| December 2006 | << November 2006 | January 2007 >> |
| A Pestilent, Unending Mire |
| Tomes of Amaxathroth > Ink, Blood and Parchment |
Facing the Lantac, the land that is called Flada by the brutish daughters of Uvea lies mired like a broad and brooding toad - poisonous, slimed and submerged in muck, save for the most repulsive of protruberances. Great blue flies of stingers the length of a woman's forearm, venomous, slithering qualth and squalid heat are but half the year, the rest comprised of dire storms called up by demons of the Caraben Sea and urged on by sorcerors of the sweltering isles. The mighty winds and salt waves swirl to flatten any endeavor of men and wash away any track laid across these vile swamps.
A fool might journey moons to encompass each last rotting stench of Flada's murk, each subtle variance of swamp and poison vermin glad to feast upon living flesh - should he survive past the very first days. Of such fools, there have been too many to count across the ages, but no sign remains; even their very bones have become mush to feed the purple blooms of the mire. Yet still they would come, were there other than savages in Emreca - an aeon of glittering tales cry and beckon to the greedy hearts of men, and the schemes of women beneath.
Tales of wealth deep within Flada were told in every age that yet retains name and memory; great veins of gold, shining in the last light of sun upon the vile brown waters; ten squat towers of a sorcerous conclave, a library of unrivaled potency upon the upmost reach; the bloating flesh of a dead Undergod, sparkling with gems throughout. A dozen tales I have heard, in the holds of Emreca and farther places besides; cross the Lantac and Passac, and scholars argue over tales descended and embellished from a past age of cities and great vessels to cleave the oceans.
One such tale gave me to rue and laughter, and she who retold it to great regret - that in Flada stood ruined the Black Palace, wherein Amaxathroth the Impetuous won youth eternal in an age gone by. Youth eternal! How I laughed, angry and with the voice of the Demon-King; there is naught of youth in the curse of years, welcomed by Amaxathroth the Cursed or not, and far indeed from Flada once rose the Black Palace. Might you well as seek the heart of a women within the dripping flesh of the Undergod's spawn; beneath the like and outward casts and appurtenances of cruelty there is naught the same. Naught!
There is a truth to the tales of Flada, those that will not rouse my ire, but it is a hidden truth. Know this, scholar of forgotten tales, scribe of cracked tablets from bygone ages: Flada slimes itself in drooling anticipation for the flesh of the foolish, and the hearts of men lust for a fool's death. All else is the embellishment of those who will live, and a demon's hunger for the taste of those who will die.
[ Posted by Reason on December 27, 2006 | Permanent Link ]
| A Toll of Flesh For the Raging Chasm |
| Tomes of Amaxathroth > Ink, Blood and Parchment |
Serpent-foaming Lantac and shard-laden waves of the Passac have eaten away at the rock of Emreca through the aeons; at the very narrows of that land runs a mighty, raging chasm of waters to link two oceans. Laid through earth and rock straight as a sword edge, here surged great sea vessels of metal and crystal banners in the last age of Yorm, bearing lords in search of sorcery within the deepest Passac.
The far sands of Meddin lands are the grave of Yorm and its age of wonderous rarities; it may be that crystal tablets yet lie buried, guarded by ghosts of demon-ridden scholars, upon which are written those secrets wrested from Passac waters so long ago. But what matter should they join the black mountain of secrets lost to men? No filthy, broken scribe who hides beneath the fanes of Magak will weep over that which he knows not exists. No masked, unwomaned mistress of the Beast Uvea's court will sigh at that tale of which she hears the name and no more.
I have stood upon hills of naked rock above the steaming jungle of Pan Ma, there to see distant Passac and distant Lantac in the same sweep of my eyes - and the chasm of white waters far below, that even the greatest and most ancient serpents will not brave. The man-large worms of that jungle are a sickly white, and beslime their way between close-pressed trunks, waiting and sliding with the patience of the nerveless until their prey must rest. Beware white-drenched leaves and wood soaked to poison mush, lest you might journey for days without end, without rest, stalked upon each step by worming, faceless demons. But Amaxathroth the Wanderer am I, cursed to live by the Demon-King of the Black Palace, and the charms of poison Kresh are known to me besides - there is naught of threat to one such as I in the worms of Pan Ma.
The chasm to link Lantac and Passac was once bridged by graceful spans, built in an age of priest-lords and mighty, high-walled cities in Emreca. Brave searfarers saw white waters as the floor of a giant's stone-walled temple fane, vaulted by bridges of gleaming white and a sky of blue above. The bridges are no more, many ages gone; eaten by the waters, just as the land has swallowed the cities and ruins of proud priest-lords.
There is but one way I know to cross the chasm, and that is upon the red boats of those who call themselves Marn, and dwell in villages upon the Passac coast where the jungle stands upon tall roots and drinks of the salt water. Scarred, bone-fingered Marn will trade only flesh for their attention and favor, for flesh is sacred to their god of buried, secret altars. Of great regard is the Marn women who weaves dried flesh from a hundred bloody trades, or the Marn man who skillfully steals living flesh from one left to live, bleed and scream in loss.
Ugly are the Marn, but secretive, for I had heard naught of their ways, nor even their very presence upon this world of poison and squalor, when first I descended from worm-ridden Pan Ma to the salt and silt-rooted jungle edge. Their red boats I saw in stone-formed lagoons, and passage I sought - but horrid indeed was my encounter with the flesh traders and their perfected braid of torment, woven of blindness brought by greed, murderous urges and tortures that collect, putrid, in the hearts of men.
Where the chasm rapids pour forth to roil the Passac, I bade my time to bleed from deep and ragged trade wounds into the waters, and then threw the dusky boatman from his red oar to the waves, there to feed sharp-beaked, many-eyed beasts with a taste for the blood of men. This murder and the boat for passage I considered poor indeed in trade for all I was made to learn of the Marn and their ways.
[ Posted by Reason on December 23, 2006 | Permanent Link ]
| The Sorceror Denas, Foul and Forgotten |
| Tomes of Amaxathroth > Ink, Blood and Parchment |
It is a pity that the gluttenous sorceror Denas is no longer known in this age, though the twisted stump of a tower built solid and thick to support his folds of flesh and sullen, demon-tainted blood yet stands upon the Meddin shore. Sorcerors and witches both are given to the indulgence of base desires, sated upon slaves, impkin and the compelled, but none since have so enslaved themselves to the hungers of the flesh. Naught but a corpulant beast was Denas, a mass of temper and vile hungers, no more restrained by thought than the most ravenous, gaunt of gorgs. In that, he was more true to his corruption than men and women more blackened by the whisper of hearts and nerves than by rotting, sorcerous gifts of the Undergod Freth.
Well for their sport and cruelty do the lascivious of Harumetha and murderous of Magak forget the might of foul Denas. It would weigh heavy upon their hearts that they stood but a tenth advanced upon a path unperceived, undesired, and yet inevitable upon the learning; malign sorceries would wilt, conspiracies become nerveless, murders aimless and seductions dried of vicious gratification. A pleasure I would take in such, but the vermin, filth and black sorceries of Meddin cities have a place within the doom that will come upon this world of men, and naught may stand to block that path.
The last ruins of the tower of Denas crumble upon the Meddin shore at a place once called Marsay. A port city stood there in a past aeon of man, gone to ruins, then mere grass-sands and the cries of the rerak, flocking to each new death upon the shore. Again rose a high-walled port and mighty merchant empire, only to crumble in the manner of all works of man. A third time was Marsay a port in the age of mighty, crystal-walled Yorm, host to a thousand marvels - but of this all, naught is left.
Atop the dust of three cities spread the ample flesh of Denas, and soon will the last of his tower join those remains. Yet a miasma shrouds the base-stones of Denas' tower upon windless days even in this age, ill remnant of a mark of death and doom once spread across the land and those unfortunate enough to be born beneath the sight of a sorceror of power and malign will.
[ Posted by Reason on December 22, 2006 | Permanent Link ]
| Penned Cattle of the Blood Witches |
| Tomes of Amaxathroth > Ink, Blood and Parchment |
The blood witches of the penisula Sef Asisca are of a beauty fit to ensnare men - but only when seen from afar in lascivious embraces with one another, fair and beckoning as lushly wooded hills upon the Passac coast of Emreca. But the witches are sharp-toothed and black of heart beneath lithe woman-flesh; they feed well upon the blood of slack-faced men kept as cattle in hidden, stinking pens.
The waters about Sef Asisca flow with an oleaginous and subtle poison, such that the great bay beneath the hills is calm and of a green taint, even when great winds blow fog and cloud from the Passac. Drink not from the streams of this land lest you burn with the desire to be meat for the witches table, or blood to paint their skins and slake their thirst. When the winds blow strong, the witches dance naked about their low, strange-shaped dwellings of stone and fitted wood, and consort with one another, with passion and sighing, beneath rows of dripping, fresh-slaughtered men.
It is upon a night of winds that a traveler - or thief, or foolish scholar - might journey the pensinula unnoticed, to enter within certain fallen temples and slumped fanes of a past age. These edifices are shunned by the blood witches, but the final, confirming sigil to many a potent charm might be found etched in worn stone within. Of those who seek such, few return. A sorcerous wealth lies within the darkened places of Sef Asisca, and its lure is the death of thieves and scholars, kept in their greed past the dawn and the dying of the winds.
Of the sorceries and secrets of the blood witches, I will say but this: they are not for men to know lest the blood of their very life already stains smiling lips and sharpened teeth. This will stand as truth until a coven of sorcerors and army of of sigil-marked shields razes all the woods and dwellings of Sef Asisca, and murders every last witch, uncaring of what is learned and what is consigned to flames and destruction.
But Emreca is not as the Meddin lands; the wilds empty of men are deep indeed. There is naught about the woods and poison bay of the blood witches but serpents of the Passac and tall, angry demons, nameless and spine-limbed, that stalk the inland wilds. No waiting army of barbarous men lies scattered and sleeping; no ancient sorceror of ill renown plots within his spire to enslave these witches. So has it has been for an age, for tales of the blood witches of Sef Asisca are told even so far as atop smoking Rania, amongst the Komo of the frozen wastes, and, enviously, by maimed mistresses of the court of the Beast Uvea.
[ Posted by Reason on December 16, 2006 | Permanent Link ]
| Rushing, Fetid Waters of the Years |
| Tomes of Amaxathroth > Ink, Blood and Parchment |
Change! You rare and lettered scribe, slave to a king or slave to your heart, clutching at this tome of blood and parchment that will bring misery to so many; yes, Amaxathroth the Wanderer has seen change. Change fit to burst a man asunder, or a woman to weep herself empty from hollowed eyes. The fetid waters of the ages rush yet in their hurry to be past my sight, filling my waterskin over and again with stench and poison. You are but a fly, your few years but a passing glimpse of a vast extent of rot and truth.
This, the Demon-King gave to me as his curse, and knowing full well I sought as much - such games are played by the maggots that consume this world, and so do those who believe they can chart the rivers that flow within the hearts of men. A bitter comfort this might be for those sorcerors who live yet, flensed and tortured for an aeon in return for granting passage from the stars. Men and women shudder and soil themselves, scream and flee in terror before demons set upon the world by the Undergods - but it is those spawn who should blind and consume themselves in what passes for a demon's fear, lest they learn that which they will never understand.
A demon may twist itself into a grotesque semblance of a man, may scrape nerves as twine from the living and form itself a heart for thinking, may torment and leer and rend the flesh of all about - but it cannot shape, cannot conceive, cannot understand the simple cruelty that is a man. Change, my companion, is a guiding, enclosing wall built of ruined hearts; hearts stabbed by women, hearts crushed by men, more inventive in their treachery than any dripping horror hatched from the burrows beneath the mountains. Long ages gone is the Black Palace, and I, Amaxathroth, am become the Demon-King's witness, from this time of dripping ink to the very end of this world.
Rare, lettered scholar, you slave of slaves, read not further the words of Amaxathroth! Be content with your place, your knowledge and your death, of however great a suffering and anguish it might be. Swim amongst the lesser fishes, and delve not into the dark depths where terrible beasts lurk, barnacled, pale and ancient.
[ Posted by Reason on December 9, 2006 | Permanent Link ]
| Women Born of the Woods |
| Tomes of Amaxathroth > Ink, Blood and Parchment |
Beyond the White Mountains and the lands of the Beast Uvea are vast plains given to the snorting brathac, hooved demons of great weight and temper. Even the vermin that infest their scales and mange bear a loathing of men to match that of the Beast Uvea's daughters. Sorcerous means exist to cross these plains, including certain signs of ancient Yorm known about the Meddin Sea, but the unruly savages of Emreca rather set crude boats upon lake and river, when they risk such far journeys at all.
The touch of man falls but lightly upon the core of Emreca in this age. It is a land given to the Undergods and their spawn, where the very soil loathes the boot that presses upon it.
Bearding the farthest extent of the White Mountains against the gaze of stamping, fearsome brathac are certain woods, little known to the cowed slaves and cruel women of the Beast Uvea. In the heat of summer, women are born of the woods, lithe of limb, of great beauty and innocence; they wander from the trees to become meat for brathac, or for slinking black gesk come forth from mountain caverns should they live to see the sun set.
From two great stones set upright and soaked in blood by the demon-blooded mother of the Beast Uvea, I watched women of the woods tumble and break beneath the stone hooves of thundering brathac. A sorcery of great power lies hidden there, within the strange trees between demons of the mountains and demons of the plains, but it did not call to me as other than a net of chain and hooks for the incautious - may the fisher remain unknown.
[ Posted by Reason on December 3, 2006 | Permanent Link ]
| The Fitful Slumber of Rania |
| Tomes of Amaxathroth > Ink, Blood and Parchment |
Once an empire held sway over now-savage Emreca. Stern and rapacious priest-lords ruled forest, plain and mountain with the same iron grip held upon the hearts of their followers, and named both the Lantac and the Passac oceans that bounded their power. But the God of Emreca was an old and fading God, and the soil of Emreca has fed an aeon upon the buzzing of demon breath - it crawls to swallow even the ruins that might show what manner of men tamed this vast land.
Only words are left. There are women who serve a priesthood upon the slopes of Rania, a volcano that slumbers but fitfully upon the Passac coast. A man might journey years from Rania to find the Lantac, stalked each step by clawed and hooved demons, but yet these women know the ocean's name, and speak that name just as the Komo of the frozen ice, or scholars of Magak in Meddin lands. Mighty indeed is an empire that marks the tongue of man across ages - and remember well, rare scribe, what little comes of power if there is but an age to wait.
A mighty city of this long-past empire once stretched from the shores of the Passac to the very foot of Rania, as great as the crystal palaces of fallen Yorm, but volcanoes are angered by the acts of men and whims of women. The priests of Rania, who build shrines upon steaming rock and torment themselves with fire, tell that three times has their God woken in anger to bury all within sight of the peak temple beneath burning rock. This the fearsome demons of Emreca know, and little plagued is this land of forest and broken blackrock by spawn of the Undergods.
Women chant the ancient songs upon the slopes of Rania, that the God remain pleased and men might live to hunt lesser serpents in the bays and rivers. Little do the two meet, save but furtively. This is the way of Rania, taught by fire-scarred priests of an iron grip, who smile whilst setting chains and scalding rocks upon the screaming few who disobey their rule.
[ Posted by Reason on December 2, 2006 | Permanent Link ]
