It’s here! Beware! The eighty-fifth edition of Shadows & Sorcery!
You know what else is here?
The 400th story of this newsletter/minizine/publication/whatever I’m calling it these days. I think that’s just ridiculous, but I’m genuinely about everyone’s who stuck with it, new and old, and perhaps even enjoyed having this beamed into their minds every week! But let’s keep going, because even scarier and mightier numbers are just on the horizon…
This week is a classic week: five flashes of weirdness, darkness, majesty, mysticism, all the deep strangeness you’ve come to expect and delight in (and how delightful it is). We’re actually over 400 now with this one, just a tiny bit. Won’t let you know which one is actually 400.
Lastly, I will say that I am still open to all feedback and suggestions on any fun or weird premium content you want to see, but this is all I will say.
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This week, learn how to make a Conjuror’s Offering, we gaze forlorn upon the Knight’s Grave, we listen for strange sounds from the Palace of Echoes, we seek dark wisdom by delving deep into the Draconic Crypts, and we learn the curious tale of the Heavens of the Forsaken…
Conjuror's Offering
Conjuring is all about knowing the right time, the right place, and the right thing to leave as an offering. This is very much an art, as personal flourishes are much appreciated. The rote offering may draw some mild interest, but acting upon a spirit's pride only goes so far. To really pull the powers you seek, you must learn to recognize the vagaries, and express in your own way, your own method, the art of conjuring. This will help foster a relationship with the powers beyond, and make them more amenable to being conjured, as well as more under your spell.
One thing you must keep in mind is that offerings become more and more elaborate the greater the being to be conjured is. The details of their offerings, the arrangements, presentation and so on, become intricate and complex, and adding one's one mark to it all rises in difficulty. Such conjurations require extreme preparation, for the danger is not some wasted valuable, or wasted time, but rather rousing an entity's ire.
To conjure means your will has been enacted. There are subtle shifts of metaphysical fabric in this. The end result, mythical in its proportions, is to simply bid things to appear. But the balance of it all is a constant battle to maintain. There are three agreed upon laws of the conjuror, each one a vagary unto itself:
At no time must you seem to be actively exerting your will over the spirit, because they are as vain as they are mighty.
Do not insult it with shoddy offerings.
Do not make a sacrifice.
There is as much appeasement as there is bargaining. One must never command, but one must never beg, or plea. Bid the spirit in recompense for the offering. This payment for services, but never shirk from pleasing them in deference to their might. But also, do not appear worshipful. Respect and at most reverence is important, but veneration is dangerous. As such, you must approach the conjuring as a proposition, and not as a favour.
The type and quality of things within the offering are also important. No matter how good the reproduction, the spirit will know. No expense can be spared for the procurement of authentic objects. Something scrounged, found disused, broken, and so on, these are almost never acceptable and must be avoided, unless the spirit desires such a thing. Make whole an object, or wait for it to grow if it be organic. Remember always that this is payment up front. There is nothing even the most irate labourer can do that a spirit cannot do worse a thousandfold.
Perhaps above all is the immense importance of not making a sacrifice. The dividing line between offering and sacrifice is murky, at best. Traditionally, this is why people of means and master thieves have often been those who make legendary conjurations. Imagine, if you will, a street urchin who begs enough alms to obtain something for an offering, and spends coin better spent on food and shelter on this offering. This is a sacrifice, the wilful loss of something important, ending in the person's overall loss. An offering, extravagant as it may be, is never at a loss. It is generosity, and a show of equal footing with a spirit.
It may be said that the first two rules will almost certainly end in one's death if not followed correctly. But the last rule is far more insidious. If a spirit appears to someone making a sacrifice, the balance has shifted, and now the will being imposed is that of the spirit. They seek entrance to our realm, and come far more readily to those who offer too much. Know that if great powers appear at your beck and call, apprentice, that you have already lost.
Knight's Grave
Stained with mud, stained with spilled blood, chipped on its edges, pockmarked with small dents all over, loose in some areas, held fast with rotting leather and linen in others, the chainmail underneath was rusted. A great black ragged and worn cloak covered all of this. And yet, when the pale sun sent a beam out from behind a steely cloud with a breath of wintry mountain wind, the weary, antique majesty of the nameless knight was renewed, if but for a moment.
The knight carried, like the sceptre of a monarch, a mace. Battered beyond belief, but whose wear showed only how truly solid it was. It may have at one time had gilding, for many of the small engravings with which the mace was covered, contain singular flecks of gold. Hanging upon the hilt of the weapon was the iron cameo of a soft-featured face with flowing locks. The mace's thick triangular wedge-shaped flanges had been beaten quite flat.
The dull clank of metal shattered the crystal stillness of the village. The people rushed from their small homes which hugged the gorge walls that sheltered them from the mountaintop storms. But it was not the clangour of the suffering plate armour that sent them out to grab and pull the knight inside the nearest home, no.
It was what that clangour might invite.
When the knight saw the faces of those poor folk, he graciously returned their offerings, speaking with a voice so soft they could hardly believed it belonged inside this grim armour. He took naught then but a flagon of cool mountain water, and bid them tell their woes.
It came from over the ridge, they said, from a deep rent in the earth, drawn by the labours of the villagers. Here it came, and here it killed. The beast which crawled and grasped and strangled and tore. They could not go about their work, and starved. Their children were long dead. The knight regarded them only for a second, closed shut the mask of his helm, and had them go about their business.
Standing by the entrance to the village, the knight listened to the people as they rushed about, a terrible anxiety in their uneasy, frantic motions. But the knight was calm. And then it came, at first one hand, and then another, and then more, until something that could only be described as a mass of grasping limbs that flexed and felt with vile intent showed itself, and commenced the attack.
Pummelled and beaten though he was, the plate bent and pulled to bits, and the chain ripped apart, the knight crushed each and every hand of the monster, until it writhed and twitched like a furious insect. What was found amidst the core of those arms was never spoken of, and they burnt it only after the knight drove his fist into it once more, silencing it forever.
When they returned from their cleansing deed, they looked upon their saviour, who had succumbed to his wounds. He lay in a heap upon the ground, blood pouring from his broken armour. There was a smile on his face. He was ashamed, he said as life left him. He had lost the end of his quest long ago in a land he had forgotten, and wandered on a deathly errant wandering, unable to return home.
His end was not quiet in those last moments, and his final breaths were dreadful shudders. But they knelt around him, and he at least saw grateful faces before they shut his eyes.
The nameless knight was buried on that very spot, and was all that would ever remain of that village long after its elders died or left for lower pastures. It is regarded by lost travellers as a mark of safety and solace.
Palace of Echoes
The city that surrounded it is almost gone. The low squat sprawl of common residences, the tall townhouses, the low but long halls, the teetering tenements, only skeletons remain. The streets are dusty with their decayed forms, stone and wood crumbled and rotten. Weeds and vines have grown unchecked for centuries, having pulled down and hidden the corpses of once stately structures. There are small glades on the outskirts reclaiming territory.
But the palace hasn't changed. It will never change.
From afar you see the towering walls of warm, whitish stone, the free standing veined pillars with their highly ornamented capitals of colossal faces, betwixt them you see the golden dome rising mildly to a slight taper, then as you approach closer, you see the colossal grand arch on the underside of which are countless divine forms. You see the great bronze gates, ever so slightly ajar. You may even notice not a single weed or single vine or anything else has crept up the walls. In fact, the old cracked flagstone around it is untouched.
Inside the palace is empty, or perhaps it seems empty, for nothing walks there save those unfortunate enough to step within the gates. Inside is dark, but there are windows and apertures letting in shafts of weird light. The interior is richly furnished, every hallway lined with gilded tables and unlit candelabras and grand portraits, every chamber holds urns, books, scrolls, old arms and armour, carpets of coins and jewelled daggers and chalices--the place is quite literally filled to bursting with treasure with just a cursory examination. And thus does the question naturally arise: why has this opulence not been emptied out long ago? Surely there are those enterprising or desperate enough, no?
Again, the palace seems empty, for nothing walks there. But it is infested with echoes.
The world works thusly: if you do something, anything, an action, over a long enough time, it sticks. Leaves an impact. Anvils which have been hammered upon for decades having odd properties. Faces in windows peered from for lifetimes. Oubliettes into which prisoner after prisoner was cast and forgotten, howling and wailing in the same throes of agony and terror. This is what ritual is, the repeating and imprinting of action, action fed by thought, and emotion. It all leaves a mark, and can leave a very tangible one if you try. Long after something has ceased, the mark remains, and will produce echoes of events long past.
You cannot even begin to imagine what happened in this palace. Though you may try as you walk its halls, hearing things you believe you won't ever forget. Raucous revelry turning positively bacchanalian and vicious, all around you but nowhere near you. And then indistinct shapes flitting about you with malevolent intent. The stench of filth and rotting corpses. That's when most people learn that echoes like this, of such potency, aren't mere replayed shadows. Emotions and thoughts and desires given half-animate form. All of this building up and up, like some crazed and lustful darkness is assaulting your senses, the veil of a still and dark palace ready to be torn asunder any second.
The stories have been told for centuries now, leaving their mark. Almost as if the place itself set about engineering a legacy so grim and alluring that it would never die. We all love a good story, and to wonder and think secretly about what happened behind those sealed gates that now beckon. What might be happening now, if one were so brave.
Draconic Crypts
Into the ice belt had come Alzared, a wild goose chase turning into a desperate hunt. His dusky skin, his black hair and beard out of which burning blue eyes gazed, clad in thick slate grey robes, made for a fearsome image in the lonely, pale wastes. But what he raced against was worse.
It was a land few greyfolk would dare enter. These towering mountains and stark vastlands had been reared against the Dragons in an aeon long ago by the Great Grey Ones, as a wilderness neither of the grand and stately overworld, nor the desolation and virulence of the underworld. Rangers stalked only the hinterlands of the ice belt, keeping vigil on the breaches through which draconic horrors sought to invade.
Fire had paid for Alzared's passage through the canyon. A simple campfire, no more. He did not begrudge the wild humans of the ice belt, they were free, and lived as they saw fit. Yet, the eyes of the ancient masters were always upon them, and dark promises would be whispered every night until this place was free of human life either from death, flight, or enslavement. And yet, they were as important as the ice itself, or the stonefolk rangers of the hinterlands, in stopping draconic advances.
At the base of a beetling precipice did he find it. A jagged maw of ancient stone, coated in frost and cracked from cold, leading into a mist-laden crypt. Had they gotten here first? The wizard unhooked from his wide belt a silver sceptre, the head of which was a crimson sphere--a globe of dragonblood, a potent source of power and for which every moment was a battle of wills against the latent draconic mind within.
The dragonblood veritably thrummed at the presence of its kin inside. Time was of the essence, and so Alzared spared no consideration for his flesh as the chill of this tomb, which had not known open air for who knew how many millennia, settled upon him. This land had once been the frontier of Dragon conquest before the ice was cast upon it. As such, remnants of primal draconic civilization still existed here, and from time to time, frost-bitten ruins emerged, and within were secrets of the dragonmagick of old, dark wisdom from the Dragons themselves granted to the finest sorcerers of the half-dragon draconian race they had made in their image.
The walls slunk ever downwards, carved most likely by long forgotten human slaves, and smoothed by the ages of pale ice. In them were niches and alcoves of all shapes and sizes, in each one were the shrivelled, sunken remains of dragonmen. Alzared studied them warily. For humans to be around the corpses of even dragonspawn like these was dangerous, their baleful influence caused mutations. The wildmen of the wastes, he knew, avoided these places, believing them to be cursed. They were right. The bodies resembled only superficially human beings, folded about them were the thin, ragged remnants of their wings, their snouts were skeletal, and sneering with old teeth. Something within the core of the wizard shuddered as he passed spaces below these alcoves, into which were packed tight undeniably human bones.
There were tracks in the stone and icy mush. It was hard to tell how many the way they wandered in searching. Alzared had been letting his sceptre radiate light, allowing it the faintest echo of flame. He knew letting them get whatever dark wisdom lay here was bad, but should they get a hold of his sceptre and the dragonblood within, that would spell disaster for the humans of this ice belt. Every drop denied to the enemy was of paramount of importance. But it was also the best weapon to use against them. Dragonfire does not discriminate. Dragons are not so kind to their kin as the Great Grey Ones were to theirs.
Alzared found the path suddenly widening, and he fell into a battle stance, ready to unleash the ferocity of his sceptre. This must be a central chamber, he thought, where some malefic corpse was enthroned to slumber in the cold dark for eternity. Alzared gazed into what seemed to be a mostly natural cavern, lit by shafts of bluish light from far above, sending down singular droplets of snow and water. The far corners sat in an curious murk, but just enough eerie illumination made it down for him to spy the great graven sarcophagus that rested upon a low cairn of skulls. And before it, a lone draconian.
Its head turned at the wizard's entrance. It wore a kind of half robe, covering its legs and thrown loosely about its torso so that its wings would be free. The arms were bare and were covered in dirty green or perhaps brownish shining scales, ending in hands of wicked talons. The snout was long and had at its end a single short horn and a sort of tuft of hair, like a beard, trailing from its chin. The eyes shone green. For all its bestial features, though, it stood like a human, tall and straight, not hunched. It had been reverently turning the pages of what Alzared saw was the prize he had hoped wouldn't be found.
The history of mankind and its degradation, or on the other side, ascension, summed up in these two ancient foes who now regarded each other. His counterpart in the underworld, Alzared mused. It carried no sceptre or stave, for the dragonblood was in it already, though it be very little, and why they sought sources such as the wizard's. And yet, what little its ancestors had been granted produced something mighty, majestic...and terrible.
The battle was over quickly, but was of such ferocity that both sorcerers felt within them the stirring of the old conflict. The draconian had not only mustered Dragon Arts learned from its masters, but had called up the powers from within itself. To see it glide across the cavern spitting flame, Alzared was reminded why primeval mankind fell so fast under the Dragons' dominion. But in the end, the raw force of pure dragonfire, untamed and undiluted, won the wizard the day. A cascading torrent of searing flame flooded half the cavern, burning not only the draconian, but the tome which had been unearthed here, and reduced to molten ash the tomb of whatever draconian lord lay here. It was for the best, he admitted.
The sceptre sated but his mind and body exhausted, Alzared dragged himself into the cold, calming snow outside, and grimly set to work sealing this place back under the ice where it belonged.
Heavens of the Forsaken
The world is ending. Time is over. It's all falling back into dust. The oldest of the forsaken remember the day the sun didn't set, or perhaps, some say, it couldn't rise. All was sickly yellow twilight, and chaos had erupted in the cities. Out of the sky and the earth came, then, figures barely remembered from the depths of the oldest myths, whose images had deteriorated to the point of being almost forgotten. Then were the old oaths invoked, and gathered into the arms of their patrons were the descendents of the first people from countless epochs ago. Bloodlines that had joined were split and sundered and fought over as the Final Battle commenced, gods of the deepest antiquity laid waste to each other's lands as they contended with the younger gods, themselves many, many millennia old, and the crumbling world was aflame with chaos.
You must understand, we hadn't seen a miracle, a sign, a vision, nary a dream in thousands of years. Those of us who clung to these last gods had done so clinging to the faith granted by accounts of meagre dreams of vaunted saints, lords, and enlightened ones. Sometimes all we had were their teachings, divinely inspired or not. So when these colossi descended upon us and claimed the world was ending and that the crucible of souls was at hand, can you blame so many of us, who had already turned our backs on mouldering faiths, from refusing to throw ourselves at the feet of these beings and begging for redemption?
Toil, they said, toil against your enemies until it is time for death, and we will take you into our arms ourselves. And those who have rejected our embrace will be deathless and weighted with age, and wander for the eternity beyond time.
They will be forsaken.
At first, the most merciful gods, scarce in number, said they would accept repentance for heresy and heathenry and godlessness, if only we died for them. If only pain was endured and blood spilled. But such solace was short lived. Truth was, our backs had been turned for so long that they could not even touch us. We walked into the wastes of the world and there dwelt as deathless inheritors of a world to be made in our image. Lands of Men now Heavens of the Forsaken. Or so the whispers, which turned into rumours, which spread into stories, which grew into legends, said. Only in truth, we suffered just as much as much as the faithful, perhaps more so because our faith was more meagre than there's ever had been.
One by one they've been disappearing from the world. Masses of humanity set to the torch and the sword, flesh torn to pieces by enemy zealots with smiles on their lips, basking in this holocaust of ecstatic last sacrifice and myth-making. Some will go to eternal slumber and dream dim visions. Some will go to a crystal domain where none shall vex their minds with thought. Some will go on to battle forever and ever in blood-red realms. Some will worship eternally at the feet of a living idol. Some will dwell as the subjects of endless feasts and orgies. Some will go on to toil in a new life. Some will cease to exist.
But we'll be here. Our bodies broken but unbreakable, bloodless and still drawing breath from stale, undead winds. Perhaps in some moment yet to pass the gears which turn the world will be left finally unattended, their last spin running out, and then, oh that's when our destiny begins.
Hi Sean! Love what you're doing with Shadows & Sorcery. We'd love to have you write a piece for Distant Reaches! Shoot us a note at editors@distantreaches.com, if you're interested. Thanks!