Shadows & Sorcery #75
Step right up, step right up, it is time for Shadows & Sorcery, oh by the gods is it time for Shadows & Sorcery—the seventy-fifth issue, that is!
I have this to offer you, weary traveller: three long tales of madness, undeath, magic, and darkness. These shall no doubt sate ye, oh yes…
The next instalment of the serial novel The Path of Poison is coming soon, by the way, make sure to check out the previous chapters if you haven’t already! Chapter 8, and links going back, can be found here
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This week, we hear the tale of the doom of the glory-seeking Sir Bertrand in Knight’s Catacombs, we learn of the power of a Draconic Pilgrim, and we delve into the secrets of the Conjuror’s Dark…
Knight's Catacomb
The Mad Duke Lemorc bent over the still figure upon the slab. Withered skin and ritually mortified flesh were revealed under the dancing candlelight. It barely looked human anymore. And soon, the duke thought to himself, it would be human no more. Around him, within a circle of high-piled salts, were six more figures on slabs of their own, arranged in a star shape. The dungeon ceiling was low and dripped foul waters from above. The ground was bare earth in some places. It had been, the duke believed, a long forgotten and incomplete secret escape built under the outer bailey. He had found ancient bones down here, most likely his ancestors, or perhaps those of a rival clan, who had met a grim and ironic fate in this tunnel meant to save lives. It had become a private prison when he had taken the throne, and after that, a laboratory. Now, it was a grand ritual chamber.
In his hands, the duke held a long and slender-necked vial with a bulbous body. It had a slight lip, which the duke now reverently lowered towards the open maw of the corpse of the treacherous Lord Havann who would have the honour of being his dark firstborn. Second, the leader of the peasant conspiracy he had quashed, who until his dying breath had sworn no plans had ever been laid against him. Corpses three, four, and five were the heads of criminal gangs spared public execution due their state as rather fine specimens. The sixth corpse, that was Lady Arremon, whom the duke knew lurked in his bedchamber most nights with a poisoned dagger. The last corpse, Duke Lemorc's seventh son, that would be his brother, who had sought to replace him as a perfect mimic.
As he passed each body, he let three drops of the elixir into each gaping mouth. The work of ten long years, bleeding the peasants dry, stealing tributes, and hiring the finest mercenaries to plunge into the depths of the continental interior and vilest underground markets for ingredients mentioned in passing in tomes of unspeakable knowledge. They would be his children, and he the dark and eternal father of a new empire, ruled by the infinite wisdom of the everlasting undead!
. . .
What was glory? It sat, they say, somewhere between fame amongst the people, honour amongst warriors, conduct on the battlefield, courage in questing, and greater and more daring deeds, all this led to glory. The one grand unifying currency of the realms, beyond gold, beyond land, beyond loyalty. Glory bought all these things. A knight could not be a knight, a nation could not be a nation, not if they were bereft of glory. The way people talked of it, one might believe it to be an actual force. And for all they knew, it likely was.
Glory for Sir Bertrand lay in the south-west. People had fled it with stories of horror from Duke Lemorc's demesne. His keep and surroundings lands had been ravaged by the swift and ceaseless attacks of a number of marauding of monsters that left a virulent madness in their wake. The duke had long been a subject of uneasy debate amongst the elder knightly council of the heartland. No one trusted him, and no one believed his rule would last much longer, though they'd been saying that for years now. Truth was, Duke Lemorc knew things, and he maintained his rule through secret means uncouth to speak of in proper company.
So, now that something seemed afoot in his lands, what better quest for an errant knight seeking glory?
With a last look at the rolling plains and golden sunlight of the heartland, Sir Bertrand donned oil-anointed armour, mounted his steed, and set forth to the dim domain of the benighted duke. First he travelled through a gentle country of tall forests, in this place there sat at roadsides ancient shrines and mossy statues to old earthen gods who had watched over these fields and knolls for aeons beyond number, before long forgotten hands had sculpted their images in pale, pitted stone. He spent long nights in the shadows of hilltop monoliths, overgrown with weed and lichen, which had once known the ecstatic worship of wildmen, but now served as the gravemarks of primal heroes whose corpses were too wild even in death for the burial grounds of the cities they founded. But he too found comfort in the huts and shacks of strangers, and in the colourful taverns far outside town walls, where he left the tale of his legend which was still being written.
Sir Bertrand finally found himself in the demesne of Duke Lemorc under a steely sky, and it was one grey morning that he met a band of soldiers taking up arms to defend a village which was under attack. Bertrand proclaimed himself and set forth with them, and it was under their banner did he finally come face to face with what the duke had unleashed. The village was already lost. Smoke stained the air and fire lent a lurid sheen to the chaos. Figures rushed about to and fro wailing, and the soldiers rushed in to lend aid. He drew his blade and rushed around a corner to seek survivors, but instead he walked onto a scene of pure nightmare. In the grip of a tall, mutant thing was the neck of a farmhand, a young woman, who flailed as she tried to call out. Bertrand saw that as the thing sunk its fingers into her flesh, she seemed suddenly overcome with violent fits as it released her and she stood up, grasping her head as if in agony. The thing pointed towards the knight, and several other forms rose from the ground.
Bertrand knew then the extent of this darkness. He slew no less then six innocent villagers possessed by screaming yellow madness as the monstrous, inhuman form lumbered about mockingly. In a burst of rage he did battle with the thing, the soldiers rounding up the sane survivors. His sword bit into it again and again, but it did not die—in fact, its wounds seemed to knit and meld together moments later with its normal movements. There had to be a weakness, he knew it, but he could not find it. When a wintry howl rushed along the charnel wind, the monster threw Bertrand aside, frustrated with anointed armour, and fled with terrible speed out of the village.
The knight shared his encounter with the soldiers as they made their way to the duke's keep. The place was utterly silent, and utterly dead. They found Duke Lemorc torn to shreds in a corridor, and in his hand, a long, thin-necked vial with a bulbous body, swirling with a strange fluid. The soldier's commander bid Sir Bertrand return to his lord the baron's manse and deliver the concoction to the court wizard.
Within the stately walls of the baron's grand home, Bertrand met with the advisor, physician, and wizard, an aged but fiery fellow named Karakus who took in firm but hesitant hands the strange vial. For two nights the wizard did not emerge from his study while Bertrand and several other knights fought off the attacks of the horrors they had no doubt were connected to the late duke. They were quite unkillable, they could be wounded, and quite badly at that, but it never hindered them much, and not for long. Fire worked better than steel, but was still ultimately ineffective. Blessed blades, holy oils, and the spears of warrior clerics called from the south did little more.
When Karakus emerged one grim evening, he declared he had, after two nights of no rest, uncovered the secret of what they had found in the dead duke's grip. It was nothing less, he said with trembling voice, an elixir of immortality, a vile thing composed of ingredients and reagents he dared not speak of. He had learned that on the first night. He had spent the second trying to perfect it, for the duke, in his wild madness, had left it unfinished. Instead of immortality, it produced undeath, of a kind which spread via touch to unwilling victims, killing them soon after infection. That accounted for the poor villagers.
The baron shirked from it and asked, was it truly an elixir of everlasting life? Karakus answered it was, but his reasoning for finishing this dark work was sound: if perfected, perhaps it might reverse or fix those horrors even now spreading death and mayhem. Likely, they all agreed, it was the only potential weapon against them. And so they set out once more, blades now blessed with the duke's sorcery, a sought to capture a single ghoul, to face it in combat.
When Bertrand's blade was plunged into its chest, the thing shrieked in all too human way, as if the aura of occult power which hung about was for but for a moment undone, and its existence threatened. But the sacrifices to get that close were too great to permit for another six monsters. In the end, it fled into the misty wilds and was lost. Bertrand and the soldiers returned to the baron's keep crestfallen, and the knight locked himself in deep and grave consultation with Karakus the wizard for many hours.
The baron had gathered together many of the regional lords in the face of the discovery. As they spoke amongst themselves, Sir Bertrand came before them and announced himself as Sir Bertrand, Knight of the Heartland, Son of the Elder Council, and begged of them a boon: build a catacomb deep in the earth for him, for his life had come to an end, and the power of eternal glory was his forevermore. He alone would become the bulwark against his insatiable darkness, for immortality and undeath must never be released into the world. Within an uncrackable crypt, he would do endless battle with this foe. He had already consumed the perfected elixir, and felt the surge of ultimate life in his flesh. Round up the ghouls, lay them low, and cast them into the catacomb of Sir Bertrand to be crushed under his feel for the rest of time.
. . .
It has been many centuries since the knight's catacomb was sealed. Every year, a lone priest goes down and blesses it, and lays a wreath before the smooth stone wall that was once an intricately carved mural telling the tale of Sir Bertrand's glory. His tale is still told, but legendary deeds numbering in the tens of thousands have taken place since then. But amongst those veterans and elders who still repeat the legend, they wonder at the fate of the eternal knight and his greatest sacrifice. Does he still fight? Was his immortality truly endless, or has he succumbed to countless mortal wounds, severed limbs, broken bones? Has he starved—could he starve? Or has he gone mad in the now long-lightless depths?
Perhaps after lifetimes of battle they came to an understanding. Maybe Sir Bertrand joined them. Or they joined him. Perhaps beneath the feet of the world the ghouls and their undying king wait to emerge once time has turned stone to dust. Or inch by inch they scratch away the rock with talon and rusted blade. The wizard Karakus still lives, a frail thing of walking spider-webs and strange thought. He has wondered at the fate of the knight, and if the sacrifice was worth it, if not another method might have been found. But Bertrand sought to save lives and oversee this defense himself, and for that the wizard was bowed by his glory.
One day the earth will open upon, or the people of a future culture will seek riches and resources in the deep places, and Sir Bertrand will emerge with the ghouls of Duke Lemorc. No warning will persevere into the aeons, and so all the wizard can do is pray that, whatever happens, the folk of the future will have the boundless glory to put the knight and his eternal foe to final rest.
Draconic Pilgrim
The battle to retain our humanity is constant. The world exists in a state of flux, from all points are we assailed by forces, powers, and beings breaking through into this space where all spaces converge. There is no such thing as silence or stillness, for even in the noiseless dark do things dance about us and speak, though we may not understand the words.
All we can do as human beings, given form by the chance passing of some great power aeons ago, is cling to the trails and echoes of that power through the manipulation of other forces, so that that we may partake in that ordering vastness that gives us our shape, our life, our battle, our purpose. This is our god, though we know not even its name.
But not all of humanity is content to wage this war, they are unwilling to dwell half their lives in the grand temples to bask in divine radiance. There are countless little corners across this plane where human beings have either faltered in their fight, or have utterly resigned themselves to beasthood, descending slowly down the path to chaos, worshipping fearsome beast gods where none can see them. But some are not so negligent, and their heresies are of an active kind.
Such are the folk who have relinquished humanity and given their soul's alleigance to another great power. It is reckoned that man is but one of the great powers of the world, indeed our command of the other forces is unrivalled, but we are not alone. The only beings who might stand aside us, or rather opposite us, in sheer might is the dragon. The winged serpents of the skies, the mountains, the deep valleys, they command thunder and flame with every wingbeat and exhalation. And so natural is their command, that one wonders why they require such size, speed, and strength alongside it. For these reasons are they are worshipped as gods.
It is believed that dragons adhere, like humanity, to a single mighty power which has made them thus, and gives them their abilities. We learned a long time ago that the god of man and the god of dragon are wholly incompatible, and no sorcery can wrench dragonspell from its current and into human grasp. Perhaps this is why it is so tantalizing, its seemingly forbidden nature. People see the singular nature of the dragon, and in that moment, take the first, irrevocable step towards attaining that nature. Draconic pilgrims are becoming, it is feared, a more common sight by the year.
Heretics they may be, but the draconic pilgrims have been tolerated more often than not throughout history. The might of man's magic is unrivalled, yes, but the raw strength of the dragon has often been a match for it. They straddle the line between human and dragon for much of their journey, and not easily are their origins forgotten. In fact, their human lives are often fixtures for contemplating their transfiguration (often referred to as ascension). As they begin to accumulate draconic traits, the foibles of human biology are lessened, if not outright forgotten sometimes. Pilgrims have been mighty warriors in much of humanity's past, leading the charge of armies, spearheading daring strikes, being as bulwarks in heroic last stands—all in the name of strength and the display of prowess, the core philosophy of their cult. Some humans even venerate these figures as saints, as paragons of human nature overcoming that which is mighty, but alien.
Of course, they have just as often been the opposite. Many pilgrims revel in their growing might, and have become monstrous warlords whose black deeds of cruelty and callousness outclass even the vilest sorcerer-lord. The pilgrim-warriors at the heads of armies, delving into raids, and holding the line of battle, many times it has been against one of their own kind on the opposing side. The pilgrims do not care, for them the expression of strength is all that matters, and it is that single-minded vision and clarity of purpose which makes them attractive to soldiers, who are known to surreptitiously worship dragons and learn from their adepts. Some draconic pilgrims, though, haven't the nobility to even become warriors, violent as they may be, but become bandits and killers in the wilds, earning their kind a grim reputation.
And just as some hold draconic pilgrims as paragons, many are so also reviled as an example of the corrupting influence of other powers.
In the latter stages of their attainment, draconic pilgrims become more and more "divine". As their attunement to the great power behind the dragons increases, their humanity slips, sometimes quite suddenly, and they assume bestial forms—to them, deific. Pilgrims tend to flee wherever they are when this happens, not out of fear or guilt for collateral damage, but because it is their time. Among groups of pilgrims, it is cause for celebration, battle, and worship. The gods are calling them to join their number, now or never. No human sage can claim to think it truly a folly, for who amongst us hasn't dreamed of the ordering god of man passing through this world again, and take us with it into wonder and glory forever?
Conjuror's Dark
Conjurors understand darkness. They have an insight into the higher natures of most immediate phenomena, but for them, darkness is something special. To the regular person who dwells in that immediate world, light is reality, light is truth, our ally and greatest tool. The less light, the more treacherous and perilous something becomes. But for those who know better, and can think beyond, they can see the inherent values and more esoteric properties of a lightless space. Darkness for a conjuror is inherently formless, undefined, unseen, unknown—it is these things in a very literal sense.
So the logic runs that anything can be inside a dark space, and for conjurors, anything really can be in a dark space.
There are limitations of a kind. The actual aperture or general size of a dark space naturally limits what a conjuror can actually summon. Hence the age old image of the conjuror in the dank cellar, peering into a wide well of shadow rising like a maw from the bare earthen floor, or gazing into the deep alcove ingeniously lit from its flanks so as to render its interior utterly black. But the real work of the conjuror is actually getting something to emerge.
Darkness works on sympathetic principles. It is highly susceptible to impressions. The conjuror's thoughts and emotions create a great impact, but more importantly, objects placed before it, or into it, also have an effect. Thus do conjurors seek out objects which in some secret, higher fashion may be connected to or reminiscent of the thing they seek to conjure. In connection with clear vision, the desired thing can be pulled, or emerge, from the dark. Do not think that the conjuror's power is limited to merely inanimate objects.
It is surmised that humanity's fear of darkness, of what may dwell within, of the strange unknown it represents, often conjured things where nothing was, back in the primal ages when we learned to fear the things we fear. We stared out into the fathomless night and imagined and conjured countless horrors. This is how the first conjurors came to be.
Those first conjurors embraced this fear. That was power for them, and in past ages, in remote areas, they were as kings and high priests. There are ancient ruins situated around cavern mouths, around rents in the earth, or around small cave systems, seats of their authority from which conjurors would call things forth. In later times they excavated and built their own dark places, and moved into the underground of society. Conjuration never quite left the fringe it began in, being rather unpalatable for the majority of mankind. The wonders of more well-meaning conjurors failed to sway public opinion, and those folk too fell back into their cellars and caves.
But just because it existed on the fringes, doesn't mean it wasn't everywhere. Master conjurors came into high demand during the long, simmering, and mostly secret generational war between Houses Albhest and Gemnion as they vied for control of the empire in the wake of High Lord Masserac's strange illness and abdication. Veritable armies of spies, assassins, and mercenary teams were thrown at members of each House and the streets of Tall Courts ran with blood on some nights. Such was the state of the empire then that few people batted an eye, but tried their best to look the other way to avoid seeming like co-conspirators.
As more and more neutral families fell to one side or the other in the growing conflict which threatened to consume half the capital city, one of the understandably paranoid heads of House Gemnion, while pondering his next move, chanced upon an idea. Skip the middle man, and instead of hiring conjurors to pull weapons out of the dark to arm assassins and thugs, why not use the conjurors themselves? Lord Gemnion had seen scores of bizarre powers that those summoners were capable of, and the next logical step—before the bastard dogs of House Albhest found out—was weaponize their greatest resource.
True master conjurors are capable of deft and striking control of the dark. With a single object can they make deep impressions upon their murk, manifesting with incredible clarity their desired outcomes, and much of it without the otherwise necessary self-immersion in the dark that lesser conjurors require. Indeed, one of his most trusted servants had a conjuror create something while in another room—it was simply enough to know and feel where the dark place was. And dark places exist everywhere, in every thing, all the time, there is no light that can fully obliterate shadow. And one of the prime places in which darkness exists, uncontested? The inside of the human body.
If one thing can be pointed to as the final nail in the coffin, as it were, for conjuration being considered for acceptance in mainstream society, it is the the conjuror-assassins of the Albhest-Gemnion war. Once open conflict broke out, that was it—anything was permitted. The battles were short, swift, and unbelievably violent. But behind the scenes were worse. Scores of hired conjurors stepping through pools of shadow and out of sight, pulling weapons from the dark and slaying their commanders, and, most shudderingly of all, killing high ranking officials by calling up blades into their very bodies.
There was no horror comparable, not even in that loathsome conflict, to seeing a man's chest burst open from within and a score of daggers fly out, or a room of generals suddenly become impaled from within their own flesh by great spears, or a head split open in a flash as something far, far too large is summoned in the little dark space between brain and skull.
In the end, Houses Albhest and Gemnion depleted themselves of allies and members, and the dregs of those once proud clans were turned on and slaughtered, along with their conjurors, and their names struck from the hierarchies, their bloodlines severed. Surviving and neutral conjurors fled into hiding for years, and much knowledge of the art was destroyed or locked away, and what remains is jealously hoarded. The art is a ghost of its former self, much to the relief of the world at large.
But of course, anything can be pulled from the dark, if one knows what one is doing.