Romancing the Stone (GLoGtober 2024)

FOOL. You wish to speak with stones? To make them move at your own will? The audacity. The sheer hubris- would you speak to eternity and if by some chance it answers keep your sanity at the response? Stone knows no master, no language, at least none that your poor transient flesh could comprehend. Abandon this endeavor. 

 

What's that? 

...

How awful. Did he at least die painlessly? 

...

To shreds you say. Well, how's his wife holding up? 

...

To shreds you say. 

Well, if you're set on your goal there are some who know stonelore that could teach you. 

This is for the Secrets of the Stones challenge for GLoGtober 2024. 

Diegetic Stone Magic

I cannot teach you the ways of the earth, but there are some learned scholars and fanatics that could teach you- if you can convince them of your need.

1. The First Men

A cult of so called "First Men", they claim their mysteries and rites stretch back to before fire. To them, stone is the first god, the oldest god, and the truest. Before all else there was the earth beneath our feet, and after all that follows there will still be stone. Stone was our first mother, before the winds taught us language and deceit. The magics of the First Men are ancient blood rites that allows them to convince stone to do their bidding- for a time and a price. 

By studying their mysteries, you can learn the following rituals.

Swallow: Dig a pit deep in the earth, at least ten feet. A live cow must be placed inside, this is the sacrifice and must be of quality and health. Fill the pit in and bury the sacrifice. Press your ear to the ground and listen for a day and a night after the sounds below cease. Dig the pit back open and you'll find mother left her boon, a single bone from the sacrifice. By snapping this bone you can command the earth to open up and swallow an area the size of  a pit, entombing your foes.

Shatter: Kill a man with a stone, then drain his blood into a deep crevice. When you throw the stone next it will fly fast and true, exploding and fragmenting violently on impact.

Strength: At sunset, roll a bolder to the top of a hill. All night, the bolder will try to roll down a slope and you must hold it in place. If you can manage to keep the bolder on top of the hill until the sun rises then chip off a piece of the bolder. By swallowing this shard you gain the strength of a giant from sunset to sunrise.

2. The Listeners

In secret holds in the earth, deep in caves and far from the surface, you might find the Listeners. A mute order of monks and scholars, they hide the fastnesses away in the quiet places of the dark and build their oracular devices, a precise and delicate working learned from cavern spiders. Large pools of still water. Webs of hair-spun rope taut across caverns. In the dark they cast large ovals of dark glass on the ground and watch for the fractures. Listeners use these devices to listen to the whispers at the heart of the world and learn of events to come and events long past, recording them in great winding stone carvings in mazelike corridors of natural stone.

For each year spent in silence with the Listeners you can learn their craft, learn how to cast and read the dooms and portents of deep places. 

Echospeak: Place an object in a stone basin and fill it with clear water. Spend a night gazing into the water in a dark place and you can learn its recent history, who has touched it, what it was crafted for, and how it earned its marks and scars.

Whisper Bell: Craft two sets of small stone bells and a hollow-bone drum with a taut lid of silk. Using the bells in a deep place you can send messages into the earth to echo eternal across the heartbeat of the world, readable only by the matching set of bells and drum.

Perfect Omen: Cast a dark glass mirror across a stone floor and fast in silence for a week listening for its cracks and fractures. Tattoo the resulting spiderweb of fortune onto your body and you can perfectly succeed at one action in your future.

3. Heralds of the Dark

Earthen heretics, they've forsaken their mother and now know her ire. Heralds can be found in great towers, preferring to keep as much distance between them and the earth as they can. When they walk on the ground they do so on high stilts of varied make to trick the earth and disguise their movements. The Heralds make auspices to the night, to the quiet stones of darkened skies, silent gods in their own rights, unknown and hungry for adoration. Their magics and rituals are profane to all earthly realms, seek their teachers only in great need or greed, as once you know their mysteries the earth will never be a home to you, now stonecursed.

Each ritual learned draws more hate from the earth. Stoneware cracks on your touch, rocks run like streams to trip you, and caverns will swallow you whole.

Recall: Forge a six foot wide disk of meteoric metals and submerge it in a basin of blood, including your own, for a month and a day. Expose the disk to the open sky in a high place. Once a month, while you can see the night sky, you can teleport back to the disk with a thought.

Dweomercraft: A delicate loom of glass and spider silk must be built and carefully maintained. When left unwatched and untended during a new moon, the loom will spin a bolt of starsilk that can be forged as a peerless metal. Its edge can cut through all but the strongest of metals and it can hold an enchantment like no other material. Exposure to sunlight negates its powers.

Meteor: The first magic, music, a secret learned from mother before language- all stones know it. Sing to the dark stones in the night from sunset to sunrise for a week past the breaking of your voice and the cracking of your soul. Great care must be taken to not give too much to the night and leave the caster a hollowed husk. Once the ritual is complete, the caster may call to a dark stone, once, and summon a meteor to strike a destination within sight. 

4. Shapers of Geltia

In far Geltia, generations of peerless masons have wrought great stoneworks and palaces. It is said that they can speak to stone and shape it at their will. This is true for those who undertake their most sacred ritual. Those seeking true mastery of stone must apprentice under a Geltian mason for a year before they can attempt the ritual. 

The mason first must acquire a block of perfect marble fit for a statue, and pour their heart into the shaping of a paramour of stone. Once complete and if the mason's heart is true, their creation will animate, filled with the spirit of stone that still yearns to feel time outside of the forces of erosion. Statue and craftsmen must then spend a year in courting and if the sculptor can win the heart of the earth the two are wed on the last day, after which the stone goes still once again. So long as the mason stays true to their vows they can then mold stone like clay until the day of their death.

The Doom that Befell Sorne

Located near a shaded forest at the stretching foothills of a secluded mountain range, the village of Sorne is a quiescent locale. Recently, an oppressive religious sect has moved in, the local witch has been arrested and set to be burned, and a round of gruesome murders has the village on the precipice of total chaos.  

What follows is an outline for an adventure in Sorne.

 

(I don't have much to say about vampires, but this is tangentially vampire related enough for me to say this is part of Vampire Weekend) 

What's Happened So Far

Untold seasons ago: 

A youth of nobility from a culture whose language and name has been rent from memory profaned a temple after his family refused his marriage to an apprentice priestess. As a consequence, a now unknown spirit of great power and malice issued a curse upon him such that he would only gain sustenance from consuming those around him. His love and familial piety was eroded until only the drive for survival remained- at the cost of all that he loved. Upon recognition of his heinous crimes against his lover and his family he threw himself into a well to be consumed by the waters deep in the earth.

Many years ago:

In the village that would become known as Sorne, a young girl escaped from wretched conditions and happened upon an ancient well. Thinking to seek the only hiding place her pursuers could not find her, she threw herself into its depths and therein happened upon the long slumbering night creature- body and mind warped by the passage of unknowable time. Desperation and chance saw the girl sing a song that charmed the beast, reminding it of the human it once was. In this encounter a subtle pact was formed, and the creature destroyed the girl's pursuers. From hereon, it bore the name Venge and the girl would be known as Hadira.

With time, Hadira learned many forgotten sciences and magics from Venge, and she came to be known as a witch of great power in the nearby lands. As her powers grew, she learned to call and quell the beast-mentor Venge who dwells within the ancient well. Using a specially crafted flute of ancient design, the beast would grant her any desire. During this peak of her powers, Hadira ordered the death of many a vile beast and man in the region, her counsel kept close and her blessing sought by the daring and desperate of the nearby towns. 

The monster Venge, now awakened and half-dreaming in bloody silt, was still wracked by its curse. Each day its memory and humanity eroded until its title of mentor was in name only. Awake now, Hadira increasingly found Venge to be more and more bloodthirsty, and more and more meals necessary to sate its growing hunger. In this time, there were many sentenced to sate his bloodthirst by necessity and not by justice. 

Whispers and rumor spread around the region of a powerful demon that haunts the woods and holds the villages and towns in its hungering grasp, their blood destined to sate its growing hunger.

In the last year:

The Choral Order, a militant order of singing priests and priestesses sanctioned by local regents, has been expanding its reach and setting up temples in cities and towns as far and wide as it can. Their creed is simple, issuing that all who wish to break free from the torments of eternal toil and the cycle of birth and rebirth need only sing loud with the Order at each service to ascend and free their souls. Through fervent and charismatic preachers, their religious zeal burst out of peasant towns and has washed over nobility and commoner alike. True or not, the resources they command are great- and the belief that fills their followers enables them to take great undertakings of courage. 

One of many similar endeavors, the Choral Order established a small temple in Sorne and began preaching to its people their creed. The assigned priest, Prelate Donan, quickly hears of the demon haunting the region and sets his order to finding and killing it to earn goodwill with the locals. 

Royalty in the region, now faded in power and prowess, adhered to a long ancient bloodline of priests and priestesses that adhered to now nameless gods and goddesses. Their bloodline once performed great miracles, bearing forward the blessings of their nameless divine ancestors their kiss can break any curse, no matter the origin and undo any transformation. The recent rise of the Choral Order has caused no small amount of strife in the region, and Royalists have secluded away one of the heirs to the throne in Sorne for safekeeping from rivals. Her name is Galia, and she does not know the full story of her heritage. Remus, a former captain of the royal guard now wears the guise of her father and acts as a shepherd in the town, with Galia as his daughter.

Last month:

Adir, child of Thorvald, the headman of Sorne, along with a gang of other adolescents stole into the home of Hadira as a test of bravery. While there, Adir stole Hadira's ancient flute and the gang fled into the night. Without the flute, Hadira has been increasingly unable to control Venge who has been killing at will in the town of Sorne on the first night of each week. Adir now exerts a tight-lipped control on the other adolescents who were with them and has hidden the flute under Thorvald's home- afraid of the consequences of the theft. 

Since then, Hadira has grown frantic and has been wounded by Venge as she has lost the ability to control the beast. In her weakness, she has been captured by the Prelate Donan and sentenced to death as the cause of the deaths in the region. Varia, de facto leader of the local Women's Circle, has been leading a subtle campaign amongst the women of Sorne to sway the men into freeing Hadira, but the stacking deaths each week have frozen them with fear.

Dramatis Personae:

Varia: Though not the eldest of the Women's Circle, Varia has risen to lead it through force of personality and sheer stubbornness. She sternly treats with the men of town and chastises them for supernatural beliefs, and especially has no love for Prelate Donan and the Choral Order's followers in town.

Thorvald: Headman through tradition and as a consequence of running Sorne's lone tavern: Knight's Rest. A recent widower, Thorvald has been having a difficult time keeping the town together especially after the forceful intrusion of the Choral Order.

Adir: Much like their father, Adir is a leader- but of the town's youths. Adventurous, bold, and known to get into no small amount of trouble. Now thinking that they have failed their father and their town- and fearing the hex and retribution of the renowned local witch, Adir's usual brash demeanor is much more curtailed and they jump at the slightest shadow.

Prelate Donan: A firm, militaristic conservative. Donan is an older man who once served in the Royal Armies. Having been converted to the Choral Order after a chance meeting with a charismatic preacher, Donan has spent the last ten years with a tight group of followers going from town to town and setting up new temples. Donan commands a force of ten armed men, all army veterans, who act as his own personal law enforcement throughout the town. The Choral Order has received a great deal of popular support, especially from the elderly and as well from many of the youth- though the leaders of Sorne are still skeptical.

Galia: A young woman nearing her coming of age, Galia has quickly been absorbed into Sorne society and accepted amongst the Women's Circle. She does not know about her heritage and believes Remus to be her father. She strongly resembles the long dead lover of Venge and, if seen by him, will inevitably be dragged back into his murky home beneath the waters of the well.

Remus: Reserved and extremely cautious, Remus swore an oath to Galia's father to keep her safe and takes it deadly serious. He has been accepted by the other men of Sorne and is recognized as a skilled shepherd very protective of his daughter.

Hadira: No one but Hadira knows her age, but even the oldest of Sorne recall their mothers and grandmothers seeking Hadira for counsel. She has diminished greatly in power since her peak, and now presents as a cranky old woman with a lash for a tongue. Since being injured by Venge she has been barely able to mount a defense, much less a spell, and has been deprived of food by the Choral Order since her capture. She is unwilling to tell the nature of Venge to any of the Choral Order and believes there must be a way to prevent his recent bloodlust.

Venge: Not even his bones remember his old form. Once, he was a man, but the burden of his curse, the depths of his murky sanctum, and the unerring turning of time has changed him into a creature resembling a bear sized fanged salamander. Venge possesses incredible speed and strength for a brief time after leaving the well but cannot travel far and cannot travel during the day- as Venge bears a vampiric curse. His mind has been eroded like a stone tossed in a river but his predator instinct is keen. Hadira's ancient flute is able to draw him out of this predatory mindset for a time- though even with it the effect is only temporary as he increasingly feeds on the local townsfolk. Venge's attacks are brutal, often crushing body parts or ripping them off to incapacitate his prey before draining the blood from their bodies, leaving them shriveled and broken.

Notable Locations

The Choral Temple: Newly constructed of wood, the temple has been fortified by Prelate Donan against the attacks of the night creatures. A root cellar has been converted into a holding cell for Hadira, and Prelate Donan and the rest of the Order hold that as long as she lives her demons will plague the town.

Hadira's Cabin: Deep in the woods, the cabin is high up in a tree and adorned with many fetishes and charms of strange make. The creatures of the woods, squirrels, owls, deer, etc, all owe Hadira allegiance and try to prevent unwanted intrusions. Her cat familiar, Phalanx, was unceremoniously stuffed into a chest by Adir and friends during their intrusion and is yowling for escape. Though Phalanx can't speak, they know exactly what is going on and wish to free Hadira.

Knight's Rest: Sorne's main gathering hall, the Knight's Rest is usually a warm and welcoming place for the townsfolk to relax in. With tensions high, it now acts as a gathering place for the small milita of Sorne and for the townsfolk to make their voices heard to Thorvald who tries to keep the peace. Hadira's ancient flute is hidden behind several sacks of flour in the cellar.

An Ancient Well: Even deeper in the forest, along paths even deer do not tread, stands a wide ancient well. It plunges deep into the earth and beneath its dark waters Venge makes his lair, buried in silt and clinging to dreams of a past world. Over much time, many have thrown valuables and treasures into the well and they all rest at the bottom as Venge's bed. 

What Will Happen

After the party arrives and if nothing is done to interfere, here is generally what happens:

Day One: Varia loudly confronts Prelate Donan with the eldest of the Women's Circle and demands Hadira's release. Thorvald urges reason and calm and breaks up the argument, calling for a town meeting the following day. A shepherd is torn apart and drained of blood tonight as well as his entirely family in their home.

Day Two: Remus confines Galia to their home and takes to prowling the fields nearby on patrol. The town holds a meeting at Knight's Rest where Prelate Donan presses the case that the killings are Hadira's doing and demands the town consent to her execution. Varia vehemently protests and Thorvald is torn by the new adherents to the Choral Order with Adir also pleading for Hadira's execution (*as a means to cover up their theft into Hadira's Cabin). The baker and her family are killed tonight by Venge, their house crushed by his massive body.

Day Three: A low fog clings to the town throughout the day and the Sorne militia, a group of poorly armed farmers, patrols with fervor. Children are kept up at home. Hadira begins casting a spell, her chanting heard as babbling by anyone nearby the Choral Order's Temple. Galia escapes from home tonight and consults with Varia before heading into the woods to search Hadira's Cabin. Freeing Phalanx she learns Adir is somehow the source of the beast's attacks and returns to town unharmed. Tonight, two of the armed contingent of the Choral Order are slaughtered in front of the temple by Venge.

Day Four: The Choral Order blames Hadira for the slaughter of their people. They once again demand the town's blessing to execute Hadira. During the plea Hadira's spell takes effect and woodland creatures run ransack throughout the town searching for her flute. During the chaos, Galia confronts Adir about the flute and, in a panic, Adir slays Galia to protect their secret and blames it on Hadira's beasts. Tonight, seeking an honorable end, Remus lures Venge into a trap and is slain, though wounded.

Day Five: The townsfolk, headed by young Adir, consent to Prelate Donan's judgement and Hadira is burnt in the center of town at noon. Their bond strong even in madness, Hadira's death drives Venge into a frenzy the very next night and he goes from house to house slaughtering the town and continues to haunt the region, driving it to ruin and abandonment unless slain.

Why is the Party Here?

For this adventure, there are a number of different draws for the party, fashion them as necessary for your table. Some recommendations: 

• The party needs some knowledge or cure known only to Hadira
• They are seeking the heir to the throne and must find them in Sorne and return them to the capital
• Thorvald has paid an extravagant fee for their services weeks ago to come in as mediators, things are much worse now than when they were hired
• A sibling or other family member lived in or near Sorne and was slain by Venge. They are here now seeking answers.
  

Winnowing Wasps (GLoGtober 2024)

This is for the Some Spooky Halloween Monsters for GLoGtober 2024.

Also known as Flute Wasps, Winnowing Wasps get their name from the sounds their abandoned nests make. The territory of a family of Winnowing Wasps is marked by dozens of discarded nests that create eerie discordant melodies when the wind is blowing. 

Matvey Smirnov

Adult Winnowers can grow as large as a human forearm. They can be easily recognized by their large size as well as their distinctive dark red and black patterning along the thorax. A somewhat social creature, Winnowers display a family behavior and have been known to nest together as well as to situate multiple nests nearby for protection from predators such as the Greater and Lesser Sulfur Lizards. Due to the typical temperatures of the Starklands, these wasps tend to congregate around sulfur pits in the colder months but there are also many reports of Winnowers entering a state of suspended animation while their nests are transported around the Starklands along with the Tower. 

Winnowers are a parasitoid wasp that lays their eggs primarily in human hosts- however moose and elk are also common hosts of the Winnower. When they find their prey, they aim for exposed soft tissue and deposit as many eggs as they can before retreating to their nests. Extensive documentation of the lifecycle of the Winnowers has been made by many a village and town throughout the history of the Starklands and the danger of these creatures is well known. After the initial attack, the host will experience the following symptoms:

Days 1-14: Itching around the injection site and a ravenous appetite. During this initial incubation period the eggs laid by the Winnower hatch inside of the host. The host will experience a ravenous hunger to account for the larva- much as with a tapeworm. A typical host carries anywhere from thirty to one hundred larva in them. By the end of this first period, the host looks to be obese and casual observers can notice unnatural movements under their skin. At this point, the larvae account for about 1/3 of the weight of the host. Winnower larvae spend their time eating and turning the chest cavity of their host into a nest, chewing through marrow and bone and spitting it back up to create a well protected barrel-like chest cavity riddled with small holes.

Days 15-21: The larvae emerge from the host at this time using sharp rotating teeth. Their natural secretions rapidly seal the wounds (and in fact make for a very valuable surgical aid) and the host will gather the larvae and shelter them in their home, usually somewhere safe and dry. Over the rest of the duration of this period, the host is driven to defend the larvae as though they were their own children- and what limited interviews are possible with these addled individuals reveal they are unable to tell the larvae apart from their children. During this time, the larvae spin a protective shell around themselves and begin their second phase of growth into a full Winnower. 

Once the Winnowers hatch, the new family instinctively returns to their host and the initial nest they made therein. By now, the hosts are usually dead- but this does not mean the end of their use. For some period after their death, their body still moves and carries the wasp nest at the whims of the family of Winnowers. Once their flesh has sufficiently rotted and they can no longer move, the Winnowers move on and leave the host behind, chest full of chewed up marrow and winding tunnels that make eerie sounds. Some hosts' minds are known to survive this process and, through means unknown, happily carry their wasp family around in their chest cavity. 

Villages are especially cautious of Winnowers. The stories of children, hunters, and foragers who have accidentally been infected and carried an infection back to a village are well known. Any Starklander worth their salt knows the best cure for an infection: fire. If the eggs were lain recently enough it's possible to burn them out and preserve the host- but some aren't willing to risk any remaining wasps spelling an end to the village and opt instead for a full cremation.

Many a wise woman and witch have their own cures as well, including the imbibing of certain poisons and liquors to kill the larvae within the host as well as the use of certain burning herbs to ward Winnowers off.

Bars Aplenty Cut Content

The blurbs from the Barkeep in the Borderlands Jam are up now! I made a big supplement for this called Bars Aplenty!

Earlier this year, after finishing Hall of the Five Moons, I realized that there was a Barkeep Jam going on thanks to Bluesky and went into a fugue state to jam out 21 bars and some other stuff in three days for it before the deadline! 

I had a lot of fun making all the locations and trying to fit it thematically into the extant materials and I may have gotten a bit carried away with the number of locations in the end. But! That wasn't all I had planned. My original design document had 27 bars in total. I cut a few due to the deadline coming up and my own available time coming up short. Here's the basics:

Nightshade

A invite only bar for the ne'er dowells, vampires, and everyone just a bit too edgy and illegal to hang out overtly with the Cult of Chaos. These guys were going to have a swanky jazz bar with a bunch of available errands to run for the various esoteric villains of the city. 

Garden of Necessary Evils

If there's a bar for creeps and ghouls then there's surely got to be a Lawful Paladin speakeasy. I scattered a few Lawful type events around Bars Aplenty and if anyone in the party took them up then they got an invite to the Garden of Necessary Evils where the insurgent Lawful types of the city mingle and try to hold things together. This one would also have errands but they'd be more focused on countering the activities of the Cult of Chaos.

Starship

In my ongoing Mothership drop-in game, a spider-cyborg ally by the name of Tenpiece fled a station the crew was accidentally responsible for deleting from reality. This bar was to be a direct insert of Tenpiece and crew's ship crashing in the Keep and setting up a bar as well as offering reaper/cybernetics goods and putting out Pikmin style bounties for needed ship parts and reagents. Ultimately scrapped because it was just too tonally distant for me.

Slumbermaw

This was to be a sleeping dragon in the keep that partygoers could enter and experience the dragon's dreams and the bar that colonized them without waking the dragon- very similar to how the Gatorbarge works. Some of the ideas got reworked into my dream-selling-buying bar location.

Slapsticks

Barkeep had a few secret factions and Bars Aplenty certainly has secret recurring characters and factions- one of which is Clowns. They're all over the tables to be found throughout the city and the party would inevitably hear about the clown-only speakeasy they would need to dress up as clowns to enter. I was waffling between it being incredibly sad, unspeakably horrific, or just an actor green room and couldn't make the concept work to a way I liked. There's just One Clown anyways.

Labyrinthia

I am pretty bummed I didn't have time to finish this one. It was to be a giant maze set up in the Citywood with harpies that deliver drinks to those trying to solve it and commentators in a central tower heckling maze goers. There would be all sorts of traps and tricks found throughout- including an accidental drop into a real dungeon active beneath the city.

Bars Aplenty was a lot of fun to make- if anyone uses any of them please let me know! I'm considering taking Wicked Whispers and spinning it off into its own separate product and expand its depthcrawl- so maybe there'll be more news on that later...

The Witch and the Wile (GLoGtober 2024)

This is for the two complimentary monsters challenge in GLoGtober 2024.

So your town has pissed off a local witch. These sorts of things happen with an uncomfortable frequency in the Starklands, so what was it this time?

 

Justin Gerard

What did your village do this time?

1. Someone cut down the witch's favorite tree and it was very explicitly marked with sigils and craft. No one will fess up. 

2. A drunk stumbled from the tavern into the woods and threw up in the sacred spring. The naiads called in a favor from the witch.

3. Patricians from the nearest city are going around trying to stifle witchcraft and require locals see doctors in the city. The witch has taken offense that her cures are insufficient. 

4. There's been a spree of cat killings throughout the village and the witch has had enough of it.

5. An oppressive religious sect has taken up residence in the village and is spreading rumors about the witch's terrible powers. They aren't fully wrong. 

6. Sulfur mine expansions have destroyed a precious foraging spot for rare mushrooms. It was the last one for miles.

Consequences and the Wile

Lusy_sama

When a Witch is ready to begin her mischief, making the town rue the day they brought her anger upon them or at least until they right their wrong, a Wile comes into her service. Sometimes a ritual is done, but more often than not Wiles have a sense about these sort of things and find their way to where they are needed. Whatever the witch does, the Wile is there to amplify and sow discord amongst the townsfolk. Their relationship is not exactly mutual- many a Witch's grimoire warns of the dangers of Wiles left unchecked.

Wiles have no shape or form of their own, instead adapting whatever suits their fancy- but a careful observer will notice their shapeshifting is never quite perfect. They aren't said to be strictly speaking intelligent- possessing more of a feral trickster level of intelligence and a sharp sense of where to twist a knife and mimic sharp words as like a malicious mockingbird. Their touch rusts new metal and gnarls wooden craft- wherever they've been one is sure to find twisted roots sprouted up from the ground where it walked.

Without any prompting by the Witch, the Wile amplifies her hexes and curses. If she brings a storm onto the village then the Wile is there howling in the night, shaking windows and doors, and calling in the voice of loved ones from just outside. If the Witch invokes a pustule pox then the Wile is there, a faceless familiar villager in the back of the crowds jeering and riling the town up. 

Though Wiles are more than happy to raise trouble for the fun of it, they also tend to take things from unsuspecting villagers. Precious jewelry, mementos, diaries, spices and the like are all up for the taking by the creature which will usually lair in a hollow tree nearby and revel in its ill gotten gains. 

Jonathan Gregory Bick

Many charms and counters are said to work against Wiles. Sometimes a Wile gets carried away and goes too far, taking a child, killing a herd, and the Witch herself may turn against it and expel it. Like all beasts of the wood it shirks from fire, though salt has no effect on it. A clever village may be able to catch and trap one by locking eyes with one another standing in a circle- ensuring someone will recognize and point out a lurking Wile in their midst. 

By the time a town has appeased the Witch and she ends her torments the Wile will have moved on, oftentimes lazily lairing in its hollow tree nearby and pulling tricks on unwary travelers until another Witch has need. 

Old myth and legend tells of the first Wile to walk the lands as a curse upon witches. They tell of the time when a Witch first acted in rash anger against a village that had offended, and the Wile leapt up from the ground and began their mischief. They amplified the Witch's fury and soon had goaded the Witch into wholesale destruction. While storm and root tore the town open the Wile stalked from home to home, eyes glowing bright, cackling laughter of parents and children, claws dripping red and rending villagers limb from limb. When the fury cleared the Witch's vision she saw what she had wrought- and what she had let stoke and feed on her rage- and lamented.

Invasion of the Adversary (GLoGtober 2024)

This is for the Alien Invasion challenge in GLoGtober 2024.

Across the stars, the mechanism of undeath is in constant motion. Dead nebulae churning out exotic matter, necromegastructures teeming with engineers and warriors in the dark, untold billions are at work under the direction of the Adversary. When your world was but a cloud of condensing matter, the Adversary stood tall on glassy night-soaked sands and watched their home chewed and swallowed by a black hole and on that day began their crusade to end ends, to cease cessation, to break the cycle and fling its ends to infinity. 

Vadim Sadovski

The Adversary's battle continues to this day, now spread across the filaments of the stars their intergalactic war against the Inevitable takes the shape of an intergalactic machine powered by matter, fueled by energy, and helmed by intellect. It is in search of these three resources that their Necrospores, moon sized heralds of undeath, have been scattered to our galaxy. 

General Order of Events:

100 years before Invasion:

Astronomers across your world will look up and see the bright corpselight burn of the Necrospore entering the star system and braking into a distant orbit. To wizards, this will be a terrible light that blooms across the night's sky and thrums with power. The Necrospore begins waking, organizing its legions and scouting the system- inevitably discovering your world.

85 years before Invasion:

The Necrospore begins thorough scouting of your world. Spies are deployed in steel coffins near major population centers and begin raiding cemeteries and funerary sites for corpses, interrogating them to learn more about the world and feed this back to the Necrospore. Meanwhile, the Necrospore is at work surveying planets and asteroids. Its light burns even brighter in the sky as its furnaces roar to life.

60 years before Invasion:

At one moment, the Necrospore contacts all of the most powerful wizards and world leaders and offers them a deal. Join the Adversary willingly and be blessed with eternal life, lead armies the size of planets across galactic timescales in exchange for selling their world. 

20 years before Invasion:

Agents of the Necrospore begin sabotaging the world's defenses and identifying key areas. Mass graves. Loci of magical power. Vaults of artifacts. Capital cities. Orbital batteries. Using Gates and other ritual magics, the Necrospore begins seeding elite forces throughout the world and causing chaos.

10 years before Invasion:

Each day the world is more dangerous. The dead walk freely, and the corpselight in the sky grows brighter. Over these ten years the Necrospore burns into a tight orbit around your world. Each day the great bell at its heart tolls a pulse across the gulf of space and you feel it approaching in your bones. Your skeleton knows where it is at all times. Once it is ready, the Invasion begins. 

Day of the Invasion:

The stage set, the Necrospore eclipses the world. Its corpselight blots out the sun and it unfurls its many millions of hangars and launches a million million ancient skeletons, alien death knights, and galactic liches to invade your world. Your world will serve, one way or another.

Variations

What's special about your world?

1. Your world was seeded with life long ago by an alien empire. Their engines of creation and destruction are still intact in the deepest parts of the world.

2. The world itself is alive but slow to rouse. It will try to combat this invasion- making it a powerful ally if you can contact it.

3. Nothing. Yet another world for the machine.

4. Powerful ley magics are infused in the asteroid belt near your world and the Necrospore will take twice as long to begin its invasion.

5. The veins of your world run infinitely deep and wide. The further you go, the stranger things get- and the further away the invasion forces are. If you're clever and fast enough you could outrun them forever.

6. A Third Party has interest in your world and will warn and provide support once the Necrospore appears in the sky. They have fought these battles before.

Your Necrospore

The Necrospore itself is a machine-being the size of a moon. At its core are the concentrated quantum-state phylacteries of a hundred liches in divine theospension mixed into one Ur-mind that makes up the Necrospore itself. It has a personality, whims, and can be spoken with. Though there are countless Necrospores, each is unique. This one:

1. Will take its time. Using waves of attacks from very far away until your world becomes strong. Then, it will crush you and turn that strength into its own weapon.

2. Prefers subtlety and manipulation. It masks its presence and sends dreams to recruit a cult of followers that will make the world ripe for its harvest.

3. Tries its best to bring your world into the fold peaceably. It will offer the gift of undeath to all who will take it willingly. It wants to be your friend so badly- why won't you just let it kill you?

4. Is a cauldron of bio-horrors. Feasting on samples from your world and others it brews them into soldiers and deploys them in a quest to improve their armies.

5. Has killed your gods. This isn't its first invasion by a long shot and knows the best first strike is to sever the divine links and smother the gods and godlings before they make the invasion more difficult.

6. Hates all of you individually and specifically. There will be no offers of peace or leniency. The Adversary sent it here to acquire materials. It wants to guarantee that the last sparks of your lives are so miserable that you will recognize undeath for the gift it is. All will serve- it does not matter how they get to serving.

Conclusion

Play as a dynasty fighting over a hundred years to defeat the Necrospore and its agents. Or as adventurers on that final day as the sky rains alien skeletons and angels of death. Or as world leaders and wizards orchestrating the final defenses. Maybe a neighboring interplanetary civilization will offer an escape for some? 

If you defeat the Necrospore then you have probably bought yourself at least a hundred years- maybe more. Perhaps you'll be lucky and the Adversary's forces are busy elsewhere in your galaxy and it gives you more time to prepare. To the Adversary, these are but small setbacks on subpixels of an intergalactic map. Your world will join eventually.  

And if you do join? Well now comes the longest war in the universe. Join the legions of the undead as they battle the Inevitable. Galaxy-class rituals spanning a thousand thousand worlds. Lead legions of dead conquering innumerable planets. Star system sized battles against the pawns of the Inevitable. Ancient Necrospires floating in the dark secret parts of intergalactic space and collecting all of the knowledge of all of the subsumed worlds. And perhaps, serve well enough to earn an iota of attention from the Adversary and bear their mark.

Chapel of the Living God (GLoGtober 2024)

Sacred Body Horror for GLoGtober.

On entry into a Chapel of the Living God most visitors will first be in awe of the hundreds of Beneficent Saints lining the walls, smiling down from the rafters, whispering their rapturous chants and cloaked in woven gold. Older Chapels are said to be so filled with Beneficents that their very roofs and shrines are upheld by smiling, chanting saints- gold-flecked skin and swirling golden irises.

Kris-3d

Feast days and memorials will usually see families visiting with and caring for their relatives that have become Beneficents, cleaning their skin and making offerings of their favorite foods. I have even heard of some sects that allow families to take their Beneficent out for the day to visit and bless each of their households before returning them into the care of the Chapel once more. 

The two other most significant features of your average Chapel of the Living God are the Supplication Basin, where appeals are made to the Living God in the presence of the oldest Beneficents of the Chapel, and the closed off Ritual Chambers, where the priests perform the Benefaction Sacrament.

Entei Ryu

Most are familiar with the general practice of Benefaction as a means of ritual preservation and recognition of services to the Living God, however the details aren't well understood by those outside the faith. The history of Benefaction goes back to the early days of the Living God, who would bless their chosen as Avatars that would wield a fraction of the Living God's power against their enemies. The saying holds true, however, that absolute power corrupts absolutely. After a time, Avatars would begin to be corrupted by the Sacrament as it grew and warped their bodies and minds with unfathomable power. Eventually, the Living God introduced the practice of Benefaction as a means of preventing Corrupted Avatars from wreaking havoc. 

Depending on the suitability of an Avatar candidate, they are assigned a date for their Benefaction. Great heroes of the Living God are known to have borne the Sacrament for years on end, though most last a month or a week. Once the date is reached, the Avatar returns to a Chapel where the priests ritually sever their limbs and burn them, then wrapping the strands of the Sacrament that remain around their torso into a golden cloth. Now a Beneficent Saint, they are put under the care of the Chapel- or transferred to their home chapel- where they will be cared for eternally. 

What's Going On?

The Living God is a hivemind organism that lives in the bodies of the Beneficent Saints. In the form of the Sacrament, it is a bundle of carefully grown tendrils that are ingested by candidates. Over time, it grows in the candidate and grant it extreme powers of strength and agility as the tendrils reinforce the candidate's natural body. As the growth progresses, the Living God and the candidate begin to act as one- however eventually the Living God will overtake the host where it then risks severing from the hivemind and growing its own- something like a sub-cult. Knowing this unfortunate feature of its evolution, the Living God uses ritual and tradition to curtail its Avatars early- maintaining its existence in the body of the Saint and allowing it to continue to grow. 

Evgeny Romanov

These facts are known by some of the highest of the clergy of the Living Saint- who maintain that these abilities could only be those of a God. Their God is tangible and, if it needs their service, then they will carry it in their body and become its lever upon the world.

Knifepoint Horror

Smaller posts for awhile! Finally not procrastinating and spending more time slaving away at the programming chisel, amateurishly trying to rip the form free from the marble block it's trapped in. 

I am very, very picky about podcasts that I listen to. Partly this is because the main times that I consume podcasts affects what I'm listening to. For example:

Driving: Anything below but particularly: If Books Could Kill, Bad Books for Bad People, Radiolab, Behind the Bastards, Fear of a Black Dragon, Pretending to be People, Into the Megadungeon, Ologies, etc.

Hiking: Lore, Mayfair Watchers Society, Modes of Thought in Anterran Literature, the Magnus Archives, the Silt Verses, the White Vault, etc.

While falling asleep: Exploring Series, Acephale, Knifepoint Horror, the Wrong Station 

My "falling asleep podcasts" are, barring the Exploring Series, exclusively horror themed and have been finely selected for three qualities.

1. Consistency of audio volume. If it maintains the same general volume over an episode then it's a keeper.

2. Paucity of advertisements. I don't know what happened recently, but more and more advertisements on podcasts have been maliciously raising their volume over the general volume of the episode it seems, which is annoying. 

3. Unique Horror (Mostly). The three main contenders here, Acephale, Knifepoint Horror, and the Wrong Station generally offer stories that I have not heard before. 

Best of the Best

In particular I have to shout out to Knifepoint Horror as the best horror podcast I have been listening to this year. I have listened to it for several years, but this year in particular I did a great deal of hiking and driving finally actively listened to the entire catalogue and on a re-listen I finally started to appreciate these tales. 

Soren Narnia, the author of the stories, the podcast creator, and the main voice in all but the earliest of episodes weaves a variety of tales that usually wind a nebulous wandering tale through horror and mystery. Each story is very minimal in audio effects and uses a singular narration, they're all by one person. There's no guarantee of getting closure on these tales, some of them end rather abruptly, some of them wind out over the hour or so, and some have satisfying resolutions, but each one still succeeds in that draw in of Soren's narration as he tells a strange story. I highly recommend the podcast and in particular here are my favorite episodes. You don't need to listen to anything in order*, so don't worry about that. 

• Let No One Walk Beside Her: Absolutely unique in the podcast, there's nothing else like this horrific, fantastical tale of survival, winter, and magic
• Colony: A tale of years and a bright community's transformation, told by an outsider
• The Crack: Unsuspecting, a student joins a silent group meditation hike and experiences a terror of geography and humanity 
• Twelve Tiny Cabins: A student finds a campground mysteriously and suddenly abandoned. Later, they interview a professor about the writer's retreat that had been abandoned and what they saw.
• Occupiers: A 19th century story about what stalks the streets of occupied Moscow.
• Digs: The narrated notes of someone moving into a strange apartment and what they experience there.
  
• A Convergence in Wintertime: Tales of treasure bring several different groups together at a critical moment in a deadly environment.

There's more but as I scrolled through my notes just now I started to realize I would end up listing most of the episodes in the catalogue! So, if you want some quiet, wandering narration and mystery then definitely check out Knifepoint Horror.