Incunabuli

A great map commanded the room. A gridded realm of canvass and ink stretched over continental furniture. Mice in suspenders and shirtsleeves scurried, titans, over the tiny landscape, plucking up and setting down pins, miniatures, and labels. Others bore inkpots, pens, fine brushes, delicately altered the surface of the painted land. Beady eyes peered through thick spectacles, intent. Ash dribbled from cigarettes lodged in rodent jaws. Ears and whiskers twitched, concentrating. All in quiet, save a few gossipful mutters and the brush of footpads on taught canvass.

Someone spoke up. The mice perked their pink ears.

"Report: Expedition to Caircollin amended. Expunge," said a woman with an open ledger in hand.

A mouse rushed to comply, snatched a label from the relevant grid-point. "Done, Smithers."

Smithers nodded. She ticked an item off her list. "Prospective numbers in Draum have risen again. Amend, plus three score."

Another mouse rushed to the continent-table's edge, removed a ledger from shelves neath its lip. He rifled through, adjusted a figure, skittered to plant a new pawn on an inked frontier town.

Nearby, in the rose-paneled wall, a door clicked brusquely open. Hard-toe flats passed through.

"Master Smithers. Updates from the cashiers. The estimate from this morning's return from Leeland Haunt is corrected to five thousand, and they are still degilding* the walls," read a spectacled woman from a clipboard.

"Thank you," said Smithers, pointing to a mouse, who nodded, obliged, corrected yet another record.

"And the casualty rate was seventy percent, not eighty. A cutter presumed missing reported in, said the others tossed him off a bridge on the way back in hopes their shares would increase."

The table of mice chuckled. Smithers shook her head, disapproving. "Animals. Dock their benefits."

"Of course." She departed.

At the table, a brown mouse stood. She wrung ink from her clawed paws with a rag. "Any chance of an update from the Sansevie Raid?"

"Afraid not, Tiff. Communications are still down after the breakout."

"Shame. We were enjoying following that," said Tiff. The others, noses bent to work, nodded.

The door opened again. A bearded man swung through, panting. His tie was askew. He held a scrap of typewritten paper. "A tele from Sommersault Consortium," he heaved. "From the Yawn of Auld expedition." Smithers and the mice looked up with interest.

"Go on. Do breathe, Wilkins," said Smithers.

Wilkins gulped. "The cutters have withdrawn. They encountered an eidolon in the first hall."

The mice began gossiping minutely. Whiskers twitched, excitedly ablur. "Casualties?" squeaked one. Smithers glared at them, resignedly at the bearded man.

"Fifty percent."

The mice cringed. "Damn," mumbled Smithers.

"They request immediate reinforcement," said Wilkins. "The Firm has heavy infantry** on retainer nearby."

Smithers curled her lip, frowned. "No need for that."

Wilkins gaped at her. "It tore them apart, Master."

"If it's an eidolon, Wilkins, it's probably been there two millennia. It's not going to leave, now." She turned to the mice. "Do we have any known errants, nearby?"

The mice scrabbled, opened a half-dozen ledgers. "One put up in Sommersault town, Sir Courtebank," squeaked one. "And a Sir Hewn, of Tort is in Country Persecht, with squires. Very good standing."

Wilkins frowned. "A knight team? Is that an appropriate thing to do?"

Smithers drew a thin squint of a smile. "Wilkins, I realize you are new to the Firm," she said. "But there are traditions to be upheld, for the sake of respect." The mice at the map-table all nodded. "To kill a knight, you must use a knight."

Smithers snapped her ledger shut. "It is the most appropriate thing to do."

A grating of steel shivered through the halls. Rasping, sparking; bounced off moldering grey walls and vaulted ceilings, round occluded corners sconced with skull-faced statuary. The sole sound in bleak passages, save a crunch of bootnails on ancient tile.

Three pairs. Three walkers down the high, dark corridors. Two were attendants; armored, laden with packs. One of them held a lantern. The other: A broad, rectangular shield, thickly pitted. They kept close behind a towering third.

This, their charge, ground cracks into the tile with every steelshod step. A towering man, queerly long of trunk and limb, clad completely in interlocking, scalloped steel. His every move hissed, whirred softly, driven by the armored mass of hydraulic arms hidden close, connected to his broad back and every armored appendage. In the hinged elbow of one arm, he couched a plain helm of forged plate and steel mesh. Large, metal fingertips ground into the dome, nervous.

"It's close," he said.

"The sound?" said one squire, behind. She peered round the gigantic shield's burden.

"The eidolon," said the Knight, pointing ahead. Ahead, just visible in the lamplight, showed stained lumps strewn over and against the floor and wall. Some dozen corpses, blotchy with fresh rot.

"Oh," startled the lantern-bearer. He jumped, caused weird shadows to writhe over the walls.

"Plague?" said the other, breathless. The two poised nervously.

"I would wager not," said the knight, keeping on. "These cutters had standing. Could afford their salt." He sneered, grimly. "In too many pieces to live again, anyway."

Only meters farther down showed an archway. Chipped, flanked by carven, cracked statues of death. Past it, the grating sound originated. "This'll be it. See that?" said the Knight, pointing above the arch. A stone plate was graven there, written in ancient speak and near-indecipherable. One squire squinted, read the words aloud.

"Things to be forgotten;
Place to be forgotten"

"The litany?" she said, frowning. *** "That's meant to come at the beginning. How can this only now be the mouth of the tomb, after so far?"

The Knight shook his head. "Can say neither why, nor whom built it this way." He extended a free hand to his shieldbearer. "We have but one purpose here."

Wordless, the attendants set to work on their ironclad master. They slid his shield, oiled, into its T-shaped mount upon his forearm plate. It took fast, buttressed by reinforcing spokes up to the shoulder. They set and rotated the helm, locked it into its armored neck ring. Its mesh eyes peered only just above a great, banded alloy gorget. They disengaged and carefully withdrew a mailcoil, whispering with the contained energy of a hundred meters of vibrating alloy hairspring, from the man's steel back, replaced it with a fresh surrogate. Then, they proffered the hammer.

This weapon, a meter and more long and cruelly beaked, the knight took up himself; locked it fast in the chainmaille pad of his paw. Steel scraped 'gainst knurled steel as he gripped it, breathing slow, helmet bowed. Listening.

From beyond the dark arch, the grating still came. Short, close. The Knight looked up.

"Put the flares in quick, for me," said he, hollow within his steel casque. He stretched, rolled his shoulders. The armor complied, pliable, produced a chorus of small clicks and pressurized squeaks as plates and pistons ground over and within each other.

"Aye."

"Wish me well," he said, breathless with sudden energy.

"As ever," said the shieldbearer. Her fellow nodded, smiled grimly.

The Knight nodded. With loping strides, incongruously light, he made for the arch, ducked beneath. For a moment, darkness surrounded him. Then, a set of stars arced in from behind: Flares, bright white and near-smokeless, tossed by the squires. What they revealed gave the Knight pause.

An open plain of pillars on grey stone. Bleak, unadorned, shedding shadows like trees into the immense black beyond the flare's light. And midst them, a crude marble throne with three corpses slumped at its side.

There sat the eidolon. A creature of wrought iron, plated all over with iron studded thickly with decorative rivets. Humanlike, queerly elongated. It hunched where it sat, knees higher than shoulders, long neck bowed to where spider-hands worked an oblong stone over two meters of gleaming steel. With every strop, the stone, whetted with some red liquid, scraped a grating note from the cruciform blade.

At this sight, the Knight paused, gripped his hammer. A breath caught in his throat.

The eidolon's flat-hopped helmet rose, turned to face the sound. No eyes showed in the long, tall faceplate. Only two conelike divots for ears. A crack and a clatter of stone echoed under the pillars as it released the whetstone. Then, a breath. A long, drawn-out pull through dry tubes of flesh. And as it inhaled, it stood. A hundred layered plates of black iron clinked and slid into their place on the willowy limbs of that protracted form. It stood like an iron lamppost, straight, cast a spare line in the flarelight.

Dwarfed by a meter or more, the Knight swallowed, straightened.

"Eidolus," he pronounced, voice too-quiet within the helm. "Fratrem in ferro," louder. He lifted his hammer, pointed it at the iron guardian's sword. "Perform for me the task for which we were made."

The eidolon nodded. Slow, it approached, blade lax at its side. The Knight raised his shield to match, bent at the knees, on guard. With his every move, a series of mechanical retorts followed.

"On your guard," declared the Knight.

The eidolon kept on, head cocked.

"On your–" he yelped. The eidolon swiped at him, fast. A stab, hooked so far round from the right it would have connected, save the shield's right corner. A gouge showed in the steel slab. Heels crunched over the stone, driven by the weight of the blow.

Without pause, the eidolon pulled its huge blade into both hands and struck again, overhead, down at the Knight's back with the point. Pistons spat and groaned, jerked to lift the shield and absorb the blow. Hinged knees buckled, momently.

This proceeded a half score times again. The eidolon, towering and erect, whipped its great weight of steel thought the stale air with casual ease. The Knight, hunched under his now-battered slab, groaned. Black and silver steel glimmered with countless pinpricks, reflecting the flare's stark starlight.

Another swing. This time, the Knight, already croached, leapt aside. Steel rippled through the space he'd occupied, came back around too late. The eidolon, legs locked, could not dodge the beak of steel which punched greedily through a plate above its hip.

The wrought-iron creature staggered, but only briefly, righted itself. The hammer ground free, pulled with it an arc of dark ichor smelling of putrid almonds. It stood hastily, sword fending, before the panting Knight. Purple-red gore and a wash of some clear oil trickled from neath its plates.

They stood a moment, silent. From the archway, stifled cries of encouragement sounded. The Knight heaved, gasped, grinned at the squire's cries. With every breath, with every movement, his armor whirred, clicked.

Dry breath rattled in the eidolon's long, iron helm, canted to listen. It began to circle, fast, sword still extended.

Abruptly, it feinted. The Knight jerked to parry, groaned at the false move. He leapt back, crashed his heels into the tile, expected a counterattack. He armor screamed with the motion. The eidolon's head swiveled, followed.

It feinted again. Again the Knight leapt, but forward, retaliated. The eidolon made little attempt to mitigate the plates and hunk of gristly flesh torn off its thigh.

"What are you doing?" gasped the Knight.

It swung again. The Knight countered, but met air. The eidolon had pirouetted. A rush of air and speeding steel rippled behind his back, inches close.

They still circled. The eidolon's head faced sideways, ear to its opponent. It feinted again. The Knight dodged, armor groaning and shrieking with pressure.

The eidolon stopped, lept a step back, sword limp.

"What?"

It came at him again, slow. "Are you listening?" said the knight, as it neared. "Listening to my armor?"

Still it came. The Knight remained in place. He scoffed. "Trying to listen out a weak spot? Though you'd have some better trick than that!"

Before him, the eidolon jerked its sword up. The Knight struck as soon as it did, expecting a faint. It wasn't a feint.

The eidolon struck down, overhead. As the Knight's hammer bit again into his foe, the eidolon's great blade cracked deep into the mechanisms of his back.

There was a shattering of steel, a crack like a whip and a thunderbolt combined. Hundreds of yards of alloy hairspring exploded, shattered and sinuous, from their housing in the Knight's armor, tore chunks of steel plate, flesh, and mechanism with them. The armored man was thrown up and into his foe, who swatted him limp from the air with a counterswing.

From the arch, the squires cried out in dismay, watched the wiry, wrought-iron giant bend over their motionless knight; his chest-plates now caved, his armor ruined. They watched as it seized him by the helm, and, with shock, dragged him, limp and grinding to the arch. They scampered back, watched the eidolon deposit their charge within reach. At that, it stopped.

Slow, bleeding, the eidolon resumed its throne. Rasping, battered, it bowed its helm, set to waiting.

Waiting, to perform again the task for which it was made.

Knights

In all the courts and orders of civilization, there belong knights.

They are human exemplars. Paragon soldiers. Men and women made literally larger than life by traditions honorable, martial, and chemical. Nobles, bound by heritage and respect. Soldiers, unmatched in might and cunning. Inhumans, tempered and crafted by rare armor and obscure, terrible processes of augmentation.

They are a legendary caste. In peace, they sit the courts and parliament-houses of nations, lend to their leaders the level surety and wise ears of heirloom wisdom. In war, they accompany fellow soldiers in battle, make an inspiring and devastating vanguard. In uncertain times, they venture; live as mighty errants seeking use in troubled lands.

In all these actions, knights hold to various forms of chivalric code. Regardless of origin state or brotherhood, these are invariably doctrines of honor and respect for mankind. † They are also condemning codes of justice for inhuman and human alike. Knights view these traditions, these limits and cautions, as necessary strictures; for only they reckon the true, augmented might at their disposal.

From their smallest days, prospective knights, chosen from the most apt of young squires and nobles, are raised for singular purpose. Among their studies in science, tactics, and history, they are taught restraint, honor, and level-handedness. These facets of character and education are deemed necessary accompaniments to the terrible processes of physical manufacture which they simultaneously undergo.

What these processes are, precisely, varies greatly from one state or knightley order's tradition to another. Most include obscure and painful enhancements by way of tincture, surgery, and decoction to height, muscle mass, and durability during key developmental phases. †† A given knight will stand head and shoulders above his fellow man, weigh three or more times their mass. His or her blood will run thick and dark through taught veins, large under strengthened skin.

These enhancements, these augmentations, are not the sole provider of a knight's titanic power. Nor even are they the best known. †††

Clockwork armor, as it is commonly known, is the most chiefly recognizable icon of Coastal knighthood. Suits are custom made and immensely heavy, suited only to a knight's enhanced resources and strength. The combination of hydraulics, whose accumulators are pressurized by a maincoil similar to those used in gunsprings, and mechanical aids which drive a suit's limbs provide the knight within an even greater degree of physical supremacy.

A knight and his suit, both huge, ornate, and expensive, are maintained by a parade of squires. These are not common folk. Rather, they are themselves soldiers and experts in the fields required to maintain their augmented charge. Armorers, ballistics specialists, scouts, and, most notably: Doctors learned in the strange processes which gift a knight their strength. The secrets known by these workers are thought by most to be closely-held marvels of modern science. They are not.

Knighthood's origins are secret, not because they are guarded patents or private procedures, but because they are sorcery. Artifact-methods, relics, reverse engineered from the corpses of all knight's progenitor: The eidolon.

Eidola. Deathless guardians in tombs and ancient places. Twisted knights of old, made strange and single-minded by sorcery and millennia-long posts at past ages' forbidden gates. Creatures, presumably once-human, made horrific and durable for the ages. These knights of old, with their steel skin, corrugated veins, and misshapen, mighty frames, are the basis for all of modern knighthood.

For this hideous truth, the knightly codes of chivalry exist. To separate today's knights' in both thought and potential action from the terrible nature of their progenitors. To clad and reassure them so profoundly in their purity and exemplary human status as to enable them to face fellow knights on the battlefield, justified by the coda, and to even face their ancient brothers in single combat, assured of the other's inhumanity. All without doubt.

Yet, with every passing decade, with every knight made stronger and more inadvertently inhuman than before, swollen by the weal of ancient sorcery, some begin to question. They question, for they see reforming the terrors of old. The ways by which the folk of millennia past removed their own humanity, brought themselves up as sorcerer-kings.

For now, the codes of chivalry hold. Inhuman knights still respect their mortal lords. And they will yet, until the day one begins to question.

Author's Note

This article became a little big, for what amounts to an excuse for putting a boss at the beginning of the dungeon.

This contains the greatest collection of spiderlinks to other articles, to date. It likely represents the most interconnected piece of lore in the Incunabuli fiction.

The topic of eidola was inspired by a character in The Sinkhole, which is now available to Incunabuli Patrons. It's the first dungeon I've released for the Incunabuli system playtest.

Additionally, Sir Hewn, of Tort is an anagram of one of Incunabuli's generous Patron's names.

Footnotes

* Ruins built by the Ancient Nôr are ornately built, typically in white marble accented by liberal gold ornamentation. These are among the most valuable ruins and tombs a bank may hope to break, for the value of their construction materials represents only the beginning of the wealth contained within. They are also among the most deadly.

** Most banks, in addition to their bevy of hired cutters, maintain not-inconsiderable private security forces. They utilize these for purposes outside those typically entrusted to cutters. Usually, defense of bank officials and locations, and, rarely, the clearing of especially stubborn tombs. They are paid a salary, unlike cutters, and are primarily composed of heavy infantry personnel.

*** The Litany of Tombs is a pair of phrases oft inscribed on the portals of tombs, warning, or perhaps challenging, those who would enter them. Eidola or other gate-guardians are often found directly beyond.

† Followers of Aveth claim their humanocentric faith as the basis of such tradition. Northern knight-brotherhoods denounce this, claim instead that their tradition was formed to serve all of civilization, regardless of kind.
†† A knight cannot be manufactured after puberty. The human body is insufficiently pliable to mould, after this stage. Even a successfully generated knight requires frequent and unpleasant medical maintenance of a dire nature to maintain their augmented bodies.
††† Their presence is paid carefully small attention, by many states. Suspicion of unnatural enhancement of such paragons, especially in the South, would be frowned upon if better known.

"Jorge."

Jorge shifted in his hammock, exhaled fitfully. He wrapped a hand round his sleeping head, hunched his shoulders, dozed on. Beside, the speaker, a short sailor in cornrows, moaned. "Jorge, get up. There's something wrong." She seized the hand, yanked on it. Jorge sputtered awake.

He blinked torpidly, sniffed. "Margot," he mumbled, sniffed again. He shuddered, frowned. "I was having the most awful dream."

"Just get up. Something's wrong."

"Aren't you on watch shift?"

"Come one. Everyone's on deck."

"What?" Jorge rolled out of his sling, stood barefoot on the planking. He shivered, pricked by goosebumps. About him, rope hammocks hung between stout hold beams, swinging gently. All were empty.

"What's going on?"

"I don't know, just please come with me. I can't go alone," said Margot, dragging him to the hatch ladder.

"This isn't like you," Jorge stuttered, rubbing his arms.

They clambered into a night awash with mist. Chill rivulets clung from the decking to Jorge's feet, ran from the masts, yardarms, and railings. Ragged lines of cloud hung white under the swollen moon, trailed like slow ribbons from the veiled peaks of mountain islands shrouded in the distance.

"Cold," said Jorge, shaking his feet.

"There they are," said Margot.

She headed to the starboard gunwale, where two dozen or so sailors stood fast, silent, shivering, at the rail. They stared down and out at the distance, rapt. Some chattered, cold, even sobbed, but none spoke. Jorge and Margot wandered over. "Oh…"

Out on the water, some hundred meters out, stood wide outcroppings of dark, flat-topped basalt. Geometric collections of pillars, only feet above the water, clothed in curling vapor and dark weeds swaying in the mist. Atop them lounged beautiful, pale creatures.

Lithe, bare forms. Long and athletic, rested with heads cushioned by folded arms or affectionately on neighboring chests and laps. Seaspray glistened on their grey-alabaster flesh and voluminous lengths of black tresses. Some dozen creatures, in total, peacefully asleep amidst the rocks and weeds.

"Blimey," whispered Jorge. A half-hearted smile of relief passed over his features.

Margot looked sick, nodded. "Just like the stories."

"Story's don't say anything about feeling like doom's hanging over your head, though."

"How can something so beautiful be so dreadful?"

Someone nudged Jorge, pushed him a spyglass. "Take a closer look, you two," they whispered, voice cold. "And maybe you'll understand."

Jorge squinted through the lens, directed it to the creatures. He turned the focus, teeth chattering.

"My…" He scrunched his nose, exclaimed softly at inhuman details couched in beauty. Lovely faces, set with eyes so black and so large as to show bulbous through translucent lids. Shapely legs, strong, half again longer than a human's, and ended by oarlike flukes. Sculpted lips, parted in sleep to show needlish carnivore's-teeth.

Jorge pulled the glass from his eye, shoved it to Margot. She looked, squinted, blanched, handed it away fast. "Be glad to get past them."

"Too bad, then," whispered a bald sailor from along the rail. He took his glass back, pointing ahead of the prow. Jorge leaned to see. Amidst the looming islands, countless more basalt stands stood from the sea. Indistinct, swathed in fog and weeds. All littered with lovely, predatory forms.

"They overwinter, here," said the bald man, grimly. "We'll be lucky to get past the lot, by morn. Slow going, for the rocks."

Jorge shivered. "Think I'll head back to my sack, then." He turned, nodded to Margot, who quivered. "Don't envy your watch."

"Wait." The bald man hissed, caught his arm.

"What?"

"You ever encounter them before?"

"No," said Jorge.

"Then take these." He handed him two globs of beeswax.

"Oh." He went pale.

"Lest they start to sing."

"The lobby is practically a brawl," said a silver mask, plopping into velvet upholstery. Silk-gloved fingertips pinched at the nose bridge, pulled the visage away. Tired eyes and a pointed nose showed, beneath. "People are throwing things. And there's no more wine. I asked," said Clove, rubbing her temples.

"Shame," said her companion, a dark woman with cropped hair. She, too, had an aristocrat's mask on thin cord about her collared neck.

The two looked out from a high box, stage left, on an sumptuous auditorium half-filled with folk in evening wear. Some, seated and quiet with concerned thought. Most, up and outraged. Aisles thronged with pushy clammorers in dark suits, dress coats, and feathered hair embellishments. Ringed hands and wine glasses raised in gestural pique. The mezzanines' rails overflowed with indignant gentlefolk and balancing noblemice, who all alike frowned and pointed to the shut curtains hind the stage's gold and marble proscenium arch. Below, nervous eyes and brass instruments flashed in the half-hidden orchestra pit. Across, fellow masked box-goers leaned to mutter and conspire dourly.

"Suppose that's why the interval has dragged on, so."

"It's terrible," said Clove. She adjusted her tulle cravat. "The composer, that fellow from Adaleutia, has disappeared. Someone's threatened to duel the producer," she rolled her eyes. "And that assinine princeling from Lisa is demanding everyone in the stalls be escorted out."

"They were applauding rather inappropriately."

"They were applauding at novelty, Karene."

"'Novelty,'" mocked Karene. "That soloist was essentially nude." *

"Poor thing," said Clove. "I'll not envy the attention she draws, after this."

"Who was she, anyway?" said Karene, lip wrinkling. "Some underfed waif? It's a shame what the Company has stooped to."

"Haven't you heard?" Clove raised her eyebrows. "The cast is supplemented by a troupe from Adaleutia. Brought on specially by the composer's request. Evidently, he's very proud of his heritage."

Karene toyed with a gold cufflink. "Was that the other language in the sailor's duet? The one from off stage. Adaleutian?"

"No. Come to think, I've never heard it before."

"Very inappropriate, then, introducing nonsense tongues," sneered Karene. "A blatant break from civility."

"It gave me chills, really," said Clove. She picked up a pair of opera glasses, polished the lenses with her silk fingertips. "And not nice ones."

About the auditorium, most folk had resumed their seats, fewer and more sedate than before. A nervous, muttering energy followed them; muted, but yet undiminished. Up and behind the mezzanines, a heavy chime rang twice.

"Nearly time," said Clove.

"At last. Last bell was ten minutes ago." Karene frowned, watched tailcoated ushers attempt to quiet the house.

"Look how few remain," Clove mused.

"Can't blame them. The performance is aesthetic scandal." Karene turned to her friend. "Do you think we should leave, too?"

"No. If the night's to be scandal, it's ever more worth watching. We'd best see it through."

Karene nodded, pursed her lips. The chime rang again, and the front lights dimmed with a subtle hiss. "Finally," she said. There was a final scuffle to resume seats. Near the back of the house, a belligerent old man was dragged out by staff. Hundreds of opera lenses flashed, resumed their places in silk and ring-couched hands. The house lights sunk to black. Silence gradually swelled.

Invisibly, the stage opened in a surrurant swish of velvet and runner rings. From the orchestra, a thin and amelodic quaver of bassoon began to swell. And as it swelled, there bloomed in the stage's heart a spotlight. First a pinpoint, then a cold flood, revealing as if by starlight a lone performer on a curious set. The audience immediately began to mumble.

It was lone, grey-pale woman. She reclined, head bowed, clothed in naught but liquid spills of black tresses on an angled bed of rock. Curious pin-lights of stars glittered above, somehow reflected in the sea of blue and white-tipped silk which appeared to lap at her half-submerged calves.

Surprise caught in Clove's throat. She raised the stem of her theater glasses, squinted agape. "Oh, beauty," she muttered.

"Oh, scandal," said Karene, frowning, but likewise fascinated.

"Look at her–" On stage, the silk-water woman raised her head. The bassoon swelled, quit into silence.

"Eyes," finished Clove. Black orbs, larger and more liquid than any human's. Beside, Karene shivered visibly at the sight, knitted her shoulders. Below, the auditorium did likewise, twitched like a lot of rabbits shot suddenly dumb and dreadful by the gaze of a fox in the undergrowth. Someone whimpered. Another sobbed. None moved.

"What is happening?" Karene turned to her friend, fear large in her eyes. She dropped her glasses, half stood. "Please, I feel wrong. I think we really must–" Clove seized her wrist, held her still; enraptured, for the creature on stage had begun to sing.

A clear contralto note spilt warm and lovely from smiling lips. A sound so invitingly antithetical to the dread of moments before that the auditorium gasped in choked relief. Then, a complimentary swell of strings.

Another note, ascending. Another peal of strings. Folk began to stand. Another. Higher, quivering with liquid vibrato. Members of the orchestra faltered in their accompaniment, began to clamber from the pit. Yet another, all instrumentation forgot. The aisles and mezzanine rail clamored with pushing, weeping masses. Clove rose, dragged an unresisting Karene to stand with her.

On stage, white, predator's teeth gleamed in limelight, parted with rounded lips in a tremulous solo; unadorned, multitonal. Inhumanly beguiling.

In the spotlight's dark periphery, folk rushed blind for the stage, scrambling over and crushing seatbacks and fellow patrons alike. Bodies tumbled willingly from boxes, balconies, and mezzanine. Screams rang out, somehow softer than any charmed note of song. The singer beamed.

Clove and Karene clung at the rail of their box. "If we stay here, we will die," stammered Clove.

Shaking, Karene glanced to the back of the box, to the crashing riot, to her friend's panicked eyes. "I know."

"Come."

Hand in gloved hand, they leapt, tumbled to the maddened sea below.

Sirens

In 3.445, just five years past, a tragedy came to play at the Royal Opera.

A performance of momentous anticipation, composed and constructed by a multinational collection of the era's greatest musical and theatrical minds. Its opening performance, which would host the Coast's most esteemed and evaluated patrons of the arts, was forecasted to be the most expensive and profitable showing of either ballet or opera in history.

Its title: Water Music. The most calamitous and literally deadly tragedy to have ever graced the world of Coastal arts.

What would begin as a shockingly-nouveau performance, renowned for sparking outraged duels and fistfights during its intermission, would be remembered for causing over two dozen fatalities, mass hysteria, and the parading of a siren's corpse through the streets of Fortenshire.

A siren: A creature absent for a century or more from the lexicon of modern folklore. An Othersome brand of sea-monster so reduced in perceived danger as to be considered threatening only by sailors, who had long-ago learned to avoid its charming ways.

Indeed, a tempter and a beguiler of prey grown over-wary of its predator's charms. ** An eater of manflesh so limited in its wiles as to have curtailed even its own depredations, opting instead to dine on seal, muscle, and oyster. A creature reduced from legendary terror of the sea to strange sea-mammal; more alluring, but no faster or more deadly than its better: The shark.

And yet, somehow become the unexpected star of an ill-fated opera, recruited by a foreign composer of strange sensory and social orientation. How this came to pass, none can precisely say, for the man himself, an Adaleut by the name of Andrei Ilyushin, sunk into hermitage and obscurity after the incident.

What can be known is this: Ilyushin was a man of auditory genius, capable of drawing harmonic inspiration from sources he claimed only he could hear. He was also a social recluse, apt to disappear to the vast beaches on the wild Sea of Khawdor for months at a time. Rumor supposes that it was on one of these long hiatuses that Ilyushin encountered a siren, one made cordial by generations of non-predation of humans, and befriended her.

Further, what can also be supposed is this: Ilyushin was immune to one of two of the lethal, otherworldly*** gifts possessed by siren-kind. Sirens, as scholars understand them, emit constantly an aura of infrasound from an organ adjacent to their bronchi. A strange energy which unnerves all but the strongest of wills, summoning a sense of panic and impending doom. For this, the composer, gifted as he was with an uncommon reckoning of sound, had no fear. He had ears only for the siren's second gift: Incredible vocal range and ability.

It is by this natural ability that sirens beguile their prey. A human being, afeared by subaudible emmanations from within the creature, sees only a welcoming, beautiful man or woman singing the most welcoming of melodies. They have no mind for razor teeth, or black eyes, or paddle-legs: Only safety and welcome in the face of inexplicable horror. By this charm, sailors of old were so very easily drawn from the decks of their ships and devoured.

This queer immunity was both the genesis and the undoing of Ilyushin's masterwork. The composer, ignorant of the danger which he had befriended, wrote a bittersweet opera inspired by his inhuman friend. A doomed romance between a sailor and a siren. A groundbreaking piece uniquely composed of both Firlish, Adaleutian, and Otherworldly languages. An epic featuring as characters many a siren, only one of which would be filled by an anonymous star: The genuine article.

By what cunning Ilyushin managed to smuggle his siren into the venue, let alone the Firlish Capital, none can say. Despite his distaste for society, he was yet a fellow of great means, and in the end commanded the secrecy necessary to hide his star soloist in the opera house's undercroft in time for opening night.

That day, it is said, the Royal Operahouse was haunted. By the influence of the latent siren, several cast members were driven to melancholy and understudied at the last minute. Many musicians and property staffers became deliriously, miserably drunk. The director was barely preventing from hanging herself. How the performance ever progressed to its fateful entr'acte, folk can only marvel, for all the while, the Company was forced to endure Ilyushin's unconscious sabotage.

By intermission, Water Music's audacity, combined with the awful effect of a nearby siren, had driven the house to artistic outrage and the bring of violence. Indeed, several duels are rumored to have been fought in that time, most notably one by the producer, who lost. Nudity, incomprehensible language, provocative and vicious applications of ballet: All were an affront to the artistic gentry. The lengths to which Ilyushin had managed to unkilter his audience were sufficient to cause a substantial quantity of walkouts; and these quitters of the performance were perhaps the most lucky.

When the opera's star was finally unveiled, only barely made-up in human guise, Ilyushin's tragedy came to its raucous conclusion. Unaware of both humans' norms and her effect upon their behavior, the siren whipped her audience into wanton, panicked fervor. She was, as it rushed the stage, only the first of the riot's many victims that night.

Ilyushin is rumored to have realized his terrible error only then. Whether he saw, from his seat at the Royal Box, what became of his Othersome friend, none can confirm but the man himself; and he is long since fled.

Since its calamitous first performance, Water Music has been performed only once again. Once, this year. It was met with incredible success, both as a result of its legendary history and its all-human leads.

By its effect, the folk of the Coast once more know the terror of the siren, of beautiful tempters on shorelines and seastones. Queer monsters, once reduced to pretty sea-mammals, now again remembered as beguiling eaters of mens' flesh.

And with every passing year, stories of siren attacks creep from port cities with ever greater frequency. Though absurd, though impossible, it would seem that sirens themselves have heard the stories, found new hunger and new ambition in the cursed tale of Andrei Ilyushin.

Author's Note

A new take on introducing lore topics. Sirens were, on their own, maybe too mealy to describe without some flavor. Add a extra dash of story, and here we are.

Does this approach a dangerous level of fluff, for the lack of crunch? Maybe. We shall see.

Footnotes

* Northerners are rather accustomed to a degree of gender-neutral nudity. To them, to be warm enough to shed any amount of clothing is a luxury, one which they don't hesitate to share in the company of spas, saunas, and boiling hearths. The Coast as a whole, namely the aristocracy and their haute arte, is more prudish.
** Some scholars suppose that the siren, since it evolved not on the Coast but in the seas of the Otherworld, was never meant to pursue humans as prey. Its skills, they posit, were meant to terrify other sea-mammals and simply woo each other. Their beautiful forms, then, are no more purpose-built for luring than the bodies of other fairies. A matter of opportunistic happenstance, and an unfortunate one for human prey.
*** Sirens are among the most common creatures of the Other found on the Coast. They, like others of their kind, and black-blooded, black-eyed, and allergic to iron.

Brown husks of leaves drifted on the autumn road. Sticky branches shivered above, loosed what cladding they yet possessed to spiral in the bitter wind. Not far over the squat, umber hills, a raven croaked. Down the lane, a clapping of horseshoes swelled.

A rider in grey came along. He rode sedate and boredly, tucked up into his fur collars for the cold. His mount, a pudgy roan, crunched unconcernedly over the leaves, ears low. They sauntered with slack reins.

The breeze kicked up. Leaves rasped. A faint yell followed, muddied by the wind. The rider startled. His roan perked her ears, huffed. The reins stiffened. "Gee up" mumbled the rider, eyes suddenly bright. He squeezed his boots to the beast. They set off at a canter.

Seconds later came another yell, high and afeard. Other voices, too, jeering. A rush of three ravens startled up ahead, where the road went deep into a brown grove. Rider and horse passed under those bows, broke into a gallop.

They rode for a minute or more before the shouting's source, now quiet for awhile, showed. Ahead, in the mottled grey shade of the copse, hunched two figures in leathers over a fallen, bloodied third. One, a ginger woman, was tugging at the fallen's boots. Her fellow, a scabby man, was working at the other end with a knife. Seeing the rider, they quit their desecration, turned.

"Ho there" said the rider, pulling furs from his mouth.

"Ho yerself," said the woman. She wore her hair drawn back tight. At her hairline, a few flecks of blood showed bright on the scalp, fresh.

"What's become of him?" pointed the rider. His steed nickered, unsteady at the red which pooled midst the leaves.

"Ragwretches, from the bush," said the man, behind her. He put down his knife, covertly held the hand behind his back.

The rider frowned. "Ragmen, at this time of year?"

"Ye. Dreadful large ones," said the ginger

"They clocked your friend here and scarpered, then?"

"You've guessed it."

"And left the two of you unscathed?"

The scabby man nodded. "Miracle, it was." He stepped a mite closer.

The rider leaned in his saddle, peered round him. His brows raised, crinkled. "Clocked him with a pistol gunspring, at that." He gestured to a metal point protruding from the back of the dead man's skull. "Rare seen a wretch with a pistol."

"Miracle of miracles," said Scabby. "He sacrificed himself to save us."

"So, you're stealing your fallen comrade's boots," said the rider. "And, what, his gold teeth?"

"See, it might look like that, but–"

"You two are cutters, yes?" the rider interrupted.

"Aye," smiled the scabby cutter, showing rotten teeth. "How'd ye guess?" He stepped closer. The roan twitched her ears.

"And you work for what bank? Tiber and Fellowes?"

"Spot on. Good guessin'."

"Then I'll tell you," said the rider, smiling. "That I am a commissioner for T and B." He opened his coat, showed the insignia on his lapel. The cutter's eyes went wide.

"So you'd best not use that pistol you're hiding behind your fat ass, and…" He swung about, glared at the ginger, who'd been creeping up behind. She grinned, sheepish. "Tell your little minge here to reconsider knifing me, lest you meet a team of real cutters on a hit."

Both backed off. The scabby cutter went pale. The ginger reddened, blotchily. "M'apologies, Commissioner," she mumbled, surreptitiously tucked a knife into her boot.

"Likewise," said her fellow. He tucked the pistol into his belt, looked to the corpse. "You're not gonna, ah…"

"Report you?"

"Ye."

The Commissioner squinted, pointed to the corpse. "What was his standing?"

"Ain't had any."

The commissioner shrugged. "In that case, don't make a habit out of it." He nudged the roan, started off.

"Enjoy the boots."

A key rattled in the lock. Some muffled giggling sounded through the walnut paneled door. The bolt turned. Hinges swung, and the giggling came through in a flurry of snow and winter's-night air.

It was a red-nosed pair, wrapped up in coats and swathed in giddy vodka fumes. The first, a scarred, long-nosed man, grinned, wobbled slightly. The second, the giggling's curly-headed source, hung on his shoulder. She was small, expensively made up, and better dressed than her scuffed-leather companion.

"I must say," she said, ceasing her giggle to frown dramatically at the parlor interior; all leather armchairs, shelves of curio, and dark wood. "You live better than I'd expect."

"Ah, well," drawled Dacre, fingering the buttons of his coat.

The young woman let him go, wandered to the brick hearth. "A new townhouse," she said, warming her hands. "And staff to keep your fire, at that."

"N' good taste in lunch*, I hope."

"Dinner, Dacre," giggled she, rolling her eyes. "And we mainly drank. You cutters have such odd slang."

"Ex-cutter, and a lucky one." Dacre insisted. He tossed his coat and scarf to a chair, moved to loop an arm round his companion. She slipped coyly free, moved to examine the books and oddities which cluttered the room's surfaces. Dacre followed close behind.

"Goodness, you do own an excess of skulls. How gruesome."

"Aw, Silve. 'S only five."

Silve tapped the silver teeth of one blackened skull. "Who was this?"

"Some dead chap."

Dacre received a frown. "Rather goes without saying, doesn't it? Given you own his skull?"

"Fine. M'enemy," Dacre said, tucking his chin on Silve's shoulder.

"Why'd you kill him?"

The man shrugged. "Didn't. Enemy, b'still my partner. Got his head lopped by an eidolon, so I kept it."

"Oh," said Silve, shirking. "Why would you do that?"

"Seemed like a good idea, a' the time." **

Silve tisked, moved from the skulls. Dacre wobbled, unsupported.

"What about these?" said the woman, indicating a glass dome containing dozens of blue coins.

"Agadese ducats. Call it m' rainy day fund."

"Where'd you find them?" Silve peered at the coins, at the runic denominations on their faces.

"Some hole inna mountain. Inside statues." None too gracefully, Dacre peeled the coat from her shoulders.

"What kind of statues?" said Silve, pushing the coat at him.

"Living ones," he tossed it away.

"Queer."

"'Orrible."

"Hmf," said Silve. She moved to a side table, leaned on the wide arm on the chair beside. "What's this?" she said, pointing to a mossy glass cylinder which occupied the table. Something moved inside.

"My friend," said Dacre, joining her there.

"Oh," brightened Silve, kneeling to look at the glass. "A pet?"

"A mince toad."

At that, Silve recoiled from the glass, the water-eyed amphibian within. She frowned. "Ah."

"Ain't nothing to scoff a'. Little bastard's more faithful than most." He looked grim. "'N longer-lived."

“Have you no friends but toads?” she grinned.

Dacre looked sour, arms folded. “Like I said, longer-lived.”

“Don’t tell me all your friends are dead?” consoled Silve, cleaving to his side.

Dacre shirked from her. “S’what I implied, init?” His tone was abruptly cold.

“What of the cutters you earned your fortune with?”

“S’ one man’s fortune,” Dacre mumbled. “For there weren’t none left to share it with.”

Gingerly, Silve patted him, hiccuped pitchily. “I’m s–”

“Don’t,” said Dacre, turning his lip. “Got nothin’ to do with you.” He slumped into the armchair, kicked his hobnailed boots over the side.

Awkward, Silve peered at him, made a show of twirling one brown ringlet. Dacre, his coquetry vanished, paid little heed, chin tipped to chest. Silve raised an eyebrow, sauntered to the hearth. Firelight flickered on the drunken sheen of her eyes as they slid over the cluttered mantelpiece.

“Sword grip,” she mused, touching a broken hilt. “Jar of pretty white arrows." She touched a point, delicately. "And…" she smirked, plucking up a battered wooden thing. "Er, what do you call this?"

Dacre's head snapped up. "A helmet," he insisted. "M'first."

"But it's–"

"Helmet," he interrupted, loudly.

"Just a bucket with eye holes," giggled Silve.

Dacre reddened, glared at her. A network of pale scares stood out on his worn cheeks. He stood.

"Sorry," mumbled Silve, eyes wide. With a terse jerk, the cutter took his bucket from her limp hands, replaced it on the mantel. He scooped up her discarded coat, proffered it. "Y'should go."

"But–"

"Can't be laughin' at m' past." Dacre

"Dacre, I want–"

"Get." He shoved her towards the door.

"Want to know more about it," blurted Silve.

Dacre settled, blinked. "Y'do?"

"Yes. I shouldn't've laughed. It's just…" She worried the coat. "So extraordinary, your life. I like you for it. I want to hear about…" She gestured round the parlor, to the collected oddities. "All of it."

Dacre's face softened. "Didn't think you reckoned it tha' way," he said, passed a hand through his hair.

"I can stay?"

"Aye. M'sorry I snapped." He looked sheepish. "Guess cutterings'a bit silly, sometimes. Gotta be that way." Stiffly, he took up on a nearby sofa, gestured for Silve to join. She did, and, hesitantly, leaned into his shoulder.

"Now," said the once-cutter, gesturing to the collected marvels of his venturesome times.

"What d'you want to know?"

Dangerous Wonts

Cutters are a folk of peculiar taste. A caste whose proclivities, influenced by a culture of labor unrivaled in peril and horror, have grown primal and queer.

They do not begin this way. Novice cutters, untested, desire much the same as simple soldiers. Food, drink, good beds; company and gold to share and afford them with. And of these novices, many enough never grow weirder in their wants, for after even one bleak venture, the weak and the timid are alike culled by fear and mortality. Those who do live grow stranger by each venture.

With every delve into the dark and the forbidden, a cutter may come to desire and fetishize the unusual. As folk exposed to the extreme and the traumatic are wont, they may seek distraction and sensation either superior to or in sublimation of their fell experiences. To some, violence becomes normalcy. Either as a pastime, a solution, or both. Casual criminality, brazen squatting or trespass, and predation of junior cutters are everyday activities. Other cutters acquire a taste for numbing substances. Laudanum, strong absinthes, and coquelicot, namely, are habitual favorites. Enough of these sorts end their careers not by venturing's dangers, but by the addictions acquired in an attempt to forget them. These behaviors, while common, are not yet among the oddest cutters learn to exhibit.

A fetishization of particular elements of gear numbers among the venturing folk’s chiefest obsessions. Arms, armor, and specialized equipment are marks of a cutter’s success, of the gold earned and burned to obtain them. Among such equipment, a superstitious desire is especially present for three distinct items: Boots, backpacks, and helmets. These are staples of the cutter’s trade. Boots, for long marches in the wild and the black; and for cathartically stomping one's foes. Packs, to safely ferry gear into and loot out of a venturing locale. And helms, colloquially known as “buckets,”*** for which cutters hold superstitious reverence. Cutters will readily bicker, tussle, even kill, if given enough mad impetus, over such icons of their trade.

Many choose additional accoutrements for which to obsess. Some, obsessed with cleanliness both physical and mortal, crave soap and gray salt. Others, terrified at the prospect of encountering the unknown, hoard bestiaries and books of lore. Lots, conditioned by poverty and romanticisation of wealth, carry a store of gold at all times; one which they will never spend, only clutch for strange security.

The queer predilections of cutters, though uncountable in their variety, are in the end joined by a few pervading traits: By obsession over material gain, the behavioral consequence of a trade defined by stealing wealth for greedy solicitors; and by an eerie tendency for gallows humor, a jovial manifestation of defences formed to resist the black effect of often-hopeless work upon the mind. A product of camaraderie, of the self-reinforcing fellowship, built of a communal rejection of mortality, without which the venturing life would be impossible.

A guardian of the mind, without which a cutter, retired or alone, is naught but an oddity: A collection of hoarded curios and memories best forgot.

Author's Note

While playtesting some cuttering scenarios, it occured to me to consider the actions and desires of player characters and extrapolate it into an in-world subculture. By this lens, what is a venturing sort, but a lot of awful habits, collected oddities, and a mad disregard for death?

Footnotes

* To cutters, who often spend protracted periods of time in odd hours or subterranean depths, will describe any meal of the day as "lunch." If two meals are had in a day, the second is known as supper.
** Cutters are renowned for their ability to acquire packs full of useless items for later hoarding.

*** These are sometimes actual buckets. The cooper's trade is one valuable amongst novice cutters, for they are capable of producing a brand of inexpensive personal protection called "barrel armor." Such armor makes its headpieces if literal wooden pails.