The fifty-first edition of Shadows & Sorcery comes to you courtesy of a fevered and fatigued madman who will not stop. Some people might wisely take a break when down with covid, but apparently not me.
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Otherwise, we’re steamrolling right through on the path to issue 60 and the 300th story, but we’ve got a bunch of weird, creepy, cool, and exciting stuff to see before then, including chapter 4 of The Path of Poison to come in the following weeks. Get up to speed with the first three chapters!
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This week, we experience the Nightmare of the Drowned, we stalk about the Temple of the Witches, we encounter the curious Pilgrims of Chaos, we learn how best to deal with Defiled Undead, and we follow a familiar face down into the Cavern of the Astre…
Nightmare of the Drowned
Around the seventh day on the water, the dreams began. Naval travel was still primitive, and the methods for dealing with the dreams were just as primitive, but the water had been a fixation on the human mind since recorded history. The captain of this vessel preferred to drug her crew with moist lotus pulp and brood alone in her chart room. No matter the dosage, though, the dreams would surface in someone, and whoever was on duty had to attend to a screaming madman and further drug the rest of the others.
No one knew what the dreams were, what sent them, what they foretold, but they were all of the same type: drowning. Inhaling lungfuls of stinging ocean water, falling helplessly under towering black peaks of raging ocean, unable to push oneself above the surface for even a moment despite the kicking and struggling. The feeling of being devoured, and dragged down. The light disappearing forever. And above it all, a sound no one could describe or place.
A fierce wind that threatened an unseen storm sent the ship across the formless vastness of the great sea. Rigmen clambered uneasily across the ropes and pulleys, and other workers stayed as close to the middle of the deck as possible. It was inefficient work, and progress was slow, but the captain didn't berate them. She didn't like it either. This stretch just felt bad. Seasoned sailors learn to develop a sensitivity to the alien vagaries of the ocean, or perhaps rely upon an intuition that was already there, and it always pays off. Unfortunately it also hits when there's nowhere else to go.
As the day grew darker and the skies and waters more leaden, the uneasy wind suddenly shifted, and rain began to come in. The captain called for all hands on deck--they knew that she knew. Sleepers below were called up, and the deck became a confusion of crew scurrying to their posts, securing everything they could. All of a sudden, it was upon them. Gusts of biting wind threw up waves that blasted against the vessel, the sea churned with the growing storm causing navigation to go awry, and a deep fog seeped in through the sheets of rain.
It was inevitable that in this mess, a man would go overboard. Cast over the side by a beastly gale and the crash of a wave into the ship, the fellow--a well-respected veteran of several voyages--screamed in mortal terror as the crew scrambled to save him. It was several minutes before he was heaved back over the deck by four men who leashed themselves to the head mast with thick rope and jumped over. Captains by naval law are required to have some knowledge of medicine, being responsible for the crew, and it was sufficient to bring the sailor back from the brink.
Near to a lungful of water was spewed forth onto the deck as the man's eyes cleared and he began to wail and scream, kicking and flopping away from everyone around him, adamant that something was trying to take him, and to please not let it take him. No one said it, but they all knew what had happened.
He was given a hearty helping of lotus pulp, but not allowed to sleep. When he calmed down, his captain came to him alone and bade the fellow relate what had happened. It was an order.
He had only been overboard a few moments. Less than a minute of that had been spent underwater. But it was enough. The towering black waves, the biting cold, the sudden choking gasp of sea water into the lungs which felt more like it was being forced down than breathed in. The same damn thing each one of them had seen. But it didn't end there. He was on the verge of death for several crystal clear seconds. Staring, still, mind afire with rapid, senseless thoughts, he suddenly saw something. Hundreds, thousands, countless millions of thin, waving black things, all around, reaching from deep down below, like seaweed strands. His gaze was shifted downwards by the current and he saw the corpses of dead seamen and fishers, caught amongst the strands. He watched helplessly, as his life ebbed, the strands tighten and squeeze the bloated corpses, causing what was in them--what was REALLY in them--to slink out and into the dark. Pale, wrinkled, with bulbous heads and faces. Faces, he choked, like a person's. Beyond them, he saw something incalculably vast visibly shift, and a cloud of the black feeler-weeds foamed up towards him. At that moment, he was dragged by his shipmates out of the water.
Yes, there was a sound, he affirmed, but he refused to repeat what it said. He would only mutter that "it was for the drowned". Despite a successful voyage after that, the sailor reputedly never set foot on a ship again.
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