| January 2007 | << December 2006 | February 2007 >> |
| The Mad Scribe and Limbs Torn From Scholars |
| Tomes of Amaxathroth > Scholars |
Of all the works laid at the restless feet of Amaxathroth, the Blue Tome is that most often found in the collections of the credulous, so called for the Blue Sigil upon the covering parchment. Its prevalence is the work of the Mad Scribe, who once held the four-faced spire of Magak as her own, and drove the scholars of that murderous city into the filth and darkness beneath to hide.
The Blue Tome was to be copied from the second binding of Amaxathroth the Cursed, inked a hundred times over by the dread construction of the Mad Scribe: yellow rope, aged wood, sorcery and fifty arms torn from the finest scholars of the Prime Fane; the teeth of impkin to gnaw and sharpen quills; two hearts of gorg to beat forth blood; the nerves of lesser demons to string the parts into one; the scaly wings of a roarch to beat the whole into motion.
Such a vile screaming the sorcerous creation made as it twisted the words and scratched great vituperations upon parchment that all of Magak fled - save for the Mad Scribe, who wrestled with her creation and screamed her own potent curses. For a night and a day, none dared enter the city, such were the shrieks and growls, the booming shouts and cackling of demons, such was the dire reputation of the Mad Scribe. When all was silent once more, lesser sorcerors and priests returned in trepitude to find naught remaining of either the Mad Scribe or her sorcerous construction - save for a great hole burst through the uppermost reach of the four-faced spire, and Blue Tomes scattered about the base.
Beware the Blue Tome! Many are the tales of sorcerors slain and scribes trapped by the demon-tainted words within, but I say there is little to choose between the cursed hand of Amaxathroth, and hatred given voice by Gorg blood pumped through the stolen limbs of scholars. Heed either at risk of your life given to eternal torment by demonkind.
Since the age of the Mad Scribe, always there is one in Magak who lusts after the same heights of sorcery, one to cull the scholars who live as rats in filth and ruins beneath the feet of sorcerors. The priest Thodar of the Fane of the Undergods has taken this place these past years, callous lord to a waxen-faced flock drained of their very will and life. The gold of his coffers calls diseased and starving brigands from cave and hill to creep across the broken walls of Magak by night, and sends them below the spires and fanes as limb-thieves. With great hooks and rusty axes, the rabble hunt skulking scholars of sewer and tunnel; each morning, a bloody pile of severed limbs brings Thodar closer to the mantle of the Mad Scribe - and his doom.
[ Posted by Reason on January 28, 2007 | Permanent Link ]
| A Tainted Grove, Born of Demonflesh |
| Tomes of Amaxathroth > Ink, Blood and Parchment |
In a deserted place of Espaga, near to the Meddin shores, grows a tainted grove of twisted trees, tall grass and glistening orange fruit - but underfoot is rot and the feel of bone beneath fallen leaves. A nameless lesser Undergod, as dead as alive, reaches up from a deep place beneath the lands of men, strands of ropy demonflesh twisted into every branch and each watery fruit. So the men and women who come here, lost and tempted, never leave.
A sorcery of vibration within the grove calls to the nerves of men, tugs upon the hearts of women, and the eating of demon fruit changes the lost utterly. The essence of the Undergod melts away that which makes the cruelty of man distinct from the cruelty of beasts, severs the screaming ghost from the corrupting flesh. Slavering in the manner of animals, but eyes crying for the ways of man soon lost, these unfortunates eat and eat, growing bloated in limb and torso as though shuddering, olive-skinned bladders of oil.
Finally unable to reach the calling fruit, mewling and blubbering, the most corpulant tear and puncture one another in hunger for the demonflesh, spilling stench and meat turned to liquid rot across the grass and coiling roots. Soon enough, nothing is left to warn away those who will come after - and the nameless Undergod twitches far below in the pleasures its flesh transmits.
Half an age ago, a witch of Malg set fifty of her scheming sisters upon my path to Cadaz, each bearing long needles and vicious sorceries to torment me in vengence for my refusal of the witch's plain and unremarkable favors. The first I drowned, as has been the tradition of ages in wild Espaga, but the others, and their weak-willed, ax-armed lovers of Cadaz, I led for days into the Undergod's grove.
Upon the hill of rocks above the grove, and beneath sun and cloud, I thought of the deserved death to come below, as newly swollen puppets of the Undergod moaned though a mash of fruit and demonflesh. How apt the diorama, the Meddin lands cast in a single expanse - the ever-greedy fattened to incapacity by their excess, given to prey upon one another for the pleasure of demons by a hunger that cannot be sated. In place of twisting trees, there might be the spires of Magak, the opulant halls of Calland - and the wormish sorcerors and fattened merchants who plunder one another's corrupt flesh.
I did not wait to see the fate of the witches and their lovers, for Cadaz, and thence a passage to Jibaral, called me onward.
[ Posted by Reason on January 21, 2007 | Permanent Link ]
| The Spire of Salt, Thirst and Madness |
| Tomes of Amaxathroth > Ink, Blood and Parchment |
A line of broken black pylons leads from the bone-strewn and most desolate part of the Vision Desert to the Sea of Salt. Set by men of a past aeon, shimmering in the heat, glistening beneath cold stars, the pylons form a treacherous silken thread to beckon those cast from caravans, hunted by the keen blades of black-clad Amaram or maddened by thirst.
Strewn is the Vision Desert with worn remains of foolish lives from this and many former ages, but not so the broken shores of the Sea of Salt. Few of in this age can claim to have stood upon the crusted salt-sands, and the remains of those who stumble to fall, broken by thirst, at the very last pylon are vanished. No man might know their contortions upon the shallow waters that burn to the very touch, their thrashing upon the poison mud.
The crippled priestess Haneh, who lived three times the span of a man within dark caves beneath the high mount of Jerlasum, told me the why of this in trade for a diadem of her ancestor-god. Those who believe themselves chosen hunger for such trinkets; their hearts would be easily bought were such diadems and jewels not guarded closely and with fervor.
In a past and distant age, the sorceror Gidden long ruled over the people who would claim Jerlasum, and drank deep of the life of men and women to sustain his wasting flesh. He cast their rattling, withered corpses aside to molder beneath the harsh sun. Soon, the dust of the dead came to form a great desert, choking grass and palm, and swirling into the air to scour rock and flesh. What little blood dripped from Gidden's lips and sacrifical altars pooled to form a shallow salt sea amidst the dust.
The desert grew, and still the sorceries of Gidden drew new flesh to his call - to a mighty spire of salt blocks, set about with great and rusted chains, that rose within the shallow Sea of Salt. The thirst-mad and charmed by sorcery, too dry and burned to bleed from cracked skin, would wade into the sea, one by one, with cries and moans of anguish in the voice of circling vagra.
Yet the lives of strong men and lush women, broken upon the desert and consumed utterly, could not sustain Gidden an age. With a great and final sorcery, built upon the bones of a hundred children, he rebuilt his tower within the visions of the dying come to the Sea of Salt. Many-clawed Gidden even now reaches from the pitiful depths of thirst and pain to steal the very body and death of those who come to his domain. The barred cells of his vision-spire fill slowly with the croaking anguish of madmen who cannot die, with gaunt, eye-swollen women who babble in agony for age upon age. Their unending madness and sight into the burning sun are life to the sorceror Gidden.
So spoke the cripple Haneh, served by ten priests as though a queen. I have knelt in the anguish of thirst, sustained by the ancient curse that yet echoes in the halls of demonkind, upon the shores of the Sea of Salt. Yet I have seen no tall spire, heard no call of ancient sorcery. But of bones, ragged cloth and tarnished prizes, there are none past the fiftieth pylon to rise from the sands; all has been swallowed by the burning salt.
The life of Haneh was consigned to the catacombs of ruined, palm-shaded Jerlasum, watched for a year and a day by dour priests who believe their flesh to hold drops of godly blood. Her stone coffer and dry bones remain now, cracked and disheveled, but the diadem is mine once more, for the tale was worth no more than three lives of possession.
[ Posted by Reason on January 3, 2007 | Permanent Link ]
