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that-idiot-with-a-quill · 6 years

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The Deep One’s Doxies, The Deep Mistresses, The Beautiful Drowners

Women, in many of the world cultures, find themselves social prisoners. Even in our enlightened Aeternus, the general attitude towards the fair sex is repugnant to say the least. Often viewed more as property than human beings, it is no wonder that many a young woman’s mind has turned to escape. The open ocean has long been a symbol of such. Countless women have looked upon the great blue with dreams of a better life beyond some distant shore.

But occasionally, rarely, a few women feel a certain call beckoning them not to the ocean, but below it. On a moonless night, a wanderlust struck lass might find herself propositioned by a particularly salty suitor on a dark shore. Whether he is exploiting her desire for freedom or offering her a chance to live a life without restraint is unclear. But the women who take his offer become something more than human, they become the Mistresses of Fear, the Beautiful Drowners, the Deep One’s Doxies.

They appear at a glance to be normal human women, save for some very notable differences, those being their elongated webbed feet, the dozens of scar like horizontal markings on the sides of their necks and torsos, and their matted kelp like green hair.

Their feet allow them to move rapidly through the water, functioning not unlike the appendages of water faring foul and amphibious reptiles. The “scars” which cover the sides of their bodies open when exposed to salt water, revealing themselves to be in fact gills. Roughly twenty percent of a Mistresses total body surface is actually gills. Dissection reveals two completely separate respiratory systems, with the more fishlike being superimposed over their human biology. The Doxies’ hair might be considered some form of natural camouflage, or simply an side effect of their transformation. Typically decorated with braids of sea vegetation or small shells, their hair hides their faces in veils of shadow.

The Mistresses wear their hair in this way to intentionally obscure their features, for in the absence of flesh, they have masks of ebony black. These masks perfectly resemble the Mistresses original faces in such detail as to make even the most fervent of sculptor mad with envy. Comparison testing reveals the masks to actually be formed from calcite, the same substance which comprises barnacle shells. While beautiful, the masks charms are rather undercut by the opening where the right eye would be. Uniformly across their kind, from this opening peers a single yellow iris. Where the mask joins the head there is a seam, barely detectable to the eye. At will, the Doxy can raise her mask, revealing a great slimy jaw of jagged needle like serrated teeth, designed to sink into flesh and catch. Coiled within their neck and throat is a two foot long four pointed prehensile tongue, perfect for snatching fish from water, or grabbing an unsuspecting human victim.

In addition to this secret maw, the Mistresses also have hidden bone spurs which they can extend from their fingertips. These spurs are coated in a toxin which causes near immediate paralysis, yet leaves the target wholly conscious to witness what the Mistress does with their body.

The Beautiful Drowners wear no clothing, yet seem content in even the coldest of climate. Examination of a Deep Mistress’s cadaver reveal they possess a thin layer of fatty tissue beneath their skin. This tissue is remarkably effective at insulating the heat of their bodies. This adaptation explains why even in the frigid waters of the Norn, where these creatures are known as the Seal Maidens, they seem comfortable with constant nudity.

Because of their proclivity for exposing themselves, before the Mistresses reveal their true features one might be forgiven for thinking them quite fetching. The Doxies come in a variety of body types and skin colours, suggesting that their ilk can come from any shore faring people around the globe. On moonlit nights, they tend to lounge on beaches or rocky shores near human settlements, bathing in the sea water, laughing, and singing songs from exotic ports and dead ages. The Mistresses hunt either alone or in a pair, never more. They are well aware of the lusts and prudishness of all manner of women and men, and so use this to trick their prey into their grasp. When alone, a Mistress might pass herself off as a lonely woman out for a evening swim, beckoning a foolishly excitable shore-goer to join her for some carnal comfort. When in a pair, the two Drowners lie together on the shore pretending to be lovers in a heated embrace, waiting for some passerby to get close enough to attempt to chastise them or join in the fun. While most are warned of such danger at a young age, there will always be someone young or gullible enough to fall into these traps.

Despite all of their predatory biology and behaviour, the Deep One’s Doxies are generally unwilling to kill anything larger than a fish. Though carnivores, they do not hunt humans for sustenance, but rather as a bizarre form of worship for their lord and lover, the god of fear, Deep. They placate their god with tides of human suffering and mortal terror. Unsuspecting fools who wander into the grasp of a Deep Mistress will find themselves drowned repeatedly just to be pulled back at the last minute. Others are strangled within an inch of their life only to be released with moments to spare. Others still are paralyzed by the Mistress’s toxic claws and forced to watch as she runs her horrible tongue up and down the length of their body, unable to even scream. The Mistresses revel in this spectacle, all the while chanting some alien chant as play with their catch. The Doxies continue their games until their victims have gone unconsciousness. They leave these fools at the thresholds of the nearest human village, usually to be mistake for a drunkard who passed out from inebriation.

Their bizarre, yet enticing, visage coupled with their proclivity for pranks has led to these creatures having a somewhat colourful reputation amongst the sailors of the world when they are rarely spotted swimming through the water. Some see them as omens of bad weather, while believe them to be a sign of safe harbour. Some sailors boast loudly for resisting the urge to venture into their clutches, while others claim to have made love to a Deep Mistress and lived to tell the tale. The validity of such sailor talk is questionable.

What the Doxies do when they are not playing on the shore is unknown and is the subject of both academic speculation and wild rumour. Some believe they form underwater communities, tending to kelp gardens and raising aquatic animals as pets. Other rumours suggest they are the brood-mothers to the Frūiguli, a race of monstrous semi-human aquatic giants who stalk the ocean floor and occasionally raid ships. Some claim they spend more time on land than we think, disguised and moving through the shadows of port towns, growing the cult of Deep amongst the superstitious and depraved.

Whatever the truth, these women have certainly gained a form of the freedom they craved.

“In 346 A.P, Sir Shaun Campbell the high lord of his Majesty’s navy put out a open bounty on the Deep Mistresses. 100 gold crowns for the first man to bring him a head. of their kind. As of today, 240 years after his death, only one man have ever attempted to claim the bounty. Upon further investigation, he was revealed to be a truly disturbed grave-digger with green paint.” -Excerpt from Morbid Histories, an essay by Prof. Alexandria Philopator, High Historian of the Aeternus Imperial University

#Monster #prose #writing

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that-idiot-with-a-quill · 6 years

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The Singers of Yul.

Twenty-seven years ago in the small coastal colony of Yul, disaster struck. A gateway to the dark realm opened one humid and moonless night. As the Flyers ripped a bloody swath through the townsfolk, and the goliath Demolishers reduced the sea-stone buildings to rubble, a far deadlier threat silently ascended the bell tower of the local Alabaster cathedral, these were grotesque Singers of Yul. That night those killed by more visceral means proved to be the lucky ones, for all that heard those monsters terrible song perished in agony.

The Singers are a bizarre Voidling in both form and function. These creatures can best be described, in a loose sense of the word, as the malformed children of a trumpet, a giant spider, and the nightmare of a truly disturbed dentist. The main body of the Singers is thick at the base, thinning and curling over itself as it winds upward. The skin of the creatures appears segmented, as if several layers of carved living stone were stacked on top of each other. The Singers are novemrupeds. Three stumpy kneeless legs support the creatures from below their bellies, ending in flat toeless feet. Where the main body transitions into its legs, sprout five more multi-jointed limbs at irregular intervals from the Singers hips. These long spider like limbs are each a different size, and end in two sharp stiletto like points. From the top of their bodies, two funnel like orifices sprout, giving them their bizarre instrument like appearance. The colouration of the Singers largely maintains the typical gray complexion of other Demons, yet with a noticeable accent of purple. Opening vertically across their bellies, are the Singers horrible multi-layered jaws of jagged teeth an sickeningly moist Void flesh. From the creatures undulating orifices ooze constant streams of black syrupy saliva.

While the outward appearance of the Singers is certainly horrifying, the truly lethal feature of these creatures is the Singers deadly song. We know not the nature of this grizzly melody, nor its composition, tone, rhythm, or perhaps words, and yet we know its bizarre and fatal consequences. None who have heard it have lived to tell the tale. A creature exposed to the song suffers terrible and violent convulsions, accompanied immediate bleeding from every orifice, and what can only be excruciating pain. After minutes of unending suffering, the victim will die from either heart failure, head trauma, blood loss, or some combination of the three. Attempting to block out the noise proves useless, as only those naturally bereft of hearing are spared this fate. The only reason we know of the existence of these creatures is the miraculous survival of a deaf man who operated the cathedral’s main bell tower.

While the monsters of this world can kill in a myriad of ways, it’s only the Void which has found a way to weaponize music.

“...secret words, words known to the ones that do not live and do not die. After many long nights of cutting, and scraping, and biting, I know them too. I have touched these words. I know their taste, their texture, their terrible smell, but I dare not utter them, nor write them down. They are poison. They are the promise of a cold and dead world”- Diary of a Madman.

#Monster #horror #picture

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that-idiot-with-a-quill · 6 years

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The Broken of St.Ivan

The poor and destitute of the city Hardcastle have long told tale of a group of lepers which roam the northern wood. They speak of men and women who mutter gibberish and hunt the forest like rabid dogs. They whisper of people with skin grey as smoke, covered in scars, and possessed by carnivorous madness. The transients of Hardcastle know to avoid these woods at all costs, least they become the next meal of the Broken of St. Ivan.

What theses homeless men and women don’t know is the story behind these creatures. It is a story long suppressed by the Church. Before the first Crusade, among the original disciples of the Prophet Benedict was a man named Ivan Thatch. Later canonized by the Alabaster faith, the man who would come to be known as St.Ivan was obsessed with finding some way to attain communion with his god, as his master Benedict had.

According to certain forbidden texts, to accomplish his goal he began abducting common folk, spiriting them away to what was at the time an abandoned abby deep in the Aeternus countryside. St.Ivan had been born into a noble and wealthy background, and was confident that these people would not be missed. It was in isolation that St.Ivan began his bloody and sadistic work.

Through experimentation combining strange hallucinogenic decoctions, exotic drugs from distant shores, and all manner of gruesome and invasive surgeries, St.Ivan sought to crack open the minds of his victims and expose them to the Void. It was his hope that by driving the poor souls mad, he might discover a way to touch the divine Sunbringer himself.

His methods were brutal. He flayed the skin off their hands, with slow methodical motions, meant to maximize the pain. He opened their skulls, removing chunks of gray matter, and injecting strange and foul smelling liquids directly into their various lobes. He would drown them, sometimes in water, and sometimes in acid, just to pull them back at the last moment. He would cut away any facial features he deemed unnecessary, including the eyelids, ears, lips, and nose, leaving their faces horribly mutilated. He cut long and deep gashes into their flesh, carving parallel to the muscle tendons, before inserting barbed metal wire into the wounds, and sewing them shut, so that they would never know a moment without pain again. He would shut them away, bound, gagged, and buried in the graveyard behind his abby, only to dig them up days later to receive new and gastly “treatments”. All of this was done with the goal of driving his victims irreversibly mad.

Bizarrely, these experiments proved fruitful. With enough abuse, both of the mind and the body, the Broken of St. Ivan began to feel the touch of the Void. Becoming human in only the technical sense, these poor souls were transformed into the most heartbreaking of Voidlings.

Their metamorphosis manifested in subtle but terrible ways. Black eyes, fanged teeth, malformations in the skull and arms. Some walk on two legs, but some walk on four like animals. They tend to appear emaciated, although their violent carnivorism should leave them quite well fed. They hunt together, encircling and trapping their prey, which is anything unfortunate enough to have a pulse.

The Broken reside on the edge of civilization, scavenging, skulking, and hiding from view of society and the light of day. They have done so since they were made close to 500 years ago. Often, they are mistaken at a distance for transients, rather than the near immortal creatures that they are. They live in shadow, wearing scraps of cloth, possibly in a feeble attempt to disguise their true forms. Why they have come to live in the forest north of Hardcastle is a mystery, as is what happened to St. Ivan, and how the Broken came to be free. What isn’t a mystery is the well documented fact that St. Ivan’s family once owned the countryside surrounding Hardcastle. Perhaps, the Broken once lived here, and even in their violent madness, still find themselves drawn home.

“After they chased us into the forest, I thought I was dead. We kept running, those things scrambling, scurrying behind us, nipping at our heels. By some miracle, Morice and me found a hollowed tree to climb into. Eddie wasn’t so lucky. I saw the thing that got him too, it were a woman, naked as the day she was born but so very wrong. Scars from foot to teet, and no lips. She was crying and laughing as she ripped into him. Poor Eddie, poor poor Eddie.” -Johny Smokestack, Hardcastle transient.

#Monster #text #horror

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that-idiot-with-a-quill · 6 years

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The Lipigât

Forgive me for the cliché, but there is truly no more disturbing kind of beast than those that walk among us. In the ranks of such deceivers, beware the most terrifying and insidious of their ilk, the blood drinkers. These are creatures of cunning, sin, and defilement, I sincerely warn you, noble reader, beware the ravenous Lipigât.

The modus operandi of the Lipigât is to remain as indistinguishable from a normal human being as possible, typically through the use of concealing clothing and careful social maneuvering. When disguised, their only noticeable physical trait is the naturally pale skin of their head, feet, and hands. When their dress is removed, the repulsive nature of the creature is laid bare. The majority of the Lipigât’s body is covered in thick, bulging, red veins, which ungulate in an disconcerting and unnatural rhythm.

Yet even when undressed, one might still confuse them for a human being, although a severely diseased and deformed one. No, it is only when the creature feeds that its deception truly shatters. When preparing to feed, the Lipigât opens its mouth, unhinging its jaw like a serpent, revealing a second more worm-like mouth. Like the proboscis of a grotesquely large leech, this fanged maw extends out from the exterior mouth. Typically, four to seven inches long, this hungry appendage latches on to a victim along major arteries, and begins draining them of their bodily fluids. An adult Lipigât typically needs to feed only once every six to seven days, consuming an average of four pints of human blood plasma. Such feedings generally take downwards of an hour, leaving the victim disoriented, enfeebled, but not completely beyond the possibility of survival. Behaviorally, the Lipigât displays sociopathic tendencies, such as a complete lack of conscience or empathy, yet a remarkable ability to feign both effectively. These creatures view humans as nothing more than a source of food or reproduction, and have no qualms in taking a life to preserve their own.

The lifecycle of the Lipigât is disturbing, blurring the line between parasitism and symbiosis. The creature actually starts as two separate organisms, a larval Lipigât and a human host. Until it reaches maturity, the larva gestate in the stomach of its mother Lipigât. This larval creature resembles a bloated leech, dark red in colour, and fat in the middle. Once it’s ready to be “born” the newly matured worm bites its way free of its mother's stomach, and enters the body of its new host through the mouth. While the specifics remain a mystery, one thing is clear, once the matured worm enters the host body, they begin an immediate process of amalgamation. Through autopsy, we know that dozens of tendrils sprout from the abdomen of the parasite, and weave themselves into every organ of the host. Complete symbiosis is likely achieved when these tendrels make their way into the host brain. As the final transformation begins, the body of the worm wraps itself around the host’s spine, while the host begins exhibiting the exterior physical appearances of a mature Lipigât.

According to experts and hunters of these creatures, modern Lipigât prefer to infect affluent or titled members of societies. Outwardly, their facade typically appears selflessly charitable, incredibly kind, or charming in the extreme. However, in truth, their nature is steeped in vulgarity and depravity. A universal quality amongst this species is a unrepentant lust for violating social taboo, and an almost euphoric enjoyment of all manner of wickedness and perversion. Interestingly, the nature of their sinful indulgence appears completely reliant on the culture to which they currently inhabit, and not on the actual enjoyment of such deeds. For example, if a Lipigât inhabited a culture where the consumption of potatoes was considered grave trespass on decency, once out of sight, the Lipigât would do everything in its power to acquire and consume the starchy root vegetable. In a way, this behaviour seems almost proforminative, as the Lipigât tend to display their “vulgarity” to their imprisoned victims before feedings. It is unclear why Lipigâts do this. Some experts suggest that it is tantamount to a cat playing with its prey, while others assert that it could be a twisted attempt at courtship.

Among the superstitious of Aeternus, The Lipigât is commonly confused with bloodsucking spirits of eastern West Continent legend, when in fact, it was likely the Lipigât which inspired such myths. Historical evidence of these creatures suggests that they have existed among us for some time. Recent archaeological finds in the newly acquired province of Misr reveal ancient murals which depict scenes of Lipigât feeds, as well as detailed accounts of their reproductive cycle. Similar evidence has been observed in the oral traditions of the people of Gree, suggesting that Lipigât have been present on the South Contenant for upwards of seven thousand years. All of this evidence makes one thing clear: This parasite has been preying on humanity successfully since ancient times.

“White mask, white mask, passion in his dead eyes and hunger between his lips. Save me Lord, oh save me, lest I become his supper, or worse, become him.” -Prayer to Sun, the god of the Jioni tribe of the South Continent

#Monster #horror #text

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that-idiot-with-a-quill · 6 years

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An Angsty Old Poem I Found

I don’t remember when I wrote it, or why I wrote it, but enjoy this bit of angst from my past. I think I was exploring synesthesia in writing form. “His eyes are filled with the taste of honey until you taste the arsenic,

His words smell sweet until you detect a faint hint of rot,

His laugh seems confident until you can see that it is in fact crooked and broken,

His promises seem real until you feel their venom tipped thorns,

His love feels real, until you hear the sound of crumbling sediment beneath your feet and a single bitter laugh.

#angst #poem #whygodwhy

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that-idiot-with-a-quill · 6 years

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Bestiary: The Corpser

From a book I’m working on. Enjoy.

The Corpser

Upon Terra, there are few beings who are as consciously malicious as the vile creatures known as Corpsers. Supposedly the results of flawed necromantic attempts to extend one’s life, these semi-ethereal undead haunt graveyards, battlefields, or any place where they might gain access to freshly deceased bodies. With no respect for the dead, and a natural disdain for the living, these creatures exist as a subversion of the very laws of life and death themselves.

The Corpser is immediately identifiable by the large disk-like bone plate which protrudes from its malformed and eyeless cranium. Due to the colouration and tautness of the skin on its face, the head of the Corpser resembles an exposed skull. Theses creatures come in all shapes and body sizes, some small and stout, others willowy and slouched in appearance. Either way, Corpsers are rarely seen without some kind of cape, cloak, or robe, made from some unknown flesh like material. This need to clothe themselves comes not from modesty, but necessity. The body of the Corpser can only be described as a pile of gore, sewn and affixed about an artificially constituted endoskeleton. These reconstituted organs are covered in creeping black veins which start at the neck and move downwards, these veins pulsate unsettlingly, and spread black ichor throughout their artificial body. Their living cloaks act as a sort of mock skin, keeping their stolen organs from falling out, and allow them to remain preserved.

The Corpser is unique in its ability to move through solid matter as easily as one might move through water. They use this physics defying power, coupled with their abnormally long arms and claw like hands, to reach into the graves of the recently deceased and take the samples they need for their nightmarish and grizzly work. Additionally, the Corpsers preferred method of ending a life is to use this phasing ability to pluck the still beating heart from their victims, immediately killing them. Lacking legs or any form of physical propulsion, the Corpser is able to move itself telekinetically, its cloak dragging behind it as it glides soundlessly over the ground.

Unlike most creatures, the Corpser does not require its body to survive. The body of the Corpser is nothing more that a vehicle or tool, easily abandoned and replaced. In truth, so long as the head is intact, the creature will remain alive indefinitely. This is why Corpsers require a steady supply of freshly dead meat to work with, to insure that they have a healthy reserve of substitute bodies, should their current vessel be damaged.

Perhaps the most terrifying aspect of the Corpser is the vast mystical knowledge they accrue over their endless existences. Able to alter the properties of matter, endow life upon dead tissues, exert a degree of telepathic control, and spread disease with only a thought, the Corpser is a terribly fearsome foe to any living man.

“On the 7th night of my investigation into the strange ailment which had gripped the heart of the capital, I decided to tunnel down into and examine one of the local drinking wells around Broad Road. There, carved into the stone and glowing with a sickly green luminescence, was an ancient and mystical rune which I recognized as the word “Poison”. After I destroyed the rune and ascended back into the cold night air, I became aware that I was not alone. Standing above me was a darkly robed figure with a bizarrely malformed head. I realized immediately, this was the being who had poisoned the well.” -Quote from The Curious Case of the Broad Road Well, by Dr. John Summer

#monster #exerpt

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