[What Came Before]

#48 -> Mon:

1. Loki's was a chaos dependent on the consistency of others. Yet the winds of time and change showed him new futures in bloom offering the scent of nascent possibilities and unforeseen betrayal:

2. They showed his wife leaving, walking away from his bound form, serpent venom free to drip into the caskets of his sockets, burning down to the hollows past the pupil darkness no longer curtained by his eyes, boring into divine gray matter but still he will not die and so must scream and scream for the eons between foretold capture and predetermined release, begging his own Being forcibly calcified into flesh to deliver him from agony to hallucination:

3. Screaming as he, Hero he was always meant to be, all the sniveling of Trickster archetype sloughed off, is charging with giants of bathed in auras of Winter or Flame, hammer blows drowned by the howling of Fenris and Garm, meeting his end as Martyr murdered amidst the iridescent shards of a shattered Bifrost -

2. Yet those dreams are few are between, godhood has made him too strong to slip the leash of this hallucinated Present, and so he must scream until, hoarse only when the pitch of his voice has hammered cracks into surrounding stone, he tastes the blood in his throat -

1. He turns from the churning prophecies, and queries his heart, finding a hate that is as inexplicable in its depth as it is inexorable in its targeting of the Aesir. It troubles him that his Chaos is pinned down like a butterfly on velvet even as it soothes him. He is an actor on the Norn Sisters' stage, caught on a current plunging over a cliff. He is and was always bound, and what was his life if not a series of snakebites?

0. "Ragnarok", he whispers, in the way a man speaks on the way to visit a lover long-absent from the embrace of his arms.

[What Came Before]

#49 - Tues

Enjoy this life, Archenemy of Mine,
as the Norns say the final reckoning approaches,
when you and I will at last meet on a vast plain of wolf's fur,
striding toward battle on a lupine corpse so grand its jaws could swallow the sun...

[What Came Before]

Weds #50

Here it was, the moment of truth.

She looked down as the zipper descended, allowing a thick thuft of pubes to blossom. At least he smelled clean, which made him better than half of the men she brought home from the club. She didn't care about men being uncircumcised, so long as they "cleaned behind the ears".

As his uncovered, mushroom headed erection sprung out from the enclosure of denim, her eyes flickered upward and her mouth stifled a sigh. He wanted a compliment, she could see the expectation in his puppy dog eyes.

They always did. Men who couldn't accept that save for the rarest of circumstances, a dick was a dick was a dick.

Still, after the last dude had deflated because she'd included "moray eels" into her dirty talk, she's been meaning to try out some new lines.

"Ooh baby if it were a salmon, I bet it could swim up Victoria Falls stacked atop the Niagra!"

He beamed with pride. It was an act of will not to roll her eyes.

Men. Fucking men. If only she could develop a healthier love for pussy, she was sure she could live without 'em.

/story

[What Came Before]

Nihilistic story (cu...cont)

Dense, nestling deep grey points of light, a shaft, bolting across ground so thin it could be forgotten, yet it carries the world. Equine screech in the distance. It does not know what will happen, the dust spirals at their approach like an old mans anger. It inhales, like the very act were to already scream. Minute fragments of pine click and shiver over things so small they can only be tasted, not seen. They are around it now, swords drawn.

It swivels skull constelation, finds lens to lens. It's lens shivers, clicks. Many, so small and numerous, they cannot be known. The other lens, even as twining fibre tugs at calcium stalegtites around forged earth bone, flickers. Syncronises.

Then one slits it's throat. Iron rich reapportions.

[What Came Before]

Saajan, what's with these empty sex stories? (alternatively: Am I more of a romantic than I thought? Second alternative, I'm only thinking of one other at this point, so that makes 2. Which may not qualify as 'all these'.)

How did that ball (scuse the phrase) start rolling with her, to begin with? How did she end up getting to the club. Prior, how did she end up thinking of the club? Prior that, how was anything attractive to begin with for her to travel this road ever to begin with? Is her gut brain just sending her out and then her upper brain has all this sarcasm? If so, when did they depart/sheer from each other?

[What Came Before]

oh, i just built the story around the Niagra line. the shortest imaginative distance was to have promiscuity rather than intimacy.

but, though it doesn't count as the daily since it was written awhile back, I do have intimacy in stories:

Is that why you started liking girls?”

Eana frowned, thankful the other woman's eyes were admiring her nipples. It was hard to remember that Deandrea was isolated from prejudice, that societal condemnation of her desire was nothing more than proof of a world long fallen to ignorance. Why care what those deaf to the Song thought about you? Why weigh yourself down with the banal opinions of the unchosen masses?

“Does it matter?” Eana asked, drawing Dee's hand from her breast to her mouth. A small, half-whispered moan stumbled out of the lips of her boss's daughter.

“I've just been a phase too many times.” Memories moistened Dee's eyes even as her now slightly choked voice continued to be weighted by pleasure. Eana, rather than speak words of comfort, stopped her suckling of Deandrea's fingers and placed her lips on the other woman's neck.

Slowly, with the gentleness used to pinch a butterfly's wings, Eana shyly led Dee's moistened hand into the clasp of her thighs. Upon contact Dee rubbed her lover forcefully, elicting a gasp of pleasured surprise, then pulled back her hand to taste Eana before descending once more. Dee's fingers clasped the thicker woman's thigh, her nails digging to stake their owner's claim. Drawing away for a moment, Dee caught her lover's gaze as she licked her lips. A promise of things to come, like the taste of dessert given before the table is set. Grabbing the back of Eana's head, Dee pushed the woman's full lips back to her throat.

“Now that you've started, just don't ever stop.” Dee arched her head, exposing her neck to more slow suckling kisses. Her fingers wove themselves into Eana's mahogany locks. Her fingers traveled up Eana's thigh with teasing slowness. Once her destination was reached, Dee kept her fingers together in mimicry of a tongue. Distilled pleasure from Eana with a woman's expertise. An offering of proof that in in the arena of sex men were superfluous. Coarse. Substandard. It was not in their nature to be either giving or patient.

“Don't ever stop liking girls, okay?” Eana murmured something in response to the question. Something incoherent that might have been affirmation, the elusive Grail that Dee had long fought for, but was likely nothing more than lustful glossalia.

As her hunger uncoiled from its place in her belly, Eana's kisses began to shed their gentleness. Deandrea remembered they'd have to meet Father tomorrow, that it was too warm for turtlenecks and scarves. A recipe for ridding one's skin of hickies flickered across her mind, something a college roommate had told her, but worries were hard to hold on to at the moment. In truth, they only served to further excite the normally prim Dee.

Even through the haze of her own passion, her tongue found and flickered across Eana's earlobe, fishing out another moan from her lover. Every sound she drew from Eana's lips buttressed Dee's hopes. Maybe this time it'll be different?

One more lick, tracing the curve of that ear. A prelude to her plea, the hope that passion would keep the other woman from one day tumbling out of her arms.

“Don't ever stop liking me.”

[What Came Before]

Nihilistic story (cu...cont)

Dense, nestling deep grey points of light, a shaft, bolting across ground so thin it could be forgotten, yet it carries the world. Equine screech in the distance. It does not know what will happen, the dust spirals at their approach like an old mans anger. It inhales, like the very act were to already scream. Minute fragments of pine click and shiver over things so small they can only be tasted, not seen. They are around it now, swords drawn.

It swivels skull constelation, finds lens to lens. It's lens shivers, clicks. Many, so small and numerous, they cannot be known. The other lens, even as twining fibre tugs at calcium stalegtites around forged earth bone, flickers. Syncronises.

Then one slits it's throat. Iron rich reapportions.

I like what you're doing here, your rhythms seem to be gaining confidence with ever story! I like how the reality seems to be determined by this rhythm, though I might be primed to see it that way b/c you refer to the tale as "nihilistic".

[What Came Before]

Lady Dark (#51 Thur)


"She is like a cat in the dark,
then baby, she is your darkness.
She rules her life like a fine skylark,
when the sky is starless..."
 -Rhiannon

Darkness in the Wyld is the living darkness of forests, of entangled lovers, of festivities and terrors. The comet streaked night of the Weal, the Moon conquered sky of the Warp, the cacophonous dark of Eald and even the sunless corridors of Wan are all pregnant with Story. This bountiful Wyld night of opportunity is incarnated in the fey mistress referred to simply but reverently by all of Fairy as Lady Dark.

In Weal she might arrive in miniature, on the back of a nightingale whose song reverberates into the mortal world, emerging from the throats of the fowl's brethren so poets across the worlds might be inspired to pen new verses. Her steed settles on the shoulders of a fey who has caught her eye, and she'll whisper novelties yet untried into the lucky Wyldling's ear. She comes as a shadow, draped in the diaphanous mists of fecund nebulae, a lover whose touch is maddening, her teasing gestures almost as light as the rays of the moon on your skin. She is the assassin spoken of in whispers, the one who throws whole kingdoms into upheaval by slitting throats or slipping poisons under the cover of Herself thrown across the sky. She is the titan general who conquers under the watchful stars of nightfall, astride an oak trampling stallion whose hooves and teeth are formed from blackest iron.

In Eald she is lynx and owl, patient stalker and wisdom giver. She runs and rides with the Wild Hunts, takes charge of wolves or is devoured as the martyr among the fleeing hares. She comes cloaked in star bright darkness to offer visions to the Heirophant Druids. She is mother and queen to Etrau, for she is the angel wrestler of shamans, the Death that initiates must conquer to grasp the Mysteries that lie beyond the grasp of reason and conscious thought. She is the womb and the egg, the wet darkness that encompasses and continually generates the creation mythology that buttresses Narrative Time. She awaits supplicants at stained altars of unhewn stone, for it is to her that the sacrifice of hearts and babes is offered, with her that hoary, bloody bargains are struck.

In Wan she is the rope and chain laden Queen of Muses, a martyr and mistress of leather and lace who allows herself to be bound even as the inspiration and excitement she offers her chosen Unseelie bind them in turn. She rides dangling black widows, whispering encouragement and goading on obsessions, offering injections of imagination through venom. She is hunger and terror and wanderer, as much mole and bat as she is woman, or perhaps blind amphibian swimming then joining with cold rivers that have never been mirrors for the luminous bodies of the sky. Her menstrual blood drips onto the Underdark Floors as she liberates and cages heroes and monsters, leaving a trail of burning rubies that sink into stone to mark a path of pilgrimage for the cyclopes and formians of the Wan. Sometimes she is even a lost and frightened child.

In Warp she is the Crone and Vistani Queen. She meets you at the crossroads, tarot deck in hand. She has full moons for eyes, one holding a hare and the other a gnome. She suckles the lunatics chosen by destiny, and sings lullabies to the Rip Van Winkles who will sleep soundly through decades or days as determined by whim. She is Corpse Bride, Queen of the Cremation Ground, pale belly as full as the moon, birthing minotaur sages whose placentas are labyrinths even as She is jet skinned Entropy whose children are ravenous nagas that swim through the waters of Time. She is Maiden, eyeless virgin who pronounces and prognosticates with sockets raised to the stars even as she is a Seductress whose kiss exchanges years, vitality, or memories for the insight of unfathomable lives.



Gloom Drinkers (#52 Fri)

In the Grey Courts, some seek a different kind of night than that offered by Lady Dark. They treat depression as if it were an intoxicant, basking in the despair and dolor that radiates out from the Shadowfell. Their castles and forests feature various gates to their sister plane, portals that are as varied as paintings, wells, lakes, tree hollows and of course arches and tori and doors. For some this is a test of the Wyld within them, with those succumbing to the gloom cast out as failures. For others it is an attempt to balance out the wildness within them, a task taken up by those who for one reason or another have been cursed to dwell among the mortal races. And still for others it is a sickness of inversion, a loyalty to the Story killing forces of the Grey.

Are the latter traitors to the Wyld? Most, even among their own company, would consider them as such though some wizened children of the Warp say that these supposed turncoats are in fact bound to the ultimate Story. Why else would Lady Dark allow such an affront to her glory and contamination of her domain?

[What Came Before]

Sat story early ->

Wanderers in Possession of Unkillable Hearts

Some loves won't die, they transcend circumstance, death, and sometimes the wishes of the person who feels the emotion. In the Wyld, unkillable hearts appear on trees in the midst of cherries and apples, on runners where their siblings are strawberries, on vines and as tubers and growths forming from the spores of mushrooms and birthed from other varieties of flora.

Rarer than seven-leaf clovers and blood hued pearls, these treasures are much sought after, sometimes the cause of skirmishes or if strong enough all out wars. To replace one's own heart with one of these enables one to survive some of the darkest wasting curses of the fairy, not the least of which is the infectious power of the Story-sapping Grey.

To take in such a heart is to subject oneself to madness, for the incarnation of love into Wyld flora leaves little in the way of knowledge - sometimes not even an image of the affection's target, just feelings of skin upon skin. It thus becomes a martyrdom of insanity, a Grail Quest for a needle in an infinite haystack. This passion is like the churning sea, a counter-cancer eternally drowning the previous curse or nightmarish taint of the Grey.

Who dares to murder one's Self in order to defy the touch of the Reaper or the Horsemen of the Grey? Some of these Lovers were infected by Grey Carriers willing or unwilling, turned into conduits for this power that seeks the strangulation of Art and thus the ruin of all that is Wyld. Others were cursed by the nigh inexorable power of Court Lords, Eald Elders, or the hags of Warp and must take up the banner of adoration that might be the foundation stone of a good life or the curse that grabs and leaves a lover pining away for one who years or decades or millennia gone.

Once an Unkillable Heart beats in a Wyldling's chest, it draws the fey deeper into madness. The fey will pine for the object of someone's affection, will deny this love is their own when the agony builds to crescendo but this will be to no avail. The heart may allow the focus of the love to change, but the intensity and thus overwhelming nature of the need actually makes this worse for the fey in the long run. And so most likely the fey wander off, traveling the Wyld and the worlds, sometimes leaving ruin in their wake and sometimes gifting others with wonders, half-fey children, or a defense against the approach of the Grey.

Among these Lovers, some hope for a reprieve from their infections or curses, and so preserve their original hearts. Others worry the time may come when these loves prove themselves far more fragile than is usually accepted, that despite their incarnation upon the Wyld these loves, like most things in the multiverse, are touched by Impermanence. Not every love proves to be as Unkillable as it might initially seem. These persons will secret away their original hearts, placing them in sanctuaries under the guard of those beings who can, through strict rituals and bargains, be trusted to defend that which is left in their care. These Heart Gardeners are various fey of the Wan whose Stories turn to those tales of contemplation and steadfastness, knights and monks and great beasts of heraldry. Great vaults and monasteries are built with ritual magic continuously employed to keep the hearts alive and secreted away from their original owners' foes.

Other fey, especially those who seek to bravely contest or understand the Grey, are more willing to destroy their original hearts in return for some great boon or blessing. Many of these go to the altars of Lady Dark scattered across the Eald, though others have turned to other lords, alchemists or even the Kitchen Kings and Queens. It's said that in the depths of the Warp there is a convent-palace of gingerbread, where witch-nuns have grown fat supping on the hearts of the Fey.

Though incredibly rare, given the hearts' appearance seems to have little connection to the present time or gulf between realities, and the instinctual awareness of danger by both the fey and the original lover, a fey finds the object of the heart's affection. This has heretofore always been a situation in which the tragedy is compounded, for a fey who manages to steal away the lover from the person who's affection created their Unkillable Heart sentences themselves to death. Thankfully, in some sense, most fey find themselves cursed with memories of rejection intertwined with relief the lover they sought stayed true to the one who empowers the hearts in their chests.

[What Came Before]

nihilation (cont)

Mud slumps. The burning cancer in the sky both remains still and wheels across the horizon, till it retracts it's kiss. The gripped steel is long gone toward smaller fire, kicked up dirt and rotting grass atop. At and upon dead tree the lens that saw now sits. It eats little. In more courses of the sky cancer, twisting out of cells clawing each other for nutrient, beats child. Memory of the sea exuded across and down dead flakes of skin, the tinier replica of a calcium arc abased on thin ground, it's lenses roll up. Ostensibly a spilling of hurt, secretly a wielding of hurt. It's lens find it's father's. Shiver, dilate, click. Smaller lens syncronises. It is here, decide, as what you call thine?

And so on, for decades. Lens locked. Recovering itself in every new skulled aurora of electricity, from one to the other, again and again. Rebuild the utilities. One hundred years latter, it finally stretches within it's calcium lamp - unfurls wings made of skinned faces. Remnant to reclaim. Only deathly whisper of corruption circumventing.

Vengence.

[What Came Before]

Sun -> #54 ->

Lake of Bile (Wan)

A liquid body of green-brown chemicals with islands of accreted lumps, the Lake of Bile is an incarnation of anger and bitterness preserved by the thousands of bile nagas living within its caustic confines. Unlike true nagas, whose subspecies possess a humanoid head and a serpents body, bile nagas are a kind of fey that possess colorful flatworm bodies topped by a head that resembles a living vampire whose face is flush with passion.

Bile Nagas travel the multiverse seeking those whose nursing of hatred has consumed their identities. Some are manipulated into exchanging their blood, drawn out by the faux nagas' fangs, for a promise of assistance in vengeance that never comes. If this makes the blood donor resent the bile naga all the better, for this blood causes a reaction in the naga that sweats out the donor's hate as the bile that fills the lake.

It is unclear whether bile nagas are a natural creature native to the Wyld, or some species that was cursed into this form. It may even be possible that they were true nagas at one point. What is known is that a constant supply of bile must be obtained, as a donor's death or willingness to relinquish the nursed hate turns a portion of the bile into purest spring water - a liquid that is anathema to the fey-nagas.

[What Came Before]

Mon -> #55 ->

The Gremlin Guildhall of Fixers

Race traitors dedicated to the arts of regulation and repair, the Fixers are forever running from those gremlins who accuse them of betraying their heritage or being tainted with gnomes' blood. The Guildhall is a massive fortress-castle, a battleship tank spider that moves with the aid of contracted elementals. Within this structure one finds a planar metropolis where various beings who take pleasure in the building of mechanical things come to discuss, reverse engineer, and produce inventions of all sorts. The portals also allow Fixers to travel the Multiverse and go around secretly repairing and maintaining devices.

The Guildhall is a massive city run by a democracy. Every Fixer gremlin gets a vote. If you are not a gremlin, you don't. In truth, non-gremlins are treated according to the reputation of the person's race as builders and craftsmen in the Multiverse. In addition to that, those non-gremlins who live in the city are judged by how well they themselves are fit the theoretically positive stereotype.

[What Came Before]

Wan Miners #56

Burrowing mole-folk, dao and pechs, deep gnomes content to be away from the drow and illithid of the mortal Underdarks, fey-touched xorn princesses, these are a but a small sample of the varied beings that search for treasures in the depths of the Wan. The gemstones of the Wan contain the power of the Wyld, and as such are as much seeds of Story as they are precious and semiprecious stones. There are ever burrowing mechanical cities and grand urbanized caverns driven and run by the Unseelie obsessed with the fossils, sediment, and even wells of unrefined oil born in the currents of Narrative Time. Whether in motion or sedentary, these chthonopolises are fitted with portals and teleportation circles in order to serve as gathering places for the varied groups to swap goods and stories, and each city is a place of noir intrigue as its citizens seek to siphon off the glory and rewards of the more adventurous miners.

Over the eons a camaraderie has formed between the different groups of miners, leading to various guilds and loosely connected alliances. Given the twisting nature of the Wan, and all the varied monsters and villains imprisoned in its depths, it only makes sense to have someone watching your back. Of course, given that this is the Wyld, all these alliances are mortared together with binding oaths and promises of blood debt. Currently, many of the miners have claimed to hear a regal yet desperate whisper in the dark, a voice floating on impossible breezes asking after a black gem of infinite facets...

Sailors of Holographic Calligraphy #57

"Physicist David Bohm believes the hologram to be an analogy for his vision of a vast interconnecting universe, in which every part is in some sense a reflection of every other part...In the same way, everything in this story reflects and comments upon everything else."

-Arkham Asylum Script


The Sailors are travelers on the waters of Narrative Time, adrift on skiffs and rafts and beer barrels and buckets and giant peaches, utilizing the recursions and fractals of Story to maneuver themselves into varied adventures and situations. They continually play out the myths of old in varying incarnations, sending echoes and avalanches across the Wyld. In the midst of war there is a conflict amidst brothers, plague shatters an Empire even as illness causes a man to reevaluate his relationship with his gods.

The violence done to a prince is the seed that leads to a genocide. The kindness shown to an orphan waif leads to the redemption of a race entire. The battles of a world mirror the battle of the deities in the heavens. The initiates follow in footsteps tread by hero-shamans who first struck the ancient covenants between mortals and the primal lords of Eald. The sailors look for such reverberations, where the ancient and modern, miniscule and cosmic, shape each other. Stories born of stories, themes and events echoing out or spiraling inward, commonalities and synchronicities across the stretches of the Wyld - these are the currents they ride.

They are members of no Courts, but instead uplifted changelings and errant fey knights moving through all of Fairy and even spiraling out into the Multiverse entire, their paths crossing again and again in the heart of the Warp. Some say they are cursed (or perhaps blessed?) by the hags and hag-men, journeying through the Narrative until finally, through their continual cycling of stories, they finally capture their own tales, relive and reenact their own lives in new environs, and in correcting past failures set themselves free.

The Angels of Story #58

In ancient days the gods battled the Old Ones, whom some name Titans and others Primordials. Yet even the Titanomachy is a tale, just as the battle between Good and Evil is a tale. Is it not, then, a rivulet that is born of and feeds into the waters of Narrative Time? Where did the seed of god and titan germinate if not the Cosmic Ocean whose tides lap the Warp, the Primungle now bound in the Eald? Is the Wyld older than even the Chaos Ocean of Elemental Primordials?

Though they do not speak of such matters to their mortal churches, surely the gods brood over the properties of Narrative Time. Why else would they bind their angelic servants into the Wyld unless they hoped to draw its temporal waterways toward a destiny in which the primordials are either finally murdered or inescapably bound? Mysterious servants whose faces are as masked as their glory wreathed brethren, yet are hunched over in cloaks that range from velvet or chain mail, rags or hide or shed snake skin. A few even robe themselves in feathers, as it seems these angels do not feel - or at least do not express any - bitterness over their distinguishing lack of wings.

Some of their masks are those worn in plays in operas, others bear the false faces of tribal ceremonies, autumnal Samhains, or masquerade balls.

Though they lack the blazing auras of valor or vengeance, these angels are surrounded by whirling pages on whose surfaces are written malleable narratives. Strangely enough, there is no draft surrounding the bodies of the angels. The divine servitors, serving as guides to mortal travellers who enter Feywyld on behalf of the gods, continually snatch pages through the air to read them then return them to the forcelesss cyclone. Anyone else attempting to the do the same find the papers whirl with enough power to dislocate a bone from its socket, and are sharp enough to leave grooves in metal.

When not serving as guides through Narrative Time, it is unknown what task the angels set themselves to. On behalf of their gods, do these servitors seek the wonders of the Weal, the secrets buried in the Wan, the revelations that await those who take part in the hunts and dances of the Eald? Perhaps they wish to gift the Warp to the lords of the Astral Sea, who'll use its power to supplant their elders, rewriting time itself so that they are Alpha and Omega of all creation.

Or perhaps the Wyld is a grub in the hearts of these angels, gnawing at their Astral loyalties...

The Trickster's Circle of Eald #59

Coyote, Anansi, El-ahrairah, Raven, Tanuki and Kitsune. These are just some of the primal animal spirits that take part in the infinite games of the Eald. These tricksters are forever fulling their fellow primal spirits and Eald fey, as well as taking part in continually broken and rewoven alliances against each other. This collection of shape changers, enchanters and illusionists will prank and seduce those around them, often to rage or madness but occasionally into Enlightenment.

The Trickster's Circle will at times tie itself to the Conspirator's Quorum, though one can never be sure if this is a rumor or even just deluded cultists who think they've touched the manipulators of the Grey. Other times they will end up forcing new changes and origins upon the animals of the Wyld that reverberate from the Platonic Fauna of the Eald as they cajole and deceive those around them. One of their favorite parts of this game is to befuddle those forces beyond the Wyld who attempt to steal or conquer the primordial power of the Eald for themselves. Both celestials and fiends have been ensnared in their machinations, and it has cost both Heaven and Hell dearly in terms of lives, treasures, and self-respect.

Mortal visitors may fare better if they show the proper respect, though sometimes a mortal will walk into the Wyld at an inopportune time and end up part of a practical joke that is but one play in the Tricksters' infinite game but results in the deaths of hundreds of others. When pressed about the immorality of their actions, they'll press back and ask the last hare that the visitor protected, the last spider they watched be trampled in the confines of the mortal world...

The Ouroboros #60

Valkeries given over to aging in the Warp say It is the father of all the World Serpents, while beasts imprisoned in the Wan by Marduk and Enki claim it to be the last avenging daughter born of Tiamat's womb. The nymphs of air say it was born upon the death of Typhon, wriggling away from the slain Titan's corpse while the medusae will tell you that it is a shorn lock from the head of the primordial Gorgon. Draconic shamans claim it is nothing less than an avatar of Io, the Ninefold Dragon.

In the Wyld many fey will tell you that this Serpent created the Wyld from the Cosmic Ocean, that the mountainous paths of scales one occasionally finds oneself walking are its body woven through the waters of Narrative Time. Others say the Wyld is its flesh, that the earthquakes are the rumblings of its restless ghost, that its mind still lives in the Warp for that is where the Serpent laid its tail-grasping head before dying. In the Eald some spirits whisper that the Ouroboros circles not just the Wyld but reality entire, that it holds together the current configuration of the Multiverse itself.

Yet among the time wanderers of the Grey Courts and Sailors of Holographic Calligraphy there are those that claim that there is no Ouroboros, not yet, that it is a fetal primordial called into being by the wizened elders of the Warp, a creature that will encompass creation and bind it to the desires of those enigmatic fey. All experiences with segments of its gargantuan form are due to the ever increasing wrinkles in time.  Rituals are made from events in the lives of mortal and immortal, god and titan, angel and devil. Events that ripple and echo and act as enchantment and insemination of reality itself, providing the spilled seed of lives lived that is necessary for the Serpent Lord of Time to be born. Uroc would pay much to know the truth of such rumors, but even the Wyld touched son of Ztefano does not demand anything of the elderly masters of the Warp.

The Primordials of Seasonal Tribulations #61

The valiant Hecatoncheires, the sun devouring Apopsis, the horrors of Tiamat and her monstrous brood, the maddening visage of Cthullu, the destructive might of of the giantish forbearers of Jotunheim and Muspeillheim - all these enemies threw themselves against the gods and were conquered, their defeat giving shape to the modern Multiverse.

Yet in the depths of the Eald, creatures as old as they are watched the Titanomachy from afar, and their kingdoms became - or always were - a part of the Wyld in the new Multiverse that arose after the triumph of the gods. The floods, hurricanes, and lightning of the Monsoon. Late frosts that ambush the budding crops in Spring. The Drought that chokes the joy from Summer, accompanied by the Forest Fires that are his children. The Starvation and Cold that stride through the Winter. The swarms of locusts that come before harvesting, the blight that strikes the crops and the erosion that steals away the soil.

In the mortal worlds these forces might be ruled over troublesome spirits, but these spirits in turn answer to the primordials that represent these tribulations suffered across the worlds and planes. In the Eald one finds these beings incarnated as wandering horrors or as Wyld lords in their own right. Often times their nature will change as directed by their own whims or the currents of Narrative Time, and a massive bureaucracy of sacrifices and rituals coordinating floods and hurricanes is left in ruins as a capricious and amoral djinn-titan decides to curse the mortal worlds based on nothing but whim.

Yet as powerful as these beings can be, they too must respect the current of Narrative Time. This means not only respecting covenants struck in accordance with the binding rules of the Eald, but also incarnating in forms that continually war against the gods. Drought must become the Vedic dragon Vritra, battling Indra for control of the waters. The Horde of Spring Frosts must battle the Daughter of Summer and Sun. The ugly giants of Cold and Hunger must face the young archer in combat. Some say these battles sway the likelihood of the these tribulations, others claim the opposite is true. Yet until one finds a way to kill these immortals forever, whether slaying them outright or preventing their continual resurrections, the debate remains a matter of theory that gives little comfort to the farmers and hunters toiling across the worlds and planes. Those mortals seeking respite for their peoples must come to the Eald to bargain, ideally guarded by covenants guaranteeing safe passage and in possession of something to make even the consideration of a deal worthwhile.

[What Came Before]

The holographic one reminded me...

Incurvian. A universe like an old video game, a ship passing far enough to one side, simply appears to the other. But broader, this a cell for a prisoner too large. An immense thing, jammed into a space where ye pass from one edge to opposite....and still so immense, as to pass over edge again. And again, and again. Overlapping immesurable times, the one thing. The conflict and impossibility of one thing overlapping creates the apparent many. All are a reflection because all are one, put into a corner too small.

[What Came Before]

Callan - Is Incurvian your own creation? If so definitely develop that further, that is a great story seed!

The Gauntlet (Wan) #62

The freedom that Seelie lords enjoy extends not just to freedom of choice, but also freedom of form and freedom to manipulate one's surroundings. Freedom, to these entities, is something intrinsic to their being.

Yet what of the desire for freedom in the hearts of mortals, a craving for it perhaps greater than that found in the hearts of the Seelie? Why would beings so bound by time and space, flesh and circumstance, ever think to enjoy even the smallest modicum of choice? Why would they defy odds and threats and tortures to free themselves, some warring even with the scarring ghosts of their very own pasts?

What is this spark and where does it come from? And what are the limits one can place on a prisoner before this spark is snuffed out? These are the questions that drive the work of the Gauntlet, an underground prison camp of pointless tasks and carefully considered cruelty ruled by Seelie lords whose driving curiosity about such things led them inexorably to the Court of Wan. The walls of this gulag continually shudders in revulsion or shivers in ecstasy, each reverberation of stone producing nigh indecipherable hieroglyphics in the passages and cells. What little can be read suggests the entire Gauntlet is an elemental creature that feeds on or is poisoned by the suffering of those it contains:

Mortals, drawn from across the Multiverse, made to suffer and serve in the races of the once Seelie, now Unseelie that run this nightmare, contests in which the fey compete to see which among the new crops of mortals are most easily broken, which one is most readily made to into yet another shuffling "zombie" with warm skin and a heart beat. The labor here ranges from mining the Wan for gems and ore to serving in the painfully exhausting dances, skirmishes, hunts, and orgies the fey continually engage in. The broken are but fodder for all the activities the fey engage in, victims made to suffer at the hands of fresher or hardier mortals.

Though many end up joining the ranks of the Broken, there are those few souls who do not. Those with the most resilient spirits are, through personal passages created in the stonework, given harrowing escape routes by the Gauntlet. Most face death or worse in their attempts to leave the nightmare behind, but every once in awhile someone manages to make their way to the final emerald lit tunnel that leads to the place the mortal was first abducted from. As they stumble, or more likely crawl, toward their home they see or if blinded by then sense their captors in watching from the shadows. All those sweaty, naked, lithe bodied fey with leering animal heads, impossibly lascivious grins on the visages of variegated fauna always staring with the green, wild and humorless eyes of humans perpetually starved.

At this moment, the lords of the Gauntlet offer the escapee a thunderous echoing ovation, for to them the chosen of the Gauntlet who make it this gateway are considered both freed and holy.

Though these mortals have earned their freedom, the Lords always send a pixie or two to observe and record how these sacrosanct figures fare after their departure. These journals are treated with the utmost respect, each one a relic the rulers of the Gauntlet would upend entire nations to retrieve.