Tuesday, July 28, 2020

FLESH FOR FALLEN ANGELS

cw: body horror

So I've been playing a lot of Darkest Dungeon of late and it inspired me to write... this. Do you need some rampaging, demonic foes to infest deep dungeons and loathsome coves?


ON FIENDISH TROTTERS
Demons summoned into swine flesh. Demons can be summoned into animals more easily than people, less ego to interfere, and summoning into flesh is easier than crossing over. Devil Swine are violence and chaos made piggy flesh. They burn, pillage, and destroy without cease. Eventually they will create a Swine King, who leads and directs them, and can speed the creation of new Swine.

THEIR CORRUPTION CAN BE SEEN IN THEIR
ADJECTIVE 1                ADJECTIVE 2 BODY PART
1 distended                 weeping         belly
2 drooping                 oozing         face
3 swollen         pustuled                 jaw
4 skeletal                 insectoid                 eyes
5 ruptured                 torn                 limbs
6 engorged                 wheezing                 feet
7 inverted                 infested                 head
8 triple         foul                 back
9 fanged         many-eyed         hindquarters
10 heaving         bifurcated         hands
11 scabrous                 faceted         skin
12 scaled         bony         head
13 slimy         spined
14 horned         double-jointed
15 smoking         toxic
16 leathery                 infected
17 cracked         sulfurous
18 hooked         trypophobian
19 stalked         cracked
20 rippling                 roiling

THEIR BODY PLAN IS
1-5 Humanoid
6 Quadruped
7 Inverted Quadruped
8 Slithering
9 Centipede
10 Bat

THEY REPRODUCE THROUGH
1 Mitosis
2 Infection
3 Implantation
4 Eggs
5 Spores
6 Regeneration

WANT DO THEY WANT
1 Accumulate biomass to create a Swine King
2 CHASE KILL EAT CHASE KILL EAT CHASE KILL EAT
3 Use entrails to create a hellish sigil a mile wide
4 Burn it. Burn it all down.
5 Collect gold and loot to attract greed demons and greedy adventures - who will be excellent hosts
6 Unearth a buried temple of ETH-KN-YAATU, the Eighty-Tusked Swine Lord of Greed


PRIDE OF HELL
Lions are born evil, you can see it as they eat their own young. If a lion tastes the flesh of a man, it changes. Eat enough, it will walk on two legs and spread its vile taint to other lions. These dordaives (darkness-walkers) invade villages when the moon has waned to slaughter and kill and drag away the dying. These they feed to other lions who in turn are entered by demons. Soon they number an army that sweeps across the plains, red-jawed and golden-crowned, to devour whole nations.

KNOW THEM BY THEIR
ADJECTIVE NOUN
1 Flaming Manes
2 Metallic         Claws
3 Blood-soaked Jaws
4 Venomed Hides
5 Many-horned Coats
6 Serrated         Eyes
7 Shadowy Hands
8 Scaled Tails
9 Gaunt
10 Painted
11 Spined
12 Crystalline

WITHIN THE PRIDE YOU WILL FIND
1 Despicable, degenerate human cultists
2 Starved berserkers, maddened with hunger
3 Bloated womb-mothers, with a dozen birth-sacs
4 Insane ghosts, swept along by death
5 Shambling undead, resurrected by hatred
6 A great hell-palanquin, bearing the stacked skulls of the dead
7 A powerful lion-sorceror, possessed by a demon of magicks
8 A rolling shrine of LAARTU-NA-YEK, Sin-Queen of Pride and Conquest

FOR VIOLENCE THEY CARRY
1 Tools of iron, looted from burned farms
2 Weapons of bronze, dug from ancient graves
3 Fresh steel, still smelling of the hell-forges
4 Jagged bone and stone, bound with human sinew
5 The looted gear of a slaughtered army
6 Gnashing teeth and rending claws


SO LONG AND THANKS FOR YOUR SOUL
The land lubber, new to sea, fears the shark. The old salt knows better. Fear of sharks is like fear of storms, or time, or hidden reefs - they are inexorable, unfeeling, impersonal. There is no cruelty in them, just a perfection of form and purpose that will outlive us all. The old salt, the experienced deck hand knows instead to fear, and to loathe, the dolphin. They torture and they kill and they frolic in blood-flecked waters. They are like us and like us the hounds of hell are drawn to their wickedness, may enter them. Coastal villages vanish in the night to the sound of songs in the water.

THESE HORRID FISH-MEN, THEY LOOK LIKE
1 Grey-fleshed humans with needle-snouts, they speak in damnable clicking
2 They crawl about on dozens of shorts arms, clawed hands gripping and tearing
3 Dolphins with over-muscled arms and legs sprouting from the wrong places, and human teeth in their long jaws
4 Ordinary folk, with vestigial flippers and fins hidden beneath their stinking rags, their eyes are dead and unthinking
5 Motley hybrids, human limbs and faces and wails emerging from slick dolphin bodies
6 Gaunt, skeletal, famine-thin, coral-growths for limbs and weapons

THIS POD SPAWNS FROM
1 A sunken prison-hulk, angry spirits have bound themselves to porpoise and come back for revenge
2 A hell-gate beneath the waves. Demons reach through, steal willing hosts for themselves
3 A warlock, burned. His foul children run amok.
4 A sea-nymph's tomb has been looted, her spirit calls for her bones.
5 Flaccid cultists of YAAN-MEK-THOON, Hell Duke of Torture and Cruelty, spill murdered flesh into the sea
6 A lich sank her reliquary beneath the waves to hide. The evi is leaching out.

AFTER THEY MASSACRE THEY
1 Arrange the corpses in perfect symmetry
2 Frolic in blood-soaked surf
3 Burn everything, leave no trace
4 Kill one of their own to sit enthroned before the gore
5 Build rafts of the bones, to float to distant shores
6 Remain, feasting on flesh and ambushing passers-by

IF THEY ARE NOT STOPPED THEY WILL
1 Spread their corruption to whales
2 Tear open a hell-rift
3 Evolve through rapid generations until they are almost human
4 Grow to an army
5 Wake Leviathan
6 Poison the seas, drive away the fish, corrupt the shores

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