and now stuff about the eldritch horrors or THINGS in that setting/story I am working on
MORE HORROR! WEEE!
Miracle Maker
“I think I was seven years old when I first saw it. It was a gossamer thing, all silk lines and webbing dangling from the trees in the yard. It moved like nothing else I’d ever seen or have seen since. There was this buzzing in my mind, the kind of feeling you normally associate with a leg that’s fallen asleep on you. Pins and needles or ants and spiders running wild through the veins in my head.
My nose started to leak blood, more and more the longer I stared at it. Couldn’t look away though. The sight of it was so beautiful and as I looked I began to understand it. How its strands were woven. How its eyes functioned. Knowledge poured into me like an ocean into a cup. It overflowed and I lost things in the process.
When my parents found me the next morning I’d already lost enough blood that I needed immediate medical attention. Both of my kidneys had completely ruptured, bursting inside of me. One of my lungs was filling with fluid, a mixture of mucus and blood from my nose flowing backwards into my throat. I’d inhaled it as my breathing had grown more and more erratic from the flow of knowledge and the pain of my body failing me.
The mental damage, however, was worse. I’d lost a lot of my memories. Forgot my best friend’s face. Forgot my dead sister’s birthday. Forgot my own parents were my parents, had to be told that a few thousand times before it was able to stay in my brain. Most embarrassingly, I forgot how to eat. To this day I mostly eat soft foods. I just… I just… It’s all so pointless in the face of that knowledge I have, you know?
So that’s why I can make the things I make. That’s why I have such an incredibly thorough but impossible to explain understanding of the underpinnings of our reality.
Because I think I was seven when I saw The Weaver In The Stars and stared at it for five whole minutes.”
~Zane Diedrich, Artificer and only known producer of miracles.
Rituals Of The Lady
“Move the knife clockwise. Now move it down three lengths of the blade. Twist it so the blade is pointed down. Plunge it into the wood, deep as it will go. Drink of the sap that spills out. Do not allow a drop to touch the soil. This is the first step on the path.
Go into the woods. Find a tree and with the remains of the knife clutched in your hands, and we do mean remains for the blade is certainly ruined if you did the first step right, with the mass of metal that once was a blade find a tree. Make certain that the tree calls to you, matters to you in some way on some level. Peel the bark from the tree and chew upon it as you peel off one of your fingernails to feed the soil in turn. This is the second step on the path.
Do all that you can to get a fruit-bearing tree in your place of choosing and plant it there. If you can not find a fruit bearing tree then find one that will produce nuts for you. If you can not find a tree that will do so then find a tree you would feel useful in your life. Even if just for the shade it gives you must find a tree that will give to you in a way that matters. With this done, you must care for the tree in the manner most appropriate to the tree. After it has been growing in your chosen place for a year, give to it something you would consider appropriate in turn. If it bears fruit then give to it one of your organs. If it bears nuts then give to it your teeth. If it gives you lumber then give to it a limb severed willingly. If it gives you shade then give it a blanket woven of your hair or your skin, preferably the latter. This is the third step on the path.
The tree will soon enough wither within the span of ten years time. You will know when the time is right for the tree will look to you as though something was wrong. This is fine. This is right. This is how the path must be walked and it is now time for you to take the final step. You have taken from the tree what it has given you and have yet to return to it what you can give in turn. You have drunk of its sap and now it must drink of yours.
Move the knife counter-clockwise. Now move it up three lengths of the blade along your arm. Twist it so the blade is pointed away from you. Plunge it into the flesh and bone, deep as it will go. Do not allow a drop to spill on your body, spilling it all upon the ground.
This is the fourth and final step.
Well done, weary soul who gives and takes as needed.
Our Generous Lady watches over you.”
~Initiation ritual for The Cult Of The Forest Of Many Branches, worshipers of Our Generous Lady.
Rituals Of The Ocean
“If you wish to know the ways of That Fathomless Ocean then the method is very simply.
Learn. Whatever you can, whenever you can, embrace the opportunity to broaden your knowledge of things. There is no such thing as a useless idea, no limitation as a worthless question. Seek and know. Know and then seek more. Understand all that you can, all that comes to you. How to whittle. How to bake. How to kill a man. How to kill a city.
All things are worth knowing. All knowledge is good in the gaze of That Fathomless Ocean for its depths are limitless and contain all things. So too must you.
You are already one of us, my dear fellow. After all, the most important way to learn is to ask.”
~Initiation ritual for The Scholars In The Depths, worshipers of That Fathomless Ocean.
Fearlessness Is Foolishness
“Fear? Why should we fear? The Mountain illuminates our paths, my friend.”
~Last words of many, many worshipers of That Glorious Mountain
To Love All
“Do not pursue this.
Do not walk this path.
Do not seek the answers for why the Saint Weeps.
Do not think upon the feelings blooming within you.
Down this road there is no joy for you.
Down this path there is no hope for you.
Down this trail there is only suffering.
Down this way there is only harm, that which you bring to yourself and to others.
To do this? You will know death like few others.
To do this? You will give of your body and soul to others.
To do this? You will open your heart to all things in equal measure.
To do this? You will love all unconditionally.
Think on that.
Think on what that means.
Please, god, I beg you.
Do not make the mistake I made.”
~Last words of the most prolific serial killer in the Age Of Magic, Waclaw Andrysiak, who was later found to have been touched by The Weeping Saint.
Their Consuming Rage
“It started small. I think that’s what I remember the most is that it started small. Just… Some random dickhead middle manager denying us our fifteen minute break so the company’d save ten dollars on the power bill or some shit. I remember feeling… Upset. Rightly so, as my coworkers put it. And they were riled up as well and-
It started small… Just, telling the managers we were upset with their decision. Civil like, too. It was just the fact there were so many of us and I guess that spooked the guys in charge. So they started shouting back and threatening which just upset us all more.
And it just… It escalated. It escalated more and more and more and more. It took maybe an hour before we were throwing chairs through windows and trying to force feed people the broken shards of glass. From there, pent-up frustrations with different people just sort of fueled it further. That co-worker of yours chewed their food a little too loudly a little too often and now you were trying to drown him in the toilet. That new hire, pretty young lady that she was, she’d made the same joke one too many times in front of the janitor and now she was trying not to get her throat cut open on a saw. On and on it went.
Then just all of a sudden it stopped… We picked ourselves up, dusted ourselves off, and we were understandably horrified at what we had done. No one was dead. But the level of hurt that had happened? Yeah…
Some heroes showed up not long after that. Starlight Sisterhood which I remember thinkin was weird. Something like this? Surely that’s not big enough for the Magos killers to step in, yeah? But they explained that what we’d experienced was some monster magic or other… We were all so desperate for an answer, some kind of thing to justify what had occurred that we just blindly accepted it.
Three months later I saw the writing on the back of a dumpster as I was taking a smoke break. The warning about things we shouldn’t know or look into. And I did. And that’s when I learned about it. About the Thing that had briefly turned its gaze upon us for just a few short minutes. It shook me. It shook me bad.
That’s why I’m down here in the library’s basement looking at these books, sis. I need to know more about those Things.
I need to know what the Sisterhood is hiding from us all.”
~Cong Hoang, researcher into Things and their effects on our world, responding to his sister in regards to the incident at his former workplace where Their Consuming Rage briefly glanced upon them all.