Incunabuli

They crept through an autumn wood. Two men in green coats and stalker's caps tugged over black hair. One young, the other old, bearded. They carried lever guns in the crooks of their sleeves, stepped lightly round dry stands of elderberry and the musty detritus of fallen leaves.

A hound walked before them, nose whuffling eagerly at the earth. A flop-eared cocker with a blotchy coat and thick collar. It held close and obedient to the younger man's leg.

"I've been thinking about the wedding," said the man, softly, kept his eyes low, scanning the brush.

"Ai?" said the elder. "What about?"

"Whether it should be, well, postponed."

That earned him a sideways glance. "Hm? Why, Alphons? I do hope the two of you are getting on."

"Lasuli is… fine Papa," saidAlphons. "It's just, well." He pursed his lips. "The disappearances. In the village. The folk say something's been taking people all year, especially after festivals. It's killed five, now. The reception is at risk."

"Ai, Alphons," bemoaned Papa.

"Please. I know you don't truck much with Northern superstition, but, well–" He quieted, for Papa had raised a finger to his lips, gestured to the surrounding wood.

"Sorry." He whispered. "Forgive me, but it's as Mama says: You married a Northerner. You must know how many of their superstitions have more than a little tru–" *

At that moment, they both quieted, for the cocker had frozen, set its nose in a definite point. Its brown, wide-set eyes fixed on a bramble some fifty meters ahead. Alphons produced a hunter's glass, dialed its focus on the brush. Within, near obscured, milled a flight of fat, long-billed woodcocks. They poked at the earth, drawing up pink worms and sour elderberry seeds. He passed the glass to Papa, who squinted through, nodded, readied his leverette. **

Both men crouched low, leveled their guns, set a bird each in their sights. "Uno, dos," whispered Papa. On "tres," the birds dropped in a puff of feathers. The remaining woodcocks flushed in a flutter and a panic, dispersed with the fading ring of shots.

They grinned at their successful kills. "Go on, Blotto. Find them up," said Papa, patting the dog. It shot off, tongue lolling, under the low thorns of the bramble.

"You were saying?" said Papa. He recocked the leverette, stowed it back in his elbow, raised his eyebrows to Alphons.

"There are many of their myths which are true."

"I am certain many are." Papa knelt to pat the hound as it returned, a bird clasped gently in its jaws. He turned the feathered lump in his hands. "But this tale, I do not believe as one of them."

Alphons frowned. "You are husband to the Earl. *** I can't understand how, after all these years, you've never come to trust her, your, people."

"Because, hijo, for every myth that is true, there is another that is a lie." He smiled encouragingly at the hound as it returned again, trotting happily with a limp bird in tow. "Willfully or not, they are a mask for crime, or disease." He took the bird, rubbed the cocker's ear. "Or sin." The dog yipped once, scampered away.

The bearded man rose, both birds in hand. "The killings were committed by that mad hermit they hung last season, if you recall. I am certain." He turned to go, whistled for Blotto. "Come." Alphons followed, diffident.

A wind came up. Brown leaves tumbled around them. "I want to see you without worry, Alphons. You are soon to be wed." Papa turned to him; eyes crinkled. "Ai?"

"I try, Papa. I hope you are right."

"Good." He looked ahead, idly strung the birds onto a cord on his belt. "Shall we try the back range, now? I am sure they are roosting, there."

"Let's."

"Bien." He clicked his tongue for the dog. "Come, Blotto. Vamos."

The dog's trotting footsteps gained behind. It bumped his leg, whined. "Eh?" said Papa. Both men looked down, froze.

In Blotto's mouth, limp like a bird, there were bit the skeletal remnants of a human hand. Red stings of flesh joining white, wet bones. Blotto proffered it obediently. The men recoiled.

"Dios mio."

Alphons met his father's wide eyes, spoke.

"It would seem that lie has killed again."

"Let me get this straight, Master Saddleback," said Alphons, overlooking a long table of beer glasses, breads, and linkwurst. "To do this, you really needed two crowns of…" He waved a hand at the spread, set up in a flower-strewn field beside the looming wood. "Celebration?"

"Precisely," said the cutter beside him, a hard-bitten, scruffy man with bushy eyebrows. He tugged the collar of his jerkin, scratched his rough neck. "If'n the beast is what we think, it'll hate a celebration. Song, laughter, firelight. It'll hate 'em all. Best way to draw it out. It'll come after we bed down te sleep, but we shan't sleep. We'll be waiting. "

"I see." He watched a pair of cutters, both long-haired and strapped with blades, carry a keg to the table. "My father is dubious, but I've faith of your record. And I've convinced the Earl."

"Ta. They'll see."

"And, " said Alphons, running a hand through his hair. "What did you call the monster?"

"A barghest," nodded Saddleback. He sniffed, spat on the grass. "'Bear-geist,' so goes the old Awnish. When they believed such things as spirits."

Alphons nodded, too, but still he frowned. He turned to behold the nearby wood. A shrub-choked reach of waving trees, just turning to brown, with an evening shadow within. They rustled in unceasing movement. He gulped. A hand twitched at his side. "H…how did it come to prey here?"

Saddleback raised his eyebrows, shrugged. "Well, me more academic compatriots suspect it's the fault of that logging camp upriver." He turned a pointed gaze to Alphons.

"Ah," said the nobleman's son, lowly. "The one owned by my family."

"Indeed," Saddleback said, wry. "Your woodcutters've gone and depleted the territory, and all manor of ill shite's come wanderin' down to these parts instead." He raised his eyebrows at Alphons. "Can't give ye family too much sass, though. Been makin' fine coin. Banks n' governors've had us cleanin' up the result for the past month. It's a rich life, for a cutter."

"A rich life," trailed Alphons. He watched a one-eared mouse hop by with a fiddle, followed by a bald woman with a bundle of pikes. The orange of leaves and declining sun glowed in their burnished points. Both of them carried about with gleeful step, and not a glance to the gloaming wood.

Some dour tension grew between Alphons' eyes. "What an interesting life you and yours lead, Saddleback."

Saddleback focused on him, furrowed his brows. "Got something on ye mind, mate?"

Alphons' jaw worked, undecidedly. "You know, I am arranged to be married, soon."

"Ye?"

"Marry, make a family, groom the land, prepare to pass this world on to my heir. Like my mother to me."

Saddleback remained impassive. "Woss wrong with tha'? S' a better life than mos' get."

"For me, it has been, certainly." He tilted his head. "Only, I've been thinking. About Parousia, in the South. And awful things I've learned at the Academy. And barghest at our door." He stopped a moment, beheld the looming wood. "I feel we're fighting against other worlds, and we're losing. I fear there won't be anything left of my world to pass on, soon enough, and it'll be my kind's fault, to boot.

He looked to the cutter, all scars and scruff and leather. "It's a world for your kind, now, Saddleback. And I'm almost jealous." He turned away. "Suppose that's what's on my mind."

Saddleback scoffed. "Ye only just realize tha'?" He raised his eyebrows.

"What?" said Alphons. Surprise widened his eyes.

"Dinnae take no academy te tell ye the world's split in pieces, Lordlin'." He raised his chin, sneered. "I'll beg ye forgive me, but ye're playin' catch-up. We cutters've known it a long time. Been plenty of us cleanin' up for decades, all so the rest o' ye can pretend things is alright." He gave a snort, poked a finger at Alphons. "And don' say yer jealous of us, for there ain't a cutter among my posse who'd not trade lives with you."

Alphons blinked a moment. "My apologies, Master Saddleback. I am embarrassed for my blindness."

"Och, well," said the cutter, simmering down. "At least ye've got one eye out of the sand." He narrowed his eyes. "Jus' remember: Ain't no one's known the damage done this world who's not worn a cutter's boots."

"I suspect you're right," said the heir, dourly, squinted at the setting sun. "It grows late." He turned for the road, which wound towards a great, crenelated country house atop a nearby hill.

"Thank you, Saddleback. Good luck"

"Ta. We'll need it."

Alphons watched from the safety of a distant balcony. He leaned, hunting glass set to eye, elbows on a rail midst planters filled with dead begonia pixies. Autumn wind brought the dry petals to shiver, carried the sawing of a fiddle and the hum of a solemn tune: the celebration of the cutters, feasting and reciting mythic lays down and a darkened hillrise away.

O'er the hills,

Across the plain,

Ride chevaliers from Even Fane.

Crimson banners,

Raised high and plain,

All to war, to war in vain

They had sung with energy, before the sun set. Jigs and reels, trotted out on the trampled, sweet grass. Alphons had watched them all the while, watched them feast and pour beer, a flask of whiskey at his own side. But as the night grew, and the shadow of the wood overcame their firelit camp, and the flask emptied, the cutters grew quiet. They sang airs of solemn antiquity, instead. Tales of älves, and serpents, and dead heroes.

Now, Alphons watched them turn to sleep. The smoke of their shortening fire reached him even there, mingled with the ashen dregs of whiskey. He watched the fire fade, nodding many a time. Eventually, the hunter's glass rolled into a begonia planter, and the heir slumped, hunched under a quilt, quite asleep.

He awoke to distant cries.

Alphons startled. The quilt rolled away. In the distance, screams and flashes of fire emanated from the hill. He scrambled for his hunting glass, looked.

On that hill, the cutters battled a giant. A rawboned, four-meter bear stood up like a great, stooping man. A gaunt behemoth with nubs of deformed bones burst from its taut and mangy hide. With arms thick and twisted as branches, it swiped cutters like pins, whipped weapons from hands and limbs from torsos with equal ease. With every swipe, it pulled, maniacally, fresh meat to the lipless gawp of its gnashing jaws.

The cutter's efforts were fruitless. Pike points were swatted, flashing, away. Firebombs missed or broke with little effect, for the thing ignored all flame consuming its fur, its flesh, so enthralled was it by the act of killing and eating.

A stench of burning hide reached the balcony, strong even on the distant wind. Alphons blanched. He gagged, hung on the rail. There, he clung for some time. Until the ring of slaughter died. Until the barghest, fattened with the meats of men, rose, faded, smouldering, back into the black of the wood.

He slunk from the rail, disappeared into the manor. By candlelight, silent, to avoid waking the house, Alphons gathered a pack, provisions, gear for travel. A knife, a leather duster, his gunspring, and a pair of heavy boots. He saddled a muscled roan, and, laden with the goods of a cutter, rode for the estate's end.

At the road, he turned the roan about, beheld the still-smouldering hill where the cutters had died. Smoke streamed in wisps against the black, cloudless sky

"I'm sorry, Saddleback."

Alphons spurred the roan, rode hard the opposite way.

Maneater

The word bear comes from old Awnish. It means "beast."

Ancient folklore says is a name given in fear, out of a belief held by mythic Man. Out of their concern that the animal's true name, if uttered, would cause the beast itself to appear.

And though the great brown bear of the North is no small villain of the wood, apt to chase, and maul, and threaten, it yet remains a timid beast, and its name is one given wrongly. For in their mistaken fear, mythic humanity confused the lowly bear for the real and monstrous object of their fear: The barghest. The maneater.

The Barghest

When a bear, driven by rage, or scarcity, or territorial decline, is forced to prey not on its harmless fare of nuts, and berries, and scavenged meat, but on humans, it becomes a barghest. A creature of unceasing hunger and rage, its existence reduced only to the insane pursuit of those two drives.

Forever hungry, for every pound of human flesh it consumes does not satisfy. Rather, it compounds awful, burgeoning bipedalism and ever-expanding gigantism. Monstrous gifts to the barghest's efficiency as a killer, but unrelenting blows to its starving mind.

Forever enraged, for the madness of a barghest's undying famine begins and continues eternal by human contact. No bear is born with the will to eat a man, but it can be given one. By plight and hardship driven by Man's depredation of its environment and kin, a bear will come to test that adversary's easy mettle. Most often, it will win, become a barghest, and, bestially aware of the cause of its mad hunger, be forever consumed by hate for the race that unwittingly forced its unnatural dependance on their own flesh.

It shant appear because you said its cursed name, but it will come and eat you all the same.

Folklore & Truth

For millennia, Littorans† have known the barghest.

Examples of the monster exist as the chief nemeses in unending recountings of Northern lore; the archetypal devouring giant, harrowed and driven to nightly hunts, attracted by the song and revelry of mythic humanity. A beast motivated by a dyad of drives so simple, so bestial, it could only represent the epitome of nature's black and othersome wiles. Of the always-encroaching gloom of dark forests and the queer creatures of the Other bred within; the servants of an awful and predatory ecology. ††

And still, in modern times, few have come to hold any grasp of the barghest's true nature. Few know it is no servant of the Other. Nor is it, like wicked trollen, a baleful combination of Other and natural world. Not at all.

Rather, by depleting the forests they fear so dearly as homes of the Other, humans activate the ireful defenses of their very world. They create the barghest: A destroyer summoned to reap mankind just as they do the woods. The barghest is no Othersome monster, no product of warring worlds.

It is merely nature.

Author's Note

Here's a simple monster article blown up into something much more bloated with thematic cogitation. A glutted combination of wendigos, the transformative maneater concept I've used before, and the old euphemism of the bear.

Promise I'll write about älves and trollen, eventually. And I'll post the Lay of Even Fane on Patreon if anyone asks.

Finally, please expect at some point in the future a gazetteer portion of Incunabuli (featuring a map, I know) meant to enable easier, organized consumption of the site. This is a wild and unusual little art project, and it needs such a thing. Brace.

As ever, this article was made possible by Incunabuli's generous supporters on Patreon. To join them and read articles available only to supporters, support Incunabuli on Patreon.

Footnotes

* Northerners are typically areligious. Instead, they hold a variety of superstitions and natural myths, most of which religious folk hold as paganism.
** A leverette is a lever-action gunspring. Its launch springs are charged by hand, via a lever mechanism flush with the stock.
*** Northern titles are decidedly gender neutral.

† "Littoran" describes any individual hailing from the Coast, be they human or otherwise.

†† The Otherworld is chiefest of the alien realms which interstice the Coast, bleeding their growing influence upon the home realm of Humanity. The home of älves, and trollen, and spriggans.

They crouched midst broad tuffets of musty earth. Grassy-topped knolls, like turrets of root and dirt carved by floodwater. No water flowed among them now, however. Only a thick and swirling morass of fog and acrid smoke.

Soldiers crouched there, black jackboots and woolen knees sopped through by mud and trampled grubs. Men and women in dirt-caked burgundy jackets, eyes nervous and wide neath battered, black helms topped with rusted spikes. They held close to the tuffets, service gunsprings and tasseled partizans couched close and ready. They kept smoke-reddened eyes fixed south, on the deep swirl of vapor; the high, diffuse sun above, and the pillars of graphite smoke in the distance.

From the grey wash came a pattering splash of bootsteps. The soldiers twitched collectively, kept steel points and ironsights searching for a prospective charge.

A young scout was all that emerged. Panting, helmetless, and smeared head to toe in mud. He staggered in a wild and stooping run, clutching his side. At the sight of him, his fellows murmured in interest, looked on with anticipation as he stopped, weakly saluted, addressed the nearest officer.

"Captain, I, I…" At this, he staggered. Two enlisted men rush to support him, found his uniform soiled not just with mud, but with a copious red stain let from a broad slice under one arm. He was blanched, blue in the face.

The Captain, a green-eyed woman with a muddy helmet plume, startled. "Beren," she lifted his head, found his eyes glassy. "Beren. Come on, you must speak. What has befallen you? Does the cavalry still hunt us? What of the 302th?"

Beren lolled, looked her in the eye. A dribble of red rolled from his lip. "They are coming."

"Who are coming, man? The cavalry? The grenadiers?"

"Cobbehunden." His head lolled forward. A line of red mucous dripped to the wormy soil.

The Captain likewise lost her color, for at that moment, a scream broke through the mist.

Eyes and gunspring muzzles turned on a single tuffet, for around its earthen side had come a spider, large and hairy as a mastiff. Eight furry, three-clawed paws kneaded like an eager cat's, gouged the rooty soil. Long, serrated mandibles worked, drooling slime, in sharp anticipation.

There was a moment of horrid silence. The soldiers stared, matched the unmoving gaze of massed bubbles of eyes.

There was a crack. Somebody had loosed a shot, missed. The spider twitched, leapt in reaction. It cleared ten meters to set upon a nearby soldier, bore her down into the wet soil. Sickle-jaws snipped through wool and flesh with soft, slick resistance; like shears through ripe fruit.

A crackling barrage of gunspring flechettes crunched through the thing's carapace, ripped trails of cornflower-blue ichor through the sour air. It seized, rolled belly-up to twitch, dying, beside the fallen soldier. The shots echoed, receded into the fog. Soldiers' eyes held, wide and horrified, on that inward-curling carcass; and on the spreading stain from their ruined comrade.

Breath shallow, they listened, for in the dying ring of shots, there gained a charge. Not hoofbeats, but the pattering hiss of uncounted seething claws.

"Prepare to receive charge!" The Captain leveled her pistol, gloved hand shaking. Partizans and gun muzzles hastily redirected, pointed to meet too late the burst of dog-sized spiders from the vaporous morass.

They washed like a scuttling flood through the tuffets, leaping and scampering; clicking and chattering like pebbles dropped down a washboard. Shots rang out, intercepted many in-air, then died as a score of snapping jaws bore soldier after soldier to the earth, mingled mud with spilled gore. The Captain fell soon after the rest, snipped through the eyes, squeezing off random shots in the nervous spasms of her dying hand.

By the time horsemen arrived a half minute behind, all grey denim and chain coats, the soldiers in burgundy were undone. Each lay, a resected mess, neath a hunched war spider, its jaws clamped and sucking for freshly running fluids.

They dismounted, calmly clipped chain leashes to the war spiders' collared waists. When they'd finished feeding, the handlers clicked their tongues, led the cobhounds quietly away.

"Come on, Basc. Tell me where the money is."

Basc, bloodied and tied to a rickety chair, smirked. "Nah," he said. A bit of gummy scab stretched at the corner of his lip. "Don't fancy I should."

His interrogator cracked her knuckles, turned a lip. She stood before him on the hay-strewn floor of a shed, neath the shine of a hanging lamp, burning low. It cast her broad face with heavy shadow, twisted that expression into a displeased caricature.

"Basc," she drawled. "I'll give you another lick, lest you comply right soon."

"Do it, hag. I know you'd love to get your fat hands on m–."

She did. A spray of sweat and mingled red pattered the wooden floor and mildewed straw. The flat thump of the blow knocked Basc's head askew. He righted himself, giggled wetly.

"Me boys'll be here soon, Hele," he said, jaw slack. "N' you'll be sorry. They know where to go."

"Ye? Where are we, then?"

"We're in the shed behind the Wesket. Barman rents it to you. Takes pity on account of you not affording proper rooms."

"Hah," said Hele. "Bloody wrong." She stomped 'cross the shed, pushed the door open. Pale moonlight and a dusty scent of dry corn washed into the little room. Outside, there was naught but blue-black sky and waving fields. "See? Them's Fenton's fields."

"Shit."

"Ye, you're in it. Now, tell me where the money is, ye down dirty cutter."

"Nah."

She hit him again. In the gut. Basc groaned, bent, spat up bile down his already-stained front. "I'll show ye to the hounds, Basc. Fenton's not fed'm for a week."

"Do it. I'm no' afraid of some mutts."

Hele grinned. Broad teeth shone in the moonlight. "You asked for it." She seized the back of the chair, spun Basc around, dragged him scraping out of the shed and over the clover lawn. Hele puffed, yanked him along through the night air, scraped two furrows of soil behind.

Basc wiggled his feet. "Be mighty ironic if your fat heart gave out right now, eh?"

"Stuff it."

"We'd both be canned," he pattered. "I don't fancy you all gruesome. Big-boned, n' all. Can ye afford yer salt, Master 'Lives-in-a-She–" At that, he yelped. Hele had jerked him along so hard his head cracked 'gainst the chair back.

"I'll feed yer bones to the swine, Basc," smirked the woman.

"Ye, right."

They drew near a low kennel. A squat, long, peak-roofed hut. The door complained as Hele wrenched it open, yanked the chair onto the floor inside, shut it again. It was quite dark within and smelt of dirt and spoiling meat.

"Last chance," said Hele, in the dark.

"I said," he sneered, voice sticky. "I ain't afraid of no dogs."

Hele chuckled, and a match fizzed, flared. She lit a lantern. The bars of the kennel illuminated, just before Basc's face. Cast iron bars, rusty, coated in thick, tangled webs. Something scratched in the dark, moved just outside the light. Basc's expression abruptly turned to panic.

"Oh, shit. Those hounds," he gabbled.

"What about those hounds, Basc? They looked usual to me. N' hungry."

"Come on, Hele. You won't."

"There's three, in there," said the woman. She leaned close behind Basc; one hand on his bound shoulder, the other pointed towards the dark. There, two dozen beads of bunched eyes shone, swam, like soap bubbles grouped on black water.

"Come on, it's not my money to give. They'll kill me!"

"Yeh?" Hele scooted his chair against the bars, so the man's shaking kneels poked through. Deep in the kennel, the eyes crept forward, slow, revealed dripping, sickle-like pincers gnawing below. They parted, emitted a high, excited clicking. Hair rose on Basc's neck. Hele grinned, pointed again. "They will."

One cobhound crept forward, eight legs rippling, propelling the leathery, hardened body forward. It stopped. The hair of its limbs twitched. Its pincers lifted, as if sniffing, inches from Basc's knee. He screamed, softly.

"Alright!" Rope creaked as he strained. Sweat rolled down his brow. "I'll tell." He gulped, squirming. "I'll tell. U-under the stile in Broughton's Drive."

Hele leaned close. So did the hound; an inch nearer, pincers waving. "You sure?" said the woman, threat resonant in her tone.

"As crystal."

"Hmph." Hele pulled him back. She drew a knife, bent. There was a ripping sound.

"The shite are you doing?" said Basc.

"Takin' a sample." She held up a thready, stained scrap of shirt.

"For what?" Basc wriggled. Sweat dripped from his nose. "Let me go! I told you where the money is."

Hele smiled, took a knife to his ropes, sawing. They split, dropped from wrist and ankle. She backed away; knife pointed at the bloodied man. "Ge' up. Ye can go."

Basc bolted aright, staggered away. He backed towards the kennel door, insisted: "For what?"

"Scent for the hounds, Basc, and insurance for me. In case you're a liar." She grinned even wider, held up the scrap, chuckled. "Ye best be going."

Basc gulped. The kennel door banged open as he flew into the blue moonlight, took off flailing over the fields. Behind him trailed Hele's raucous laughter

Laughter, mingled with the clicking bay of the hounds.

Cobhounds

A cobhound doesn't like you.

Although you walk it, and feed it, and pet its wiry fur, it is not loving. Though it stands guard, and never bites, and obeys your commands, it is not loyal. Though it is yours, and protects you, and never runs away, it is not your friend. It is not a dog, and it doesn't like you at all.

A cobhound likes one thing: Meat. It eats plentifully, but not often. A pile of butcher's scraps will do. Skins, and organs, and rotten meats. It takes the lot into its cobwebbed kennel and nibbles and slurps away, satisfied. That is one of the few things it can feel: Satisfaction. Not pleasure, but simply the rote fulfillment of a requirement.

Because you have provided for its satisfaction since its puppyhood, it has attached itself to you. It does not like you; you are merely a provider. The tasks you ask of it are merely the customary cost of easy meat. So long as you continue to provide for it, it will stand beside you. It will accept your home, and your petting, and your commands, and it will do so until it shrivels up and dies of old age.

The Domestic Cobbe

You will find the cobhound is not a dog. Rather, it is a cobbe. ** A wolf spider made domestic.

The wolf spider was not hard to domesticate. By a simple offering of meat, maintained over generations, Littoran pioneers quickly attained the spider's alliance, rather than its predation. Since, they have kept multifarious breeds of the beast for hunting, companionship, and war for over two hundred years.

Hunting

If you wish for a hunting hound, the cobhound is without match- with exceptions. In killing, it excels. In retrieving, it fails completely. A cobhound will not happily ferry downed birds to you, because it cannot understand the concept: To a cobhound, there is no hunting unless it is personally involved in the killing.

It will, however, readily take a scent*** and run down any prey imaginable. It will do so at great distance, over terrain of any dimensionality, and it will rarely fail. Unavoidably, though, it will attempt to kill its target; for again, it knows no purpose for hunting but killing. Game animals, convicts, and bounty targets alike, no matter how they run, will nigh-unerringly find themselves the unfortunate recipient of a sicced cobhound's bite.

Fancy

If you wish for a companion, there are surely more personable options than a cobbe. However, this doesn't stop many folks at all, for they keep the creatures anyway. Cobhound fancy has produced a range of breeds, varied in appearance, but not in temperament. Orange cobbes; brown cobbes; cobbes with fur black and thick as smoke off an oil fire. Small cobbes; large cobbes; cobbs with tiny bodies and long legs. Some with red eyes, some with green. All interesting, but none too friendly. For in spider behavior, there are merely to permutations: Aggressive, and docile. The docile ones are loved for pets. The aggressive ones are kept for war.

War

If you dearly desire someone hurt, and hurt very badly, at that, you set a cobhound on them. A broad, scythe-fanged war cobbe, all thick, leathery-hard flesh, textured like the pad of a dog's paw, and wiry, sharp hairs. It'll do, and it'll do very well.

Cobbes meant for war and guard duty are vicious indeed, when hungry. They are starved a little, then unleashed to fulfill their purpose. This practice, when used in war, typically as an augment to cavalry charges, it a topic of some concern. Many national bodies, stating crimes born of the Lothrheim/Belvirine conflict, have cried for a ban on cobhounds used in war.

They demand a ban on humanitarian grounds. Not for the humane nature of how a cobbe kills, however. That is not an issue at all, for a cobhound trained for war is very adept at killing quickly. No.

Rather, they declaim the inhumanity of the very concept; of giant spiders unleashed on human troops and let to feed on human flesh. Of a battle tactic not modern, but ancient. The selfsame tactic used millennia ago by sorcerer-kings of old to rout and scour the countryside with a monstrous horde.

But yet, you will still see the cobhound used in war, unleashed evermore frequently as a scuttling vanguard before cavalry, or as a flush sent down enemy trenches. Commanders know the utility of a creature so committed to killing. They know all a cobhound wants is one thing, one way or another, and it is very apt at getting it from Humanity.

A very simple thing: Meat.

Author's Note

I realized the irony of including the word tuffet, used in this case for a small landform, in adjacency to spiders only after I'd written the whole scene.

I'll add cobhound rules to the Incunabuli Playtest, sooner or later.

As ever, this article was made possible by Incunabuli's generous supporters on Patreon. To join them and read articles available only to supporters, support Incunabuli on Patreon.

Footnotes

* "Littoran" describes any individual hailing from the Coast, be they human or otherwise.

** As in cobweb. Cobbe is the old Awnish word for spider.

*** Cobhounds, despite being sold

On a snowy rise, in a hollow log, under a holey quilt, there squatted a pair of mice. Mice in grey woolens and white pickelhauben, wrapped in scarves and thick socks for their pink, sharp toes.

One held a monocular, outsized in his small paws, on a bipod before him. He squinted, lens to ruby eye, through a ragged knothole in their log, scanned the broad and snowy vale before them. He dialed the focus, exhaled wisps of white breath through flickering pink nostrils.

The other clung to a volley gunspring: a long, mechanical weapon furnished in matte wood and loaded with a great, curving magazine and drumlike, whispering artillery coil. A machine far larger than he, mounted on a pintle tripod and set of skis, that the tiny soldiers might handle it. He pressed one cold lens of his spectacles, hooked round pink ears, to its scope, likewise held watch over the vale.

Down there, in the undulating drifts of snow interspersed with wind-bent spruce, there was a glint of silver, a bobbing hint of motion.

"Contact, Sir. One fifty, two hundred out," whispered the first, whiskers twitching. "One man. Belvirine colors."

"Confirmed. Good eye, Ensign."

Two glass eyes, scope and monocular, fixed on the oncoming soldier. Through holes in their quilt, they watched him, glinting; watched him stumble on through knee-high drifts, shade his eyes for the sheer sun which glared off the white expanse of snow.

"He's carrying something."

"Yes," the gunnery officer adjusted the power of his scope. "Munitions box, looks like. They're constructing advanced positions over the rise, I'd wager. Bugger probably got lost."

"Will you take the shot?" said the Ensign, looking briefly to his officer.

"Soon enough." He focused; ears perked in interest. Down in the vale, something glinted on the Belviriner's denim-uniformed chest. The scope lengthened, twisted, brought a spearhead charm on a silver chain into focus. The gunnery officer chuckled, highly. "An Avethan." He twitched his ears. "Ever shoot an Avethan before, Ensign?"

"No, Sir."

"Watch." He pulled his small form close to the gun, nestled a small shoulder into the furniture, hooked a pink claw over the weapon's trigger. The safety clunked softly. A high, slithery whine sounded as launchsprings charged. The gunner squinted, adjusted his bead just a mite. His furry lips pulled from long incisors in gritted focus.

There was a crack, as if of one anvil dropped flat against another. In the distance, the soldier startled, looked up. A half-blink later, he dropped flat backwards. The box tumbled from his arms. He lay as a sprawled, blue and grey lump on white snow.

"It's just like killing a normal man, see," said the gunnery officer, keeping his scope on the lump. "Except," he trailed, watching. "Watch. There he goes."

The ensign's nose twitched, flared as he watched the fallen man shift, rise to one elbow. From his bowed neck dangled that silver, flashing charm, gripped in one quavering hand. He got one knee under him, then the next. He began to stand.

The gunspring cracked, bucked again. The man crumpled. The silver glint vanished into snow.

"Except sometimes you have to kill them twice."

Faith

Humans are a remarkable species.

They are the original people of the Coast, a folk who once upon a time dominated the world's entire reach by the might of their ingenious gifts of evolution: by their curiosity, their craft, and their dire ambition. Who burned, by the sorcery engendered by these remarkable gifts, that selfsame land into a tattered scrap of a realm; a single, continental Coastline impinged and infiltrated by countless alien adjacencies and black-eyed Otherwordly gatecrashers.

And, queerly, only by this self-imposed cataclysm did ancient humanity come upon their species' most remarkable gift: Faith.

The Last Gift

In the ages following that cataclysm,* so say myth and vague history, humanity lived in bondage. As a slave-race kept in service to deific, antique serpents and titanic god-kings. Chattel to tyrants of uncounted millions, of dark lords uplifted and appointed as rulers of a world ruined by the same raw sorcery they still wielded with perilous abandon.

These were the Dark Ages. Centuries-long dominions by sorcerer-kings, serpents, and monstrous worse alike, in which the bulk of humanity lived as slaves or citizens of the worst, rude nation-states imaginable. As muddy peasants oppressed by landscapes crawling with monsters and sorcery-fueled overlords, or as the collected war-fodder and disposable slave base of the most awful empires known to time.

All that ended thirteen hundred years ago, with the birth of a slave girl who would be later known as Aveth.

Aveth

Aveth, who by the age of twenty had freed humanity. Who had toppled empires and personally slain uncounted serpents and sorcerer-kings alike with her own star-headed spear; the weapon which would later symbolize a religion founded on her name. **

All this she accomplished by a singular gift: Faith. An omniscient presence generated, some say, by sorcery stolen by Aveth from her masters. Or, others suppose, by the very randomness of life which brings change to all things. A power which allowed Aveth, a leader and wisewoman nonpareil, to inspire, comfort, and unite all of mankind to collected freedom. A power which changed the world, and by doing so returned it to the species which first owned it: Humanity.

Despite its widespread influence, little can be known of faith. None know, empirically, how it affects those it inhabits, nor the woman who first created it; only that it manifests only in humans, and only in those willing to believe. Most who believe say the power presents itself in dreams, as a guiding presence that dispels nightmares and gives counsel in the night. Indeed, research has shown Avethans report fewer nightmares than nonhumans and gentile folk.

Others say it is the armor of wisdom. Of clarity and Lordly suggestion that give wise words both in dreams, and, as it first did all humanity, give aide in, and recompense for, suffering.

Faith, Austerities, Worship

The following is a mechanism from the Incunabuli Playtest:

Humans have the capacity to hold Faith. Said faith takes the form of the Avethan trait and its Ordained variant:

Avethan Cost: 10XP, Prerequisite: Human, Starter OR Be taught the Lord’s truth by a priest this session

The Lord Aveth gives you resolve and guards your mind against evil.

You hold 1 Faith point. Once per session, you may spend it to add a bonus of 1 to any roll. Additionally, you roll for nightmares at -1.

To maintain these benefits, you must take care to pray nightly and observe Aveth’s dictates.

Ordained of Aveth Cost: 10XP, Prerequisites: Human, Avethan, Starter OR be ordained as a priest by the Church

The Lord of Humanity has given you the resolve to guide her kin.
You hold a second Faith point. You may expend it to add +1 to any roll made by another character, but not yourself. Alternatively, you may spend both your Faith points to aid another.

Additionally, you roll for nightmares at -2. To maintain these benefits, you must take care to pray nightly and observe Aveth’s dictates. Your faith may be tested. Adhere to the dictates of Aveth to hold true.

Austerities

Characters who undertake austerities may maintain traits that further enhance their Faith:

Mendicant Cost: 50XP, Prerequisites: Avethan

You gain another Faith point.

To maintain this Faith, you may possess neither coinage nor liquid assets. All spare wealth you come into possession of must be given to humans who are in need.

“To give charity is to serve the Lord. Thus, Her truest Church is the Church of the poor.”

Ascetic Cost: 30XP, Prerequisites: Avethan

Every time you forgo a meal during the day, you gain 1 Faith point the next, for a maximum of +2. Additionally, if any of the meals you consume during that day are more complex than Simple, you gain no additional Faith points.

“To live by the flesh is to die. To deprive the flesh is to live by the spirit. To live by the spirit is to transcend the flesh.”

Flagellant Cost: 40XP, Prerequisites: Avethan

Whenever you strike yourself with a wound that bestows a level of Bleed, you restore a Faith point.

“I will know the lash as did the Lord, and by it know her strength.”

Worship

A character who devotes 1 hour to worship at an Avethan mass or alter gains +1 Faith Point. It disappears at day’s end if not spent.

Author's Note

This requires background reading for maximum meaning. Check out this article on Aveth too.

I thought this was a fine opportunity to both explore Aveth and post my faith rules. I'm running a game that now features both expressly, and they are fresh in the mind.

The Faith system is made for Incunabuli's playtest, but should be easily hackable. It's roughly compatible with modern D&D, I suppose, though mildly underpowered unless you use advantage instead of +1 for Faith bonuses. If you like hacking your game, you can do it, I'm sure. Eventually, I'll need to tweak the austerities for balance. I'm sure I can trust my players to break the everliving devil out of them.

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Footnotes

* Known to the few scholars who still know it as "interstiction."

** The stellate hasta, or seven-pointed partizan, is the spear of Aveth. It is seen as a charm, known as the hastella, worn as a rosary round worshipers' necks, or on the emblems and steeples of the Church.