| Tomes of Amaxathroth > Scholars |
| Library of the Reddened King |
Beneath the palace of the Reddened King lies a library vault to hold his ten Tomes of Amaxathroth the Wanderer. The vault is rumored far and wide, well-hidden and guarded by the most savage bandsmen of the Edge-Walled City - those yellow-painted ones who wail and cut at one another, dancing about fires at the palace gates. Naked scholars, captive and tormented by the bandsmen, are bound in chains and carried downwards by torchlight with each new night. They must wring new secrets from the Tomes, or be cut at each limb and hurled four ways at once from the Scar Tower above the market of the starving bands.
The Reddened King is hungry for a knowledge of the farthest lands; bandsmen who prove their wiles in the Pointed Maze - and yet live - are sent away on direction of the Tomes and tortured scholars. The returned bear heads of the most wise and honored men of far cities, for the Reddened King dines only upon travel-dessicated brains, and in this grows ever more cruel and powerful with each passing year. Head-bearers are gifted with great rubies and pleasing slaves - or are slain by jealous and cruel-mouthed bands for the amusement of the powerful.
That which my master knows of Amaxathroth - wanderer, murderer, cursed man and scholar - came copied in blood, upon scraps hidden about the bodies of those long cut four ways and eagerly eaten. The words of Amaxathroth have a manner of seeping from the strictures placed about them by jealous Kings.
[ Posted by Reason on October 18, 2006 | Permanent Link ]
| The Hidden Vale of Cultured Brutes |
The fat, pock-faced dockmasters of Calland greatly prize the blue-black horns of mountain jalsque. They grind the horns of that ill-tempered beast for philtres to ply upon Calland maidens, or as bribes for lustful sorcerors of Magak and Harumetha. Why, the great and reviled Massas had a horn to mount upon each and every torch bracket of her reception hall - until she was cut apart and burned by those captains whose labor filled her coin vault. This, I am sure you know already. Let me tell you a little more, however, for nearby lies an interesting tale.
Lulled from sense by Calland coins, the foolish have long traveled to the dolesome Grey Peaks, a wall of few doors that divides the lands of men. There, they seek the jalsque with spear and net. Most are caught and slowly consumed by winged demons, or crushed by the Garamek Worm that coils itself about an entire mountain. Yet there are some few who have made their names known by luck or skill in the hunt.
Torthen the Climber claimed the skulls of twenty jalsque in his years as hunter of the Grey Peaks, proof of his worth piled before his tumbledown tower outside the gates of Calland. Such was his renown, none sought to disturb his cobwebbed door in the year and day of a hunt.
It came to pass that Torthen followed a mighty red jalsque of great strength, far into the Grey Peaks, farther than any man of Callend had gone before. Steep and jagged were the mountainsides, lacking path and shelter - and the demons flew above, screaming to one another. For all his prowess with spear and slope, Torthen would have been carried away to torment by the winged horrors, but that a great storm of rain and sudden rivers came upon the mountains. In but a short time, the the treacherous rocks slid Torthen the Climber into a deep ravine, and pinned him there above a raging torrent.
Upon awakening as the storm had passed, Torthen found himself surrounded by misshapen brutes - shambling echoes of men, twisted of face and thick of limb, yet clad in well-made clothing after the fashion of craftsmen. They set upon him, binding him, and there was naught he could so ambushed and half-buried by rocks carried with his fall. The brutes carried him away, running like jalsque across slopes that no man of Callend could match, grunting to one another in a coarse tongue.
The brutes carried Torthen down and down into a green valley of grass and twining trees below the high peaks, and there he saw many more of their kind. Every tree was set precisely, and huts and halls of carefully-fitted stone formed a circle at the very center of it all. If not for the ill-shaped creatures before his eyes, Torthen might have thought himself within a sanctuary of those who built ancient Yorm, long before the sands overtook its well-formed streets.
Placed and barred within a hut, alone upon a well-crafted bed, it did not take Torthen long to slip his bonds. Was he not Torthen the Climber, who wrestled down his fifteenth jalsque and broke its neck across a high rock spur with his own hands? However well made and well tied, the ropes of half-men would be no obstacle.
Through barred and slatted window of finely waxed wood, then, Torthen saw a gathering of brutes from all across the vale. Such an array of faces and bodies - fit only for the drug-addled dreams of beggars in the spice markets of Alacran, or the waxen curse figurines that Magaken sorcerors melt to bring anguish upon their victims. Yet in form of the most peaceful and civilized people of ancient Yorm did these brutes consort themselves, gathering and speaking in turn as wise sages. About and through their ugly, polite throng passed a large and well-used book of leather, marked well upon its bindings by a blackened symbol I think you well know - yes, a tome of Amaxathroth.
Yet Torthen knew not then what he saw, more valued than all the jalsque horns of the Grey Peaks. Perhaps it is as well, for even had he escaped with the tome as well as his life - there are a thousand who would slay him for it. But escape Torthen did; whilst the brutes held council and debated in their gruntish tongue, he took stones from the far wall and slipped away, stealthy and unseen, as only a hunter can be.
I have heard like tales as this one. I have heard tell of Borok of the White Spears who sought to loot great red rubies from mines of the Reddened King in the mountains above the Edge-Walled City. Or of Nelphen the Sea Captain, run aground upon a fog-bound isle where the distant mountain-tops shone with gold. Yet there is always the hidden vale, and the brutes who act with a manner that is gone from the world of men - and there is always the tome of Amaxathroth.
More than this, I do not know. Perhaps there are those who do, but their price may be too high for one who desires to keep both limbs and blood.
[ Posted by Reason on October 21, 2006 | Permanent Link ]
| Tomb of the Patient |
Amaxathroth has not wandered the world in an age; his tomes decay, his words stolen and hoarded yet by wizened sorcerors who cling to life like leeches in their towers. King and Lords, who would suffer a thousand torments to gain the curse of the nameless Demon-King, devise worse tortures for scholars who fail in finding the road to the Tomb of Amaxathroth.
Amaxathroth the Patient does not laugh at these fools, nor at us, for we are less than worms to his gaze. He waits for the world of men to end, or perhaps for the Demon-King to rise from an ancient, hidden coffer beneath the ruins of the Black Palace and forget his wrath. The dust covers Amaxathroth who has learned all that can be learned, seated upon the last of his Tomes, waiting.
The seeker who disturbs Amaxathroth will find wisdom not meant for those uncursed. He who finds and descends into the Tomb will ask one question, and give sanity in trade for an answer that might never be used. Amaxathroth has become a God, and we his priests, who sacrifice all we hold most valuable, the better to impale ourselves upon his words.
[ Posted by Reason on October 24, 2006 | Permanent Link ]
| The Mad Scribe and Limbs Torn From 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 ]
