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.

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.

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.

Tower, the Ghoul Titan

Jannis Mayr

The Nine Cities of the Tributary Houses of the Starklands are built on the graves of more glorious republics. Each sits upon a convergence of the Tireless Highway, whose immutable tiles were first laid in the forgotten past by the Empyreans who created the mega-constructs that still walk the world. All along icy coasts, boreal forests, and sulphur pits of the Starklands travelers can follow the Tireless Highway and unfailingly find their way to one of the Nine Cities. 

Before the Heritor came with their shining fleet and subjugated the Nine Cities, the Starklanders were known for their unique funerary customs. Young or old, man or woman, the dead were garbed in fine armor and equipped with blades and other weapons before being placed along the Tireless Highway for the coming of the Tower. 

As certain as the phases of the moons, with the coming of the first thaws of spring the Tower will descend along the ring road of the Tireless Highway and make his circuit, trudging past each of the cities before ascending once more to the Battle Peaks as Winter's grip sets in. With him comes his army of the dead, and his approach causes the dead to rise once more and join their ranks. Like a natural disaster for those not prepared, the undead swarms that attend the Tower flood over the lands as he passes by. At the core of the army, in rank and file at the feet of the Tower, dead kings and generals preside over the assemblage and shepherd the slavering ranks forward. 

Jonah Lobe

The Tower is a 300 foot tall Titan. His endless journey is heralded first by the approaching swarms of feral dead, and then by the stench and march of the army proper. When he begins the trek in Spring, his skin is pale and tinged blue, his figure gaunt and eyes black. As the year progresses, he steadily rots and chunks of skin and meat fall to the ground along the highway, attracting clouds of flies as well as adventurous adherents to the Tower or Exiled Sorcerers.

For the people of the Starklands, his legend is well known. The Tower was a great hero of the Empyreans and won many a battle against the enemies of civilization when the world was young and in its spring. When Winter first cursed the seasons, the Tower set forth with his armies into the Battle Peaks to break Winter and its curse. His battle was mighty and shook the foundations of the world, but in the end he broke Winter. However Winter's curse was laid, and as the seasons turn it grows in strength and inevitably overtakes Autumn. The Tower swore to defeat Winter, twining their fates and setting the Tower on his eternal path along the Tireless Highway to gather his armies once more and break Winter each year. Starklanders remember this legend and their heritage, and thus they set their honored dead along the roadside to join the Tower in eternal struggle to break Winter and rescue the land from its frozen grip each year. 

When the Heritor came and subjugated the Starklanders, his governors set the Tributary Houses to expunge this funerary tradition as an abomination and replace it with their standard of cremation, as the Heritor would not tolerate any encouragement of what were seen as necromantic practices. Some of the old folk still tell the tales, however, of how the Heritor's First Failure was when his legions tried to break the Tower. In the end, the Tower's path continued and the Heritor left the Starklands for his next conquests. 

Mika Koskensalmi

The seasons have turned and the curse of Winter has been broken dozens of times since the Heritor enforced cremation amongst the Nine Cities. Each year since then, the Tower has begun to slowly rot more quickly, and his disciplined army of the dead has grown thinner, their weapons broken and armor torn, replacing their numbers only with the slavering corpses of feral dead. Each year, the Tributary Houses hire Ghoulhunters to clean the lands of those that are left behind by this wild horde in the wake of the Tower, and each year the dead that wander the forests grow more numerous. 

Winter comes more quickly now, they say, and its icy tendrils remain longer and longer as the years go by. Cults of the Old Ways have sprung up throughout the Starklands, fueling a secretive worship of the Tower, whose countenance grows darker and more foul each year. The beer-halls grow more rowdy with disquiet and dread, as the elders whisper that the end times are coming. Brushfires of rebels have sprung up and have even blown the sole rail that connects the Starklands to the Heritor States. 

As the Tower finally breaks Winter once more and Spring is returned, the fires of rebellion are stoked around the Starklands.