Keeper Dan wrote:
Topic
This week, we ripped a page from H.P. Lovecraft's "The Festival" (written in 1923, published in 1925), and discussed an unnamed creature that has generally been thought to be a Byakhee. What if it was something else?
"Out of the unimaginable blackness beyond the gangrenous glare of that cold flame, out of the tartarean leagues through which that oily river rolled uncanny, unheard, and unsuspected, there flopped rhythmically a horde of tame, trained, hybrid winged things that no sound eye could ever wholly grasp, or sound brain ever wholly remember. They were not altogether crows, nor moles, nor buzzards, nor ants, nor vampire bats, nor decomposed human beings; but something I cannot and must not recall. They flopped limply along, half with their webbed feet and half with their membranous wings; and as they reached the throng of celebrants the cowled figures seized and mounted them, and rode off one by one along the reaches of that unlighted river, into pits and galleries of panic where poison springs feed frightful and undiscoverable cataracts."
Really enjoyed the discussion about this creature and the variations that you all discussed...had me thinking.....
The Baron's face was flat, cold, a reflection of his heart as his mind realized that the carnage that lay before him was hundreds of his soldiers ordered into the no man's land between two salient of the front line in some Gods forsaken hilled portion of South Eastern France. There was no loud sounds, just the slow din of flies and the shifting, gurgling sounds of flesh decomposing. His steel blue eyes surveyed the scene through the silver wired glasses that he had put on his face when he stood above the trench wall. Out there, in front of him, was the trenches of the enemies of the Empires with their concepts of liberty, equality and the intermixing of the social orders that had served Europe for centuries. There were roles for people, and those roles ensure a level of stability, of order, allowing those born to lead to use all of their talents to protect those born to serve.
His hand reached into his officer's tunic, pushing aside the gorget and the gold and jeweled double eagle and sword order that he had received from the Emperor himself for his service a year earlier. The year he and his troops had advanced the lines deep into lands of the degenerates. What a difference a year had made. Yet, there was still a way that his lost troops could help the Empire. The scroll tube was ancient. It's obsidian hardness was criss-crossed with silver glyphs and cuneiform. "Korporal," he handed his patton and crop to the corporal that jumped at his calling. The corporal carefully took hold of the crop, noting that for once he was not feeling its bite across his shoulder or about his head.
'Stay near me, but do not at any time interrupt me, or touch me, no matter what occurs. Failing me in this will cost you beyond your worst imagining, do you understand?" The corporal whimpered and nodded in obedience. The Baron could feel the fear in the man rising, and that fear raised his own expectations for what he was about to undertake. The corporal would be a perfect source of power for the spell. A cold, predatory smile broke across his face and the fear in the corporal rose even higher with the Baron smelling the odor of sweat mix with the sickly sweet smells of blood, offal, and decay.
The Baron twisted the one end of the scroll case, and slipped the silver and jade cap into the pockets of his wool feldgrun trousers. He unscrolled the parchment, copied by the Order and sent to him to provide the unholy aid needed to keep the Empire, holy or not, in its rightful place. Too much would be lost if commoners could dictate the fate of empire, or history, and of the Gods themselves. The rusted iron script was in the language of an empire long lost to the depths of oceans and the swirl of millenniums long past. His mind reeled in revolt and disgust at the sight of the language and the translations it began to make. He clenched his jaw and focused, opening himself to the fear, the decay, the loss, and the carnage. His mouth began to utter guttural sounds and tones not heard in that part of the world for thousands of years. As he spoke the words and phrases in their unworldly rhythms, the corporal's fear and panic grew as he watched the Baron's eyes turn ice blue and then cold white. Energy swirled about the Baron mixing with the unworldly sounds flowing from his mouth that was twisting beyond any normal manner of speech.
As the power grew, the corporal could sense movement in the no mans land and turned his eyes out to the wire and craterfield moonscape that was the site of the battle he had survived days before. He wanted to shout an alarm, the Frogs were mounting an attack, surely he needed to interrupt the Baron and sound the alarm. But, the horror of feeling the Baron beating him with the crop again, or worse, held his tongue as he continued to stare. The Baron's voice was combining tones and sounds no longer human in some strange, unnatural way it reminded the corporal of flies and crickets but not exactly like those either. The movement continued but appeared to be something rising, crawling and constricting across the earth in front of him.
His eyes focused on a couple of the bodies that had been his fellow soldiers days earlier, and then he saw it the movement of arms and legs. His eyes went wide as he watched a torso shimmy and twitch closer to another then fuse with an arm and a leg. he turned his eyes away in disbelief and tried looking elsewhere as the Baron's unholy, depraved ranting continued with growing force and decibels. The battlefield was moving everywhere, intestines slithered across craters and barbed wire to bind themselves into new horrific shapes and forms. The barbed wire itself uncurled, straightened and then became the basis for form and structure that muscle and bone attached themselves to in the same unnatural rhythm used by the Baron. Bile rose in his throat and he felt a scream rising along with every hair on his head.
The Baron could feel the fear reaching a crescendo, the spell was nearly complete and the fear fed him the energy he needed. As he proceeded with the last reiteration of the vile sounds he was now screaming, he twisted and flicked the scroll case unlocking the sharp finial that the parchment had wrapped about. Without hesitation, and with ungodly speed, he buried the finial deep into the Korporal's chest forcing blood to rush forward through the case and to be picked up with the energy that was swirling about him. He could not hear the corporal's agonizing screams as the evil charged energy drained the iron rich blood from the dying corporal's heart. The Baron flung his hands with the last syllable of the spell, focusing past the stabbing pain running through his skull, and commanded the creature to arise.
Sinew, muscle, intestine, arms, legs, heads, and skin had fused with barbed wire and steel barrels to create a creature of slithering dead flesh with pulsating membrane wings whose multiple heads turned towards the Baron dozens of snarled lips and hundreds of blood and bile stained teeth barred at its creator in disgust and loathing. The Baron's hands stretched and twisted in unnatural contortions that ended in a series of half barked, half screamed sounds that caused the creature to moan and hiss from numerous mouths. A greenish black pulse moved out from the Baron and struck the creature coating it causing the flesh and skin to pulsate and shiver. The creature screamed and moaned as it slumped towards the Baron on a multitude of webbed feet that patted against the barren, war pocked earth. The Baron climbed a ladder to the top of the trench wall as the creature stopped at the side of the ladder's upmost rung. The Baron grabbed the waiving hands and arms as one would grap the reigns of a saddled and bridled horse and stood between a ring of bone and stretched skin.
"Now we feed you with the fear and the blood of my enemies," the Baron shouted at the ears that had turned towards him twitching in anticipation of a command. "Fly, fly and feed on those I call out as our enemies."
Ok, enough of that...lol...but wanted to share what your discussion of this passage caused me to bring forth from the void!
![Geek :geek:](./images/smilies/icon_e_geek.gif)
![Uber Geek :ugeek:](./images/smilies/icon_e_ugeek.gif)
Glad you liked it, Keeper Jon!
Boy as to the Baron,
Friederich, Frieherr v. Alteisenstein
Rittmeister (Major) in the Imperial and Royal Hussars
Meister in the Order of the Rising Silver Theophant
How is that for a bit more on this creature of creation?