| November 2006 | << October 2006 | December 2006 >> |
| The Sigil That Is a Doom Upon Scribes |
| Tomes of Amaxathroth > Ink, Blood and Parchment |
Many ages past, proud kings ruled at the swampy mouth of the Nal; of their slaves and priests naught is to be told, even within the most ancient of bound tomes treasured by sorcerors of Magak and Harumetha. The many-pillared ruins and great, crumbling statues beside the Nal are given over to roosting vagra that await the scent of rotting flesh upon the wind, or toppled into the waters where krevakile lurk. So is the fate of all works of man; this I have seen.
From this kingdom of a long past age, swallowed by the poison jungle of Kresh, came the Sigil of Fifteen Points and a doom upon scribes. There is but one true path to form the Sigil, for each other leads, midway, to the formation of a lesser sorcery of anguish and destruction. Even the true path must be taken with haste and precision, lest the scribe linger for too long upon a certain Calling Sign; it will be many days before that unfortunate can know in certain surity that a plague of demons will not burrow upward from the palaces of the Undergods to place spikes through his organs and drag him down to an age-long flensing of flesh and bone.
He who first formed the Sigil of Fifteen Points might be the most refined murderer of all the ages, and who can say in truth that each and every doom contained within the Sigil is known? I have scribed the Sigil but twice; the once to better know the character of its originator, and the twice in extremis and without other recourse. This, I say with the weight of knowledge: better that the Sigil was lost to the world, alongside the being to spawn it, but no torture is so exceedingly subtle and sadistic that a lord of men will forsake its use. No, if there is but one mark to distinguish the hearts of those who strive and die so as to rule, it is the lust for such. The world will crumble into the void, riddled to ash by the maggot-spawn of the Undergods, before men will set aside the Sigil.
A man might die the once, but ten thousand times, and in as many ways, might he scream and wish life to end. Without the fear of this and fates far worse, no lord, king, nor callous sorceror might have authority over even the weakest of men. This secret is in the heart of all men, and well known to women - yet each man is surprised by its utterance afresh, and thus do men so set their fate as slaves.
There was an age in which the Sigil was well known indeed amongst sorcerors and scholars about the Meddin Sea. Barbarous Emmegdio slew man, beast and demon alike, and wore the skin of all as proof of his prowess; upon driving out all other killers of man, he enslaved most harshly a thousand women to raise city walls within the mountains of Espaga. In time, no living man remained to dare challenge his rule, but the pleasures of enslaved flesh paled with the decrepitudes of age. Cruelty is ever as a river, hungering for any path to the sea; Emmegdio who called himself King became enamored of the power and suffering brought by sorcery. By dark chance, the Sigil of Fifteen Points came to Espaga, and the lives of Emmedgio's slaves were spent as water in the exploration of its manifold dooms. For year upon year, the city of the woman-slaver echoed to screams and the cackling of demons, and the stench of death grew ever thicker.
Strange and secretive priesthoods are all that now haunt the empty city of highest Espaga, but Sigils both true and false found their way far and wide in the age of Emmegdio; this lure to doom and enticement to torture is hidden within sorcerors' towers, sealed inside the vaults of kings, and set upon ancient parchments arrayed before the ignorant of the bazaar of Abekabar.
[ Posted by Reason on November 26, 2006 | Permanent Link ]
| Crossing the Demon Wastes |
| Tomes of Amaxathroth > Ink, Blood and Parchment |
If you must travel the infested and doleful wastes beyond the Grey Mountains, journey in a company of no fewer than twenty beasts and men, of whom five carry spears and a knowledge of gorg. The most ravenous and long-tongued of gorg will be left sated and distended by the swallowing whole of twenty live bodies; a doom cast upon passing companions is the only true surity for your safe passage, for horned gorg are long of limb, cunning and strong enough to tear men asunder.
I crossed the wastes in the first year of a journey from new spires raised upon the ruins of forested Hambegh to the tormented lands of jade and tallow - a long and arduous path of many forks; drear and emptiness picked clean of men by the spawn of the Undergods was but the first step. So in huddled, thick-walled Varzsova, beside a river of treacherous currents, where the rain falls blackened and men have but little thought and no will to pleasure, I tied my path to that of thirty color-strewn Rhym Ney and painted wagons.
I knew something of the Rhym Ney, for all their distain of clay and parchment, of trade with men of other races. Sharp knifes against the dull blades of Varzsova, quick thievery and smiling cruelties hid convictions of a king's prowess. They call themselves descendants of a empire of man once known as Rhym, in which a hundred Lords of equal might ruled all the world from a white city of seven hills. Sharp-toothed vermin who call themselves kings, the Rhym Ney journey to and from the secrets of deepest Rushka, bleeding towns and murdering the weak for their needs. Proud, boastful, they tell tales incautiously - and so I already knew their keys to their rotten hearts.
Yet of Rhym and a white city - and of sorcery to compel a hundred Lords to refrain from murder until there was but one remaining - I knew not further then, and know not further now. Before the fall of Yorm, before Undergods descended from the stars to set their eggs to hatch within the world, before the first sorcerous sigil pressed upon the most ancient of tablets, say the Rhym Ney. Are the words of scholars any more to be believed?
The dark-haired women of the Rhym Ney are hard and passionate in their youth; willing lures for the schemes of fathers, brothers and lovers. Were the shaggy wolves who stalk lone travelers possessed of human lusts, Rhym Ney women would lick their lips and dance naked in the wilds to bring forth fangs and fur from the thick forests to a hunt of spears.
I appeared as sorceror of secrets for the Rhym Ney - an easy guise for a man of uncounted years - and thereby another form of animal for the snaring, should the hunters come to think they understood the nature of the spoils. Caught I was, but by the elegance of the trap evaded, the glimmering of the net of lies and intent, for decay of the body is naught as colorful as what has become of the hearts of this age. Lush Red Talytha pressed herself against me not as lengthy prelude to the murder planned by Andryzeg, but as ardent inspiration for his jealousy - and then for her own greedy desire, for men grown wise see a mirror of waters in the ways of treacherous women. Words to charm and hooks to sink into a perfidious heart come ever easily for one such as I.
The cruel Rhym Ney laughed at Andryzeg when they thought I paid no attention, or when Red Talytha cried loud within her swirl-painted wagon and the gelded jureth in the traces grew restless. Soon, then, there would be knives, but the game demanded no less than to wait and step aside at the last moment - just as those who offend the strange priesthoods hidden in highest Espaga are given one chance, blindfolded, to face a spearing axar in the blooded pit. Perhaps this all was yet the snare set about my neck and legs, but the Demon-King's wrath shielded me from the sons and daughters of Rhym, as from any black-willed worm in this last aeon of the world.
Games of murder and lust are amongst the lineage of man, however, to be scattered and forgotten with the coming of demons. It was not sudden screams of jureth brought Red Talytha and I naked from heated bedding and into the cold rain of hilly wastes, but rather the choking cough of the gorg, the sound of a dying man horrified by the flux that pours from his mouth. Thrice as great as than any other I have heard tell of in all the ages, more pustulant toad than horned ox, this mighty gorg was set about with chains of copper. It stuffed a broken-necked jureth into its maw, while its dripping belly-hide flexed with the struggles of the Rhym Ney who preceeded it.
Gone was the bold bluster of Rhym Ney men, who cried sorcery, cowering or fleeing, save for two whose spears caught and broke within the copper chains. Three outer tongues had the gorg, one yet wrapped about the jureth's haunches, but two were enough to stretch its maw yet further with the flesh of foolish bravery. About the painted wagons bounded the gorg in spray and hunger, snatching up those who ran or cowered, smashing the panicked jureth to the wet ground.
Wisdom flees first, as had I, and Red Talytha behind me, naked in the rain. Gorg can neither climb nor fit their bulk within thin crevices, and the hills about were topped by great cairns and the remains of ancient pillars, set by giants of a past aeon. The powerful choking call of the gorg spurred us, chests heaving on the boulder-strewn slope and skin cut by long thorns. The curse of the Demon-King has turned back deaths by blade, venom and a hundred other violent betrayals, but never have I sought its test in the maw of demonkind.
Scattered Rhym Ney and all the jureth did not occupy the chain-bound gorg longer than for I and Red Talytha to mount but three fourths of the nearest hillside, and nor did their struggling flesh sate the demon. In all her youth, Red Talytha proved more fleet than I, and the gorg was scarce slowed by the living packed amongst the broken-boned dead within its bloated midsection. Upon the upper slopes were scattered stones of all sizes, cast off as chips before the awl when giants hurled rock upon rock, and broke down the pillars of ancient fanes. One I snatched and hurled to strike Red Talytha square amidst her rain-soaked hair - she fell, and scarce was I past and to the base of the great boulders when the gorg was upon her. A old and potent curse upon me she screamed, but the gorg's tongues broke her limbs with the sound of branches parting before the fifth word of power could seal the sorcery.
Thusly I scrambled, berefit of dignity and any tool of man, to the very apex of giant-piled rocks about a pillar of ages. Below, the gorg's tongues worked to pack Red Talytha, yet screaming weakly, amongst the rest of her kin and their beasts - united now with her Andryzeg in goals and fate. Then the great, copper-bound gorg squatted, glaring up at me with ire and hunger in its bulging eyes, and settled to wait. The rain fell colder, and the part of the broken mass within its belly that yet lived squirmed and twitched; gorg digest but slowly - and most painfully for their food. When the squirming became great, it rolled to punch at its turgid gut; more bones snapped and crushed, the sounds ugly and muffled by its hide.
A curse I knew besides, dire and of ancient Yorm, but of no more worth than that screamed by Red Talytha when matched against a gorg. What priest or sorceror had bound this demon about with chains and fed it to such prodigious size upon the flesh of man and beast? Such a guardian might have roamed the wastes for an age, eating all it found, so that no tale came to the cities of man.
An age might a gorg roam, but Amaxathroth the Wanderer has lived many ages of man - and eluded far greater dangers. What price might I put upon two moons of torture by unrelenting sun and rain, hunger and thirst fit to die, but that will not kill me? May the Demon-King have reveled in these days of torment, whatever has become of him and his Black Palace. I waited naked in the cold, above the patient gorg, for it to dissolve away the flesh of Rhym Ney, cough forth their bones, and hunger enough to seek other prey.
[ Posted by Reason on November 24, 2006 | Permanent Link ]
| The Honest of Abekabar |
| Tomes of Amaxathroth > Ink, Blood and Parchment |
In life, Bagad-Tul gave voice to malign and inventive sorcery within the Folded Palace of Abekabar; in death, a long and lesser line of the worm-hearted have used his name and engraved ruby to raise fear enough to occupy the Palace. But rule? None had the true hatred of all men and women as still burns within the brittle bones of Bagad-Tul, cast into the Vision Desert and cursed mightily; no, even the Bagad-Tul who brought the stone tubes to the slave bazaar is but a shadow of the original.
Abekabar is a font of unthinking thieves, of base murderers who care not even for excellence in their craft, of nerveless whores and beggars who will not even look down to see the results of their mumbling. The sands have a madness in them, that weighs down men and women in the moment of the beast, without any vision of the heartbeat to come. They spawn and multiply like demons in the dust-choked alleys and brown shelters. Treat the diseased throngs of Abekabar as you would a pack of starving curcal; kick them, put them to the torch and blade, or feed them with flesh and wine - but expect neither understanding nor change.
The crumbling walls of Abekabar do little to mask this pit of vermin that walk on two legs; but such is fit for a place to which the Kreshi bring torture-maddened slaves, and is coveted not by the Ten Oasis Kings. Abekabar is a city of a hundred men afloat upon a sea of rats and lice - and those hundred are Bagad-Tul, a band of prideful murderers who guard the Palace, and avaricious merchants who trade and steal without care for any forbiddance of God, king or man.
Where then will you find men who are neither thieves nor murderers, women who have yet grace and will in Abekabar? There is one sure place. Those who push back and cry out, or call for honesty and guards against rogues, are thrust within the thin, hanging stone tubes of the slave bazaar, one apiece and behind great metal hinges, with but a thin carven notch to see that which so drove them to their own form of madness. Children of the slave bazaar slip angry spidrel and thrinlizards into the tubes most recently occupied, there to fight with black flies for choice flesh - but the laughter of rogues, slave masters and whores at the weak screams of the imprisoned is ever disinterested.
Not even cruelty rouses the sand-worn rabble; the present Bagad-Tul wishes it so, and it pleases him to watch the tubes through thin, high windows of the Folding Palace. The weighty stone tubes swing gently upon their great chains when the wind blows sand from the alleys, and every so often the bones of one unfit for Abekabar slip from the base-notch.
[ Posted by Reason on November 19, 2006 | Permanent Link ]
| Black Blooms Twined About Bone |
| Tomes of Amaxathroth > Ink, Blood and Parchment |
Fools and slaves of the greedy have long sought hidden wealth and ancient sorcery in the unending jungles beyond Kresh. Demons and beasts of those lush and steaming lands have fed well upon pale flesh set forth from squalid, sandstrewn Abekabar to the mouth of the Nal, and there to venture into the jungle's poison maw.
Some are taken by laughing Kreshi torturers; some are envenomed into bloated man-mush by sliding yellow vine. Others momentarily sate the rathusk's lust for vengence against all who walk on two legs, or become shambling, moaning egg-sacks for verli-spiders and shiny blue rot flies as big as a woman's fist. Few return to Abekabar where once they mocked fools come to their senses, and slaves who hid amidst cripples and beggars of the bazaar.
Even sorcerors must be wary of the nameless jungle that presses close upon the Nal; the wise learn from heavy, thick-scaled krevakiles of that river, who stay far from the banks unless tender flesh presents itself for the taking. But the ruins of past aeons call softly, heard by those who know the teachings of Yorm and sorcerous droolings of the Undergod Freth - and the bones of a sorceror molder to feed jungle trees just as those of any lesser man. Ask you, scholar, who besides Amaxathroth has seen The Tower That Eats the Jungle? Who besides Amaxathroth has seen the Shore of Black Blooms? Precious few, and their names have not lived for so long as mine.
Scarred MarMar and vine-bound, tongueless Tuk cut apart and bury every last trace of dead fools and poisoned slaves from Meddin lands - and the spoor of stranger intruders besides. The dark men and their tempting women are of the jungle; they are no more nor less your foes than nurra worms that seek blindly for the beating hearts and warm blood of those who rest near their lair. Cut their limbs from their bodies, or show them the Sign of Unth if you dare. Like all men, in all lands, they can be tamed if the way is known.
So did I journey beyond Tuk villages and through the thickest swamp and jungle, ripe and wet as rotten fruit, infested by demons who trampled trees and lesser beasts unseen behind poison green of leaf and sickly yellow of vine. To this place the Tuk send captives and those too old to leap and spear mahuh gourds, to struggle through and die upon the Shore of Black Blooms beyond.
The great demons who tread all underfoot are named as Falor Tal Unna upon a worn crystal wall of Yorm. They are the terrible servants to an empire of men that came before the jungle. For all their sorcery, mighty ruins have been consumed near-utterly by green ages, the names of their Gods and kings forgotten - only these aimless, crushing slaves remain. I have seen their footprints mashed across the trunks of fallen trees, a sight to spur madness and effort amidst the heated ooze and buzzing insects.
The Falor Tal Unna can be heard upon the Shore of Black Blooms, and the shaking of trees by their passage can be seen, but they do not approach. The jungle fades to pebbles and a sea of fresh water - here is very source of the Nal that sometimes roars and sometimes slides green through the jungles of Kresh. Everywhere are the bones of men, wrapped about by the Black Blooms that slew them. Musk hangs heavy in the air; the Blooms sway against the wind, back and forth, slow as the red-striped snakes that MarMar fear so greatly.
The Demon-King's curse of ages laughed at the murderous scent of the Black Blooms and waters poisoned by their roots; I gained much in years to come by the many Blooms I plucked, bleeding and twisting, from a corpse as yet only mummified upon the shore.
[ Posted by Reason on November 18, 2006 | Permanent Link ]
| And Lem Fell Beneath the Waves |
| Tomes of Amaxathroth > Ink, Blood and Parchment |
Two ages have passed since the Undergod Freth shuddered its third counterwise segment for a year without cease, and so cast the high cliffs of Lem beneath the waves. Twice in this time, I have journeyed from end to end the greatest mass of lands, and the greatest breadth of the seas. Of men and women of these lands I have learned much and nothing; hearts are sly, cankerous and greedy, urges base and murderous in every age.
Sorcerors have forgotten where carved city-caves and vaults of scribes slaved to demonkind once loomed above the roiling serpents of the Lantac. Well it is that Lem is so vanished, lest those who hunger for the doom that hides behind power build another path for the spawn of Freth - and thereby gift more sorceries upon the rotten flesh of this world. No more do thick-limbed ugret and lolling xamat climb the Staired Pit into the world of men; no more do horned swythern worm about pillar and shelf, twining long tongues through the living brains of scholars. If men were wise, and women possessed of self-knowledge, all would be glad this was so.
Tablets of Lem, cracked or burned, waterstained or bloodsoaked, are yet like flies in Magak and Harumetha, and as worms beneath Hambegh. Strange knifes are the sorceries and signs that drip from this clay of Lem, tools by which men and women become demons in their lust for inventive torments and knowledge beyond that of this world. So Freth casts lines and hooks across all lands, for a mash of blackened hearts steeped in the rot of ages is the sweetest maiden's flesh to the Undergod.
Witches and sorcerors are maggots of a different color to the spawn of the Undergods, but no less writhing members of the feast upon the dead flesh of the world, the spiral into the void that will end this last aeon of man. Freth, too, will be be claimed by the void, but the Undergod cares not.
[ Posted by Reason on November 17, 2006 | Permanent Link ]
| The Opal Skulls of Thaiy |
| Tomes of Amaxathroth > Ink, Blood and Parchment |
Few are the ancient, high prows of metal and strangely-cut sails that follow coasts about the Ocean of Isles. They are vessels of a past aeon, beyond the wear of sea and man, crewed again with each dark fate to befall those who tend decks and bulwarks. Sailors of far-off lands risk sudden, sorcerous storms, great sea-demons that leap and fly in search of men to torment, and serpent riders who claim all deep waters of the Ocean of Isles as their own - but even those foolish or cursed beneath a doom avoid the ruined harbors of Thaiy, glistening by day, and marked in darkness by lanterns set atop fallen statues of long forgotten kings.
The brown, elegant women of Thaiy are beautiful as in no other land, painted and patterned, numbering twenty for each thin, haunted man in the sun-drenched port city of Foon Khet. They slink and dance to the side of any traveler or ignorant seafarer, promising much with wide eyes and reddened lips. But it is not pleasure they seek, nor the face - a mere covering of flesh - they stare at so entranced.
For there is a deep shadow to Thaiy, well known to scholars even so far as Magak or Hambegh. The necromancer Kovat, who sleeps upon tightly laced thigh-bones and embraces the bundled ribs of his long-dead love, has built towers of opal-eyed skulls of men, engraved with signs of power and torment, within the jungles and upon the mountains. Villages that once laughed with life are silent ruins or long rotted into the trees and vines; great Thaiy is but the eyes of Foon Khet and the dead realm of Kovat in this age - and women are the means by which servants of the necromancer raise themselves yet closer to the sky.
Enjoy the few hours you have remaining in the arms and at the lips of beauty, unwary sailor, for long, heavy knives will soon be brought forth - and the bones of your neck will add another notch to their metal. You will spill your secrets to Kovat, and he will set your place in the world for the remaining ages before the void claims all.
[ Posted by Reason on November 14, 2006 | Permanent Link ]
| The Beauty of the Street of Leering Whores |
| Tomes of Amaxathroth > Ink, Blood and Parchment |
For a time, at the end of the age of the Black Palace, the fetid Street of Leering Whores in the port of Piryus held a certain attraction to men other than low born thieves, murderers and lesser vermin of the Meddin cities. For amidst toothless hags, cripples who dragged women upon chains and painted poisoners, within huts and ruins built upon middens, a beauty of true measure was hidden.
Tales were told about the Meddin shores, and even by the lustful, inventive sorcerors of Magak, they who would barely stoop to consort with man, woman or beast in any common manner. They spoke of the graceful, sweet-scented blossom who offered herself to all cravings upon the cribs of diseased harridans - yet always she had a beauty and nature to match the opal-necklaced maidens of far away Thaiy, and about her wrists and ankles were bracelets of gold. So came men of means to the Street of Leering Whores, and the thieves rejoiced. Many were the corpses stealthily placed by night upon the great midden that slumped into the Piryus harbor waters, their eyes and softened parts food for ragged crathegull and poisonous climbing spine-crabs.
Who, then, was this high courtesan amongst low whores? I am given to think it was the witch Arthymaste, who haunted ruins and forests upon the slopes of the mountain called Pentayl. Once, she bowed before the Demon-King and gave her heart in trade for sorceries - in return, the hearts of ten demons pulsed and bubbled within her slight frame, each one a fountain of wanton craving, strange thought, pain and cruel urges. How much more advantagous her position had she followed my path, cast the fortunes and carefully roused the Demon-King's ire! In the long years I followed the apex star and journeyed far from the Black Palace, Arthymaste screamed and leaped about the Pentayl, consuming, babbling and coupling as cackling demons so directed. Well deserved was the mountain's dire reputation in that age.
But wrists and ankles cased in gold were the sign of Arthymaste then, and even before her thrall to the spawn of the Demon-King. A women can tame any man, given but enough time and length of rope - perhaps even demons are not immune.
[ Posted by Reason on November 12, 2006 | Permanent Link ]
| The Jrel-Aluk, That Turned Men Inside Out |
| Tomes of Amaxathroth > Ink, Blood and Parchment |
When you say "scholar," speak the word in the manner of the Komu who dwell in the frozen wastes of Emreca, to mean "speaker of falsehoods." A wise man lies in ways that are both blown away by the wind and forgotten by women; a scholar presses lies upon clay for all the ages. As Amaxathroth the Wise, who bore parchments, I was met with laughter from the mighty-thewed Es-Komu. You - who has but a few score of years before the death demons hook claws into your flesh - would do well to recall this happenstance.
In all the tablets and parchments that tell of the sorceror Mazyar - he who built Harumetha in a single moonless night - there are but two matters the same. That his skin was the dead grey of fungus, and that he alone in all the world dared ask a question of the Jrel-Aluk. Both are lies.
In the age the tall, spindle-spined Jrel-Aluk stalked the Valley of Pillars, many were the men who screamed questions of that most dire of demonkind. Any answers will remain unknown, for each man was most carefully and precisely turned inside out. Women met a most different fate: pulped and powdered down to the very finest, spilt into a pile of dust and puddle of red slime. In the hearts of sorcerors, it seemed the Jrel-Aluk sought most carefully for something that lay within men and women yet foolish enough to risk the broadest of passages through the Grey Mountains.
Mazyar had within his spire a single crystal tablet, upon which twelve mysteries of ancient Yorm were etched. One such was a compelling of demons and men, a hook of sorcery laid within the nerves, by which feeling and action are made as those of a puppet. By this means were the sumptuous chambers of Mazyar populated by the most beauteous, pliant youths and maidens - mere decoration, no less so than the mosaics from far away lands and cloth of impossible colors, for the sorceror Mazyar had no interest in the pleasures of the flesh. Yet he would rather have been swallowed by the Undergod Ythugg and pierced for all time by a thousand stomach-tendrils than to appear less corrupt a sensate than the most debauched in Harumetha. It is a truth that all men - even sorcerors of great might - possess one strange, unseemly weakness that stands as a rock to cast spray in the river of their life.
It passed that Mazyar spoke ever less with the many cruel sorcerors and priestesses of ill-repute who occupied the spires and fanes of Harumetha, the better to cast their blacknesses upon that age. He took to believe scholars who spoke of a hidden sorcery within men and women, a great power diligently sought by the Jrel-Aluk. So Mazyar took his crystal tablet of Yorm and went forth to the Valley of Pillars to ask his question of the tall questing demon, and sorcerously compel an answer.
There, the tale ends, for scholars are little concerned with lies in the form and manner of bards. Of Mazyar, there was no more; the youths and maidens of his spire were taken away, one by one, as concubines and catamites, as sacrifices both straightforward and strange upon stained altars of the Bone Priestesses. Of the Jrel-Aluk, dread legends persist, but no more were the bloody remains of men stretched upon pillars of aeons past, nor the remains of women placed beneath.
So is the world of ages; it turns, and no man sees.
[ Posted by Reason on November 10, 2006 | Permanent Link ]
| Weeping Flowers of the Blue Philtre |
| Tomes of Amaxathroth > Ink, Blood and Parchment |
Oh sage of intellect - you who has correctly mispronounced the third protrusion of the Tongued Ward placed upon these iron-bound parchments - I, Amaxathroth the Wanderer, greet you. I might hope that the earnest endeavors of those lesser scholars who preceeded you will not be mourned; in truth, I value this most ancient ward of the first spire of Magak for its disregard of wear and years - not for its lust for the bones and marrow of the unlettered. By means of recompense, let me tell you of the source of the Blue Philtre - but do not thank me, for it will bring a doom upon many.
Blue Philtre is rare upon rare about the Meddin Sea; it comes from the lands of jade and tallow, of opulant citadels and sultry, olive-skinned women, far beyond the wastes where only demons and the outcast wander. No trader brings thin vials of Blue Philtre from afar - it travels by the trickery and rot of this age of men; from thief to murderer; from scheming witch to demon-blooded outcast; from roguish catamite to a King who rules over filth. None would trade Blue Philtre, yet many die to unwittingly bring it ten steps closer to its true owner - a fattened sensate who will sigh for the year of endless pleasure it will bring.
Of all men to touch upon Blue Philtre, only the black-clad Amaram of the rock deserts retain any semblance of strength, for they have sorcerously forsaken pleasure in service to an unnamed God. Vials the robed Amaram women gracefully pluck from bloodied bodies of the wicked are a ransom and surity against petty avarice of the Ten Oasis Kings, and jealousies of priests of Jerlasum upon the high mount. So are the Amaram temples, carved from the most remote wind-shaped rock, sustained and preserved.
Upon the forsaken road of the Vision Desert, marked by great pylons of a past aeon of man, I learned the secret of the Blue Philtre from a dying Amaram and his five loyal women; they told the tale in turn, a word apiece until his final breath. Whereupon, each woman took a different path into the wilderness, and his body was left for the sand vermin that clean bones whilst no man watches.
Beyond the demon wastes, where the gorg and hrale-eaters prowl, are steamy jungles of yet stranger beasts, thorn-vined and deadly. Beyond the jungles lie jade mines where starved slaves suffer under whip and knife to better please the concubines of plump overseers. Narrow-eyed Lords and their advisors stroke the jade carvings of crippled artisans, who work from birth to death caged amidst offal at the base of tall, many-layered citadels. The mists flow across terraced hills, and men die by the order of other men - so it is in every cruel land of this age, and so will it always be, until the void claims this world.
Beyond all these lands are the Hamal Yan mountains that touch the sky, and fierce, hag-toothed yellow men who wear only the furred skins of demons they have slain. Beyond the mountains lie lesser peaks, wild hills, fields of weeping flowers and Khaarnul, the fallen city of the Athgands - it is there you must go to find the source of the Blue Philtre.
The weeping flowers came from the stars in an age of sorcery, brought by fools who fled the coming of the Undergods. The vales of Athgand bloom with a strange glimmering in summer sun or winter storm, and each blue-tinted petal sheds silvery tears that poison the earth.
Athgand kings were once mighty, building both thick-walled towers and great hoards of precious stones. From rugged lands often conquered but never ruled, swarthy tribes turned back both armies and mighty sorcerors. Beauteous Athgandi women were in some ages warriors, in others a portion of the hoard, chained atop beds of rubies and emeralds in latticework prisons and fought over by bearded men bearing sharp, curved swords. Each Athgandi is descended from the blood of kings, and knows himself a prince in his heart - but in this age they are filth and vermin, fit only to be cursed and spat upon by demon hunters of the Hamal Yan mountains. In this, a wise traveler might see workings of baleful sorcery and weeping flowers.
Once-great Khaarnul is broken and ruined amidst the flower fields, mere huts of time-worn stone pulled from mosaic roadways built within the pillared halls of a past age - but men come yet in this age upon the Ten Mountain Roads, just as stinging night-moths to the flame. They are drawn by the Blue Philtre, for here the Ten Magasi gathered and made the great sorcery that draws pleasure from petals that have wept all they can. Long and hard did the Magasi labor in an age when the men of Khaarnul stood strong, but a traveler may buy the knowledge for rotted crusts of bread - for there is no food in Khaarnul.
Three kinds of men are found under the gaze of the fallen statue of the last Athgandi king. The first come in strength to steal or trade rot with the starving; a few leave while yet strong, with vials of Blue Philtre, destined for death at the hands of the next owner. The second are ensnared by the pleasure that flows from the petal, and is borne by the air from the great fields; these caged men grow thinner and more bestial with each passing moon. No forbidden act is taboo in Khaarnul, and all have debased themselves for but one drop of the sorcery of weeping flowers. The third are scarce men at all - the petal has consumed them. They slump against the pillars of Khaarnul, and are herded to pull blooms from the fields by those who yet seek their fate.
A well-prepared man may risk the fields of musk and silver tears, he might resist the call of pleasure for a time to gather petals, but the vile dromch that hide amidst the flowers will feast upon his flesh. The wall-paintings of Khaarnul once showed the hideous aspect of the dromch, but have long been pulled down by men driven mad by pleasure; no man might say what consumes the languid petal-gatherers. All that is seen are the rippling of tall flowers and sprays of blood; all that is to be heard are short screams and the crunch of bone. For this reason, those who live for the Blue Philter tie rope to the mindless they herd into the fields; lives are worth naught in comparison to sacks of silver-blue petals. Loud is the cursing when the stench of dromch venom and worthless blood spoils but one bloom!
Seek out Khaarnul, oh sage of great intellect - but scribe all that you feel you must in a lifetime before you set forth. Many are the men who have envisioned such a journey, and few indeed are those who survive the very first step.
[ Posted by Reason on November 9, 2006 | Permanent Link ]
| Red-Eyed Apes of Jibaral |
| Tomes of Amaxathroth > Ink, Blood and Parchment |
The great rock Jibaral stands alone between roaring straits, where the Lantac pours into the Meddin. Serpents brave not these waters, but men and women of Malg and Cadaz risk all in tiny boats of fronds and bent askas wood. Mighty pillars stand amidst the waters, placed by kings of a past aeon, worn but yet strong; between hang great and rusting chains, each link the length of a woman's arm. From Malg come strong men, the chain-graspers; from Cadaz, lissom wise women, who know the sorcery that charms askas trees into boats.
The plain women of Malg are bitter and deceitful; the thin, swarthy men of Cadaz base and cowardly. Have naught to do with either, and beware their murderous plots and consummations, for they spread across that land, far from the walls of both cities.
At the foot of Jibaral, amidst spray-watered trees and lush fruit, are the Ape Temples. Furred and fanged, greater than their brethren, red-eyed apes climb down from the great rock to speak in the way of men. Many are those who come to Jibaral to seek the wisdom of the ape, ferried across the straits by men of Malg and women of Cadaz. The weak stay, for the hearts of weak men and hesitant women are no greater than the hearts of lesser apes; they will serve any who speak strongly.
This I learned from man-tongued apes who live as kings, served by men. I have faired well by this knowledge; it is a mighty sorcery indeed.
[ Posted by Reason on November 5, 2006 | Permanent Link ]
| The Rotted Throne |
| Tomes of Amaxathroth > Ink, Blood and Parchment |
A demon of great antiquity once took upon the vague semblance of a man - but giant, warped and miscolored. It hung nerves deftly extracted from a hundred men of Yorm about its wattled neck, to better hear the thoughts that lead men to destruction. A great throne this demon built in a dank, cavernous space below the desolate lands, and there it crouched to be a man.
What this might have been, none may say, for the seeping Undergod Ruk lusts for nerves alive with pain and screaming. The oily, liquid Ruk oozed upon the demon of ages, distracted by its necklace of nerves and thoughts, and consumed it; the nerves hang yet in the Silent Web of Ruk, wherein pain greater than all the world's suffering plays sweetly for the Undergods. This much is etched by iron claw-knives upon the stone of the Acris Tablets, or so is believed by the few free scholars who dwell in filth in the sewers of Magak.
But the demon's throne remains, and I have seen it. Expelled from the deep earth, it stands canted, tall as ten men, foul and eternally rotting in the bone-strewn Vision Desert beyond Abekabar. Diseased beggars and women halved lengthways by the sorceror Bagad-Tul are stoned and cast from Abekabar; the throne sustains them in ways no man should see, and these weak grow strong in the desert that thirsts for blood and flesh. The dregs sport, lust and mock Bagad-Tul and greedy merchants in the shade of the rotted throne - and so none in Abekabar now dare the caravan path marked by tall black pylons that crosses the Vision Desert.
[ Posted by Reason on November 4, 2006 | Permanent Link ]
| Undergods Came From the Stars |
| Tomes of Amaxathroth > Ink, Blood and Parchment |
In an aeon past, foolish sorcerors built a way to the stars, and in doing so, brought Undergods and a plague of demons upon the world. Even now, these sorcerors scream within the gizzards of the greatest of Undergods, and may they suffer an aeon yet! It is upon their account that loathesome, gigantic maggots yet worm their way beneath plain and mountain, spawning demons of claw and fang to torment this fading age of man.
Only one torture-mad sorceror has ever found death, in an age in which the White Mountains of Emreca and the corpulent Undergod Hruzle beneath were cleft in two by a great movement of the earth. A full half of the Neglenda of the infested woods beyond the mountains were struck dead, those vicious men who once leashed shaggy crelt and carried darts to hunt bloodsucking flies the size of man's head. The remainder and their fattened women were swallowed by the waters of the Lantac, that rushed across the land to fill the great crevass.
In place of the Neglenda, a stench to slay men and the most vile demons wormed their way from the pits beneath the White Mountains. The fat of Hruzle became rancid, peeling away from the mountaintop that pierced and crushed the Undergod's gizzard; from this spawned most terrible, poisonous and angry demons. Men suffered and died in ways the Neglenda could only have dreamed of lustfully - but this was an age past.
When I climbed the White Mountains, men of an empire come from naught and gone to ruins had long ago slain the greatest of demons to roam this reach of Emreca. Their blood and rent flesh was shunned even in memory, but their seed had given to warring cities and a rule of cruel demon-blooded women - and in this there is little difference between Emreca and the lands of the Meddin Sea. What matter the sex of the murderer or the victim? To a demon, a worm is a worm, fit food for eggs and spawn.
Beyond the stone towers that mark the farthest reach of the Beast Uvea, hopeless captives are roped and herded into worn, demon-haunted ways that lead beneath the White Mountains. These are wretches the Beast has deemed unworthy; spared from her lustful, crushing attentions, they are instead doomed to the tearing embrace of black gesk, four-armed iryth, and more terrible spawn of rotted Hruzle. Death would be preferable to a tortured span as a demon's mate, amusement, or sack for eggs. The Beast's daughters stand watch upon cavern entrances with long, sharp spears to encourage those who hesitate in the pursuit of a fate ordained.
Gelded, face-scarred mistresses of the Beast Uvea's court claim that ten men have returned from beneath the White Mountains, and that each bore a portion of the Undergod Hruzle. The skin of each man is stuffed and set with bluestone for eyes about the Beast's bloodstained bedsheets - and she regards them most fondly whilst sporting with her newest plaything.
[ Posted by Reason on November 3, 2006 | Permanent Link ]
