arises when a soul returns to a dead body. A human is a complete unit, the body is no less important than its spiritual counterpart. What makes a human truly human, their identity, their thought, their emotion, is flesh and spirit naturally conjoined. Neither one by itself is human. It is likened to a driver and a carriage, the soul is the driver, the dead body the carriage, inert without exterior influence. Self-possession, in other words.
In truth, it takes a specialist to really understand why the living dead, these walking paradoxes, ought to be feared. Certain limitations, it is known, are in place when one is alive. There are things living flesh cannot do, cannot know. Shamans have for thousands of years sent their spirits out to perform wonders, and magicians continue the tradition to this day, albeit with ultimate limitations. These limitations are removed for the living dead. A magician is human, but a soul, bereft of its link to warmth, life, expression? They know and are capable of things, things from dream, from astral realms remembered. Knowledge and power unfit for the living world of flesh.
For this reason do the graveyards of dream exist, those deep earthen shafts whereinto the expired body is enclosed and sealed in silver tombs made at great but glad expense. Either as empty shells to quietly decompose, or as possessed shells filled with wrathful, alien souls.
Cathedral of Lords
In the great broad arc of the Imperial Plaza, dominated by the towering Golden Fortress, there sits an impressive though overshadowed structure. It doesn't even have an entrance, its tall, thin alcoves containing no doorways, sealed or otherwise, housing only busts of past emperors. Most simply believe it to be an oversized shrine to well-regarded historical figures. What none but the emperor and the elite priesthood know is that it is a cathedral, the central seat of an exclusive imperial cult believed to be the very foundation of the empire's well-being.
The emperors of the past are enshrined and deified in this cathedral, a colossal space lined with ancient sarcophagi bearing idealized likenesses and symbols of power, before which the emperor stands and worships the predecessors. An entire chapter of priests serve the emperor in this faith, dwelling inside the cathedral at all times, tending to an archive both historic and hagiographic - a curious melding of obsessive scholarship and feverish zealotry.
The rites an emperor must perform are lengthy, detailed, but perilously important, so it is believed. The old lords are tutelary deities of the capital, protectors whose mighty spirits must be called upon and appeased with royal tribute. The cathedral interior is lit only from within by torches and braziers, the reddish light setting the great heaps of gold and precious jewels upon the altar-dais aflame. Shadow is cast upon all else, though the walls and ceilings are agonizingly decorated with carvings and friezes. Nothing less for the cathedral of lords.
The imperial cult is thrust upon new emperors a few days after coronation, at the tail end of religious festivities where the gods acknowledge the new lord. That is, before the emperor can begin statecraft. A high ranking priest, whose will and loyalty are ironclad, goes into the emperor's chambers and there bids the new incumbent to partake in an ancient rite passed down from the golden days of the old empire. The emperor is led through a secret passage and through a dusty corridor, arriving up a spiral staircase, through the floor, and into the cathedral, accessible solely from this one spot.
There the priests greet and give honour to the emperor, and begin to initiate and instruct their master in the lavish rites of the imperial mysteries. Overwhelmed by the presentation of the secret priesthood in their full regalia, the belching braziers and glowing gold hoards, and no doubt having been plied with wine for the past few days (for few emperors have been the stoic ascetics the popular, public cult deems they ought to be), the emperor is easily possessed by the spirits which stride forth from their tombs beyond the altar-dais, and greet their loyal cult officials once again.
Castle of the Mountains
One would have to be extraordinarily unlucky to get lost in the mountains. Trackers and caravans have been mapping safe routes across those expanses for centuries due to the extreme peril associated with their wilder regions. Only the worst storms or most negligent amateurs find themselves off the beaten path. But starvation, wolves, and pitfalls are by far the least of one's worries out there. Once the path has been lost, another surreptitiously takes its place. The path to the mountain castle.
It's the last place in the world anyone would expect to find such a keep. Were it a simple tower house, it could be forgiven, perhaps, as a isolated outpost from a vanished culture. But instead what looms from the hazy air, surrounding by jagged spires of dark rock, is a sprawling jumble of great conical-headed towers, long battlements, and a single imposing gate of back iron. No sentries watch, no horn is called on approach, and when one arrives before the great gate, covered in bas-reliefs of twisting figures - not all of them human - they find that the portal is already open.
Candles burn red in the dark. Great masses of them line the walls, completely enveloping whatever stands they have in thick veils of snaking wax. Some candles litter the bare stone floor. They form bizarre constellations throughout the shadow-laden hallways. The vaulted ceilings are entirely black with smoke, like an eternal night sky. And yet, for all this, remnants of finery can be discerned. Tattered lengths of thick, decorative rugs are strewn about the flagstones, gilded candelabras and richly carved wooden panels sometimes appear between the walls of dark wax. Busts and statues peer from the murk with distant expressions.
But the castle is not empty. Curiosity almost always overcomes lost travellers, and they become confused within the crumbling interior, with sections having collapsed upon themselves, revealing secret passages and opening layers that ought not to be connected. Exploring these makeshift hallways, travellers invariably encounter the twisted remnants of a once mighty clan who continue to stalk the frightful halls of their home, insane, inhuman, and immortal.
After a cataclysm that left the region fundamentally altered, the castle and its surrounding township found itself isolated in a new, barren wilderness. The event is still remembered in the local folklore of neighbouring regions. What befell this place, however, none will ever know. The township has long been effaced from the world. But the family remained, and somewhere in the depths of their ancient archives, they discovered a way to, if not prosper, then survive until they might wax mighty once again.
The clan are known in old chronicles to have been a particularly sickly bloodline. Illness of mind and body were common among their lot. Their crypts were spacious and deep. But they were crafty, serpentine, and above all, ruthless. Perhaps even cruel. They hungered for strength, and found strength of a kind in their new isolation, with no other lords to keep watch on them.
Alas, the clan has forgotten the source of its immortality. The immortals, in their inhuman states, have taken to nameless rituals and practices in an attempt to prolong their endless existence, unaware if what they do actually works. The wayfarers who end up in the black halls are fodder for their vile rites. Some have taken to creating and maintaining colossal flesh-pits, wallowing amidst the gore and rot. Some consume wholesale the blood and hearts. The king, it is known, has become a colossal worm-thing, which coils and writhes in a vast cavern underground. He sends tendrils throughout the castle, snatching and grafting to his new incarnidine body the flesh of the unfortunate.
The immortals are bent twisted from combat with their victims, yet no blade or spearhead has yet caused even grievous harm. The immortals delight in using weapons used to harm them against new invaders. A few sages of exceedingly dark repute and power have their stories end in mysterious disappearances, usually put down to witch hunters or hired killers, but it would be no surprise at all to learn that some of these learned folk discovered the mountain castle, and attempted to wrest from the mad inhabitants the secret of their eternal lives. None may join the ranks, however, save as flesh and fodder.
Sunken Sanctuary
In a remote region of the Golden Plains, that vast swathe of gentle hill and dale famed for its shimmering, aureate landscape, there dwells an inexplicable expanse of cold, deep bog, out of which the rotten peaks of ancient roofs jut.
Shunned by the nomads, fearful tales are whispered to travellers that in a time now long past, it was a humble a monastery town, home to a temple of some now old, dead faith famed for their unshakeable holy duty of sheltering wanderers as they journeyed through the vastlands. Such fine traditions of unconditional hospitality are what the Golden Plains are known for, after all.
But on one steel-grey eve, a dark-cloaked rider requested sanctuary in the temple, and true to their oaths, he was given food and rest. They knew not where he was from, but his mien was strange. Foreigners pass through all the time, and the temple and surrounding town delighted in news of other lands, but none could place his origin, and he did not speak save for the most basic words in a guttural bark. He was not hostile, but he was furtive, and looked strangely about the chambers he entered.
The priests had dreadful visions that night, accounts of which have to this day never surfaced, and there are many who hope they never do. As the sun flooded over the plains, the priests conferred silently, and barred and locked the temple doors. The people, unable to enter for worship, heard naught but frightful wailing from its depths.
Within three days, the entire temple began to sink into the ground. Black waters seeped from the earth about the whole town, trickling silently through streets and into houses. As the town began to drown, the people hammered on the doors demanding aid. After hours of repeated and desperate summons, the waters lapping about their feet and the beasts fleeing into the wilds, a single priest spoke through a crack in the portal. Their holy oaths, he said, had been profaned. They, in their ignorance, had let something in. The sinner’s weight upon the sanctuary ground was too great, and he knew they could not break their oath. Better to let the earth take it, said the priest. Flee in your innocence.
Some nomads claim the sinner still dwells far below, in the choking mud, and will one day devour the entire Golden Plains