Six Forgotten New England Monsters

(During the Kickstarter for Queen Mab's Palace I am trying to blog as a much as possible. This will be separated into two streams; Echoing Stars for my dark Science Fiction Posts, and Fall Posts for more fantasy-esque Autumn Themed ones. The first Fall Post was Twelve Adventures of the Autumn Lands, this is the second;)

 

John Gast

 

1. Old Teak Britches 

He walks by night and by wind for only so will none hear him come. If you are out in the forest by night - listen for him when the wind stills; if every tree ceases creaking but one - and that one stops a little later than the rest, you might still have time, for he is not too close and seeks to hide him approach. Make for the forest edge for he doesn't like to go beyond it. If you hear him swift after the wind, like creak-creak, creak-creak, like footsteps getting faster, its likely too late so you may as well run and don't stop running just because the land is clear for though he likes not to go beyond the green growth and fresh fences, he can still reach beyond them and you might be carried up and away... 

 

2. Shock Hairs Pig Mans Mark 

There was a deal done by night at some time and on one side was a Pocumtok who knew nothing of pigs but wanted some, and a half-Dutch who knew more of them than man should, and on the other was the Devil. In any case the men would have pigs and old Shock-Hair said 'now here is a sign I shall show you two which I gave long ago to a Lady far off, and if you make right the ink and draw right the sign on a man’s hearth, he becomes a pig, and you can make as many as you like, though in return I will take off your spirit till the sun goes black like a coal. These two fools mistook and had the Sign not right, thence, on using it, they made not a pig, but a man-pig, who was neither one nor another. Pigs having wits and men some too, the man Pig caught them both and got the secret out of them and set about trying to get the Sign right, thinking if he could get a Pig done rightly he would be half-way to getting one un-done - which was himself. Those three never could get a Pig done right and likely they are all dead now but the Pig-Marked men are still abroad and still take people here and there to try their Sign. 

 

3. The Chatter Box

 This was an Algonquin maid who wasn't of the usual kind, so no man would marry her, but they feared her too much to say no but pretended to be sick, mad or dead. She got sick of this and said she would go with a white man, which she did, and found a widower. He did not know about the kind of thing she was, so married her, but he found out. From the moment she moved in she would not stop yammering, in English and every other tongue, morning, noon and night and every minute of every hour. This woman didn't even sleep but got up on the walls and onto the roof in the dark, talking and talking. She drove that man mad and he jumped in the river so she went off to marry another, but they got her first, for white men stuffed their ears and caught her and put her hands in chains and her head in a box of rowan wood, which was an old cruel punishment even then. She got away from them but she couldn't get out of of that iron or that box. If you hear her, and you will if she is close, for she is still talking, talking, talking, run fast and run quiet for if she learns your name you will never be free of her. 

 

4. Nantuckets Whalebone Man

 He was made in Nantucket by a whaling man who had seen the last of his trade and by God did he hate whales. He hated that he could hear them still, swimming and free, and he knew whales hated man just the same way/ "White men and whales is like Christians and Indians; it is them or us so we better get killing". Why then did he make the Whalebone Man? Surely for spite alone. he made him from Ivory Bone and dressed him like a Gentleman and paid good money for the whalebone face, giving him smoked spectacles to hide the whalebone eyes, and he set him loose with he last breath as a curse upon the world that wouldn't hate whales the way it should. Now, if you are inland and you see a pale gentleman who walks with a click and if you hear a whales song as if from an ivory flute, but he has no flute to play; leave your doors and windows open, no matter the cold, for if you don't they'll find you drowned in the morning and your house full of seawater which comes out in a flood. (He pipes it down the chimney you see.) 

Michael Ayrton

 

5. The Hessians Hole 

At the time of the war against King George there was a Hessian who loved to kill. He killed when told to and when suggested and he liked it so much that he kept at it regardless, which left him in difficulty. He was out in the night and met an old Indian by the road and was about to kill him too but the old man said don't do what you are thinking and I will give you a hole you can put anything in and take where you like. Well that's just what I need said the Hessian - you show me and I'll believe it. So the Indian showed him the hole and said here is the cat gut to sew shut the hole and only it can so be careful with it, and take care a second time to always leave it not quite open or it will get loose, and it’s as hungry as you are. And he unsewed the hole and there it was, deep as you like, and the Hessian said very good then and kicked the Indian into it and sewed it up and carried it off. Then he just killed who he wanted and put them in the hole. But it came at one time the call to battle for Washington was coming and we better kill that man, and he was busy at the hole so sewed it shut but caught the cat gut with his spur and rode off and started fighting. The hole was loose and came for him. he was fighting and stabbing and found himself going missing, part by part, though no blood flowed. It was the hole. Soon all that was left was a spur and a long cat-gut thread. That hole is still around, you can listen for the Hessian and Indian still in it and still arguing over who gets what to eat. 

 

6. The Southrons Mill 

There is a Mill that moves through the night like an owl and the earth like a worm. It is always working and never in the same place twice. A Southron made it. This was in the years before the war between the States. He came north slave hunting, saying they get cold in the woods and slow down, though he never seemed to catch any, but he built that mill which made candles that gave a strange light. Then the war between the states took up and his fortunes fell and it seemed people started going missing here and there and the old mill took up thundering away all night with bright clear candle light shining out. The women got to talking about that Mill saying 'Did you ever work there?' 'No?' 'How about you?' Well it seemed no-one worked at that mill or ever had so up went a good many one night to talk to that man and pound on his door. Up he popped. "You won't have my Mill and no-one will for my investors won't allow it!" Then that Mill just burrowed into the soil like a mole and swam through the earth like a whale and was gone.

 

 

The Kickstarter for Queen Mab’s Palace has hit its goal and is still on! More artistic goals coming soon!

Eight Votive Species - Echoing Stars

A brief description of eight species or life-forms encountered amongst the Echoing Stars. In every case it is assumed the life form or its biosphere entire is the deliberate creation of an Engineer-Class interstellar species, now defunct, for reasons that are either beyond our comprehension, or are deliberately perverse.

 

Maciej Drabik 

https://www.artstation.com/maciejdrabik

1. The Uncomprehending World 

An earthlike planet with two great continents, each a great distance from the other, both tectonically locked, with deep oceans and strong currents between them. Each continent has been seeded with a fundamentally, biochemically different, form of life. Examination has been challenging but its believed something like the principal of opposing chirality is at work; the life of each continent is biochemically incoherent, sometimes even toxic, to the other. The oceans have been described as a 'soup of chaos'. Each continent has evolved a form of intelligent life, each cognitively incoherent to the other. 

 

2. The Moon of Eyes 

The single moon of the Uncomprehending World plays host to yet another form of life, itself believed to have been seeded at about the same time. The biosphere of the moon is a single sentient mind with a staggering range of visual and electromagnetic sensors. The 'mind' of the Moon is believed to be half-sleeping, able to observe and perhaps, understand what it observes. (All of its sensors are open only when facing the Uncomprehending World.) However if the Moon of Eyes attempts to awaken, to act, to advise or communicate in any way, buried genetic architecture collapses the stability of the entire biosphere, reducing it to primitive ruin, from which it only slowly re-develops. 

The trifector of the two species of the Uncomprehending World and the Moon of Eyes which can observe, but not alter, their fate, is believed to be an act of religious observance by its creators. 

 

3. The Drinkers of Wind 

Sub-earth desert-like world. Life emerges largely around the oceanic coast but has evolved an intelligent crustacean species adapted to the deep desert. The species is born addicted to a pheromone, or complex wind-borne chemical, produced very rarely by complex biogenesis in the deep ocean. When this chemical sweeps across the deserts, any Crustacean that experiences it is instantly and permanently addicted, experiencing philosophical and religious rapture and losing interest in anything other than pursuing the wind in the hopes of experiencing the scent again. This acts as a 'destroying wind' on any development of complex civilisation on this world and the power of the 'God Wind' plays a major role in the sentients mythology. 

 

4. The Abyssal Builders 

An ocean world with deep-dwelling trench-creatures which have been given a level of complex intelligence far too high for their lightless, high-pressure and limited environment. Wits return like a cancer to this species, generation upon generation, regardless of circumstance. Hosts to great monuments of knowledge and experience they can never use, the builders sculpt the sea-floors of that world into great empty palaces which span its dark oceans, sculpted with agonising care, over centuries, with whale-falls of ivory and bone. 

 

5. The Wombs of Chaos 

Earthlike moon of a Gas Giant. Some combination of genetic tampering, nanotech and still-unknown science causes the apex creatures of this moon to reach periods of stability, agriculture, civilisation and population growth. if this period of abundance and high populations reaches a certain unknown threshold, chaoitc wombs are triggered universally across the entire species. All children born are 'sports', mutants, chimera or monsters, each as different from each other as they are from their parents and usually either incapable of or unwilling to, absorb or retain any of their parents culture. Then comes an age of chaos, ruin and warfare as the civilisation collapses. What follows is a long fallow period until the few stable breeding pairs gradually normalise and stabilise the population, which then slowly grows towards a state of civilisation. 

 

6. The Homonculi 

An intelligent designed-parasite species, the Homonculi have maggot mouths and dendric hands. They share their world with a robust semi-intelligent Pseudo-Hominid. The Homonculi's main means of surviving its environment is to burrow into the Hominids skull, taking control of its spinal base with their dendritic hands, forcing out its eyes and peeking through the resulting holes while taking their sustenance from its blood. The Prey-Mens brain matter remains intact. The Homonculi are more tangibly intelligent, social, verbal, abstract and driven than the Pseudo-Hominids and what civilisation exists on this world is entirely their creation. However, the Pseudo-Hominids are intelligent enough to despise the Homonculi and are more robust, fertile and more capable of surviving the planets complex environment. The civilisation of the Homonculi is semi-regularly destroyed by the Pseudo-Hominids and the species hunted to near-extinction. 

 

7. The Living Reefs 

An ocean world holding sparse continents and bounteous moving archipelagos of islands with sea-adapted fungal bases. The isle-fungi were designed with a powerful latent intellectual capacity. When inhabited by the worlds "sea apes", complex interactions through the islands bio-sheath environment 'awakens' the entities into comprehensible sentience. They invariably aggressively investigate the Sea-Apes using this sheath-environment, so much that the apes are torn apart, survivors, (if there are any), fleeing to the spares continent if they can. The Isles then sink back into sub-awareness. 

 

8. The Hegelian Fog 

A highly desertified world. The dust, sand and weather of this sphere are made up of complex but non-active nanite swarms. When breathed in by a complex life-form, (always visitors for the planet has no natural remaining species of this type), the nano-structures accumulate in the cortex like a plaque and form a fresh sentience which combines the nature of the infected sophont with memories and advanced processing power of an unknown nature. The resulting organism is highly intelligent and capable of advanced reasoning and communication, but as the plaque accumulates they become uncommunicative and insist on retreating to the karstic plains of the continental interior where they seem to be engaged in the construction of vast Nazca-style megastructures. Though resistant to the local environment the 'victim' or transformed entity, is thought to function for a century or so before desiccating and blowing away into a new flurry of nanites.

Queen Mab Lives!

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ere is your regular post, Autumn-themed for all of October;

Twelve Adventures of the Autumn Lands

1. The Candle and the Fog-Bound Bells.

A house moves through the fog like a ship, bells ringing from its highest hall. A curse comes with it from the past. A blessed candle shows the way to the house through the fog and once there, it lights the interior of the rotted mansion as it once was, revealing scenes that can solve the mystery of the curse. But while looking at the golden walls, take care for other things haunt the darkness.

2. The Giants Pantry

A giant has lifted the roof off the pantry and stolen the jam! And all the cheese, honey and preserved meat! That’s all we have to eat this winter! Someone has to go after that giant, take back the food, and somehow stop the Giant from coming back. At least his tracks should be easy to follow.

3. The Roc Migrates

A giant Roc has haunted the lands, but with Autumn, the bird has migrated (probably), South to warmer lands. Its nest must be full of all the treasure and goods of all the people it ate! It lies near the peak of a mighty mountain, ringed by the azure world. Storms are coming and Goblins are chasing the gold!

4. The Cursed Geese

Each night, honking Geese fly above the village as they migrate, and each night one or two people who hear their call are transformed into Geese and fly away with them! Someone has to go and get them back. The Charcoal-Burner tells you that the Geese live 'North of the Wind and West of the Moon', and there you must go to find the altered Geese and bring them home.

5. The Witches Pigs

Each night, winged pigs attack! Through sheer mass they barrel into houses, smashing windows and doors, snatching up children and the old, wreaking ruin! They are gone before the sun rises. Only the Anchorite knows the secret of the Pigs and the Witch they serve, a twice-bend crone who lives in a great Boot, along but for her Pigs.

6. The Town Returns

Out in the drowned bog, the spires and eves of a sunken village have always poked up through the glassy waters. Now, day by day, inch by inch, the sunken town is slowly rising from the bog, though the waters do not fall. Things are coming from the sunken town.

7. The Goblins Conker

The Goblin King is stealing homes, squatting in them and ruining everything before moving on. No-one can refuse his challenge to a conker-smashing contest and no-one can win against his devilish Conker - soaked in the blood of maidens and the bile of babes. Only a Conker from the tree which grows from St Aldhelms tomb can defeat the Goblin King, but that was lost in the forest an age ago.

8. The Wood-Nut Man

His brown face appears in the darkness beneath the boles of trees, his barky hands reach out to stroke the heads of truffle-hunting pigs, he feeds them his nuts and they speak in a deep and growling voice, the voice of the Wood Nut Man, to insist you do his will. There are things he needs, several and few, and you must have them before the snow falls.

9. A Gust of Bones

When the storm winds blow from the east we see skeletons in the wind. They grab onto spires, trees and the tops of towers, trying not to be swept away. When things calm down we have to go sweep them out of branches and cart them back to the graveyard, while they complain all the time. Someone must go west and have a word with whatever is making this wind!

10. The Devil in the Frost

Black, horned, hooved, arrow-tailed, sharp-toothed, goat-eyed and cloven tongued, he appears at dusk and dances from frozen puddle to frozen puddle - appearing only above the frozen waters, disappearing into gusts of leaves and piles of worms. He cuts, bites, spoils, spills and tells terrible lies - not even the strongest man can hold him! He laughs and cackles, saying "The frost is coming! The snow will fall! Hoo Hoo Hoo!"

11. The Smith Beneath the Tide

An inlet of the high, grey sea. A sea cave where waters churn. When the tide is high a fire burns beneath the water, hammer blows ring out with the waves and a smiths bold laughter echoes in the ocean all around, keeping the fishermen up at night. A rich man with long fingers will pay you good gold to steal something from that salty smith.

12. The Stained Skulls Verdigris Brass Ring

He comes down chimneys and into windows, popping out of wells, chattering his teeth, followed by a horde of dingy grey-black Geese who eat the seed. "My Verdigris Brass Ring!". No-one can get anything done and the floating skull is scaring the children. Will someone please find this Verdigris brass ring so this thing will shut up and go back to sleep!