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Time for some more ghostie dead things and folks, yep ~
11. Raven’s Charge (“turbulent”)
Without warning, on moonless nights, a sudden rising thunder of defiant shouting — and in an eyeblink the road, the meadow, the courtyard is filled with the spectres of fighting soldiers.
Another blink — Taillevent, Raven Knight, leads his dead cavalry through the living and dead in a hopeless, wheeling charge.
It doesn’t matter. The Raven still takes an arrow in the throat.
An endless cycle.
Unless one can reach the Raven Knight, and …
12. Lily & Maria (“ditch”)
Lily walks the roads, searching for her sister Maria. She’s quite alive; no fainting maiden, either, she wears a sturdy leather jack and carries a wicker pack and a stout staff bound in iron.
Maria is with her when night falls, a faint silhouette of pale shadow.
It’s Maria’s bones that Lily searches for along the roads, in gutter, canal and brook — and any aid is gratefully accepted by both sisters, favours promised in return, alive or dead.
13. Red Ochre Hill (“myth”)
Red Ochre Hill isn’t a hill at all, they say.
True, it’s covered in grass, topped with birches, and the like. But once, too long ago, it wasn’t.
Dig into the Hill and come away with blood-red sticky ochre and clinging clay, oddly pearly, unearthly and warm.
Dig in the right places and find veins of crystal pebbles in shattered chalk.
Taste the latter and hear eternal whispers, but be healed —
The last a dead god, they say, can do for mortals.
14. Pillar Of Victory (“build”)
Victory is declared by whoever lasts; never more poisonously, ironically true than the reign — brief as it was — of Roland II.
King Ironsoul, so-called, put his rivals (and there were many) to the sword; in victory having a great bone pillar, faced with their skulls, erected in his court as a reminder, a message to all.
A year and a day, and the king disappeared.
The castle collapsed; the Pillar yet stands.
Now they only wait to be freed.
15. Liam Many-Handed (“crawl”)
It’s not easy, being a mediocre mage, a piddling necromancer at best; at least, that’s what Liam believed, until his midnight cordial-fueled revelation.
Those corpses don’t need their hands anyway.
Now Liam has a legion of scuttling bony “help”, and he’s doing better with petty theft and creeping spookery than he ever did casting spells for hire.
What he doesn’t know is what his last “donor” was — or what his boneclaws do when he’s asleep.
16. Moore Castle (“Camelot”)
It fell centuries ago, if it ever stood — there are those who doubt the Castle ever was. They call the ballads fairytales, the histories fancies penned by romantic scribes.
But then who is it thronging like armoured moonlight in a phantom castle for three nights at the turn of the year?
Who are the shades offering honour and glory to any who accept their quests to bring new favour to a fallen land?
And — the Castle fades, but tokens do not —
17. The Cave Man (“prehistoric”)
He’s been waiting a very long time.
So long, his shade looks like no one who lives near this dark cold cavern; not for centuries, millennia, more.
But he’s still waiting.
Waiting for someone to climb down, down …
Past the skulls far larger than any wolf in memory.
To the place where his bones, and shell palettes, and fur brushes, rest on the clay.
Waiting for someone to finish the painting of deer, of horses, guided by old cold hands.
18. Henry (“quack”)
Henry is a duck.
Henry … was a duck?
No duck should live — could live — as long as Henry. If Henry is alive. And that part is highly dubious.
Some folks, spooked to their bones, say Henry has eight round beady eyes on one side.
Some folks say you can see straight through him.
Everyone says he quacks like a human laughs, like a madman laughs.
And you never see him arrive.
Maybe Henry wasn’t always a duck?
He likes to follow folks around …
19. Binding Mirror (“chain”)
Oh, it’s not what it sounds like; no restless dead is pinned or trapped by the Mirror.
It’s more useful and more dangerous than that.
Hold your Mirror up, see the spectre in its face; see the slender shackles of longing, silver and rose and blood and black, writhing around them?
Look, until the Mirror shows you exactly what it is that keeps the spirit from rest —
Of course, a secret is a secret. The shade may not appreciate the intrusion.
20. Spiritist’s Net (“web”)
It looks like silk gauze while it’s folded, so fine it could be drawn through a finger-ring.
In truth it’s even finer, fine as spider silk once unfurled, and nearly as difficult to see.
Spread across a doorway or any surface, it can hardly be detected. A drop of blood renders it nonexistent for all but the donor — and wandering spirits, who leave dewdrops of plasm behind as they pass.
A way to identify shades?
A way to glean their power?
Yes.
21. Bells Of The Dead (“sound”)
The chiming of bells drives away the dead, the story goes. And, it’s true enough — but what many stories don’t say is how it can’t be any old bell.
An iron bell repels the passion-bound.
A silver bell, the malicious dead; a golden one the lost and wandering; a bronze those looking to possess a living host.
A wooden bell, echoing and hollow, to drive off the haunts of animals.
A crystal bell will call the departed to you like a gentle beacon.
11. Raven’s Charge (“turbulent”)
Without warning, on moonless nights, a sudden rising thunder of defiant shouting — and in an eyeblink the road, the meadow, the courtyard is filled with the spectres of fighting soldiers.
Another blink — Taillevent, Raven Knight, leads his dead cavalry through the living and dead in a hopeless, wheeling charge.
It doesn’t matter. The Raven still takes an arrow in the throat.
An endless cycle.
Unless one can reach the Raven Knight, and …
12. Lily & Maria (“ditch”)
Lily walks the roads, searching for her sister Maria. She’s quite alive; no fainting maiden, either, she wears a sturdy leather jack and carries a wicker pack and a stout staff bound in iron.
Maria is with her when night falls, a faint silhouette of pale shadow.
It’s Maria’s bones that Lily searches for along the roads, in gutter, canal and brook — and any aid is gratefully accepted by both sisters, favours promised in return, alive or dead.
13. Red Ochre Hill (“myth”)
Red Ochre Hill isn’t a hill at all, they say.
True, it’s covered in grass, topped with birches, and the like. But once, too long ago, it wasn’t.
Dig into the Hill and come away with blood-red sticky ochre and clinging clay, oddly pearly, unearthly and warm.
Dig in the right places and find veins of crystal pebbles in shattered chalk.
Taste the latter and hear eternal whispers, but be healed —
The last a dead god, they say, can do for mortals.
14. Pillar Of Victory (“build”)
Victory is declared by whoever lasts; never more poisonously, ironically true than the reign — brief as it was — of Roland II.
King Ironsoul, so-called, put his rivals (and there were many) to the sword; in victory having a great bone pillar, faced with their skulls, erected in his court as a reminder, a message to all.
A year and a day, and the king disappeared.
The castle collapsed; the Pillar yet stands.
Now they only wait to be freed.
15. Liam Many-Handed (“crawl”)
It’s not easy, being a mediocre mage, a piddling necromancer at best; at least, that’s what Liam believed, until his midnight cordial-fueled revelation.
Those corpses don’t need their hands anyway.
Now Liam has a legion of scuttling bony “help”, and he’s doing better with petty theft and creeping spookery than he ever did casting spells for hire.
What he doesn’t know is what his last “donor” was — or what his boneclaws do when he’s asleep.
16. Moore Castle (“Camelot”)
It fell centuries ago, if it ever stood — there are those who doubt the Castle ever was. They call the ballads fairytales, the histories fancies penned by romantic scribes.
But then who is it thronging like armoured moonlight in a phantom castle for three nights at the turn of the year?
Who are the shades offering honour and glory to any who accept their quests to bring new favour to a fallen land?
And — the Castle fades, but tokens do not —
17. The Cave Man (“prehistoric”)
He’s been waiting a very long time.
So long, his shade looks like no one who lives near this dark cold cavern; not for centuries, millennia, more.
But he’s still waiting.
Waiting for someone to climb down, down …
Past the skulls far larger than any wolf in memory.
To the place where his bones, and shell palettes, and fur brushes, rest on the clay.
Waiting for someone to finish the painting of deer, of horses, guided by old cold hands.
18. Henry (“quack”)
Henry is a duck.
Henry … was a duck?
No duck should live — could live — as long as Henry. If Henry is alive. And that part is highly dubious.
Some folks, spooked to their bones, say Henry has eight round beady eyes on one side.
Some folks say you can see straight through him.
Everyone says he quacks like a human laughs, like a madman laughs.
And you never see him arrive.
Maybe Henry wasn’t always a duck?
He likes to follow folks around …
19. Binding Mirror (“chain”)
Oh, it’s not what it sounds like; no restless dead is pinned or trapped by the Mirror.
It’s more useful and more dangerous than that.
Hold your Mirror up, see the spectre in its face; see the slender shackles of longing, silver and rose and blood and black, writhing around them?
Look, until the Mirror shows you exactly what it is that keeps the spirit from rest —
Of course, a secret is a secret. The shade may not appreciate the intrusion.
20. Spiritist’s Net (“web”)
It looks like silk gauze while it’s folded, so fine it could be drawn through a finger-ring.
In truth it’s even finer, fine as spider silk once unfurled, and nearly as difficult to see.
Spread across a doorway or any surface, it can hardly be detected. A drop of blood renders it nonexistent for all but the donor — and wandering spirits, who leave dewdrops of plasm behind as they pass.
A way to identify shades?
A way to glean their power?
Yes.
21. Bells Of The Dead (“sound”)
The chiming of bells drives away the dead, the story goes. And, it’s true enough — but what many stories don’t say is how it can’t be any old bell.
An iron bell repels the passion-bound.
A silver bell, the malicious dead; a golden one the lost and wandering; a bronze those looking to possess a living host.
A wooden bell, echoing and hollow, to drive off the haunts of animals.
A crystal bell will call the departed to you like a gentle beacon.
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