Mr. Sticks

The World-Spider came, but ahead of it was sent its envoy.

The Spider merely hungers. It does not think. It does not plot. It does not hate. Those are left to Mr. Sticks.

Generally, the World-Spider is antithetical to physical matter and most mundane concepts. The universe bubbles and hisses at its approach, and in its wake it leaves desolation on a metaphysical level. There seems to be no good reason why or how something so loathsomely humanoid could work with and around it, and certainly not for so long. And yet, he does.

Mr. Sticks is the harbinger of the World-Spider. He goes ahead of the Spider to prepare each world and plane for consumption. He is the one who plants the first seeds of the spider cults and acts as their enigmatic high priest. He oversees the elimination of threats to a smooth feast. He is even rumored to act as the Spider's steward and caretaker during its epochs-long slumber in between feeding sessions.

Whatever form he takes while the Spider is at rest is unknown. He is only known by what he chooses to sleeve himself in while walking the worlds populated by recognizably living things. It is commonly believed that the first body is willing. This need not be the case for any subsequent hosts. They can be of any sort or species, but he favors humanoids when they are present. He finds they are the most entertaining to wear.

At present, Mr. Sticks usually resembles an unnaturally tall and gaunt person with bruised and blemished skin of an otherwise whitish pallor. He lacks a face in the conventional sense, though small wrinkles and pinholes that might once have been eyes or a mouth can be seen. Everything is severely desiccated, like the liquid was thoroughly sucked out of him. He needs no mouth to speak, in a voice like a suppurating wound.

He possesses countless bones, but no real joints. When he wishes to move, his bones rapidly break and reform into their new shape, producing the telltale loud tik-a-tik, tik-a-tak sound that heralds his approach. His spine can twist and bend grotesquely before snapping back upright. His arms can coil like ropes, and his legs hold him up at jagged, impossible angles.

This latest form is also his most dapper yet. For reasons known only to Mr. Sticks, he chose to keep the attire of the first human he inhabited this past cycle. It was apparently a very well-to-do person from an industrialized society with a sense for fashion. He wears a dark grey pinstripe suit, bowler hat optional. In other ages, he dressed differently; as an armored knight, a king shrouded in saffron, or completely nude, with all his awful stitches and seams visible.

Mr. Sticks is terribly affable, or at least enjoys pretending to be. Those doomed individuals who have caught his attention can look forward to an extended, pleasant conversation with him before or even while they die- generally in a particular fashion, over a period of time.

He is nearly impossible to kill. He possesses unnatural strength and speed, as well as mastery of stealth and subterfuge. He can hide in plain sight in someone's blind spots, appearing only when he wishes to- when it is too late. While the Spider only eats for sustenance, Mr. Sticks plays with his quarry like a cat toying with a mouse before leaving most of it uneaten. He will track targets for weeks on end, slowly ramping up the paranormal events and horrific hallucinations around them until he decides to end it. In particular he delights in the moment when hope turns to despair, and he will pepper his activities with false hints that he has been defeated or gone forever.

In the unlikely event that he is defeated, the same shriveling of hope into dread happens regardless. Whoever kills the Spider's envoy has the woeful distinction of becoming his next host. Not long after his desiccated corpse stops twitching, the victor will begin to experience headaches, psychosis, internal bleeding, and itching. Several hours to days later, they undergo a painful transformation into the new Mr. Sticks, suit and all. The host is effectively dead by that point- hopefully.

Rumors surrounding Mr. Sticks include

1. He is actually just a hive mind of eusocial spiders living in a husk.
2. Perfectly ordinary spiders are his unwitting spies across the world.
3. Each host's memories are absorbed and used to his advantage.
4. Burning especially noxious incense keeps him at bay- for a little while, at least.
5. … So does loud, rapid drumming. This also makes him angrier.
6. You may communicate with him by speaking his name eight times into a darkened corner.
7. He is the last thing to die in a world, his host dissolved by acid only for him to rise again.
8. The silk threads of his suit could be spun to insulate a piece of the world from the Spider.
9. He has a keepsake on him at all times- a fist-sized piece of insect chitin.
10. Just knowing about him alerts him to your existence. Tik-a-tik, tik-a-tak...

They Skitter

The World-Spider came, and those who heard its approach were the first to go.

It started off as a distant scratching at the door, or the rustling of thick, bristly hairs over cloth. They tried their best to ignore them.

But the sounds came closer, and grew louder, until they proved too difficult to ignore- or to deny.

Soon they entered those ill-fated minds, and took up scratching and bristling against the backs of their brains. The sounds reverberated outward across their nerves like vibrations on strands. Actions ceased to be of their own volition, and thoughts of alien origin became the norm. With time, even the frantic undercurrent wishing for those scratching, skittering sounds to stop was subsumed.

What was leftover was a vessel.

For some time, they managed to look outwardly normal- at least at a glance. Speech became halting and unnatural, and virtually all daily routines were abandoned. But they retained their shape, and general knowledge possessed by the people who once were. And these qualities were used to their advantage. Few could hold themselves together long enough to infiltrate high and mighty places, but a body with only two legs was good enough when seen from a distance. No time could be wasted in their attempts to prepare the way.

Soon they were drawn together by strands of silk that only they could see, led to empty and desolate places where they could unsheathe themselves and work unobstructed. They tapped into the underlying web beneath all things, and sent such a tremor through it that the location of the world was impossible for the World-Spider to miss. They also kept abreast of anyone or anything that has heard the scratching at the door, but has managed to resist- or worse, work against it.

Once all legitimate threats are eliminated, and the World-Spider has been summoned irrevocably, its extensions may finally know the end. When the sky is wreathed in its silky cocoon, and the soft cries of reality itself can be heard, they are the first to be unmade. All becomes twitching legs and needle-like hairs for one moment of awful exultation, but just as suddenly the writhing mass dissolves into liquid potential.

They are spared the sight of fangs piercing the heavens as the world dies, though few of their many eyes would even be functional enough to see.

Of course, even that end would be welcomed, after so long spent under the direction of Mr. Sticks.

A nest of skittering signs and rumors

1. Dust and cobwebs are accumulating at an alarming rate all over town. They seem to return after every footstep or broom sweep.
2. Parents are alarmed at a new game which has taken their children by storm of late. It is called "Feeding the Cellar Door".
3. The sudden surplus of fine silk on the market has caused massive devaluation, economic shakeup, and a growing fashion war between the upper and lower classes.
4. A curious delicacy has begun appearing in coastal restaurants catering to the fine and exotic. They call it "land crab", and it is said to originate in Other Parts.
5. Paupers and transients have been vanishing off the streets in increasing numbers for weeks. The authorities are only becoming concerned now that a few members of their secret police have gone missing undercover.
6. Astrological circles have been in a bit of a tizzy recently. They insist that the stars seem "wrong" somehow. No one is listening to them.
7. A string of grizzly murders has been committed. Each victim has been drained of bodily fluids through massive puncture wounds. Specialists suspected an unsanctioned vampire at first, but those do not grow barbed hairs like the ones found at each crime scenes.
8. Something has been eating people's pets of late. Even when they are behind locked doors, several stories above ground.
9. Services at one of the city's chief temples were interrupted when the high priest tried and failed five times to speak their god's name. On the sixth attempt, they vomited a mass of animate spider legs that then fled into the rafters, catacombs, and dark corners of the temple. Extermination is ongoing.
10. Increasing numbers of clerics (as well as the odd warlock) are reporting that their patrons are responding less and less to their prayers, and that their voices sound faint and somehow 'peckish'.
11. Spells tied to conjuration or the manipulation of planar magic are fizzling, being disrupted, or having wholly unintended effects.
12. A wealthy noble's scion was spotted departing their estate with a strange gait one night during a storm. Their family has quashed all search & rescue efforts.
13. A geomancer from one of the frontier areas was arrested for disturbing the peace. They insisted that the earth is 'thrumming in fear'.
14. Nearby farmland is covered in record numbers of cicada exoskeletons, but not a single cicada was seen or heard, and the next brood wasn't expected for several years.
15. The old, disused trestle bridge seems to be under renovation now. What else are all the ropes and midnight lamps for?
16. That band of herb-burning itinerants hastily packed their wagons and left the vacant lot the other day. Most of the locals say good riddance to them, but their manner as they departed seemed strangely mournful.
17. The provost has ordered the urban park to be closed with no warning or explanation. The guard will not release the people trapped behind its gates.
18. A fire destroyed large sections of the local monster hunter's guild hall. No fatalities were reported, but untold sums in specialized weapons and equipment have been lost.
19. Some new skin disease has been making the rounds lately. The rashes and peeling are bad, but it's the crawling sensation that is the worst.
20. The man in the handsome suit is back. He's traded his face for a bowler hat.

Orts of the Lastgod.

The World-Spider came, and only dregs were left amid the riven strands of silk.

The cocoon closed the world off from everything. Nothing--no ghost, god, or spirit--could get in or out. 

Not even the prayers of the desperate fodder could escape it. While the world dissolved, the gods in their heavens starved.

Lean times set in. Having grown used to the sustenance of prayer, the gods found their withdrawal symptoms sudden and agonizing. Even the mightiest deities withered into emaciated husks.

All of them had a breaking point.

Ravenous hunger alike to that of the Enemy gripped them, and in their frenzy they tore down and devoured the essence of their own planes and servants.

When the World-Spider moved on, as it always did and always would, the gods descended on the scraps it left behind. They devoured the emptied lands before them, for matter was naught but spirit-stuff of their own contrivance, once upon a time. They drank of the lakes of liquified thought and potential. They huffed the clouds of dust and dismay that yet clung to the ruins.

And still they hungered.

Their bloodshot eyes turned toward one another before long. The smallest and feeblest among them were the first to go. Land-spirits, tutelary deities, and the odd surviving demi-god were snapped up like morsels. But they did not satisfy. A food chain shrank as rapidly as it came into existence. "Eat or be eaten" soon became "eat and be eaten", which further devolved into the mindless mantra of "e a t".

Roiling, half-digested spirit-stuff spilled from opened bellies until the selfsame feast came to a grizzly conclusion, and the last of the gods were consumed by an encircling sea of chaotic juices.

Only, not all of the gods destroyed one another like that.

Perhaps it had once been a god of sneaking and opportunism. Perhaps it had just adapted very quickly. It couldn't remember, and frankly it didn't matter. What mattered was the work it had put in before all the other gods spilled themselves.

The last god cobbled together all of the wretched castoffs of its kin and the Enemy. With skeletal fingers it sculped an island, and with spit, glue, and hope it held it together. It even managed to scoop up a few overlooked creatures who had been floating adrift since the World-Spider's coming.

It nurtured these half-dead, maddened beings until they could scratch an existence out of the rocks, at which point the last god turned from savior to jailor. Even as it raised new shreds of land from the roiling sea, it jealously guarded and browbeat all within its domain. All formality was abandoned, and the intercession of religion was done away with. The true nature of the relationship between god and mortal was laid plain, bare, and raw: one is the reaper, and the other is its harvest; flesh and prayer are just different mediums for the same outcome.

The mortals slipped down from the jagged, hollow breast of their god. They died. They spread, multiplied, and mourned. They died. They looked out upon the sea of chaos and recoiled with fear. They died. They bowed their heads beneath the lurid, bloodshot gaze of their titanic keeper. They died. They expressed their anguish by acting in the god's image and enslaving the beasts and briars of the earth. They died.

Ages passed. The god's name was forgotten, even by itself. In its place it took the title of the Last God. 

Centuries more dragged by. The title became its name, spoken in anxious, placating tones by every soul with a voice in that realm.

The Lastgod is jealously protective of its scraps, castoffs, and orts. Dismal wealth and mighty doom await.

Rumors on the Orts

1. Some farmland has started to moan and weep vinegar. The town would like help quieting it.
2. The Lastgod chipped a tooth on a sacrifice recently, and smote the offending village. Now neighboring communities are warring over the ruins for possession of its rotten molar fragment.
3. A child born under a skittering cloud has finally come of age, and must be escorted under guard to the ribcage tor where they are to be broken upon the rocks.
4. Mud puddles forming in the Lastgod's footprints are tinged with nourishing ichor from a recent injury.
5. A new island has risen from the roil. Settlers are already preparing fresh, noisy skinbarges to row to it.
6. Sacrifice is fast approaching, and the herders are alarmed that every animal they slaughter seems to start rotting immediately.
7. An old patch of forest has grown too old. The wood is spongy, rotten, and mildly carnivorous.
8. An apprentice boneturner needs live and dangerous specimens to continue their experiments in creating bipedal animals.
9. The Lastgod has not accepted the monthly sacrifice prepared by a nearby village, and seems to be completely ignoring it. The villagers are panicking.
10. Harvested grains are bursting out of their silos and smothering people. Again.
11. A plague of rampant gut fauna growth is sweeping through several towns. A dozen people have already ruptured.
12. Part of an island has sloughed off into the roil. Its exposed face is honeycombed with dozens of deep, spiraling tunnels.
13. A temper tantrum put the Lastgod's foot through the ground and revealed a hidden vault underneath. There is glowing in the depths.
14. The smoky night sky opened up briefly over a mountaintop to reveal stars. Horrible, lurid stars.
15. Clutches of rancid, undulating eggs are being uncovered in cellars and burial pits.
16. One of the Lastgod's centennial bowel movements has left a smoking crater in a nearby acid river valley. Swarms of parasites are emerging from it.
17. A raving prophet touched by the Lastgod has been raised from the nearby serfs. No matter how much they gorge themselves on food, they continue to waste away.
18. Something with Too Many Legs was spotted lurking around the old temple.
19. An ephemeral godling has congealed out of the roil to reach its pseudopods onto land and threaten nearby villages. The Lastgod must be lured over to stop it.
20. They say someone has found a shred of spider's silk.

Lamplighters: Darkness

"Intan, shine your spotlight over toward that mass over there please."

"What the hell is that, Doctor?"

"An umbral mass that is undergoing the final stages of absorption."

"What did it used to be...?"

"It could have been a cow. Or a freight train. It gets difficult to tell. Come this way now, please."

- Radio chatter from a routine field work assignment at the Elu Igwe Land Reclamation Front

 "All that is, is kith and kin. All is stardust. As moon reflects sun, we reflect moon.

Darkness gave way to light, absconded with it, and shall yield it again soon."

- "Prayer against the Dark", Kith of the Moon

The human instinct to fear the night once served a valuable role in self-preservation.

Now, with darkness ever-present and deepening, it is perhaps humanity's greatest distraction and detriment.

Learning to temper one's fear of the dark with a healthy amount of something else--stoicism, hate, prayer, professionalism, the list goes on--is a vital lesson that no one grows up without. Even in the heart of a settlement's pallite processing facility, the dark is never very far away. Exhausting, miserable vigilance is the only way forward, even if "forward" only leads to a slightly more delayed death.

Of course, one can't get along with plucky determination alone. One has to know the enemy.

Qualities of Deeper Darkness

Everyone learns about the mechanics of that which perpetuates the Long Night differently. Some lucky enough to receive a formal education are taught about its dangers in the form of lectures and texts. Most learn more informally from parents or other community members growing up. A few learn firsthand, and a few of those even survive.

Deeper Darkness (DD) is a phenomenon that breaks most previous understandings of physics, thermodynamics, and a slew of other fields in ways that are still being accounted for, decades after its first appearance. This has not stopped certain, more practical pieces of information about it from becoming common knowledge today, fortunately. What little is known about is as follows:

It is Spontaneous

DD does not appear to stem from any single source. Any shadow, if left undisturbed by light for a long-enough period of time, has a chance of generating a patch of DD. Controlled experiments with pallite cannons have concluded that the probability of DD generation increases exponentially over time until it reaches 1.

The speed of this increase varies considerably depending on circumstances that are not fully understood yet, but which likely include preexisting local DD density- this is why it can spread rapidly in trackless wilderness, but is relatively manageable when it appears in an untouched storage room in a populated area.

On average, DD can manifest anywhere from minutes to weeks in a darkened area. Shining a light upon a darkened area, even a low intensity one, is sufficient to reset the clock on generation so to speak. Only sustained, direct bombardment by high intensity light can dispel DD once it has accumulated in an area, however. Exact brightness varies, but a general rule of thumb is that the ideal "scrubbing" light has a high enough luminosity to blind operators without proper protective equipment.

The task of keeping every surface within a space illuminated or scrubbed regularly enough for it to remain habitable is a major preoccupation of the vast majority of human beings at present. Pallite light arrangements need regular maintenance, and demands for energy efficiency encourage the use of claustrophobically small spaces with sparse furnishing. Major settlements often have enormous custodial departments specially trained to remove and prevent domestic DD deposits.

It is Palpable

Describing DD as "caking" over things or requiring "scrubbing" is not an elaborate extension of metaphor. It is an actual, physical thing. It can be interacted with in a range of ways, including not only the visual, but also the tactile, olfactory, and (highly discouraged) gustatory senses.

Observing samples of DD for full knowledge of its physical properties is a challenge, because the light-absorbing properties of DD renders almost all known areas of the spectrum unable to penetrate its aura or 'halo' of anti-illumination. This halo of darkness extends beyond the physical body of a DD sample by anywhere from several millimeters to meters, depending on size and relative strength of its steeping. Pallite is one of the few forms of lighting known to penetrate the halo and reveal what is underneath.

Prolonged exposure to pallite causes DD to deteriorate over time. (Un)fortunately, the world is in no short supply of DD samples, and most lab technicians need only walk a few meters beyond their settlement's safety fences to obtain more.

DD in its natural state superficially resembles a severe mold infestation growing upon any surface. Large, spot-like structures radiate outward into smaller and smaller blotches in uniform fractal patterns, forming a pulpy, fibrous carpet that ranges in thickness between a few millimeters and several centimeters deep.

It is tough and slightly spongy to the touch, difficult to damage in any meaningful way with small arms. It is also extremely flame-retardant, mitigating the effectiveness of controlled burn methods used for containment.

The color of DD is so uniformly black that it looks more like a hole in reality than a physically present thing. This is due to the fact that it absorbs ~99.9998% of all light across the visible and most of the invisible spectrum.

Prolonged exposure to pallite causes DD to stop expanding, shrink, and 'die' so to speak. Its halo diminishes, and its spongy growths become weak and brittle, like a dry old insect hive. Larger structures slough apart, and with enough concentrated illumination, any trace of it other than leftover scars will sublimate into apparent nonexistence.

The general consensus is that DD has a smell, but what exactly that smell is depends upon the observer. Some accounts describe it as one or several smells of rot and decay, burning plastic, bleach, or a particularly cloying, artificial fruit candy scent, among others. These smells may be due to the breakdown of the matter that DD has grown over, rather than a product of the DD itself.

Dubious reports claim that DD tastes like the color purple. Subjects who taste or ingest a sample are rarely able to articulate the flavor more fully than that before rapid infection and fractalization sets in.

It is Mobile

DD 'grows' at a constant rate unless checked by pallite illumination. It can attach to and spread over any surface, whether organic, inorganic, living, inanimate, or artificial. Some of this new mass can be accounted for as previously belonging to thing which DD has broken down, but most appears to be continued spontaneous generation of matter.

Like the rate of spontaneous DD generation, the speed of DD growth is highly variable depending on environmental conditions. Growth is fastest within the halo of an existing mass, and slowest within an area of shade that is entirely surrounded by pallite.

Minor domestic growth can be managed on a daily or even weekly basis, but objects left unattended within areas of wild dark are rapidly enveloped. Caravan vehicles that have gone dark have been observed to become caked within a matter of hours.

Lingering pallite radiation seems to slow the growth of DD. This is supported by evidence of Lamplighter lamp-wagons taking days to fully succumb to envelopment, even after running out of pallite fuel. Pallite miners and Lamplighters themselves, living or dead, have been known to possess a sort of "resistance" to DD growth, remaining incorrupt after hours of prolonged exposure with minimal protective equipment.

DD particles suspended in the water or air large enough to sustain DD can also turn into micro- or macroscopic orbs of darkness, ensuring that danger and limited visibility are three-dimensional and omnipresent within areas of sufficient steeping. Drinking water must be run through pallite filters, as does air in any facility with extensive ventilation shafts that could house patches of darkness.

Atmospheric conditions and prevailing winds permitting, clouds of airborne DD particles have been known to form and blow across the land, distributing DD across a very wide area. This phenomenon is known by the unoriginal but sufficiently ominous moniker of darkstorm. Darkstorms are extremely dangerous, and are one of the leading causes of settlement compromise and loss of reclaimed territory. They resemble sandstorms or blizzards of black snow, and have been known to consume entire kilometers of illuminated land in a few hours.

It is Corrupting

Deeper Darkness does not fit most definitions of what constitutes a living thing. Some have compared it to a slime mold or even a virus, but it does not reproduce or depend upon hosts, nor does it "eat" in any conventional manner, regardless of what it seems to do to living tissue that it absorbs.

Regardless, it sometimes behaves like a living thing, or perhaps a force of nature that trends toward an end goal of expansion and absorption. Considering its antagonism toward the human species (alongside just about everything else in the world), it is all too easy to ascribe a malevolent intent or intelligence to the darkness. The topic is subject to extensive debate across many fields, and is beyond the scope of this piece.

When DD interacts with matter, it breaks it down into its most base elements and adds those elements to its own mass. At some point in this process, those base elements are converted into more pure DD. Even after being subject to illumination, no trace elements of absorbed matter can be found where a DD sample had once been. How exactly this conversion process occurs is not known.

Living tissue is not spared by this process. It breaks down all the same, causing severe damage to any organism infected with DD as it expands across and throughout the body. Bodily trauma is inevitably fatal unless the infection is quickly neutralized by pallite illumination and radiation bombardment. Survivors are known to bear deep, sprawling, fractal-shaped scars which are prone to act as sites for spontaneous generation, and therefore reinfection.

Early stages of DD tissue damage.
Subject I-82 of the Lavada Project.
Limb later amputated to prevent spread.

Infection can occur from prolonged bodily immersion in darkness, or from direct contact with DD, even under controlled conditions. Ingesting contaminated food or water, or breathing air with darkstorm particles in it, can lead to a far rarer form of internal infection.

The exact effects of internal infection are poorly researched compared to pallite poisoning at this time, but is believed to be rapidly and uniformly lethal, with organ failure the leading cause of death- euthanasia at the first sign of alveolar or lymphatic fractalization is recommended by the ethics boards of most leading medical institutions.

Darkness does not always kill, at least not immediately. Sometimes the rate at which it breaks down a host animal is slow enough to afford the organism hours or even days of in-tact motor functions and at least some mental faculties.

The near-universal violence and aggression displayed by these individuals can likely be attributed to mental stress caused by intense, nonstop pain. Their tendency to seek out sources of light may be rooted in a lingering association of light with safety, despite the fact that immersion in light causes harm once enough of the body has been assimilated. Their resultant efforts to smother light sources can therefore be interpreted as a misguided attempt to reach that safety.

The fact that infected organisms rarely attack one another, and instead make concerted efforts to attack uninfected individuals using a vast array of spontaneous mutations and bodily abnormalities, up to and including destroying light fixtures from afar, is not so easily explained.

Furt Digs Into Incursion: Halls of the Goblin King

Despite my anxiety toward OSR RPGs and my recent tendency to wilt in the face of choices with meaningful consequences in video games, I am no stranger to the genre which is about as close as you can get to a midpoint between those two: roguelikes.

Sparse in visuals, slow in pace, and startlingly sudden in killing your characters, these semi-randomized permadeath dungeon crawlers have been around for over forty years now. There are plenty of variations on the formula by now, but they generally share a few things in common: you wander through procedurally-generated dungeons in search of an important something on the bottom floor, and when you die you lose nearly everything.

I'd become at least dimly aware of their existence in the early 2000s thanks to video game pop-cultural osmosis, but I stayed far away from them because it all felt too obtuse and cumbersome for me. Also, I might have been turned off by my completely mistaken impression that the original Rogue was a semi-hard science fiction game.

It wasn't until I was beginning high school that I became interested in giving one a shot. Somehow, I completely stumbled past Rogue, Angband, Nethack, ADOM, and pretty much every other big-name roguelike on the internet with little more than a glance, and wound up picking a fairly obscure title as my first foray into the genre.

The bane of my mid teen years. And my eyeballs.

Incursion: Halls of the Goblin King, released in 2007, is unique among roguelikes for how heavily it is inspired by Dungeons & Dragons. Of course most roguelikes ever since the first have been inspired by D&D and other high fantasy sources to some degree, but (to my knowledge) only Incursion rips mechanics right out of the d20 3rd Edition ruleset.

You pick a species and class combination, choose feats, distribute skill points, and rely upon a whole bunch of simulated die rolls which use the six classic ability scores, plus the addition of a seventh Luck stat. This makes the game a bit more complex than the average roguelike, and even gives you an illusion of control- if you can survive the early levels long enough, you can start to get your own personal character build online.

Since 90% of my experience with D&D has been through building characters to fit concepts, I find that last part very enticing.

The importance of building one's character can lead to the same wonky imbalance as in D&D 3E, of course. Mundane and half-casting classes begin with survivability or some neat tricks, but quickly fall behind with the exception of rogues, who can get by on magic items and backstabs alone. While the game does a surprising job of mitigating the power of wizards, druids are mighty on such a terrifying scale that some guy even wrote a guide on doing literally anything with them and soloing the game handily.

Once inside of the miniature megadungeon, you're faced with many of the classic challenges: monsters, traps, hunger, and your fellow sapient adventurers, who may be friendly, hostile, or completely indifferent to your presence. An unseen town above the dungeon offers you a bit of respite, including an inn to rest at and a store to buy equipment from. You can even choose to retire a character to it permanently, in case you ever decide "screw it" and quit while you're ahead.

The caves are pitch black, and characters without dark or infravision will need a whole lot of torches or other light sources to see what they're doing. Health doesn't regenerate naturally, and sleeping in the dungeon eats through your food while leaving you open to ambush. Stealthy or invisible enemies are common, and it isn't unusual for something out-of-depth to get the jump on you very early in a run. Other than a scattering of eight potions in the first room of the first floor--five healing and three short-range teleports--nothing is guaranteed for you, and anything can be taken away by a successful disarm or sunder check.

Combining these aspects together gives Incursion a surprisingly foreboding, oppressive atmosphere for a game made entirely out of ASCII visuals. When you enter that first room, a text box describes to you the bloody remains of your fellow adventurers strewn about the floor, and you can rest assured that you will join them before long.

But until that time comes, you have the damp, cold solitude of the dungeon halls in which to contemplate how you'll handle your next messy, hectic clash with the dungeon's denizens. Detailed descriptions pop up with each new chamber you discover, giving glimpses into what this ancient mega-structure was once used for.

As with a lot of roguelikes, the plot is pretty bare-bones: you are one of many adventurers who has come to an out-of-the-way cave complex after hearing about an army amassing deep below ground. Your job is to descend to the lowest level of the dungeon and kill the eponymous Goblin King.

No, not that one.

Incursion makes up for this by having the beginnings of rich setting lore. Most of it is front-loaded in the descriptions of races and deities during character creation. The entries can be pieced together to illustrate the fantasy world of Theyra, which has already seen a lot of trouble, but is on the cusp of yet another nasty prophesy coming true. I really like a couple of the snippets of lore provided this way.

One of the gods of Theyra is a being known as Kysul, the Watcher Beneath the Waves. It is an unfathomably vast, tentacled consciousness from a doomed world, capable of shattering sanity with a glimpse of its true form and spawning countless aberrations upon the material plane by mere incident of its existence.

It is unknowable. It is terrifying. It is Lawful Good.

Kysul is a being of limitless, if alien, compassion, and it wants to protect the world which it has adopted as its own. It knows that its appearance is dreadful, and so it conceals itself to mortals, even its own clandestine clergy, which operates with all the trappings of a stereotypical cult but puts the utmost emphasis on ethical conduct, both with regards to doing its work, and with initiating its new members into Kysul's mysteries.

All of the tropes of cosmic, eldritch horror are neatly subverted in this big, slimy teddy bear of a god that just wants to make sure its home world's fate isn't shared by others. Theyra's backstory references some mages starting a war when they made pacts with horrors from beyond the pale. Perhaps Kysul has known their ilk before.

It's still thoroughly alien to the natural order of the game world, however, and both angels and demons count Kysul among their enemies. Lizardfolk, who have their own alien mindset in this world, regard it with some measure of respect and have been known to work alongside Kysul. It also appears to be fond of speaking in antiquated, flowery language, if its cleric intro is anything to go by.

"Seek now thine antediluvian progenitors that in sunken cities for eons have lain."

Another neat couple of details are about the playable orcs, because of course I had to insert my agenda into this article somehow.

The orcs of Theyra are peoples who are just throwing off the yoke of generic, villainous minionhood. They've been bred as stupid, burly slaves for centuries by demons and unscrupulous humans. But they recently initiated a slave revolt in Mohandi, an empire whose lands included the entrance to the goblin caves. The orc rebels freed all of the slaves in Mohandi, "good" races included, and now play a large role in the economy and politics of the formerly expansionist empire from within a number of anarchist communes. They've also developed their own gunpowder weapons, which is an accomplishment not even the technologically advanced but extremely hidebound dwarves of the setting can boast of.

The patron goddess of the orcs is Khasrach, who is also venerated by goblinoids goblin-speaking peoples. She is the Goddess of the Blood, and for good reason. She is fiercely protective of her children, as well as violent and demanding of blood sacrifice. Centuries of her peoples' debasement has twisted her into a vengeful and sometimes savage goddess. The bark she gives at the beginning of the game when you choose to play as one of her faithful pretty well illustrates her general mood:

"Smite now your slave-chains with the primal fire of my wrath!"

Khasrach is basically what you'd get if every orcish mother goddess dumped their chauvinist husband and then decided to help her people seize the means of production.

Presumably after hiring a couple of babysitters.

She isn't locked into this savagery, however. Her profile leaves open the question of whether or not enough change in the outlook of her people could transform her and bring her back to the more levelheaded, spiritual state of being she enjoyed in ancient times.

Recreation of the goddess is one aspect of an orcish cultural movement which seeks to rediscover the primeval society and values of their people, pure and free of influence from fiends or other species. This neo-tribal movement is currently vying for political dominance with the more cosmopolitan city orcs and stereotypical/traditionalist marauding orc hordes, and only time will tell who winds up on top and what that means for their people.

Or, actually, time won't tell. The game is actually sort of dead.

Surprise! This was actually a Things I Wish They Did More With post this whole time!

Development of Incursion slowed to a halt a few years after its first unfinished release, and it languished for a while until the creator finally admitted that they were doing other stuff and wouldn't be continuing the project. Fortunately they released the source code for the game, and someone else picked it up long enough in 2014 to patch some bugs up and convert the game to use libtcod instead of an outdated version of Allegro.

I have no idea what those last few words mean, but they feel important.

No one has stepped up to continue proper development of Incursion, though. The game's site has gone down and requires use of the Wayback Machine to access, the wiki is only partly filled out, and the Google Group used by its community hasn't seen any significant activity in the past two years as of this writing. The TVTropes page on the game, of all places, is the best source for information and download links today.

Incursion is effectively dead, and its envisioned full version, Return of the Forsaken, will likely never see realization.

Even so, I reinstalled the game a few days ago to take a couple of unsuccessful stabs at it. Being frozen in time with no end doesn't discourage me from playing as much as it would another game. It was a neat, odd idea that was executed with a lot of hiccups, and that's enough for me to appreciate. I can romp through and die every once in a while without too much worry.

I do wish the game could get a graphical tileset, though.

That little chump wrecked me, by the way.

Crypt Cities Encounters: Forsaken Flesh.

As fleeting and meaningless as it is in the face of an eternity of Need or waking oblivion, many of the Awakened try to resist the draw toward the Crypt Cities for as long as they possibly can. This is easiest for your kind to do when there is something to cling to, and to pour yourselves into entirely. For some it's a craft or art, or revenge, or faith. Vices are difficult to come by when the senses are so deadened, but you'd be surprised at what desperate souls have been able to find.

Surprised, and horrified.

Hedonism is a rare but particularly cruel poison to the Awakened. The absence of physical pleasure should mean that the pursuit of it is pointless, and this is mostly true. But that doesn't dull the ferocity of a few acolytes desperate to indulge in any feeling. Tucked away in the moldering warrens of cities, deep forest glades, and abandoned mountain crags, these secluded groups--hidden for no other reason than the lingering ghost of their own shame--attempt to sate their artificial fixations. To call it sadomasochism would be inaccurate, for that tame little novelty of the living is outstripped by what they do to one another and to themselves.

Still, at least those groups tend to disband within a few years, their members finding that nothing dulls the Need for long, or the unlucky becoming addled and lost.

At least they don't succeed.

Once upon a time, several centuries ago by now, there had been plans to develop a new Crypt City closer to the seas. This distant annex was probably fated to fail anyway, or at best reach overpopulation within a scant few years. But it never got that far along in its construction. The workers began to be attacked or driven off, and more than one masked priest was hacked to pieces and bled of all of their smoke before the site was abandoned. A massive structure still stood there from what work had been completed, lonesome and stark against the wasteland around it. All the interlopers had to do was move in.

Within the failed crypt, the halls were gutted of their sarcophagus alcoves, and the central chamber was enlarged massively. A deep pit was dug in the center, and an amphitheater was built which would house them and everyone drawn to their cause. In the embrace of withered arms, hundreds found love and searing agony. But instead of petering out into another forgotten old distraction, some terrible threshold was breached.

Maybe one among them had been a truly gifted user of the astral or arcane in life. Perhaps some thing beyond our ken had been watching and waiting for an opportunity. It isn't clear exactly how, and perhaps that is best.

What good could come from learning how their flesh separated from their bones in one final, debauched orgy of decay?

Ounce by ounce, their beings sloughed apart, leaving slick skeletons rattling through the corridors or around the edges of the pit, mindlessly repeating the last actions which their former owners had been performing when the Embrace happened. It started as a pool, and then grew hideously in size, piling up on itself, moving, breathing with the life of everyone who had gone into it. Like a shuddering, mewling tumor it grew to fill almost the entire amphitheater.

And there, centuries after it should have rotted away to nothing, that mound of Forsaken Flesh still churns upon itself. It calls out with hundreds of voices, begging for others to come and join their embrace, to feel their piteous love, and to add their human dregs to the mass.

Sometimes its calls are answered, either by those seeking to add their voice to it, or those who would silence it for good.

In either case, they tend not to be heard from again.

Domicile of the Forsaken Flesh

This unfurnished basalt edifice was once meant to be the core of a new Crypt City. From its domed center extend four wings, each one oriented toward the cardinal directions, but slightly skewed to one way or the other. It is entirely windowless in the traditional Crypt style, though the interior may occasionally be lit by a hole in the roof or walls caused by the slow dilapidation of the entire structure. Hallways extend in all directions within, mimicking spiderweb patterns meant to maximize the "living" space of the death priests who would have presided over the City and its occupants. All paths which remain intact lead toward the central chamber.

Forsakers

Stripped of all skin, muscle, and sinew, even hollowed of all their marrow, the bones of the old celebrants still walk the halls of the Domicile. It is unclear if they now serve the Flesh, or if they are still possessed of enough of their old selves to recognize the vile thing they contributed to, and wish not for it to be seen or added to. In either case, they will attack intruders without hesitation, breaking their otherwise mindless routines to attack with whatever is at hand- including the discarded bits of their fellows.

Free the Imprisoned: If a Forsaker succeeds in grabbing a hold of its target, it will proceed to tear at any flesh left on it, dealing unarmed damage. If its target is incapacitated--or more rarely, the target is a genuinely dead corpse--the Forsaker will strip it to the bone in an attempt to free the skeleton within. It is not clear if they are aware that this does not have the desired result of animating the skeleton most of the time. But rarely, a skeleton so flensed will stand back up, and appreciatively join its new kin in rattling vigil. It is seemingly random whether the Forsakers discard any resulting meat, carry it back out of the Domicile to rot at the doorway, or leave it at the edge of the Amphitheater to be absorbed.

Reassemble: The Forsakers do not stay down for very long. As soon as a day after its destruction, a shattered Forsaker will reassemble itself to be more-or-less as functional as it previously was, barring the loss of any bones which it cannot retrieve or replace. The oldest Forsakers are little more than swirling jumbles of fragments and bone meal.

The Amphitheater of Flesh

This massive, vaulted chamber holds up a weathered old dome which overlooks the central pit. Better sheltered from the elements here, trappings of the old coven can still be spotted amid the ruin. Stone carvings, fragments of pottery, and implements of unclear but probably unpleasant purpose abound. The flat stone floor is entirely bare around the edge of the pit, which is about one hundred feet in diameter and twenty feet deep. The floors and walls here are covered in a sheen of grease and flecks like what is leftover on a cutting board after preparing meat. Most of the pit is occupied by the Flesh.

The Covetous Singer, Forsaken Flesh

Massive, pungent, and possessed of both solid and liquid qualities, the Flesh is constantly moving. Sometimes its surface only churns or ripples, while at others it erupts into selfsame geysers which nearly reach the domed ceiling before raining back down upon the area and reuniting with the central mass. Vague suggestions of organs, vacant faces, or throbbing veins occasionally break the surface of its otherwise uniform melange of tissues. It sings with hundreds of different voices, each at an unsettling midpoint between bliss and agony. If attacked, it lashes out with countless ephemeral limbs, smashing and grabbing at anything within its considerable reach. It is not known for certain what could damage or kill it, but fire or exposure to the elements is as good a bet as any.

Seething & Slippery: The area around the Forsaken Flesh is difficult to navigate and maintain one's balance upon, being perpetually slick with all manner of bodily fluids. Yes, all manner.

Acquaint Thyself: A target which is touching the Flesh, or which is struck by one of its many pseudopods, must resist a sudden wave of dreadful nostalgia which comes over them. Failure causes the target to be lulled into inactivity, taking no actions and becoming incapable of moving or defending itself.

Come into the Fold: An acquainted target, if not removed from proximity to the Flesh, will be enveloped and held within its central mass for a full minute. If the target fails to shake off its addling nostalgia or is not removed with outside assistance before that time, it will be assimilated into the Forsaken Flesh. The target's voice joins the chorus, and a very scandalized-looking skeleton climbs up out of the pit and leaves after being unceremoniously spat out.

What is that Heinous Idol for?

Mayan Cthulhu Totem by FoxH

The Pem-Pah people of Khaitam-po are positive dystheists who worship against a vast pantheon of malicious spirits which run amok across the world. In addition to offering prayers to confuse and confound the oftentimes nameless evils, they craft idols embodying them and their abstract, harmful concepts. These idols are then damaged and defaced over time to harm and weaken the concept embodied within it. This is believed to weaken the evil's power over the world by extension, offering temporary reprieve from it.

Normally they are located securely within village sanctuaries or pious, well-to-do households, but occasionally misfortune can land an idol in the wild, able to be found and picked up by passersby.

Perhaps they don't even stay in the right world for long.

Very rarely does an evil have an anthropomorphic identity. More commonly, they are identified by what they do or cause in the world. They are almost never named, especially not on their idols, even if such a label would be very useful helping the uninitiated in identifying just what a given mass of deliberately hideous carved wood and stone is supposed to represent.

Because of the nonstandard, highly individual way in which the idols are crafted, identifying a given idol can be relatively straightforward, or exceptionally difficult. Gut feelings, hunches, and intuition can lead to just as accurate an answer as a guess born of lifelong arcane study, so any member of a group of adventurers which might encounter an idol should have an equally unlikely shot at identifying it, regardless of skill training or ability score.

Special rituals appropriate to each evil are used to further debilitate them, either in the face of terrible fortune related to the evil, or in the hopes of improving one's circumstances further. In essence, cowing and tormenting an embodied evil "blesses" certain endeavors by removing a bit more of their eldritch taint from the area. This can translate to a small (+1 or +2) bonus on appropriate rolls for a period of time.

It is imperative that an idol never, ever be the subject of a ritual meant for an evil which is conceptually opposed to it. Nor should it ever be deliberately, completely destroyed. Doing so would empower or even release the evil essence embodied within it, and their mindless gaze rarely travels much farther than those who have released the evil. Such a mistake could result in penalties to relevant rolls as high as -5 or -10, or lead to disastrous events to be determined by the referee.

A set of example Pem-Pah Idols, their areas of affliction, and the rituals meant to deal with them, can be found below:

Pem-Pah Idols
1d20	Name of the Embodied Evil	What the Evil does	What You should do
1	The Lapping of Fire	Causes the start and spread of errant fires, which burn and consume indiscriminately.	Wrap it in scrolls of birch bark or paper. Ignite a fuse of human hair. Douse it in water before it catches fire.
2	The Bloody Lungs of Saltwater	Capsizes rafts and sailing vessels far from shore, destroying goods and drowning sailors.	Leech the moisture from it by hanging it over a fire. Bind it to a bowl floating in a tub of water.
3	An Unhealing Wound	Prevents fresh injuries from healing properly, or causes older wounds to open up and fester anew.	Cut a gash across the idol and immediately “cauterize” it with fire. Then pack the cut with gauze or bandage.
4	It Which Deceives	Fosters resentment among allies and tempts strangers and new faces to betray one another.	Place the idol in front of a small mirror facing its own reflection.
5	The Creeping and Slithering	Sneaks rare and deadly reptiles or other marshland creatures into places they don't belong.	Place it before a brazier in which a handful of reptile scales are burned.
6	Grinding Iron and Snapping Steel	Breaks or degrades metal of all types with use, not least of which being weapons and tools.	Ritually sharpen a blade under the idol's gaze, then us it to mar it.
7	The Thirst of Drought	Stagnates and spoils collected drinking water, causes local crop failure.	Plant it in soil and “water” it with sweat or saliva.
8	Howling from the Dark	Sends large, predatory animals to hunt far beyond their normal ranges.	Fix a collar around the idol's “neck” and shower it in tooth fragments or fingernail clippings.
9	Foolish Gibbering	Increases the likelihood that a person will announce themselves with a blunder, or be obliviously talkative.	Adhere a strip of material around the idol's approximation of mouth to gag it.
10	The Writhing Within	Unbalances one's gut fauna or compromises immune systems until the body is prone to diseases and massive parasites.	Bore a hole through the idol if one does not already exist, then flush it out with milk and animal blood.
11	Emptiness of the Gyre	Instills constant, gnawing hunger despite any and all food eaten, causing crippling starvation as well as gluttonous bloating.	Burn offerings composed of, or made to resemble, a healthily balanced meal.
12	Flesh's Fancy	Seeds the subconscious with growing carnal urges which a person would normally be averse to.	Seal the idol in a case full of purported anaphrodisiacs (real or otherwise) and lay it on its head.
13	The Lying Light	Conjures up deceptive lights and other mirages in far-off places to lead travelers astray.	Blindfold what passes for the idol's eyes using sap as an adhesive.
14	Luck's Blind Vexations	Influences mundane, day-to-day events to appear highly unlucky when it comes to random chance.	Nail a set of loaded dice or similar crooked game pieces to the face of the idol.
15	That Which Scrapes at the Dividing Wall	Provokes extreme paranoia and auditory hallucinations, eventually causes insomnia.	Bore a pair of “ear” holes into the idol and fill them with cork.
16	Lonesome Cries as if from Orphans	Inspires alternating periods of melancholy and gut-wrenching episodes of loss and grief.	Fashion a set of wax figures resembling a family unit and then melt them together to coat the idol.
17	The Crawling Fingers of Multitudes	Manipulates and harasses loose objects in a wide area, as well as causes pinching, grabbing, or crawling sensations across the skin of everyone therein.	Bind the idol in cord tightly, going counter-clockwise from the front. Then wind a differently colored cord opposite.
18	The Consuming Cold	Hampers sources of heat, including living bodies, and promotes unseasonable frosts.	Bundle the idol in a fur-trimmed blanket while ladling boiling hot broth over its face.
19	Wisps of the Tides	Summons up motes of the Killing Tides' suffocating embrace, starving the area of oxygen or fostering respiratory disorders.	Fan the idol vigorously while burning pungent incense around it.
20	Death-Rattle's Spite	Empowers the destructive, vengeful aspects of a dying wish or curse spoken by the dying.	Bury the idol in a symbolic grave with full honors and an accompanying song of soothing platitudes.

Going Downhill: The Pem-Pah, Part 5.

"You should add a few more cuts to that image before you make the trek back through the marsh. The Creeping and Slithering is resilient this time of year." 
- A rural guide to a performer-priestess and her entourage.



To understand why the religious performances at Anqoh are so severe, the Pem-Pah worldview and their place within it must be established.

They do not worship their gods. They worship against them.

It is unknown when this shift in religious practice occurred, assuming that the Pem-Pah practiced the same polytheistic religion as their upland cousins prior to their own migration into the bay country. There are surviving figures shared between the two traditions in the form of a class of trickster spirits, suggesting at least some common origin or interaction. Otherwise, the two faiths diverged almost completely.

Pem-Pah divinities tend to be as esoteric as they are malicious, lacking individual identities but being synonymous with larger, or sometimes hyper-specific, concepts. This has proved to make intellectual studies regarding them tricky, because their names are so difficult to translate out of a very old form or dead dialect of the spoken language. A few of the (relatively) more straightforward translations into Ersuut are as follows:

The Lapping of Fire; The Bloody Lungs of Saltwater; The Thirst of Drought; A Curse Spoken with a Death-Rattle; The Wailing of Children; The Laughter of Children when there are None; That Which Scrapes at the Dividing Wall; Something Which Could Happen But Never Will; An Unhealing Wound; It Which Deceives; The Lust of Siblings; The Exultant Agony. These "evils" for lack of a better term are the immaterial essence which fuels and causes terrible events in the world. They may or may not be intelligent, but they at least operate on a level comprehensible enough by humans that they can be thwarted, after a fashion.

The natural state of the world is decidedly unnatural to our perceptions, ruled by these forces and their countless relatives, a brutal perversion of life that is, dishearteningly enough, its rawest, perhaps truest form. The evils dwell in the air and in the earth, but originate from, or at least are familiar with, the water. Their eyes are everywhere, and their ire is easily earned. But once gained, it is believed that the attention of an evil can be held, to the disregarding of everything else.

To this end, the Pem-Pah seek to embody the evils in any way possible. Ironic praise-poems written about an evil wrap it up tightly around itself, temporarily forcing it into a mindless state of self-obsession. Speaking its name as well as that of one of its antagonistic opposites causes the two forces to seize upon one another, allowing a risky mortal endeavor to skirt by below them unnoticed. Crafting them in hideous detail in effigy upon one of the streets of Anqoh chains and binds them, and the many objects nailed into them or savage cuts delivered to their new bodies are believed to weaken them greatly as well. Like the devotees of Tallash struggling against the uncaring gulfs, the Pem-Pah battle against something far greater than themselves. Unlike those distant mountain folk however, Pem-Pah religion feels considerably more fatalistic. Respite is temporary, and ultimate failure may only be staved off. Thus it is heresy of the highest order to completely destroy an item of binding. To incinerate a parchment or completely deface an idol is to free the evil trapped within it, and its gaze rarely strays farther than the culprit, unluckily enough.

However song, dance, and performance are held above all other methods of anti-prayer. To wear the mask of an evil or one of its doomed victim-heroes is to invite it into one's self. It takes a strong will and firmness of purpose not to fall prey to such things. Cautionary tales tell of performers dropping dead suffering from injuries eerily appropriate to their respective masks, including to spontaneous burns or lacerations. I am not one for arbitrary skepticism, but I am willing to entertain the notion that at least some of these cases of injury and death could result from self-inflicted harm in the heat of the performance, or some other psychosomatic event.

That does little to describe what can happen when a high priest succumbs, however.

Its name is many lines long and mostly unintelligible to us, but there does exist an evil relating in some way to a failure of performance at a critical moment. When it is not properly contained, it is believed, the entire Maintaining can be undone, and lead to widespread death and misfortune. Civic records allude to a time several generations ago when the high priest of that year's ritual found himself subsumed beneath the weight of his strangely small and unassuming mask, which was meant to contain one of the greatest of spirits. The sky darkened overhead, the tune of every instrument being played inverted itself, the lightning reached across the bay, tearing boats asunder until the stones of the harbor were blackened and scorched, and a ravenous frenzy fell upon those who could not resist their patriarch's eyeless gaze. Groping claws of darkness described as "unlight" erupted from the space around his person, and reality itself keened and wept. Yet he remained quite conscious and apparently in control of his voice all throughout, despite the depravities which his body visited upon his brethren in the dozens. He reportedly begged for death until it was given to him by a low-ranking member of the city guard.¹

Despite these and other setbacks, the Pem-Pah continue to practice the way of life that they have known for centuries. They fish, farm, and act as surprisingly friendly hosts for those who enter their bleak but livable land. Considering the demons which each culture seems to wrestle with, I believe that increased communication and cooperation between Khaitam-po and outsiders--Pach-Pah Yul in particular--would be a fine opportunity for mutual growth and understanding of how to affect positive change on the world.



¹ Similarities between the story of this nameless high priest and case studies on the symptoms of Coherent Shambler Disease are hopefully incidental.

Ergil-Who-Is-Death.

"He does not punish. He does not reward. He doesn't judge at all. He simply is; a withered hand to hold on the last, long journey."
- A literal translation out of Esgodarran prose taken from Nares Saton's Elegies.

"Don't fear Death- fear where he's taking you."
- A prominent graffito scrawled over the threshold of a funerary home in the Lower-East Tier of Deneroth.

"Relish the sting! It means the Horned One hasn't yet claimed you."
- Hital, elated as always to be performing burn debridement without any anesthesia handy.



When death comes, not everyone has a tribe to cut them apart, or a bird-spirit to whisk them away to the sky. For many, the only company to be had in death is silent and solitary Ergil.

As his epithet "Ergil-Who-Is-Death" suggests, Ergil is the state of death, and everything which is dead is entered into his being, at least temporarily. He is not a god, at least not the kind which needs worship and sacrifice, though he does receive both on occasion. He is somewhat closer to a force of nature, in a restrained and creeping sort of fashion. But he is also an individual, acting separate from or within himself in a manner surprisingly personal to each lost soul.

Upon death, the individual is commonly believed to be lost for a time without time ranging from hours to years, in which the soul is tossed back and forth upon the currents of some roiling sea of unbeing. But this transient phase ends, and then the dead "wakes up". They are greeted with a place not too vastly different from the location in which they died, with certain marked differences. In some stories this is a pallid mirror of the world of the living, while others hold it to be the actual, physical world through different means of seeing. Without the veil of mortal eyes, the spirit can see the world quite differently- perhaps, as it truly is.

Regardless of what the nature of this place is where the dead find themselves, it is somewhat of a dreary place. The sky remains perpetually overcast, and though the constant wind can feel quite damp, no rain ever falls. The world stretches out in all directions, silent and dead but for the wind in the grass or the flowing of stagnant-smelling water. Geography wears thin the farther away from one's site of death one goes, and beyond that, space itself begins to deteriorate, until a truly alien landscape stretches out before one's unveiled eyes. If this is the land of the dead, it can give the impression that one is the only dead thing anywhere, ever, for not a single other soul is ever to be seen. Black-feathered birds or small flies can occasionally be seen, as well as brief and distant views of dark shapes shifting about, but nothing pays the dead any heed. None but Ergil.

He appears sometime after the dead's wakening, typically from a great distance at first, no different from the other furtive black spots on the horizon. But though he moves slowly, he advances inexorably toward the spirit. Some flee what they see as this approaching apparition of doom, and beat a hasty retreat through the weird land which now keeps them. And because the spirit needs no sleep, nor food or water, the chase can last indefinitely. But Ergil's slow and steady approach never leaves him farther away than the horizon, a constant reminder of the inevitability of death.

Some remain quite ignorant of their own death, while others refuse acceptance, traveling through as many stages of grief as the living they left behind might feel. Though countless ages and trackless wastes may separate the dead soul from where they began, the time always comes when they stand in silent acceptance, and the master of that self-same domain comes to rest before them.

The avatar of death is quite featureless. He stands immensely tall, twelve feet or more at times, perpetually enveloped by a cloak of frayed black feathers and scraps of fur. His arms and legs, when visible, are as black as his garment, long and gangling, and terminating in gnarled claws. Contrasting with these dark hues is the dingy whiteness of bandages wrapped haphazardly around his body, stained with blood or antiseptic here and there- some believe these to be the remnants of dressings stripped from the bodies of those who died in agony under the ministrations of physicians, who finally came to know release from Najis the Healer. A more bleached shade of white is his head. Or, what passes for one.

Ergil has no visible face, for the head which caps his eerily long neck is mounted by the immense skull of a bovid shaped into a mask. Because of this, plus the large wooden staff or crook he is sometimes depicted with, he is known as the Horned One, or the Moldering Shepherd. His gender is inferred as male only due to the large and impressive horns which adorn the skull, suggesting that it had once belonged to a great steer. Either Death cannot speak, or he does not care how any including his newest guests refer to him. All he will do, is extend his hand.

He does not force the spirit to take his gesture, and will even continue to follow the dead on their aimless journey across the vast and empty vistas of that place, ever a silent companion walking a few paces behind and beside, as tireless as his charge.

When the hand is at last taken, he will not take initiative even then. Rather, the land seems to reorient itself and regain some measure of coherence around the two, and the correct path reveals itself. And so it is that Ergil and the spirit walk together, hand in hand, neither leading the other, until the destination is reached. Other times, if in life one was too young or old to walk, or some disability gripped them, Ergil effortlessly carries them in his musty yet gentle embrace, going where the dead would go as if they themselves were walking that way.

The final destination may be an opening into a vault in the earth. It may be a craggy pinnacle enveloped in a shaft of light piercing the ever-present clouds. Whatever it is, the immediate and profound sense of belonging which takes over the wandering spirit ends all travel. Ergil acts as final witness to the departed and their departure, and then he vanishes again over the horizon.

Ergil-Who-Is-Death has accumulated a great deal of frightening iconography over the ages, making him appear sinister and even violent in nature. The addition of a cruel-looking harvesting scythe in some depictions contaminated by a certain grain-god has not helped matters. But to those who pray to him and officiate funerary rites and interment, his even-handedness and gentleness are emphasized.

He is no one's enemy. Only another step to be taken.

Tallash, the Struggling God.

"We are Friends to the Helper, and we shut out the immensity."
- Dodol Pritush, of Au-ed.


The Oron'er mountain range, despite its relative proximity to civilization¹ as well as its smallness compared to such far-off giants as the Khokhantipa Range, has perhaps the most mystique out of any of the high places of the world. From its alluvial, red-grassed lowlands and foothills to its highest and driest karst peaks, the Oron'er range has been fixed in the minds of well-to-do adventurers and explorers for centuries. The bizarre weather, legends of foreboding ruins, and natives with unusual customs guarantee it a spot in the outside world's imagination. Of course those intrepid explorers rarely stay more than a day in any place of significant elevation, and hardly interact with the locals while on such expeditions, so the impressions have not been easily shed to reveal their more comprehensive truths. The peoples of the mountains are of chief concern in this respect.

"Oron'er" is a word of uncertain origin, used exclusively by outsiders to describe the mountains and their peoples. It may be a thorough corruption of an Esgodarran word or phrase, but etymologists are in disagreement over a plausible origin.² The native languages are in similar disagreement over what to call their home, owing to a remarkable density of dissimilar language groups and regional dialects on the mountains. There are thirty-two tribes accounted for in the mountains, twenty-one settled in mostly permanent villages and the remaining eleven existing pastorally and semi-nomadically, often in much smaller numbers than their more sedentary kin. In either case of habitation, livelihood follows a strict cycle of movement back and forth between lowland grazing of sheep and collection of water in the winter, and intensive handicraft and foraging during the relatively easier months of spring and fall higher up in the mountains. The interrupting summer is legendarily dry and brutal, and tribes typically hunker down in earthen places where water may be stored for the duration. Outsiders unwisely visiting the mountains in the middle of summer have remarked at the apparent laziness of the Oron'er peoples trying to keep cool, and this stereotype has persisted for some time.

Only the day keeps them away from the outside, however. For the summer nights on those peaks make the tribes privy to some of the most spectacular celestial shows known to the southwest. Comets, meteorite showers, and the occasional green sunset or purple sunrise are known to the watchers on the peaks, and they observe these natural phenomena with religious dedication. Quite unlike several lowland cultures who deem such sights to be omens of nameless dread, the people of the Oron'er Mountains see them as glimpses into the larger truth of the world, and what lies beyond the world. It is something which virtually all tribes engage in, often in wordless or gesticulating cooperation with one another. For though they remain highly distinct in language and aesthetic and material culture, the tribes each seem to share a single major aspect of religion.

The mountain people believe in one god, or at least one god who matters. Its names are as varied as their languages, but for the sake of simplicity in this article it shall be referred to by the name taken from the northeastern Au-ed tribe, most well-known to Ersuun peoples. This name is Tallash, or Tayyash, derived from a contraction between the words "tai" and "yash", meaning "the helper". The worship of Tallash is therefore Tallash Yai, meaning "the law of the helper", or "acting in accordance with the helper". While they lack a formal term of religious self-identification, the Au-ed refer to those among them deemed most righteous and pious as a Pritush, or "friend".

Tallash is unusual, as far as Gods of a monotheistic bent in the wider world are concerned. It is without a more human avatar or identity, and its worshipers have remarkably little in the way of symbolism for it or artistic depictions of it. It is not omnipresent, nor is it omnipotent, nor even omniscient. But it is omnibenevolent, having the interests of the entire world at heart. To follow Tallash Yai is to be kind to strangers, generous to the destitute, merciful to one's enemies, and tireless in the pursuit of compromise between disparate groups (such as other mountain tribes). Everything which may somewhat nebulously be referred to as good--compassion, achievement, peace, well-being, beauty, etc--is an expression of Tallash's nature, brought about upon the mortal sphere through the actions of people. Every act or event of violence, greed, petty malice, and apathy is a shortcoming of the Pritush, and by extension a failing of Tallash to protect its beloved friends from all which is Beyond.

"Beyond" is a concept which is difficult for scholars and knowledge-seekers to illuminate in the context of the Tallash faith, because the Oron'er natives' boiled-down explanations of their own beliefs tend to stop at that point, with any deeper elaboration kept tight-lipped until the nosy and more than likely badly dehydrated traveler finally gives up and continues on their way. To remedy this, we must regrettably turn to a sole and uncorroborated source which otherwise records just such a theological exchange in remarkable detail. I write of course of one of the four commonly dismissed chapters of the travel chronicles of Sarq of Nambar (not to be confused with the modern notable Sark ad-an-Rish, also of Nambar, but several decades Sarq's junior). While Sarq conducted his thorough interviews, the transcription and publication itself was done by his friend and constant companion Isha. Considering her otherwise impeccable track record and her quite vocal stance on the taking of academic liberties in Nambar's sister-city of Deneroth³, it was perhaps too hasty for the last generation of scholars to deem this and other chapters to be entirely fictive for having merely been the first to report on the matter. Despite its common omission from most modern publications of the Travel Chronicles, the libraries of the Ivory Tower are in possession of one unedited copy.

Sarq arived in Au-ed very late in the fall. It was uncharacteristically damp and chilly for the locals and Nambar natives alike, but there was much activity as the various herders and traders prepared for the move down into the milder foothills for the winter. The interview was conducted with one Pritush named Dodol, a respected elder who was said to have surpassed eighty years of age at the time. He was a small and scrawny man, his small size exaggerated even further by how he tightly tucked himself up into a ball in his blanket in the center of the large room in which he and Sarq were meeting. Apparently at Sarq's subsequent urging, a footnote was made using Dodol's smallness in the vastness of his chamber, surrounded by bustling people going about their own business and paying him and Sarq no heed in that moment, as an appropriate metaphor for the state of the world in Oron'er cosmology.

Dodol explained that in the beginning, there was no earth or water, only a sky which was not a sky, because it had nothing else to differentiate itself from. It was a vast gulf of darkness and emptiness, filled not with matter but with sound. The sounds of planetoid flies buzzing about the rotting corpses of still-singing whales, and of laughter coming from things unseen and best left unseen. Then, at some point in that pointless, timeless time, form came into being. Through utter chance, shape and physicality was granted to the void, filling it in pockets and around the edges. Dust and smoke coalesced into worlds and living things, and their primeval blood and sweat became the waters and seas. They existed in base savagery, pack slaughtering pack, mother devouring child, and maddened dances occasionally attracting the attention of the formerly formless things from Beyond, much to the mortal's detriment. But just as random chance created the uncaring and brutish cosmic vastness, so too was it able to create something gentle.

Tallash was once one of those nameless things adrift on the astral winds, fathomless in its intent as it went about business which was oblivious to and dangerously heedless of everything lesser than it, which was everything. Until it happened upon the bedraggled animals clinging fruitlessly to the rock which we all now call home. Detached pity was inspired in it, then sympathy, and then true, heart-rending empathy, which drove it to take the whole of the world in its embrace finally. It nurtured us like children, sheltering us from the outer dark and crooning soft, accepting encouragement to us. We listened--plant, animal, and human alike--and so were raised from our earlier darkness. But we were not illuminated per se. For the Beyond remained a terrible place for things of soft flesh and fragile mind such as ourselves, and Tallash sought to shelter us from it, lest this small hope of order and tranquility be dashed upon the rocks of the deep, dark ocean.

Grief came when newly-named Tallash witnessed just that. One of its kin, passing through on a mindless ellipse of destruction, wrought misery upon the world with claws of fire and tendrils of despair. It was so great a pain to Tallash, to fail in its newly-chosen duty, that it trembled and wept for an eon. Tallash stopped when it had shaken itself to bits, forming the sky above, and the celestial sphere beyond. It shielded us more thoroughly now than ever before, and all later incursions would wound it but not aggrieve it, for it now placed itself utterly in harm's way for the sake of its chosen friends, bolstering its resolve with every fair or foul result. And a compact was made between the oldest Pritush and Tallash, ensuring that when the mortal coil released each life, it would ascend to the vault of the world and merge with the great tapestry of Tallash, joining it in its ceaseless vigil against the outer dark. Every death strengthens its aegis, and every life well-lived ensures a better world left behind than that which was entered into. And so the comets and other heavenly lights glimpsed in the late summer nights are messages from Tallash itself, continued guidance and encouragement from sent by it, our first and oldest Friend.

The core teaching of Tallash Yai seems then to be one of comforting bittersweetness:

The world is a cold and uncaring place, fraught with danger and meaningless loss.

Change it.




¹ "Civilization" referring here to any and all settled areas characterized by predominantly stone architecture, over-reliance upon underwear, and a predilection toward breeding endearingly useless household pets.
² This is somewhat of an assumption on the part of the writer, since the Board of Interpreters & Linguists has not been in session since the divisive and chaotic Lavatory Sign Crisis two semesters ago.
³ This brief former partnership between cities of scholastic emphasis is typically thought to be best left forgotten in the present, but it still represents an honest attempt by diverse parties to connect the intellectual world in ways which it has not been for over four hundred years. Perhaps the ITU should step away from its self-identification as the "lone shining candle of learning", and examine the evidence of a bonfire burning outside its doorstep.