Shadows & Sorcery #4
This issue marks the one month anniversary since the beginning of this newsletter! To celebrate, this one is free for everyone to read, and what’s more, if you sign up for a paid subscription before the 10th of October, you’ll get 30% off forever. In today’s edition, you’ll find bloody battlefields, monstrous tombs, and two very strange cathedrals…
Today’s stories are:
Demon’s Tomb
Mountain of Chaos
Charnel Cathedral
Cathedral of Shadow
Valley of Knights
Demon's Tomb
A month-long slog through rotting jungle, which at every step became more tangled, more sodden, more breathless. Days spent hacking through the turgid vegetation. At nights a terrible chill flowed feebly through the air. The underbrush was verminous with creeping and slithering horrors, kept at bay merely by the expertise of the College Agent who headed the small team's expedition into the lost heart of the world.
The College, or the Humanists as they were colloquially known, were the dominant philosophical and political force in the known world at that time. Theirs was a wholly material philosophy, which placed human thought and emotion as the complexities of a fantastic but entirely mechanical device. And yet they knew they were subject to and immersed entirely in that experience, and as such held romantic notions about exploring and redefining the limits of the machine - the human mind. To that end, they sought to out human experience in all its forms, especially the experience of those long dead, mired in superstition. Whence came them to the central jungles.
When blades started to strike stonework instead of vine and bark, they knew they had found their the object of their quest. Scraping moss and lichen away, they studiously detailed the dank, deteriorating masonry, copying the inscriptions of a language likely gone unspoken for millennia. The more they revealed, larger the picture became, and what they once believed to be a veritable canyon of hopelessly tangled trees and virulent creepers, was in reality the towering walls of a grand structure.
The passage became arched magnificently as they travelled deeper, though much of it was hidden by shadow, greenery, and cobwebs. The carvings lining the walls, though indecipherable right now, seemed to the College agents to have an aspect that implied a particularly primitive culture, and yet, they had built this. Or perhaps appropriated it from an even older people. Possibilities swirled in the minds of the team as they traversed the cavernous corridor.
At last, and end of sorts was gained. It was a portal set into a slanting face of rock much rougher than everything around it, evidently an original structure around which this had been erected. It was cooler, though no less damp inside the passage, so they took their time prying the slab from its frame, letting it fall with strangled crash to the ground.
This passage didn't go as far as they had expected. It was entirely submerged under the loam above, the air was of a stagnancy scarcely describable, yet it was dry as a bone, and terribly cold. The stone was rough, almost completely unworked in places, hastily hewn. They didn't have to guess for long what it this space was for. Their torchlight fell upon it quite suddenly.
A long slab of rock, which upon inspection was intricately worked, masterfully even. It was in a shockingly fine state of preservation. Sketches and descriptions were noted down as the team rested on the bare stone floor. An altar? Or perhaps, a sarcophagus? In a fit of scientific fervour, the team began to study the edges and face of the grave. Stylized figures and symbols covered it entirely unlike those above, perhaps they served a source for another culture's appropriations, or may be the only preserved remains of their actual language and art. In any case, it didn't take long for them to remove the massive lid.
The College survived for many decades afterwards, but the secret carried back by the three surviving members of the expedition couldn't be contained. The physical evidence was clear and undeniable. Every experiment carried out in the wake of the discovery only confirmed growing suspicions.
It came to be despairingly known that a tomb in the middle of a jungle contained the desiccated form of a demon pulled right from a church book, down to the smallest detail in the most obscure legend. It withered before holy seals and swelled into almost a parody of life before fresh blood. The College never recovered, and a grand temple occupies its grounds. The old Humanists have been absorbed into the Reformed Theosophists. The Demon's Tomb is a popular pilgrimage destination, much to the distaste of the Theosophists.
Mountain of Chaos
It sits at the absolute center of the world. A single peak at whose prodigious base stretches the breadth of many kingdoms in every direction, from cold deserts and steaming jungles, to towering black forests and frigid tundras. These lands creep up the slopes for leagues, giving way eventually to storm-blasted crags and perilous cliffs.
The mountain rises to infinite height, reaching into the eternally tumultuous heavens from an equally endless base throughout the flesh of the earth. The mountain is not merely a mountain, it is the axis mundi, the center of the world, the point upon which all things turn, through which all things flow, the meeting place of Above and Below. All powers in this world are drawn from it, the mountain itself is virulent with seething energies, and so it is known as the Mountain of Chaos, the primal state and pool of all potential.
Humanity has naturally crowded about its base, and kingdoms have risen and fallen for millennia under its watch. Peoples have settled the mountain, both its crags and the limitless network of caverns below, from which emerge cthonic and elemental entities worshipped in the past as gods. The undercities were many, filled with riches and greed. Given an infinite resource, that greed overcame and destroyed them, every single one. The halls are home to ghosts tethered and fed by their desires, and the elementals that devour them infinitely.
Upon the slopes of the mountain, in the cold rises are countless small huts wherein still dwell ancient sorcerers who seek communion or ascension through the axis mundi. Such magicians living on the lower reaches are sought by the desperate inhabitants of the kingdoms scraping the mountain base. There are monasteries of mystics seeking divine union sitting precariously upon the crags, ever silent. And quite famously, there is a city on the western face of the mountain, lost in the mists. The tale is that it was a free-state, founded by a cabal of enterprising young lords who sought freedom and power, but who quickly found themselves cowed by the mountain's nature. Mired in fearful magics, the streets and courts of the city slowly but surely became ritual grounds, and electric spirits came out of the heavens to blast its vagaries clean.
All things came from this mountain, it is known, and to it all things will return. What was given from above will sink below, to rise once again before ultimate subsummation.
Charnel Cathedral
I once had the pleasure of passing through the great expanse of the Southron Forest, whose vastness eclipses the breadth of our kingdom entirely, and whose uppermost leaves scrape the very heavens. It was a warm day, the brilliant gold of the sun mingled with the rich green of the canopy, producing a hue that not even the most cunning brush can reproduce or evoke. The air was perfumed with woodland scents carried on the inner breath of the forest. Dim shade played across the surfaces of all underneath the canopy like light through water. Paths snaked through it, and upon them at irregular intervals sat small settlements. The ones who sat closer to each other formed unofficial and decentralized villages. A full hour's walk might sit between one cluster of huts and the next, and yet they considered each other immediate neighbours. Such distances meant little in the face of a forest which had leagues of earth where no human foot would ever tread.
It was in this unlikeliest of places, perhaps a day's march from the far border of the woods that opened out onto the sea, that I came across nothing less than the ruins of a gargantuan edifice. It was a shell - a vast shell, mind you, but roofless, a patchwork of jutting walls, crumbling foundation, and shattered stonework. It sat within what felt like an unnatural clearing. The extended settlements of the Southron Forest all dwelt comfortably within the forest's natural gaps. The trees loomed too close to these weathered walls, threatening to close in silently in the slow migrations the trees of this place are known to perform. It was unexpected, but not unpleasantly so, and I took the diversion. But I did not remain long.
Most settlements throughout the busier forest roads have small inns to accommodate travellers. It was in one these, gathered around the fire pit with a few local hunters, did I talk of the day's experience and thus learn the following story.
It was once a grand cathedral, the central seat of a once influential cult now relegated to scholarly footnotes and dark whispers. Their temples were verminous along the coastline at one point. No town was without one, and they were popular destinations for the sick and wounded, for in addition to places of monastic study, they were hospitals. One could guess, I was told, what established physicians, healers, and cunningfolk thought about their rise. The core tenets of the cult held that the human body held hints or schema of the divine, and that through study of the living processes, one could glimpse the nature of higher forces. That was their price: healing in return for the right to study the body.
Eventually, their influence grew, and their work accommodated not just healing, but the handling of the dead. First those who expired in their care, then those in the wider community. The first stirrings of unrest came around this time when bodies sometimes didn't turn up to their appointed plots or urns. But their services were the most advanced in the known world, and travellers came from leagues away to avail of them. This is partly why the cathedral was built. It would be their grand clinic, but also their grand archives, where medical and theogonic information would be compiled. In a move that left a bad taste in the mouths of most locals, they scooped a great wedge of the forest out, likely for notions of its prominence over the coastline, to look down on what it probably considered future subjects.
Strangely, few patients were admitted to the cathedral without going through the temples below first. Most guessed it was serving as a last line of defense for the worst cases, as few who ended up there ever came out. It must be remembered that the cult was extremely popular at the time, and if there was any suspicion, it was kept close to the chest. The cathedral itself operated for about twenty years before it all suddenly came crashing down.
People vanish, it is known. Accidents happen, travellers become lost, beasts roam the woods. An unfortunately regular occurrence. But it took the eyes of a small band of thieves who spent weeks scoping out the cathedral for entry points and hospitaller schedules for a pattern to emerge. Each night, either camping under the star-studded canopy, in a forest hut, or in a coastal tavern, the they came together and rather quickly did their unsettling experiences overtake their design to plumb the wealthy cathedral's coffers. Most criminals have a limit which dredges their humanity back up, and for this band it was the sight of dark figures at the woods' edge or in town alleyways grabbing hapless revelers or travellers, or a kindly young barmaid.
When they finally broke in, the secret was out. Fleeing into the town at the break of dawn, kicking down the constable's door and demanding audience, the next week saw a violent upheaval of order across the coast. The thieves' story was spread far and wide. The cathedral was extensively raided and destroyed, the clinic-temples abandoned and most of them demolished. Countless cult members apprehended and tried righteously, and not a single admission of innocence was ever given.
What could cause such an immediate change? The interior of the cathedral, so the story goes, was dark with blood. Not a stone in the place was clear of it. Passageways, whole chambers, grand halls, blood pooled and congealed in the masonry and marble. Mounds of rent flesh and banks of split bones were strewn like a carpet across the floors. To call it a scene from a nightmare, to call it and understatement would be an understatement. Malevolence and insanity made manifest. And there were scrolls like tapestries hung from the walls detailing every abhorrence, entire manuscripts describing in minute detail the intricacies of the human body, and all of them laced with fevered notions that the divine schematics were being laid open in front of their eyes. The key to the gate of godhood lay in flayed skin. Lengthy rituals and blasphemous communions were planned in complex patterns.
After the cathedral was stormed and the stench drowned in kegs of ale, the ruins were left to moulder and be reclaimed the forest. What happened to the archives of the cathedral, people can only guess. Some say they were burnt in vast bonfires attended by more savoury faiths. Some say furtive shadows slunk into the dark of the forest with bundles of papers. What matters is the cathedral, the cult, and its faithful are, or may as well be, dead.
Cathedral of Shadow
A curious phenomenon is said to pass through the lands of the south west. Wherever it falls, miracles occur. Of course the local people of the regions refer to any supernatural visitation nowadays as a miracle, for regardless of its effect it restores their faith in the strange divinity that has seen fit to descend upon their homes.
Small temples dot the bucolic landscape and shrines sit on nearly every street corner in the capital city. Each one carries with it a story, or often a number of stories, of when it passed that place first, and of what miracles it brought. While the official faith of the realm is the Triple Trinity, belief in the Holy Shadow holds significant sway and much theological debate has tried tying them into the Trinities, but to no avail.
The 'mother church' of the cult lies in the region's one city, Sarmokand, and is called the Cathedral of Shadow. While there is no true priestly body, the most learned students of the Shadow's many manifestations congregate to archive legends and accounts. The cathedral is not where the Shadow first fell, that honour belongs to a large shrine in the countryside, but rather it is where the Shadow first performed its greatest miracle and propelled the fledgling superstition into a powerful faith.
During the final siege of a bitter war, the city walls were beginning to fail. A market square had been converted into a temporary hospital for wounded soldiers, and was beyond its limits. With a skeleton crew of fighters barely holding the line and the healers exhausted, the cowering onlookers suddenly witness a vast dark shape pass over the makeshift hospital.
Dying soldiers gasped and shot upright. Rent flesh smoothed over, shattered bone melded, chipped and sundered blades were suddenly whole. And when the gates fell, the beleaguered invaders found themselves facing a force of invigorated warriors crying for the glory of the Holy Shadow.
The cathedral itself is a grand structure of intricately carved masonry, considered by many quite beautiful, with stylized robed and hooded figures representing the Shadow itself, and lines of low-relief figures representing the multitudes of folk saints who were touched by the Shadow and spread its wonder.
The interior, however, is much different. Upon entrance, one is met with a simple stone wall, and steps leading up left and right to a balcony which runs around the perimeter of the cavernous interior. A great arched ceiling lit with many hanging braziers send soft light and shade playing across the faintly smoky and bare space far below, the old market square. The Shadow passes sometimes across the interior, and though its miracles are not always availed of, it is available for all to see.
The beliefs concerning the Shadow's intellect are diverse. Some believe it can be regarded more like weather phenomenon, random and a by-product of a greater divinity (this is most often tied to the Triple Trinity), but others believe it can be called upon through propitiation, and incense has become the de facto method of communion, the belief being that smoke is akin to shadow.
Of course there are others who believe it is intelligent, but should not be called upon, for though stories of its benevolence are many, tales of curses and death brought upon by its passing are just as numerous. Almost universally, however, those who hold to the cult of the Holy Shadow know that it really is but the merest shadow of something greater, or perhaps stranger.
Valley of Knights
Two great hills mark the boundaries between two ancient kingdoms. Between them, a steep valley, a no-man's land. Capital cities and other settlements have drifted through the two kingdoms' holdings through the centuries, and ultimately they have left this old borderland in relative isolation and silence. But one thousand years ago, it was the site of a conflict so vicious that it is rarely spoken of even today.
What instigated the conflict or why this place was chosen has been almost forgotten. Most historians put it down to a desire for expansion from one side or another, and the blame shifts with the years. The valley was a poor battleground. From one end to the other, it is about a mile long. The sides aren't sheer, but they are uneven in many places, flecked with outcroppings of rock, the floor of the valley is quite small and when one hill ends, the other begins almost immediately, despite the size of the rises.
It was a relatively short battle, lasting about a week. But for the knights and soldiers there, it must have felt like a dragging, hazy eternity. The lines were dawn hastily, enemy camps lay on the upper reaches of their respective hills, facing each other every night. Advances were for mere inches of ground each day. Reinforcements of allied knights, reserves, and then mercenaries were called to the battlefield by both sides. Violent raids in the dark became more and more common. After four days of intense fighting in which crowds became denser and denser, and fighting lasted for longer and longer before retreats, chaos finally erupted.
The valley floor had become a mire of soil sodden with blood, creeping further and further up the valley slopes with every death. Sicknesses roamed the camps. Weapons were planted in the earth as makeshift barriers. Warriors lay where they were felled. The air was hazy with heat. There came a point when the fighting stopped, as a handful of stragglers, no longer being whipped into fervour by the calls of zealous lordly commanders, retreated with their tails between their legs and shame in their souls.
The valley was left abandoned. Looters didn't touch the place, either out of superstitious fear or plain old conscience. Corpses mouldered in their armour, blades rusted, and gore and blood flooded the mile-long valley floor. It is said there still lies a cold red marsh undiluted by a thousand years of storms and drought.