WOAH hey there everyone, it’s time for the seventy-first edition of Shadows & Sorcery!
I suppose I should inaugurate this as Season 2 of this publication, because if you missed last weeks rather momentous edition, you should know that S&S is going to be free to read forever from issue 70 onwards! But the season break matters, because season 1 is still for paying readers (although there’s still free editions and the first tale of each one is available in full, of course). You can binge read the entire thing and see this newsletter evolve in real time! Remember when I used to say nothing and it was just the stories? Experience that bliss because now you can’t get me to shut up.
This week is, dare I say it, nothing less than JUICY. Awaiting you all below is five tales of adventure, horror, and deep lore, as well as a brand new chapter of The Path of Poison, which can read be right HERE
Lastly, my friends, if you enjoyed what you read here, give that little heart icon a quick tap and tell the stories you liked them!
This week, we join a raid on a cult’s dark work in the Draconic Tomb, we learn the grand history of the Harvest Temple, we take a tense trip through the Woods of the Drowned, we learn of those who wield a Cemetery Sword, and become owners of the last scraps of lore about a Witch’s Shadow…
Draconic Tomb
"It was the paladin, alright...but I could see the barbarian under it all, waiting to get out. Those golden eyes, blazing..."
In the midst of the tomb were gathered three black robed figures, tall, gaunt, dark of cast, clearly natives of the Baletor, and they looked worried. The one who knelt before them was similar, but clad in leather armour dyed black—the garb of an assassin.
"Where are the others?" came the shaking, contemptuous voice of one of the priests.
"Dead..."
"How?!"
"The paladin met the first assassin with his hammer upon the flat of the sword, with such force it almost knocked the blade from his hands. The other came at him with a rapier, but in the blink of an eye, he swung the hammer to the side, knocking it from the hand. Without hesitation, he rushed in and crushed the assassin's head in like a ripe melon. That gore-shrouded hand was, seconds later, in the chest of the first..."
The priests looked at each other. To hear of these men, who had not been cheap, being dispatched with such ease almost shook their faith.
"Then I-I ran, but...he said..."
"What? What did he say? Speak!" said a priest as he took a faltering step forward.
"To tell you—to say he was coming, that the sign of the hammer has fallen upon you-"
There was an almighty crashing and splintering of wood from up the dark passage, echoing through the tomb like the drum of doom. Two golden eyes blazed in the dark then. They gazed past the assassin, past the three priests, to the bodies of the missing men, women, and children scattered across the chamber, and finally to the vile form enshrined upon grave-slab at the end of it all. That it had ever been human was hard to tell, but Casimir, Paladin of Imaal, God of the Law, knew it had been, and knew just what kind of person it was. He knew, too, that this cruel perversion of order was now beginning to stir in its cocoon of shadows, and that a city of innocents dwelt above. His clay-red skin and short-cropped charcoal hair was much like the others in the chamber, but whereas they carried a furtive and treacherous aspect, his was aflame with rage.
"KILL HIM!" bellowed one of the priests at the remaining assassin, who unsheathed a tapering, curved blade. But Casimir ducked low under the broad slash and lunged with a tackle, following with an upward sweep of his mallet, cracking the assassin's jaw. He slumped to the ground, motionless. He took stock of the priests in a flash—he regretfully admitted to himself they might be more useful alive. He thrust forward with his mallet into the nose of one, sending the sinewy cultist to the ground. The next one had drawn a dagger and prepared to strike, but the paladin dodged it at the last second and headbutted the priest, which was followed with a hammer to the back of the head.
The final priest had thrown himself upon the loathsome skin of the entombed horror. He was gibbering, and Casimir pulled him away. A madman's eyes greeted him.
"The master is nearly awoken, the Great Work is nigh done!" His mouth was black from trying to tear open the cocoon. The paladin sent the cultist flying back with his foot, where he slumped against the damp tomb ground. In a flash, Casimir had bounded forward and crushed the man's ankle with his hammer. The scream was piercing, but more of despair than of pain, for Casimir now strode forth to the grave-slab, and raised his weapon. It seemed as if a shaft of pure radiance speared through the very rock of the hidden tomb and through the head of Casimir's hammer, shining its path down to the newly awakened dragon's skull, which was instantly dashed to pieces.
Harvest Temple
Four thousand years ago, the land was lush and wild. Bronze-skinned barbarians raided each other's camps and caves, little better than beasts. But one day, amidst a wide plain, at the suggestion of a whisper, a single person placed a single seed in the earth, and that was that. It spread from tribe to tribe, and many came together not in war, but in trade. The blood-red lives of humanity began to pale, and over it there grew green. The farmers were like chieftains then, and it was their knowledge that sowed the seed and cutting, that took the beast from the field and set it to work. That first whisper became the bedrock of burgeoning civilization, the guiding principle of growth that each and every person was born into and passed along.
In the first ages, the farmer and shepherd went out at midday and midnight into their tended greens, amidst the soils and woods, and had covenant. Every patch of land upon which something was grown had its green man, and in the haze of summer afternoons and fog of winter eves, did the woodwose begin to jump and dance, and so through the drought and frost did seeds survive. And over it all did the Wheatfield Walker stride, overseeing the holiness of agriculture and the gentle mastery of the earth.
Then stone began to be raised higher and higher, and out of the fields did the people go, but the cult remained. Into chambers of marble and rich wood were burnt offerings made, and the ash was cast from the rooftops instead of placing it with their hands into the soil. In this second age did the cult gets its names=—the Harvest Temple—and so too did the town and the city form. The farmers fell back to their daily toil, and from them were taken the rites and old motions, and instead jade-robed men called priests went into sacred groves and there bade the green men and woodwoses take up domain in the neat tilled fields.
The first great kingdom began the tradition of equating the monarch with the Wheatfield Walker or the Walker's own blessing, instituting a secret royal, and later imperial cult, that never truly died. Lordly health became the health of the land, and as the kingdoms rose one by one, less emphasis was placed upon the farmers and their fields, and more so on the land itself. Ritual gardens were often grown and tended to by the wealthy, and even common folk kept plants in soil drawn outside the city walls. As far removed as the cult's focus became, its tenets—and its power—never left. Out of the fields, and into the homes did the spirit of the wilds come.
In time, the kingdoms became an empire, and the emperors looked from outside their green vales into the wider world. The Wheatfield Walker stepped onto distant earth, woodwoses were seen to prowl curious forests, and the shrines of green men were seen on strange hilltops, where their ruins sit to this day. But so too did distant things come into the green lands, and the emperors of that third age recognized the virtues of solar pantheons and thunder gods. Jade priests began to record foreign rites and called not just the green to rise, but to be soaked in sun and rain. It was through the sun gods did the burnt offerings, made in secret, take on newer and more potent meanings, and it is said that for a full three decades, smoke rose daily from an inner chamber of an imperial palace and across the capital city.
The empire fell, and the theocracy came after it. The priest was king in those days, and the smoke of offerings blotted out the sky on the holy days. Legends of that lost age speak of woodwoses on the old stone streets beckoning the unwary into dark woods, away from the sun, and of green men demanding frightful sacrifices in even their most venerable and popular shrines. The theocracy, whose name was banished from records and forcibly forgotten, left a black stain upon the primal cult of the farmers from which some regions never really recovered.
Three ages and three empires came and went after that. The first empire was a golden empire, whose ambitious leader set to rights the grim state of the land and gods, and struck from all records its predecessor. The second was warlike, and sought land for the gods, and they created rites of bloodletting in the fields, intended as a kind of symbolic strengthening of one's bond with the earth, of repayment for life given. The third empire still stands, and it is old, and mouldering. Likely it will soon crumble, the imperial cult will whither with it into vague saint worship, and kingdoms and city-states and republics will spring up in its wake. But the cult will remain. The shrines of green men stand on hilltops and in vales, woodwoses will dance upon the earth, and the Wheatfield Walker will stride under the gaze of the sun and bring with him his cloak of rainclouds.
Woods of the Drowned
"Careful, this is where it gets bad. No limbs outside the boat. Don't look over the sides."
The river had wound, maze-like with its tributaries and snaking offshoots, through the deep valley floor. The sides in places were inclines so sheer as to be like towering walls of rock and tough, clinging grasses. But that had evened out, more or less, to a smaller, close mess of mounds and hills, in the midst of which, was a swamp. The boatman now took out a much longer oar whose shaft was festooned with hanging bits of mottled twine and dull metal. The boatman noticed his passenger's curious eyes.
"They don't seem to like it much. Stops 'em from grabbing onto the oar at any rate. I'd cover my boat in these things, but they aint cheap."
"Stops...what?"
"Best not to know if you can avoid it." He said so without looking at her.
The oar glided through the oily water with nary a sound. The trees which made up the surroundings looked bloated, they rose from the water with no hint of land or weeds between them. Likely their roots were far below, in the lightless murk. Their boughs, which exploded into thick leaves, were long and scraggly, and were verminous with hanging vegetation. The air was thick, moist, and stank horribly. Every few minutes, the boatman had to stop and catch his breath.
"Can I help?" asked the passenger.
"No, no," gulped the boatman. "Just need to take it easy through here. Too easy to have your energy sapped in this place."
All of a sudden, there was what seemed to the passenger to be a cold breeze—not cool, cold. A swift slither of chill air. It made her shiver. The boatman's head snapped around.
"That was cold you felt just now? You sure?"
She looked at the boatman's wide eyes with a confusion steadily being overtaken by fear.
"Yes. Why?"
He looked around as he bit his lip in thought.
"Stay away from the sides. Keep this handy."
The boatman kicked out a small hatchet from under a canvas covering and slid it over the deck with his foot. He didn't stop rowing once.
She took the axe in her hand, and looked around the sides of the small vessel warily. The place was so quiet, so heavy. She gulped in the air as best she could. It almost felt like it was slowly closing in, clinging. Tendrils of hanging moss, curling vine, long, drooping flowers, and less describable protuberances, brushed against both of them every so often. Then there was a knock against the underside of the boat. She jumped, and heard the boatman hiss a curse under his breath.
"You need to tell me right now what's in this water," she said with a growing anxiety, standing up and turning about. It came again, but this time as a series of soft bumps against the side. Like knocking on a door. The boatman didn't turn, didn't speak. Vegetation from above dragged against her cheek and tore it away.
It was her sharp, inward gasp laced with fright that made him turn. He saw it immediately. There was an arm on the side of the boat. Mottled, smooth, but thin, and wiry. It had a long hand, and longer fingers, which curled slowly against the wood as the thing beneath gained a grip.
"For the gods' sakes, hack it!" he rasped as he began switching the long oar from side to side in quick succession, shaking off an unseen number of gathered things below. She didn't wait to see the full thing reveal itself as what might have been a head bagan to emerge over the rim. The axe found its mark quickly, sinking easily into the strange flesh. It yanked itself away with shocking force, almost dragging the axe from her grip. She got a better look at it than she'd wanted, and fell back with a string of suppressed curses.
"There's a village under the water. Or was." The boatman spoke with immense difficulty, but he spoke. "There's a lot of bad stories about it. Strange rites and things. You know. Whatever it was they did, it was enough to get the whole lower valley flooded. But it didn't really work out the way anyone expected. And now it's...like this. And they, below, are like that. I don't think they're really dead, and I don't think they're really people. Haven't been for a long time."
She sat down, somewhat stunned. She looked at the thin, crimson fluid on the axe blade. Looked more like how blood looks when dropped into water, that curious shifting liquids do together. She set it down slowly, away from her.
"How do people know there's a village down there?" the passenger asked, as composed as she could sound. "Regional lore?"
"Yeah. But a couple folks went down to look, too, many years ago. Some things, as I said, are best not to know if you can avoid them. You can avoid this, ma'am."
Cemetery Sword
When the black moon passed over the Parraj islands, it took the force of will of the high king himself and his chiefs to bring forth a clear sky again, but by then it was too late—the sacred serenity of the tomb isles had been enshrouded with its dark shine. The bones of ancestors clawed from the earth, and neither king nor chief rested in the ensuing days as the mighty-souled sailed the coasts and put down the undead where they appeared, carrying them back on their coffin ships to their burial grounds.
With their lords drained of their fervour, the islands began to falter, and so it was that the high king of that age, rest him forevermore, created the order of cemetery men, and imbued them with powerful wills to set to rights those undone from their slumber by the nameless black moon.
It is not an enviable position, few seek it, but the prestige and honour—and might it comes with—are nothing to laugh at. The cemetery men have domain over their burial grounds, they see to all internment and funerary rites, as the shamans now refuse to see spirits to their places in the deep, so cursed are the tomb isles. And yet, they must live alone, apart from society, in constant vigil, never truly resting. The undead rise constantly, the taint of the black moon impossible to ever truly scour. But the cemetery men can get pretty close to it with their cemetery swords.
And undead is not the mindless, shambling thing of folktales, they bear a perverted intelligence and a drive to dominate. From the earth they creep and through the calm night waters they slither into the homes of sleepers to sap from them their force of will, putting those poor thralls under their command, and cementing the undead's own power. As a village falls under an undead's will, it wavers and begins to ail. It's as clear as day to those on the outside, and then are chiefs brought in to slay with sword and mind. But it should never get to the stage—the cemetery man's blade is usually what lays them first, for the cemetery men are a ruthless order.
The will, the force of the mind, is the power to pull something towards you. The high king and chiefs of the day had to exert themselves to bring forth a clear sky, and the cemetery men exert themselves every single time a corpse rises from tainted earth, pulling towards them a vision of the natural order through a miasma of cosmic darkness. The swords symbolize this, forged as great tapering slabs of iron, in the day of the old high king and passed down from custodian to custodian. No new swords have ever had to be forged, either, for such is the iron will of the cemetery men that those under threat of thralldom have forsaken their station in the very moment, depriving the corpse walkers of their prize.
Witch's Shadow
[Note: From the scraps of a Manual of Minnozamath, stolen from the still smoking remains of Madan Manor, whose ruin is known to have began in the cellar]
You shall know a witch by their shadow, which is cast even in the dimmest days, and even in darkness, and trails after them as a chain.
For those who pass the gateway always win a shadow, and never again can be alone.
...it is a deep beyond all deeps...
Pass not over a witch's shadow...you do not know what, or where, it is you are treading upon...
Beware the shadow thrown upon the house, for sight passes through there, and figures through its doors...
Upon the shadows are the candles burnt, to light the way up the coil of the soul, and thus are the powers bid rise...
...first must go into the city, there salute the prince...
Light is a veil...even the faintest shade obscures not, but reveals possibilities. In the infinite dark of the shadow can all things be.
It is the power they fear, of who holds that power, and what kind of person could hold it.
...in the wild and lonely places...their passing...as a foulness shall they be known...
...spread across the earth.
Let the dark shine your way.
These tales were so good!! Bravo 👏