Shadows & Sorcery #91
Now I may not be some fancy big city lawyer, but I do say that this is what we in my profession call the ninety-first edition of Shadows & Sorcery!
Boy that number’s getting pretty big, huh? Anyway, I watched Jaws earlier this week (you know, the shark movie, the first American blockbuster, all that) and you’ll probably be able to tell. Apart from that, I found three weird things in my head and I think you’ll like ‘em.
Real quick: next week will be the release of Chapter 13 of The Path of Poison instead of Shadows & Sorcery. Sepp and Co. are out of Saumark and into the wilds with their freakish northern mercenary friends, so stayed tuned for that because I promise you ACTION.
But onto the stories! If you enjoyed what you read here, please give that little heart icon a tap! It lets the stories know you liked them.
This week, a curious little scholar uncovers more than he bargained for in Altar of the Dark, we learn the grand history behind the Temple Blades, and lastly, we gaze upon the grim work of an Enchanter’s Hammer…
Altar of the Dark
Yosmic Cheval, resident of the Arragad College of Silverden, had been sitting at the bar of a nearby public house popular with college folk, when he overheard a rather curious conversation. It was in the Minosmiir language of the south east, the very far south east, and though fragmented by the noise of the pub, and the particular dialect these fellows used, Yosmic more or less got the gist of it: they were leagues off course, the storm had driven then further south than they would have liked, and now they were sitting in Silverden, feeling like fools. They could have done without it, especially considering what they saw in that desert...
Yosmic's ear's pricked up. He turned to them and listened for only a moment more, then got up, and joined their table.
The archvenerate wasn't sure about funding another expedition, considering plans were already well under way for a team to work up in Voerlund in a month's time, and especially since it meant going into the desert. But, Yosmic assured the old man, it needn't be a full excavation, just a few good researchers to sketch and note the uncovered ruins. Could they really call themselves academics if they didn't take advantage of this? Not much comes up out of the sand down there, after all. The archvenerate concurred, but Yosmic ignored the odd tone of his voice. Two weeks, nothing more, he assured.
Not much of it had sunk bank under the sand. It was more or less exactly how the Minosmiiri had described it. Greyish stone, chipped in parts but smoothed in others, they seemed to be the bases of great square support pillars, perhaps even free standing monoliths. But there was a ruggedness beyond their weathered state that lent them a staggeringly primeval aspect. These were over six thousand years old. Older than Silverden. Older than Voerlund. Pre-migration. The people who lived in this land before it became a desert. The very roots of the modern world.
What appeared to be erosion at first slowly revealed itself, through repition of form, to be carvings. Low relief iconography. He couldn't be sure, but ideas were already cascading through his head. Amidst the wavering, drone-like moan of the air, he pushed away more sand to reveal deeper levels of clearer carvings. Serpent's Breath, Yosmic said with a chuckle. The air suddenly stilled itself as he spoke.
The jitters of excitement hadn't ceased in his chest, not even after they passed back into Silverden. The expedition had been a rousing success, and Yosmic thought of nothing else but a full team and a full excavation of the grounds, penning drafts of letters to the archvenerate. At night, he pored over the rubbings and sketchings taken of the reliefs. He was almost sure they were religious in nature. Those bases, those dais', had they supported not just decorative monoliths but idols? Did these carvings tell a story? A myth? There certainly were recurring figures upon them. In the depths of the night, in the flickering light two small candles, Yosmic sat humbled, feeling--knowing he was looking upon the images of the old gods. In the moments before he finally retired for a few hours' rest, he saluted them.
The finds were enough to satisfy the archvenerate of the expedition's worth, and potential return. Elated, Yosmic Cheval wiled away many nights in the college archives, reading all he could dig up on the Great Grey Desert. A region of singular mystery and antiquity, shrouded in half-remembered myths, it was a natural draw for an inquisitive scholar, though some harboured an ignorant superstition of it. Such beliefs revealed themselves as a distinct and disgraceful lack of scholarship, a scant handful of volumes mentioned it in records of the theorized migrations, and even fewer proposed potential histories.
Scant scholarship indeed. Or perhaps a niche waiting to be filled.
Voerlund. The oldest nation in the world, and its capital Lundermark, once known as the Greyhold, and before that known as the Imperial Heartland, and known by about a dozen other names in its six thousand year lifespan. Yosmic knew them all. Oh, he was a proud native of Silverden, of its opulence and wisdom and faith, but Lundermark was an antiquarian's heart home. There was history for all in this city, and throughout this country. One could take a duchy and spend a lifetime learning about it. One could spend several on Lundermark alone, truth be told. It was ripe to make a name in.
Its roots ran deeper than anything else in the known world...perhaps save the Desert, but that was as yet the unknown world. They say the grand audience chamber of Castle Lundermark itself houses several stones that date back to the very founding of the city. Doubtful, but still, to see them, to touch them, what a thrill, thought Yosmic as he strode about the cobbled streets, gazing with dark gold eyes at the wonderful tall, thin townhouses, with their high peaked roofs and overhanging second storeys. Some of the buildings teetered forward ever so slightly, and due to the aged sag of the streets, they almost met above, making a tunnel. In other places, the courts and thoroughfares blazed with life, grand open spaces intended by the old nobility to rouse awe from those who walked there.
He rather enjoyed the chillier weather of the north, though he was perfectly accustomed to the gentle warmth of his homeland. He vigorously rubbed his hand together as he descended, with the rest of his team, into a thin alley between two ancient houses in a historic quarter of the older part of the capital city. From there, the chill followed them down the steps inside a ruined edifice, through an old disused sewer, and into nothing less than a preserved street hidden underground. According to their guide, the city was full of these hidden places, and many connected. This Yosmic knew. But few of them were as old and as deep, and this Yosmic did not know.
The street was of bare earth, already speaking to a great antiquity. Lundermark had had paved roads just as long as it hadn't. The air was musty, the flames of the torchbearers were rich and lurid, and their feet made curious echoes in this still, lightless place. The slightly winding path seemed residential. Although it sat now underground, that didn't mean it had been quietly or suddenly abandoned. Most likely, as the city grew, and the general quality of life grew, it become a pauper's tenement, or perhaps a place to flee when war passed through the streets. Even today it didn't sit silent, for regular patrols of veteran town guard had to clear these places out of ne'er-do-wells. It was in fact one such patrol that uncovered that which had made its way to the top scholars of the Arragad College in Silverden.
Elder. Ancient. Primeval. No matter the words he slung at it, nothing held the right weight. They were sunken, half-buried in a kind of odd hollow in the earth, a sub-subterranean street, or perhaps chamber. The place was low, wide, and short, and its ceiling was half the floor of buildings above, half of natural cavern. What lay there was mostly crumbled but enough of them remained. The city guard stayed with them in case of disaster, but Yosmic wished they'd cease their idle talk about strange feelings. The structures were like short domes, slightly peaked, and of an extreme rough, dark stone. The insides were bare earth, likely covered in some time past by dried grasses or furs, long gone. They were like little huts, he thought, little dwellings. Maybe for servants, or slaves, quite possibly. This was pre-classical Voerlund after all.
Within one hut, at the furthest end of the chamber, he found it. A short slab of stone, rough, unshaped, raised upon four different stones of nearly equal height. A table, perhaps?
Or, he thought to himself, and only to himself, an altar.
Yosmic sat at the desk in his tavern room, grinning. Irrefutable proof. He was comparing, by good, strong lamplight, the rubbings and sketches made that day in the Voerlund underground, upon the slab, and copies of those made months ago in the Great Grey Desert. The similarities couldn't be denied. He sat and held the sheets together, over each other, against each other--even down to certain measurements these figures, or representations, were the same thing. What surrounded them changed here and there, but not to a great degree. Though truth be told, the lamplight was rather bright, and obscured by glaring sections of the rubbings, which he trusted more than sketches. And the more he reduced the light, the clearer things became.
These gods had followed humankind out of the desert, or what had been before it was desert, man had brought them with into their new homes, alongside--perhaps even before the World Serpent! It was then that something of a sorrow gripped the scholar. A sorrow, and a yearning, for ancient, forgotten faith, cast aside and left to moulder. The pre-Voerlunder peoples must have held these powers in some great regard considering their dominant stature and presence and existence across the span of countless leagues. Likely it was the serpent cult that had absorbed the veneration of these beings. Where that fit into Silverden's radical theology, he didn't know, but he was sure these elder gods of his ancestor's ancestors were behind the Silverden notion of an all-encompassing order.
That night, Yosmic Cheval prayed to the nameless, forgotten gods, and said that though all the world and blood of these lands had left them behind, he remembered now, and would hold them in his heart. In fact, he thought with a tremulous excitement in the twilight of his quiet tavern room, he would do them a service no one had in thousands of years. Just to prove himself, and his people. All he asked was that they, in whatever way they could, bless him with knowledge of themselves, as they surely had done so long ago.
And that night, in the half-solid murk underneath the streets of Lundermark, before an altar raised by hands that had long ago been erased from memory, the Aeons answered with absolute and devastating gnosis, and what returned to the venerable halls of a Silverden college, with primal altar in tow, with eyes towards fleeing into the cold grey wastes of the south, was no longer Yosmic Cheval.
Temple Blade
Every faith has one. Hrváthú people, they place their palms together, Orsk, they cup their hands close to their chests, and Kendathim have an intricate system of hand seals. All of this is intended to create a temple with the hands. Hands, of course, hold a deep and powerful symbolism as our points of contact with the world around us, the tool with which we explore and control.
And then, some faiths have amulets, talismans, or icons--something the adherent can wear. Maybe it's nothing more than stone tied up with thread, maybe it's a pressed medal, or carved piece of wood. Maybe they bear a holy symbol, a word, an image. Some may be plucked directly from nature, some may be deliberately crafted. But nonetheless, they are, like the hand motions, temples. Things in which holiness dwells or is channelled.
The Marés-et are no different, really, they have their temples, but they are of a curious kind.
Five hundred years ago, the armies of the empire found themselves in open conflict with the elite of the reigning Syresian Majesterium. The grip of imperial decadence had, they felt, finally become too hard, and the cities of the empire were suffering for it. It was true that order had begun to slip. City and town guards across the five provinces were either run ragged, or were called to be guards and playthings of the nobility's orgies and bloodsports, leaving the streets to be overrun with civil unrest against the distant ruling powers. But various religious orders that formed the military hierarchies had their own beliefs on the matter, ranging from the moral decline of the empire (which had been loose to begin with, they said), to a bloated and labyrinthine bureaucracy that worked against its people, and even a lack of any guiding vision for the state.
The imperial armies, seeing the rotting world around them destined for naught but collapse, began to impose themselves throughout the provinces, often over the authority of any present local guards. They were, after all, the strong arm and sword of the entire Majesterium, and it had been the guiding precepts of their pantheons of war cults that had given them form and purpose beyond the mere subjugation of their enemies. The army was the power of the lands, they reckoned, and commanders and archpriests were more adept at handing and carrying out orders than soft nobles.
Once the neglectful elite deigned to turn their heads from the diversions which were the fruits of empire, their hearts seethed with a passion unheard of since the first expansions from the old capitals. The lowly soldiers, their servants, dared think themselves superior?
The streets of the major cities ran red with blood in the ensuing months as royal guard met royal soldier in combat, and citizens were conscripted into the frenzied warfare on both sides. But the towns and villages remained bastions of military control, and many of the more rural and isolated settlements, once besieged by banditry and robber barons, welcomed the soldier-cults with open arms and were numbered among the faithful.
From this fractious conflict, there emerged a new faith. During the siege of Yyring—one of the imperial "heartland" capitals, and an axis upon which the entire war was turning—the devotees of a small, foreign cult found themselves as the last line of defence against an imperial guard counter-offensive. But as fate would have it, this was the moment when the small god of their sect decided to make itself known.
Gods saw further than men, that much was known, or believed, or felt. Why they acted the way they did was the mystery only those committed to a lifelong search were initiated into. Such mystery was laid bare by the hands of Marés the war-walker in the midst of battle, upon the First Blades, and that desperate stand became a righteous assault. The words were not just inscription but holy writ, and carried upon them the law and will of Marés.
This event turned the tide of the entire war. The empire was thrown down in a matter months as the battered military flocked about the divine crusaders, inscribing upon their own blades sections of the Law of Marés, the faith surging across the provinces, taking root in Yyring as the new holy capital. From there, it seeped from the military into their families, and from their families, to the wider people, before long all Yyring knew the name and law of Marés.
The First Blades have been enshrined in a domed temple where sages have studied the warrior code, whose words have never dulled. And yet, for all that it is the sole building devoted to worship and study, the cult has never waned in popularity. Instead, the sword sages have wisely disseminated the wisdom and all the city and beyond carries upon its person a Blessed Blade, crafted in imitation of the First Blades, which they will draw forth and hold aloft or kiss in oathmaking and prayer. Not only does the holy power of the god travel with them, but they wear the code upon their persons. Where most faiths would stand aside and quietly contemplate or pray, the clamour of Blessed Blades in toasting and friendly combat is a common one.
Most blades bear simple benedictions or affirmations. But not all. Within the minute and intricate divine script there lurks implications that the appearance of Marés was not a triumphant capstone to the war, but rather an opportune moment in which to make the greatest impact. Marés has come forth to bolster the faith of mankind, not so that they know the gods watch over them, but rather that Marés has come to lead. Three times across the fifty-six blades has there been mentioned a Final Blade. The Law of Marés is not complete. Sages and old commanders talk not openly of the Coming Battle, but gather amongst themselves on certain nights, hold feasts, and make plans.
Enchanter's Hammer
The ever-present low growl of the waves was a constant reminder of how close the ocean was, and would always be. Macre gave a long exhale and gazed at the door to his smith's cabin. The lad didn't need to be picky. But maybe a finsman was giving him trouble. There had been a seadark, quite suddenly the abyss had suddenly swelled up and deep things had swarmed to the upper regions of the water to feast. Every ship had been called back in haste for fear of whales or something worse, and the bell was still tolling, so the finsmen were probably still quite jumpy. A seadark was a time of horror for most, but for others, a time of opportunity.
Out of the small, thick windows, Macre could see the black water rising high in the distance, as if some colossus were about to breach its surface. He detested living so close to the water. There was only one stretch of land where you couldn't be in sight of it. Maybe he'd scratch together enough rare goods for a place there some day, while there was still room. Been more new mouths to feed these past few years, the big men inland needed to see to it. It's not like there was anywhere else in the world to live, save rotting driftbone shanties that lived in perpetual fear of being devoured by the sea. As a young man, Macre had been there the day the galleon had returned from its five year voyage, filled with weeping madmen, who proclaimed to the governors who had come to see them back that there was nothing out there. No land, no people. Nothing at all. This was it. It was us, and the illimitable fathoms of numberless horrors.
Finally the lad came back, dragging behind him a sopping wet brown sack. The wind screeched in and errant droplets stung Macre's face. Seadarks always brought nasty weather. He went and slammed the door shut while the lad, a hired hand, heaved the sack on a long table.
"They give you any trouble down there?"
"No sir, they were just squabblin' over the driftbone."
"Was good driftbone, but don't let them tarry in future. They'll spend all day fighting over scraps while you stand there."
"Aye sir, will do."
"Right so, let's see what ye got..." Macre walked over to the table. He always gave it a second to see if the sack moved. You never knew.
These sacks, gathered by finsmen for sale to folk, were grab bags of whatever was swarming about the waters at the time. The finsmen of course had an idea what was in most of them, so you had to trade well if you wanted a decent surprise. They were taken and sewn up so nothing got out. Macre took a short, sharp shipsman's knife and carefully slit the material open. It was a kind of woven weed material. Plentiful and durable if treated right. The stench that rose from it almost visibly was as familiar as it was nauseating. It stung the eyes.
A bunch of nasty black little crabs scuttled out the second the open air hit the inside, long leggy things with sharp little claws. Vermin. They'd take a while to clear out. Within was a still mass of slick black flesh. Mostly fins, but he saw too, as he poked around with a driftbone stick, some small pods as well. They both began to remove the contents of the sack in search of decent enchantment materials. The majority were small, wretched fins with long and drawn features that were uncomfortably human. Their large black eyes and little agape mouths always had a look of vague sorrow to them. They were utterly useless as food or material.
In scooping out the various nameless fins after cursory lookings-over, Macre stepped back and pulled the lad with him.
"What is it, sir?"
"Man-size pod. Let me check."
Within the slime and scales lay something smooth and darkish, with a slight red tinge. A bulbous head with odd rows of little pale feelers. Down from this, eight long tentacles, twisted and covered on their undersides with wicked hooks. These things were killers. Malicious, intelligent hunters. Macre took a slow step forward and gave it a smart blow on the head with his stick. Just to be safe.
They continued digging through the sack. Some decent food for the stores, some good, small samples of driftbone. What he really wanted was a sailfin or two. The sailors loved them. These things would swim in the heavy fogs, out of the water. Perfect thing to enchant a ship's sails with. And as luck would have it, three finely sized sailfins lay under a flat, many-eyed thing Macre discarded.
"Fetch me the hammer, lad."
The sea takes, but man could take back. All was force. Southerners were not a subtle people, but their world was a hard world amidst the crags and deep, treacherous inlets. And it was they who in times now long past had perfected the art of enchantment. Macre's hammer was a small mallet, a chunk of square-hewn driftbone. Set into the outer sides of the head were the jawbones of some fin, the handle was of a dark inland wood. He took the three sailfins over now to another table near the back of his smith's cabin. It was more of a long wooden stumb on its side, propped up, the dark red stain of years of enchantment running down its front. It sat under a variety of hooks, chains, and various instruments designed for splaying open flesh to reveal useful organs. But sailfins were quick, easy work.
He set one upon the aged wood and swung his hammer down. He felt the wrenching back of the hammer as it took some aspect of the fish into itself.
"Hand me that canvas, lad."
The boy dragged over a length of ship's canvas. Macre lay it over the stump and swung his hammer down several times, feeling the short rush of the sailfin's power flowing into it. He repeated this process, smashing fin, and then hammering the power into the canvas, until the three fish were red mulch and he was done.
He let the lad go for the day after that. Now he'd just work to get the sail ready for trading. But before he did so, he asked:
"Anything else of interest brought in at the waterfront?"
"Can't say I saw much...I think the finsmen were called in too quick to grab aught. Heard a sailor say he saw a deep shark though. Man-faced and all."
Macre stopped when the lad said it. He'd been at water during seadarks before. The image of a colossal, distorted face, barely lit just under the surface of the black water, in a loose, frowning grimace far far too close to a human face, rushed to the forefront of his mind and he had to shake it away. Macre sneered in disgust and dismissed his hire hand.
The bells throughout the southern inlets tolled for a while that day. Not that it stopped certain people from going out anyway. Always thought they'd get prime pick of the meat and bone that sloshed about, before anyone else could come in. They inevitably added to it. Macre set his hammer down, folded up the canvas, and locked the door of his cabin as he left. The sky was still dark and heavy, but the rain had stopped at least. A cold wind whipped the land. Fog in the far distance. Chatter and bells. He took some steps down the worn stone pathway that led from his cabin and gazed backwards, over the sharp rise of the inlet walls. He could almost see greenery just peeking over. What he wouldn't give to live a day without the low growl of the ocean.