Category: Blades in the Dark

When the Gates of Death were shattered, and the Immortal Emperor rose, the entire field of theological enterprise was obliterated. Speculation about higher powers and the afterlife seemed in poor taste. Still, humans need to organize their inner lives, and as they sought a new balance, religious veneration followed two main paths.

The Immortal Emperor lent support to the refocused worship of the mystery of life, seated in blood and bone and air, and recognized the new Church of Ecstasy of the Flesh. If religion must create an “us” and a “them” then all those living could be the “us” group, and those refusing to leave upon dying could be “them.” This did not create the hoped-for unity, but did provide a workable state religion with mysteries, rituals, structure, and costumes.

The other path was to worship things beyond understanding, and personify them. Humans once gazed at the stars before the sky broke; they drew pictures between points of light and gave them names and stories, granted them authority over their lives. So too with the Forgotten Gods, drawn from fragments of stories, inexplicable experiences, or the dreams of the mad. The point is to have secrets that allow people to love, fear, belong, and sacrifice, all without undue interference from the object of worship.

Living flesh minds its own business. But at some point, when the faithful whispered to the nothing, the nothing started whispering back.

From “Findings of a Heretic Scholar” by Fr. Dunswether Kakel

Maybe fifty years ago a traveling zoological attraction suffered fire and shipwreck off the coast of Ankhayat Park, in Silkshore. A monster the owner called a “river horse” got loose. It was massive, twice the size of the heaviest ox, with giant jaws full of blunt teeth. Irritable as hell. The local gondolier-based enforcer gangs cornered it for capture, and it resisted. There were lots of deaths—including the river horse. The toughest gondolier gang working for the Fairpole Grotto Council at the time was the Clamdiggers. Selman, the leader, was looking to update their image.

He mounted that monster’s skull on the wall; fleshless, it looked as fearsome as a dragon. He changed the name of his gang to the River Horses.

Twenty years later only the old-timers remembered the story, and the skull was one trophy among many. Denyek was in charge, he had his mistress paint a tribute to the gang. She made this beautiful mural of a white horse in the river. Even that was old and outdated fifteen years ago, when Sunset had a falling out with the leader and decided she was going to start a proper crew, not just thugging for the gondoliers anymore. If they were river horses, her crew would be River Stallions. She got her crew matching tattoos based on the mural under the Cox Street Stables. They never looked back.

From “Iconography of Dust: Stories Behind the Stories” by Tadger Bleek