Towards the Hoard of a Hundred Horrors: Maggot Golems

There is an edict, centuries old, which declares those who eat the deadened flesh of their own kind to be cursed - that that flesh by right belongs to the scavenger-god Yeenoghu and her priests.

The accursed wallow and groan and spread across the earth as a fevered stain. Their hunger is bottomless, but it has an apex - each tithes a portion of every mouthful of choked-down putridity to the one who changed them, and to the one who changed them in turn, all the way up the chain until the collected feast gathers in the belly of the mountainous ghoul-king, in his palace of teeth and filth.

And even the king can never be satisfied. From his palace he whispers in the dreams of malefactors and maleficarum, of this unwholesome technique:

Take a carcass which vultures have not torn and hyenas have not tasted, and lay it in a structure where crows have not alit and jackals have not tread. Whisper to it in the dark for three days and three nights, eating only fistfuls of dirt and drinking only your own tears and urine.

Should everything go properly, the ghoul-king will lend a portion of his power and a maggot will spawn within the meat, inscribed with the Unspeakable Name. This maggot will spawn more, until a great white mass rises in the shape of a man.

These larvae are not given freely, not meant to be servants - this is only a ploy.

Once one reaches maturation it will moult into a usurper of the scavenger-god, and the ghouls shall glut upon the world entire.

They are

Maggot Golems

HP: 100 + The Heart of the Swarm AC: 12 + Writhing Mass ATK: 1d8/1d8 slams, or 1d4 gnawing flood (hits all in melee range automatically) SAV: 10 MOV: As ogre, or flow as wave of maggots INT: According to orders, literal-minded ML: 12
No. Appearing: 1

The Heart of the Swarm: Maggot golems do not roll for HP with HD as normal (if HD value is needed, use 8). Each maggot golem begins with 100 HP. When a maggot golem takes a hit, it loses HP as normal, and has a percentage chance of dying immediately as its core maggot is destroyed based on how much HP it has lost (e.g. if a hit brings a maggot golem down to 67 HP it then has a 33% chance of dying immediately).

Writhing Mass: Maggot golems take the minimum possible damage from human-scale weapons (e.g. 1 on a d6), plus whatever bonus damage a weapon might get from enchantment. Area of effect attacks, siege weapons, and the like do damage as normal.

No Flesh Leaves The Abattoir: Maggot golems that come across a corpse are compelled to devour it. They must remain motionless for one round per HD of the corpse, and heal 1d6 HP per round. It may attack those within range as normal.

Also, wounds dealt by a maggot golem are prone to myiasis.

The Golden Mask

I awake at the bottom of my laparotomy soup and blink the crust from my eyes - did I drink my fill, or did it evaporate around me? The problem with drinking your fill is that you never remember doing it. Regardless, goodbye horses.

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Some time ago friend of the blog theisticgilthoniel asked for "freak versions of the Dawn War pantheon" - I suppose this qualifies for that.

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The cosmos is roughly 3,000 years old. There are still some who would kill you for disputing this.

It is also objectively true. Since the end of the god-king Zarus and the rise of Sigil, the city of at the center of everything - since the re-Ordering of the cosmos - it has been about 3,000 years. Speaking of a "before" is fraught, as any number of scholars will tell you. The cosmos will likely not grow much older than 3,000 years - Sigil is broken, and the last days are upon us.

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The foundation of every empire is energy, is control over the flow of energy - over grain and oil, sunlight transformed - over the sun itself.

Zarus's greatest coup was his seduction of the sun away from the prior Order - he persuaded the sun to wear a mask, a beautiful golden mask beaten in the shape of a human face. The nature of this seduction, as with all stories of Zarus, depends on the teller. Did he disguise himself in a scaly skin, or kidnap the sun from the sky? Did he promise the sun a place of honour in his new Order, or was he simply a better fuck than the hoary old reptiles who bathed in the sun's rays? Regardless, it is universally agreed to be more consensual than what Zarus did to the moon.

With their sun stolen, the old Order's defeat became inevitable.

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The sun was given a human face, and a human name - Pelor - but it was only ever a mask.

Only the least gods are like a person. Proper gods are many persons - like stars in a constellation.

Pelor Indefatigable, an armoured warrior who bears her child the world upon her back in an endless march, fending off the rats of Long Night.

Sharp-Eyed Pelor, who strikes the iniquitous within her sight with arrows of sun-stroke.

Pelor Bank-Lounger, who shelters her children - all the people of the world - in her mouth.

Pelor Plumage-Bearer, whose peerless colours seduce starlight into a great mating ball about the earth, making the day-time.

Pelor Basilaklas, who races across the sea of Night too swiftly to be sucked down into its darkness, his magnificent crown lighting the way.

Lustrous Pelor, who sweats droplets of molten gold in his dances and grants the metal a share of his beauty and power.

Pelor Everborn, who sheds her old flesh at every dawn and thereby defeats age and death.

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Woe to the conquered, for only death will end the humiliations the conqueror will heap upon you.

From out of the solar temples come the wondersome, thundersome parade-beasts, delight of children wherever they march. Dressed in hide and fur and feathers, with goofy gawking too-human eyes that seem apologetic for their own existence.

In their howdahs are the idols of god-king and sun, borne along in their marriage procession. 

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This Order is broken, and things long-buried seep up through the cracks.

This Order was never perfect, and remnants lingered in the peaks and valleys and unscrubbed corners.

A starving village devours itself foot to mouth, and a great fanged and scaled hoop rolls off into the night. A tomb is cracked open to the sunlight, and warriors rouse from dreamless torpor at its warmth. A warlord's mistress gives birth to an egg, and the warlord makes himself a king with that egg at the head of his hosts, a tide of serpents slithering before them.

The Order of the Oviraptor was formed to take care of this seepage and these remnants. They are a secret order, with permission to kill who they must to remain a secret, to keep the secret of their mission. Any creature can be cruel, but hate is a thing for the warm-blooded.

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Love, too, is a mammalian trait.

The sun does not love us. The sun shines upon all, impartial. His marriage to Zarus was a thing of convenience. And Zarus is gone.

The old worshipers gather in their old ways, and new worshipers turn treacherous to the image of Man across the spectrum of dracolatry.

Here there were dragons, and here there may be dragons again.

It was only ever a mask.