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the dire folk

Started by SA, November 16, 2009, 11:27:46 PM

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SA

THE
DIRE FOLK

origins, societies and mythologies
of the fell-kind
there are the stories we men tell of the pit, and the stories that devils tell among themselves. these are their legends, not ours.
-K.F.
[/i]
PAJJANG, the great seal
The Ancient People put down ktingir after a millennium of chaos, and ktingir dissolved into a river of fire, burning through the substance of the world and forever sinking into darkness. But even as ktingir fell new gods were blossoming from its blasted particles. While Middleworld's vast army fought back the newborn monsters, the Long King journeyed out among the stars in search of Leviathan. He petitioned the ancient beast and won an egg from her at great cost, an egg in which the goliath Pajjang slumbered.

   The Long King returned to Earth and cast the egg into the pit as Pajjang burst forth, falling across the pit and sealing it. Pajjang opened her monstrous, burning eye and looked down into Lowworld, and she gazes still'¦
   
WAIHOOND, the first father of hell
So great is the first father's ambition that he has endured a thousand deaths, even his utter destruction at the hands of zirraf-with-a-thousand-wings. He was the least among the firstborn horde that fought the ancient army near-to destruction before the coming of Pajjang, and the only one to survive the first apocalyptic opening of her eye, though it scorched his very soul. Looking into that infernal sphere in its nascent moment of consciousness he bore witness to a primeval, cosmic truth, which only the starkind know. This revelation is all that has sustained him through the demented history of the Lowworld; through the rise and fall and rising again of Pruul, the rape of the Elder Realms, the Long Feud of the fell tribes and, of course, his own constant destruction.

   With every death the first father grows wiser. He is already the greatest intellect in hell, so knowledgable that he has almost completely cast off the shackles of self-hate and irrationality that bind Lowworld to the wills of the Lowest Gods. For this reason he is also called Friendless: the powers above loathe all devilkind, even the Exalted, while his own race despises him for his self-mastery. Nevertheless those who seek their own spiritual liberty sometimes sacrifice to him in lieu of the Twelve Vainglories; usually out of selfish opportunism but very rarely in the honest pursuit of Grace.

   Waihoond has sired many bloodlines of demons and Fellkind. The most renowned of these are the firfid, whose lives are ultimately little more than shadowy re-enactments of the act that birthed them. Because of this they hate their father and have long conspired to destroy him.

   The firfid's antitheses are the catthalumdi, grotesque lumpen demons of pale light that grow like mould in their father's footprints, guttering quickly unless a traveller passes by so that they may creep into his soul and infect his mind with the disjointed fragments of Waihoonds' transcendant genius.

the DEAD ELDERS
As there are afterlives, so too were there past lives, in bewildering succession, culminating in the first infinite existence before the stars, the gods or even the unnamed evils. The Long King had an inkling of this timeless proto-world when he stood before measureless Leviathan and begged her for a weapon to end the War. The firstborn of ktingir knew it truly when they witnessed its glory wash away beneath the tide of Pajjang's burgeoning consciousness, and that moment of incredible truth extinguished their very souls.

Had Waihoond been killed with his siblings he would have known it too, but being the youngest he could not fully comprehend the sight and this is why he lived. As he fell into the pit he could see his beloved brothers and sisters fall as well, and it seemed they fell for years, until at last they landed on this or that burning plain of hell and their massive bodies shattered.

Through hell's ages, their bodies have remained, scattered across all its realms. A finger here, a feather there, a tongue, a tail, a tooth '" they have all preserved some essence of the incredible event that destroyed them. For any ambitious soul the pieces of the Dead Elders are instruments of great material power, but in the possession of one-who-knows their strength is, like the cosmic body of Leviathan, utterly limitless.

GMUIRG
This is the great lake, the very beginning of the Lowworld. I have more to say of this later.

ZIRRAF-WITH-A-THOUSAND-WINGS
Sometimes a dark shape wheels beneath Pajjang's fiery disc, or spreads wide its wings to eclipse her light. This is zirraf-with-a-thousand-wings, the great general sent down by the Supernal Kings to satisfy their insatiable hatred of the people of the pit. It is possibly the most terrible being alive in hell (though more horrid ones have existed), and were it not for the Lowest Gods' exhausting miracles it would long ago have scoured Pruul clean of life.

There were other zirrafim before the thousand-wings, each one as vast and horrible as a god, and each one was repelled at a tragic cost to Ancient Pruul, which had always been the pillar of hell's defence. The last, zirraf-of-lamentations, almost broke the world in half before blind Udbuducc wrestled it into the Great Lake and drowned it. Then came thousand-wings, and around it drummed the one-two thump of a distant primordial heartbeat.

   Udbuducc stood before it and was blasted to white light. Eshhya halted it for a day with her glistening knives before it split her in four pieces. Waihoond at last slithered out of his jewelled pit and glared at it with his one eye that reflected Pajjang's own cosmic fire and for a time zirraf was bewildered. Meanwhile the agents of the Lowest Gods seized the corpse of zirraf-of-lamentations as it sank ever deeper into Gmuirg and, dragging it at last into the Blue Abyss, rendered it unto the Abyssian, who began to work a deep sorcery upon it.

   As Waihoond came apart in zirraf-of-a-thousand-wings' hands, zirraf-of-lamentations strode out of the great lake. A new hideous song spilled like a plague from its hundred mouths and the invader, confused and terrified, fled back towards Pajjang and safety. Lamentations, in turn, fell back into the lake and was not seen again for a century.

   Whenever zirraf-of-a-thousand wings comes down toward hell its erstwhile sibling rises up to meet it, and the sky is filled with that wretched song. Zirraf is repelled for a time, but who knows if it may one day be inured to hell's blackest melody.

KADC HOORIE
When Burjir succumbed to the poison of Laggum-Sig-Jinauc, and fell rotting yet alive into Gmuirg, the iythkic and other peoples of the great basin began to eat her and drink her as she liquefied, and laid their larval children between her scales and inside her womb. Cjaviyye, who had wielded the mythic blade against her, was loath to abandon one of the Fell People '" even her truest foe '" to the predations of lesser beings. Thus she turned Burjir to glittering marble, and with her the giant mothmen and catthalumdi and other dire things that feasted on her.

   And so there was Kadc Hoorie. Cjaviyye cut away a piece of her own shadow to watch the corpse of her enemy (that it might not be sullied, and that it might not rise), but when an assassin slipped the wrathworm into her bedchamber as she slept both she and her gloomy sentry were undone. First the habrhai returned and nestled in the spires of her crown, then the firfid came and fought them for a century, at last supplanting them and ruling from the highest thorny towers. Later there were the buccunbanh and their slaves the ey-iy-ooa; the vrawl, the yoomli and the catthalumdi. At last the looming city was filled with demons of every sort, and the needlemen gathered them all under their banner and declared Kadc Hoorie their own kingdom.

FIDRVIYYE, a penumbral wood
All things that live shall live forever. This is the truth the first gods did not know when they cut down cruel ktingir, their own child whom they had loved, and from his body sprang the gods of hell and the nadirwendd. The world grows with life, but never shrinks with death.
This was the way with Cjaviyye, who, dying, became the golden river that tumbles always from the peaks of her empty mountain  palace down into Rambling Vast. And so it was with her shadow, and her shadow's own child who stood at Burjir's graveside: though they died, they lived the after-lives of shadows. Mothershadow is the dragon that swims the Ramble and haunts the dreams of Minnowmen; a beast of silvery wire whose many stories I will not tell here.

   Daughtershadow is a darkly dreaming wood that overhangs the western cliffs of Gmuirg, and clings like a dark patina on the carven faces of the Pruul-Junkaugh, and its trees are bent toward Kadc Hoorie, and when the city trembles its leaves tremble. The dying come to Fidrviyye to learn a little of their fate, for its trees are filled with nests where the unpassed dwell with their big shiny eyes like owls, and they will sometimes speak of what they have seen. The sleepless come to reclaim their rest from the quiet streams that carry, like flushed poisons, the fatigue and ennui of distant lands; they swell at the forest's cliffward edge and crash down into the Great Lake to join a million other drowned sorrows the world has forgotten.

FAUGH, who keep the wood
Drink deep of Fidrviyye's waters and you will sleep for a hundred years. The wise take this path with friends at their side who can carry them away to a safer rest. Alone, the earth will open beneath you and roots will wrap you up like a caterpillar, then tomb you in the ground. For those long years you will dream the cast-off dreams of weary worlds, and the Daughtershadow will drink your dreams and make them hers.

   Those who wake in the wood are no longer men. Their bodies have assumed the aspect of their grey dreams, making them as soft and frail as cobwebs. They live in villages made from blood-hardened soil and make war with weapons of petrified wood. They are blood drinkers, for dreams are in the blood, and they sacrifice the meat to the Hypgnottic, who were their lords in the Sleeping Places. The faugh jealously guard their waterways, and demand human lives in exchange for a drink. Sometimes they will sneak into the cities and steal children for their gods, or creep from apartment to apartment, thieving a drink from this or that person, but by and large they are cowards.

   Some do not wake, though they too are spat from the ground. They move somnambulant through the wood, trailing fading nightmares in the caustic pools of their footprints and stalking the wakeful to slake their lunatic thirst. They have many faces superimposed on one another, from the youthful to the matronly to the grotesque, and they use their massive granite hands to crush their prey into a gory liquid which they drink to no effect. These monsters are called the lobbr-faugh, the always dreamers.

And a few species'¦

HABRHAI, mothmen
They can bite a horse in half with their giant mouths, and they are forever grooming their black pelts with elegant white hands. They have the faces of babes, but pale and still with tiny grey eyes that stare. Their feet make no sound as they prowl and their wings are limp like ragged capes.

Suspended high up on the stalagmites of Lomugg are the glowing briloumi cocoons, where the glorious dark kerubs who are Mwavut's heirs sleep and grow. The spiteful ogna who are Mwavut's slaves constantly clamber from cradle to cradle, bursting them with spears blunted by use, so that the vainglorious queen can never be succeeded. But they are not vigilant enough to kill every one, and occasionally a runt of that limitless brood, too small to draw their murderous attention, hatches prematurely and slips away into the shadows.

   Mothmen are vain, vicious enchanters, but they are half-born and therefore straddle life's threshhold; when they ruled Kadc Hoorie they farmed souls as the raw materials from which they worked life-sustaining alchemies. Now they are the servants of the firfid, and must beg ingredients from their masters who are often given to largesse but well know the profits of miserliness.

   Among the Least, mothmen are patrons of mad artists who deny truth for the sake of illusion, and of dissemblers so deeply consumed by their self-delusion that they know not the road back to their own souls.

FIRFID, the needlemen
They are joyful and gracious, with modest smiles and lissom limbs. From the tops of their open skulls grow thorny bushes with flowers of every colour, and their fingers are needles, with which they pierce and search the souls of their victims, drawing out the secret evil that waits in some hidden chamber of every heart.

Waihoond cut out his own right eye and planted it like a seed so that it would grow into a tree from which he might learn great truths. A black tree did sprout, with grim white flowers, and in those flowers slept the first infant firfid. He raised and nurtured his children, but they drew from his soul such monstrosities that he went mad and gnawed himself until he died.

   The firfid are natural enemies of every other devil, for they are the masters of the unknown sin and a devil's ambitions are black indeed. Because of this they have been butchered wherever they have sprouted, and until they came upon Kadc Hoorie they had never known rest. Their war with the mothmen was long and terrible, but they eventually prevailed and forged an empire in Burjir's pearly peaks, a resplendent bridge between hell and the Middleworld.

IYTHKIC, the gloomchildren
They have massive eyes, each as big as their skull, and a tiny mouth crowded with a hundred neat little teeth. Their tongues are pearl-white slugs; their noses are squashed up like mushrooms and always flaring. Their bodies are thin but tough, scaly, pink and slick with mucous. They wear pieces of drowned people like jewels and flaunt their excessive manhoods as they swagger through the streets, hoping to catch the eye of some desirous lady or lustful bugger.

The iythkic grow from the broad lilies and bloated cadavers that float upon Gmuirg. They squirt forth as tiny rose-red tadpoles and hurry deep into the water to escape the gaze of Pajjang. The miasma of age and rotted history that fills the lake's lower regions is their food, but as they become large and bold they soon hunger for richer fare. Thus they seek out the lakeside towns or the proud and wicked Kadc Hoorie, where they sell their bodies or their quick sword-arms for the sweet slurry of the fermented dead.

   Iythkic hate light of any sort, but they are no slinking cowards. When Pajjang closes her hateful eye they spring out into the streets to rape, thieve and brawl; they gamble with unwitting fools '" their lives are the stakes '" and when their victims lose they string them up by lampposts and drink their blood as it runs down their legs. But they rarely kill in Kadc Hoorie, for unwarranted murder is not tolerated by the needlemen; there they are thugs, bounty hunters or torturers, inelegant but effective. Their reward is often a corpse left rotting in the contrition lanes, with which they make their delicious stews.

   Iythkic gangs are notorious everywhere, but ultimately amount to a persistent nuisance when so many other villainies prowl the nights of Pruul.

LD

Sounds very Norse, Icelandic, or Metal.

>>GMUIRG
This is the great lake, the very beginning of the Lowworld. I have more to say of this later.

That was strangely terrifying.

SA

Interesting, I hadn't really picked the Norse vibe, let alone Metal. Remarkable what impressions stick with people.

Superfluous Crow

Didn't pick up on the Norse, although I perhaps picked up on a little Metal with all those great and awe-inspiring fell-beings. Most of all though this strikes me as a grotesque folkloric/judeo-christian hellscape.
Some of the stories are somewhat Byzantine, but in most cases that only adds to the tone. The Iythkic are both terrifying, despicable and thoroughly interesting.  
Currently...
Writing: Broken Verge v. 207
Reading: the Black Sea: a History by Charles King
Watching: Farscape and Arrested Development

SA

Folkloric Judeo-Christian hellscape is pretty much spot on. I want the setting to involve Middleworld (Earth) as little as possible; it is ambiguous and terrifying to demonkind as hell would be to earthlings. I also want hell to be defined ultimately not by suffering but by its glacial but inexorable rise above it, not toward earth or "Heaven" but toward... where? The same cosmic bliss that Waihoond seeks? I think there's a bit of the Buddhist concept of Samsara in there though I may not have really evoked it yet.

Superfluous Crow

Hehe, Buddhist devils. That would be a first.
Currently...
Writing: Broken Verge v. 207
Reading: the Black Sea: a History by Charles King
Watching: Farscape and Arrested Development

LD

CC- I suppose you are being facetious- Buddhist hell is a frightening place (!) Check it out if you haven't before.

Superfluous Crow

Hmm, I was attempting a joke, but I didn't know Buddhists had a Hell... I have always seen it is as a more metaphysical and philosophical religion rather than a cosmological one with demons and angels and gods. But it seems to me that it might be a syncretic element taken from Hinduism. But interesting hells they have. Some nasty, long and clever tortures.
Do the devils see the watchful eye of Pajjang when they look up? Or is he merely the "sun" or some equivalent thereof?
Currently...
Writing: Broken Verge v. 207
Reading: the Black Sea: a History by Charles King
Watching: Farscape and Arrested Development

Ghostman

This seems awesome, weird and creepy. Do want! :yumm:
¡ɟlǝs ǝnɹʇ ǝɥʇ ´ʍopɐɥS ɯɐ I

Paragon * (Paragon Rules) * Savage Age (Wiki) * Argyrian Empire [spoiler=Mother 2]

* You meet the New Age Retro Hippie
* The New Age Retro Hippie lost his temper!
* The New Age Retro Hippie's offense went up by 1!
* Ness attacks!
SMAAAASH!!
* 87 HP of damage to the New Age Retro Hippie!
* The New Age Retro Hippie turned back to normal!
YOU WON!
* Ness gained 160 xp.
[/spoiler]

Steerpike

As always this is deliciously strange... my favorite are the faugh and the stonefisted lobber-faugh.  I`ve caught a few mentions of the dire folk in your threads - are these attached to any particular setting`s cosmology?   I notice they`re also described as the "fell-kind" - are these the long alluded-to Fell of Dystopia, or something else altogether?