Shadows & Sorcery #42
Welcome to the forty-second edition of Shadows & Sorcery!
The second chapter of my serial novel “The Path of Poison” is under way, and the action is ramping up, so keep your eyes peeled for its release early next month!
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In this week’s edition, we’re going to take a trip up to the Huntsman’s Ruins and hear a dark tale, we’ll learn the history behind the Graves of the Pilgrims, we’ll look deep into the Nightmare of the Shadow, we take a moment to contemplate the Eternal Undead, and finally make a short visit to the Sanctuary of the Sword…
Huntsman’s Ruins
The crown of the knoll was mostly bare and strewn with rock. Even in the intermittent centuries, the woodland had not reclaimed the peak. The slopes had been long abandoned to the beasts and the wilderness, and were the haunt of dark rumor and myth. The king of all these grim tales now sat before two figures who emerged from a veritable wall of trunk and brush.
"That's it?"
"That's it."
One of the figures, wearing the prescribed travelling robes of an academy adept, stained with dirt and with a dozen or more nicks and small holes, sat down slowly and without hesitation pulled out a length of scroll, and began to sketch the vista. Mostly mossy walls, ragged and misshapen with age, with so much of their surroundings collapsed to dust that guessing the layout would be a task unto itself.
"Takes a very peculiar temperament to live here, out in the wilderness," said the other, walking over to the ruins. "There's woods that flow across the mountains, where a wanderer might not see proper sunlight for days at a time..." The scholar looked up from his sketching.
"You're not a hunter? I mean, you followed the trail well enough."
"Me? No, no. Don't think I could do that. Relish my evenings in the tavern too much. Been around some hunters, though, and picked up some tricks. They're not all strange, but even the more lively chaps...ah, you can just tell."
"Tell what?"
"That something's off."
When the scroll was rolled back up neatly, the scholar rose and took slow, careful steps towards the ruins.
"So, what made you choose this place?" asked the tracker.
"Well," the scholar cleared his throat, "I'm sure you can guess why."
"You know the full story?"
"Only a short account of it, I'm afraid." The scholar's words trailed off as he stepped between the walls and examined them gingerly.
"Pff...s'pose you'd better hear the full thing then, for research and all."
"Hunter's lodges. You know about them? Hunters just about live entirely apart from the rest of the world, and these lodges are little lands unto themselves. They might ultimately answer to a council or a duke or what have you, whoever's paying them for their services, but these folk've been around for I don't know how many thousands of years. Before most laws. Before most lands we know today. You almost have to be born into the tradition. A hunter isn't just a game hunter, they're woodsmen and trappers, sometimes guards on lonely roads, sure they've even been militia at a few points in history too. More so, mind you, to protect the land than the people."
"Well, knowing that, you see this place here, hunters usually live in the forests. But the fellows who lived on this hilltop...I don't know. They'd have to be an odd bunch. Hunters in general are an odd bunch anyway, and you probably know the stories about them and the things they do, and the things they see, living away from proper culture and proper gods. All the things out here that people inside the walls have forgotten. Don't even know they have greater walls around them, and they're in something else's domain."
"A cabal of old huntsmen came up here, founded this lodge, and called the hillside their realm. Gave the other lodges ideas, you see. There was a time, so I was told, that they all looked to this place, and what it meant they were capable of. Imagine, sir, all our kingdoms and countries secretly divvied up between the wilderness. Every town gate and house doorway a guarded border."
"Now, one night, during a downpour that turned the hillside into mulch, three loud clangs resounded throughout the halls of this lodge. A huntsman went to the door and braced against the wind and lashing rain, and saw in the torchlight, the figure of a person silhouetted against the moonlight's diffused pallor. They were already coming forward when the huntsman bade them enter. The hunter got a good look at this stranger now. Might've been dusky skin, might've been a layer of earth and clay. A hermit, the hunter thought, or some such wildman, clad in beast skins and fur cloak."
"A lot of strange folks beyond hunters take to living in the wilds, and there's some folks who've always lived out there. The distant leagues of the Far Plains are home to tribes of humans who've likely never seen a town wall, or anything more advanced than a firepit and copper dagger. Some hunters aren't too far off being wildmen themselves, so they tend to nurture good relations with the earthier parts of humanity."
"So, they bring the fellow in, offer him food and a fireplace, and be generally hospitable. Now, you've never been around hunters much I'd reckon, let alone a group of them? Didn't think so, rare to see a gathering of them outside a lodge, you see. I have been around them though, and gods above let me tell you, you've never seen people act like they do. You've probably seen all the mind games and manipulation in court officials and academy heads, but with these folks, they're like beasts sizing each other up. Everything's about gauging strength, and they naturally establish little hierarchies in the moment. Well this fellow they brought in? Barely spoke, but all the same, practically owned the place as the night went on."
"Only, you see, the eldman had begun to chafe at this, as any leader of the pack might do should some virile new blood come in. He tested the wildman through the night as they drank, sang, and fought. And when the feast was laid upon the longtable? What do you think the wildman did? Only went and took the eldman's seat at the head. That's war. But the eldman was, well, an actual old man by that point - old for a hunter, mind you! - and lived more to mentor than partake in blood. A tense moment passed, and the eldman...accepted. Not happy, but he got the message. And the night took a turn, as the wildman began to throw his weight about, and there comes a point when the wildman drops a cup, and bids the eldman retrieve it. Humiliated in front of his lodge, the eldman goes to get the cup with more than half a mind to draw his dagger and take his chair back."
"But when he bends down to pick up the goblet and slip the dagger from his boot...he sees something. The wildman's feet had been done up in thick wraps like a hermit has. But he'd undone them. Now, sir, you're more than aware of the stories surrounding hunters, their rites, their beliefs. I mean the things that've leaked out, of course. The things people say. Well, the hunters know a lot more, and believe a lot more, and see a lot more. And even then, whatever this eldman sees, it makes him leap up with a shout, the dagger falling from his hand, and the wildman, in most accounts, bursting through the roof in a pillar of fire, cursing them for their hubris. The lodge burned down, was abandoned, and the hunters who dwelled there dispersed into the forests."
"I pieced this story together over a long time. I pieced the meaning of it together over an even longer time. The way it seems to me, after plying a lot old huntsmen with questions and drink, is the wilderness...fought back against the hunters becoming, well, too civilized. Not knowing their place, or something. The niche that had been granted to them perhaps. At the very least, you can say they overstepped some bounds, and what lay beyond those bounds pushed them back."
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