The World & Hell In Nine Circles

Someday you will die, and somehow something's gonna steal your carbon. Unless, ironically, you are carbonized beyond recognition. Absolute carbon. A black stain on the Earth. Indigestible atomic mold, unrecoverable by the cycles of death and rebirth.

The other day, watching the England vs. Mexico match of the World Cup, my buddy gave me a beer. He is an aficionado of beers, a frequenter of varied breweries - sometimes he finds weird ones. This beer he handed me had unfiltered dregs, clumps of rat shit bobbing at the bottom of the glass. It was an atavism, a blasphemy against the world-spirit. For spirit is spirits, spirits are spirit (except for the American spirit, which is tobacco) - Hegel knew this. But the well and truly carbonized have nothing in them, nothing about them to sublimate. They are severed from both natural and human history.

 

Montreal

It's been said that there's no need to beat the meat that beats itself, but I've found that the heart, like bread, must be kneaded to rise. You wear the grooves out, doing the same thing over and over and over and over again. It's the moving parts that break most often.

Look look look around, at all the new buildings and flowers and animals. Daylilies are my favourite flower - and the reason may surprise you. Or maybe it would only disappoint you. I can't stand weakness, and Orson Welles once rebuked me for this in a dream. But I was thinking of a way to feed oneself on batter, and so go on from day to day getting a little fatter. It remains one of my vices.

Fewer dogs and more children in Montreal. Every child is a new heaven and a new earth. All of our trees will be carbonized. The smoke smells good, but it sits in your lungs for a while. Anywhere on Earth can be paradise if you've got the spirit for it.

Lakes & Rivers

Someday science will validate this belief of mine: that proximity to large water bodies is invigorating, by some bio-electrical method. You can feel it in your own water (which would be completely evaporated in the event of your carbonization). Lakes are moderately effective in this, rivers even better - likely due to their motion, and the ocean is best of all.

Montreal and Chicago are both expensive cities, and this is even the case relative to Toronto (which suckles greedily at the teat of Mammon). Maybe my tastes have gotten too fancy with age. How I yearn for the hostels, for the ability to enjoy traveling without feeling as though my salami is getting sliced down very thin indeed. Total immersion in a current of saltwater is the key. Riptide take me out to sea.

 

I had a recurring dream when I was younger, of every other person disappearing from the Earth (save, in some, of some others in all-covering robes and featureless clay masks). People are the opposite of bodies of water. I don't squash bugs anymore. Haven't for a while. I admire their purity. People are noisy. Even their thoughts are noisy. Crowded streets and crowded buildings full of their hummadruz.

Chicago

I flew in to Chicago expecting it to be fairly similar to Toronto - which it was. Which made it more galling that Chicago was more beautiful than Toronto. The majority of the construction in Toronto is from the last few decades, and is made according to the images of the small and tasteless souls of these latter days. Chicago's architecture is of an older pedigree - the art deco, the gothic, the monumental, great causeways of vertiginous perspective.

Americans are a friendly and chatty people. Perhaps this is just me being paranoid, but they also seem to be suspicious sorts - good for small talk, but talk to them for more than a few minutes and you get the sense that they're trying to sort you into some box or another. I have heard this said about the British, with their classes and shibboleths and such, but never noticed it with them the way I do with Americans.

Chicagoans seem fond of pickled peppers - a fondness I share. Pigs' ears should, however, never be deep-fried, for this robs them of their particular character to turn them into an inferior version of crackling or chicharrons. And it's a sin to water down drinks, and to not serve wine for toasts. A sin against the holy spirits - almost unforgivable. I'd like to dance until my feet blister and my legs burn and I can't stand and my ears go deaf from the music.

How much more do I yearn to slip this world in a fiery flame into another, and leave nothing behind for any other. Nine rings in nine minutes concentric. Hell is empty, and the devils are all here. Hell is emptiness, and the devil gnaws away all roots and fruits. 🌟The world is hell🌟. 🌟The world is hell🌟.

Killer Copper Pieces: Chiniya-Ayinich

The symmetry and ratios of human bodies prove that we are not children of the gods - their creations, arguably, but shaped by sober hand and intellect rather than born in hot, wet passion.

Sex meshes poorly with deities' creative energies. They become undirected, chaotic. More often than not they birth monsters - blessed by their parentage, but shamefully cast out and hidden all the same.

This loveless lovechild of the divine has three eyes and two faces, one masculine and one feminine. Their eyes are black from corner to corner, and their skin is red on one side, and white on the other. They stand tall and crooked, and their feet are twisted backwards.

They delight in spying on the discord and treacheries of mortals. They are constantly hungry, as they may gain nourishment only from the flesh of the faithful and true.

They are

Chiniya-Ayinich

HD: 6 AC: 15 ATK: 1d8+4 smack or crunch plus Bouquet of Viscera SAV: 12 MOV: As ogre INT: As very well-informed person ML: 6
No. Appearing: 1

Bouquet of Viscera: Take 1d6 damage to a random attribute, caused by a random limb, cluster of fingers and eyes, or other such organ sprouting somewhere on your body. This attribute damage cannot be healed until the excess organ is removed.

Mother's Cloak, Father's Footsteps: By day Chiniya-Ayinich is invisible. By night Chiniya-Ayinich is inaudible (though may still speak if they so choose).

Voyeur's Vim: Chiniya-Ayinich speaks all living languages, and knows the secrets of all living people. They are loathe to share these secrets, preferring to whisper them back and forth between their two mouths in remote lairs. Chiniya-Ayinich will share a secret they know only if:
-They are wrestled into submission or otherwise captured
-They are gifted a faithful and true individual to eat

Towards the Hoard of a Hundred Horrors: Cockatrices

The first words were "Let there be light" - and so the eye is a tool of worship, a jelly-filled rosary bead. The first to see by light was also first among the angels. When he fell he fell the hardest, and profaned the eye the furthest.

 

The eye of the Accuser sees evil in everything - and wherever there is evil, the Accuser is there watching. It's a bit of a chicken and egg thing, which is funny because that's where these guys come from - from the devil fucking a chicken. Or any oviparous animal really. When some great evil calls him, he has his way with such beasts in the vicinity, and leaves his spawn to scourge the earth further. Such abominations are a fixture of the Black Masses of the witches.

They have their father's eye, swollen baleful and cyclopean on their face, and the spade-tip of his tail upon their snood. Between specimens little else can be found in common, the features of their mother overwhelmed by chimerical unwholesomeness. They are poisonous princes one and all whose domains become wasteland under their withering glare.

They are

Cockatrices

HD: 4 AC: 14 ATK: 1d6 peck + Petrification, Witness True Horror SAV: 9 MOV: Run as terror bird, fly as chicken INT: Evil yet animalistic ML: 7
No. Appearing: 1d6

Petrification: Those touched by a cockatrice must save or be turned to stone. Wearing heavy clothing or armour with full coverage grants advantage on this save.

The tears of a cockatrice undo this petrification - the creatures weep with joy when they are about to feed. After a cockatrice has been killed, a successful roll with a relevant skill (e.g. butchery, anatomy, hunting, medicine, etc.) can extract 1d3 doses of tears from its eye.

Witness True Horror: Those who meet the gaze of a cockatrice will receive a revelation of the true depth of sin - they must save or be overcome with fear for 1d6 rounds. Reflective surfaces can reflect this gaze back on the cockatrice. They have a habit of befouling still water within their domains. Only the hardiest and most toxic of weeds can withstand a cockatrice looking upon them - all other plants shrivel and die. Roll 1d4 for the affected's fear response:
1. Fight - Mindlessly attack
2. Flight - Flee in terror
3. Freeze - Become paralyzed
4. Fawn - Become charmed by the cockatrice

Killer Copper Pieces: Jinjoris

(God bless Uguisu Sachiko!!!)

 

They are the lowest rung of the world's creatures - pure evil in the flesh. They're vicious brutes, they smell, I'd bet they eat their young. And they hide among us! They could be your friend, your neighbour - your very family! Everybody who's walked in the woods knows this.

Actually, they're corpse-lickers, marrow-slurpers, feasters in the wake of witch-hunts, riots, and persecutions - stirrers-up of the same.

Cowardly lurkers who flit through the shadows at the edge of torch-light, between the boughs of trees, letting others butcher their prey for them.

They are

Jinjoris

HD: 2 AC: 14 ATK: 1d4 cast stone or 1d8 bite SAV: 8 MOV: as horse, climb as monkey INT: As person ML: 6
No. Appearing: 1d4

Surprise 3-in-6 unless lured out by a funeral

Song of the Jinjori: Jinjoris love to sing - and their singing festers paranoia and hatred in the hearts of those who hear it. Those who hear the singing of a jinjori must save or begin to believe that jinjoris are hiding among them, revealed by certain signs, and must be rooted out and killed. For every sign of the jinjori someone displays, they receive a -2 reaction roll modifier with people in the jinjori's feeding grounds. Those affected by the song will not recognize a true jinjori as a jinjori, alive or dead.

 

Roll on the table below to see which signs an affected community believes reveal someone as a jinjori (1d20x3): 

1. Red blood

2. Unibrow

3. Stinking breath

4. Bald head

5. Sleeps lying down

6. Light hair

7. Vulnerable to iron

8. Long nails

9. Can't say their own name backwards

10. Narrow eyes

11. Green eyes

12. A mole

13. Stooped posture

14. Eats fish

15. Yelps if splashed with boiling water

16. Pointy ears

17. Can't hold their drink

18. A runny nose

19. Missing teeth

20. Stubby neck

Jinjoris' fondness for songs makes them hungry for new ones. For each song you can teach a jinjori (or group of jinjoris) its reaction roll improves by +2. A jinjori will already know all songs originating from its feeding grounds, but has a 3-in-6 chance of knowing a song from outside it - and no chance if the song's from exotic parts.

Execution of the Jinjori: Those under the spell of a jinjori's song come to believe that jinjoris must be killed in a particular manner - this tends to help the true jinjori feed on the corpses of those who are accused of being one.

 

Roll on the table below to see which execution method an affected community believes is necessary (1d6):

1. Being put in a bag and thrown into a river.

2. Roasting atop a pyre.

3. Live burial.

4. Throwing off a cliff.

5. Tied to a stake and exposed to the elements.

6. Pursuit and mauling by dogs.

On the other hand, jinjoris are attracted to actual, respectful funerals, and can be lured out of hiding with such - or a convincing imitation thereof. This is a fact that would be known to sages, and not to communities under the spell of a jinjori.

Case Files of the Knights of St. Phanourious: Pinemarten, Ontario - Session 1

QUIA QUOD STULTUM EST DEI SAPIENTIUS EST HOMINIBUS ET QUOD INFIRMUM EST DEI FORTIUS EST HOMINIBUS

After several delays due to me being a busy bee, me & the boys have finally started our Delta Green campaign. 

Our party is:
Bart "Codekiller" Regis
Manhoman "Dr. House" Kamaroff (portrayed by friend of the blog deus ex parabola)
Auggy "Shillelagh" Ashe

(With one more knight set to join us, when he's not giving his girlfriend a ride from the airport.) 

They're not your typical Delta Green, because I will be FUCKED before I use someone else's lore for MY games - they are Knights of St. Phanourious, a British Catholic secret society that gets stuck with the occult bitchwork of the Commonwealth.

They've been sent to the northwestern Ontario town of Pinemarten, where news of a spree of decapitations has made it through the grapevine to the knights' superiors, so they've been dispatched to investigate and solve the problem.

Pinemarten is about a workday's drive away from Toronto. Oh, there's other places in Ontario I could have used as a reference? I don't care. You are telling a man in the fires of Perdition that Purgatory is just a breath of God's love away. I'm down here for a reason.

Lakeside location, population of a couple thousand - a former booming mining town, nowadays scraping by on pensioned retirees, all-seasons tourism, logging, and a hub of remote-working techies who moved out here during the VOID lockdowns.

There's been a freak snow-storm the last few days. Everything is buried under many feet of snow. Getting anywhere, especially anywhere out of town, is a slog.

The knights roll up to the cottage (more of a luxury house) where the decapitations were reported. Strung between trees above the driveway is a(n AI-generated) banner announcing the First Annual Rodnovprom Associate Artists' Retreat. A perfunctory attempt has been made to cordon off the place.

Making their way inside, the knights find a trio of corpses in isolated positions in the house, all neatly decapitated (and getting pretty ripe) - their nerves and brain-matter "unspooled", for lack of a better term, into decomposing fans stretched out from their necks. They find no signs of forced entry, but outside find indents in the snow, each 5-10 feet apart, as if something about human-sized had lain down in the snow - though their are no footsteps or other such tracks between the indentations.

They stumble upon a duo who'd been hiding in a closet for a while - urban romantasy series authour Sam Fishbourne, and Rodnovprom PR specialist Nelya Stasiuk. They're both thirsty, hungry, tired, smelly, and don't seem to know much about what happened to the others - they stumbled across Jaythan Daniels' (zoomer influencer & sports-betting analyst) corpse and hid. Nelya gives them some info on Rodnovprom's operation in Pinemarten: they're turning the old mine into a grow-op for psychedelic mushrooms for pharmaceutical applications, and Nelya sees it as a spiritual, enlightening mission.

The party takes Nelya and Sam into their custody for further questioning, and drive into town. They come across a diner, the Lucky Mouse, and bring the pair inside for food and coffee. Auggy orders one of everything on the menu, and the waitress - an old Filipina  lady named Alice Ortiz - pours them coffees with a shot of vodka added when she notices how rattled they look.

Local person of houselessness Moroz stumbles into the diner, mumbling to himself about how he "got out" and how "it's all one thread". Nelya notes that Moroz did some design for the Rodnovprom website before losing his mind from drugs. He reacts poorly to Bart addressing him in Surzhyk, which prompts Bart and Manhoman to violently restrain him and drag him out to their van - and also get the address of the local cop, Debbie, from Alice. Nelya and Sam take this opportunity to bolt out the back.

Manhoman force-feeds Moroz a xanax to chill him out, and they interrogate him some more, not getting much actionable info in the process.

They drive to Debbie's house, and witness her arguing with her daughter on the porch. Debbie claims the argument was about "family business", which Bart intuits to mean literally a family business, and one that's not above-board if she's being so evasive about it. They plant the idea that Moroz, in a drug-fueled frenzy, may have been responsible for the decapitations. Debbie complains about being busy handling a horse theft from the property of local rich person Chloranthy Williams-Wynn, but gives Bart her number.

They follow after Marlin to an abandoned skating rink, and bust down the door. The gang of rowdy teenagers within tries to scatter, but Manhoman fires his revolver into the ceiling and tackles Marlin, force-feeding her xanax like he did Moroz. She too is hauled to their van. Moroz recognizes her as the one who sold him drugs, but she claims to have only sold regular-ass downers, and that he probably had some latent mental illness that was activated by a bad trip.

The party settles on the plan of breaking into Rodnovprom's restored mine, but Marlin warns them that the place has serious security - the Norsefire company. They negotiate for her gang's help in breaking in, and she agrees that if she takes out rival teen gang leader Stan Koontz for her then she'll go along with the plan. They drive to Stan's hideout, the Copperbottom Theater, and after getting there zonk out Moroz and Marlin with more xanaxes. The front door's locked, and the doorman asks for a password, so Manhoman acts like a violent maniac, claims to have killed Marlin, then shoots the lock off the door. They enter, intimidate some teens with Bart's excessively high-lumen flashlight, and find Stan watching auteur director Richard Brace's gladiator movie Blood on the Wheat. Manhoman tries to convince Stan's guys that Stan hired him to kill Marlin, which none of them buy. Bart texts Debbie on his Blackberry device that Stan had kidnapped and drugged Marlin. The session ends here, with the party debating what to do with the semi-conscious Marlin to convince her mom that Stan really had done that.

Towards the Hoard of a Hundred Horrors: Kenkus

They can love, much as we love, but they have no love-poems. No poetry at all. They do not have stories of vengeance, whether laudatory or cautionary, only reciprocation in kind.

They are seen as ill omens - imps, trickster-spirits, servitors or victims of the king of the valravens. Where their black feathers are found is thought to be inauspicious ground.

This is a self-fulfilling attitude. They mirror what is done to them. Perhaps they have no choice but to mirror what is done to them. Where their territories and humanity's overlap is all but certain to become a theater of war, wherein every battle and tactic used tilts attrition in their favour.

They are

Kenkus

HD: 1/2 AC: 14 ATK: As weapon (as little guys, small weapons must be wielded as medium weapons, and so on up the ladder)  SAV: 8 MOV: Glide as kite, climb as monkey, hop as crow INT: As exceptionally hidebound person ML: 5
No. Appearing: 4d4

Corvid See, Corvid Do: Kenkus can perfectly mimic any physical action they've seen before. If they've seen you tying a rope they get your same skill level in rope-tying. If they see you wielding a weapon they get your proficiency in it and any to-hit bonuses that come from skill instead of the weapon being a magic sword or whatever. And so on and so forth.

They can also perfectly mimic any sound they've heard before.

(An encounter with kenkus is like the manga Sarumane, or like a mini-version of the also-manga HunterxHunter's Chimera Ant arc)

Sensitive Ears: Any especially loud noise (a big gong being banged, a gunshot in enclosed quarters, and suchlike) will cause kenkus within 30 feet to take 1 point of non-lethal damage. However, kenkus can never be surprised unless you are hiding your presence preternaturally.

Dire Corbies

Kenku thought is inextricable from their mimicry. It is mirrored, literal, direct. And yet - there is already adaption in it, generalization in applying the movements of the other's body to their own.

There is a glitch in the kenku thought-process, kicked off when they push beyond echopraxia into anticipation, extrapolation, and abstraction, which results in a mental and physical transformation. Their brain throbs against their skull as it demands more energy and growth to match these more complex processes, and their body grows with it.

Most kenkus who reach this point die, from the strain and the stress and rejection by their community which cannot understand their new demands. Those who survive - also called daikenkus - become these:

Dire Corbies

HD: 3 AC: 14 ATK: As weapon or 1d4/1d4 talons SAV: 11 MOV: Fly as crow, run as person INT: As smart though hidebound person ML: 7
No. Appearing: 1d3, accompanied by 2d4 kenkus

Corvid See More, Corvid Do More: Dire corbies' capacity to imitate exceeds the physical. They can copy mental skills and abilities they've witnessed being used now too. If a dire corby hears you speaking a language, it becomes fluent in that language. If a dire corby sees you casting a spell then it can cast that spell too - only the once, though, with the same amount of MD as you used. And so on and so forth.

They can also perfectly mimic any sound they've heard before.

Being deficient in their own subjectivity, dire corbies are obsessed with novels, plays, and conversation, modelling their own personalities and mannerisms off of those encountered therein.

Sensitive Ears: Any especially loud noise (a big gong being banged, a gunshot in enclosed quarters, and suchlike) will cause dire corbies within 30 feet to take 1 point of non-lethal damage.. However, dire corbies can never be surprised unless you are hiding your presence preternaturally.

Killer Copper Pieces: Mister Mittenbiter

He walks through town with his dapper hat and his dapper coat. He's got a refined bearing and an easy stride.

He is tall - maybe the tallest man you've ever seen. He's got no gums - but you won't see this until his grin stretches wide and the lips peel back to show long, long teeth planted right in his jaw-bones.

When he comes across lone children he pinches their chin and turns them this way and that. Most he doesn't bother with, not worth his time, not worth his trouble. In some he sniffs out the seed of kindred-spirit, and kidnaps them to initiate into his gang of pickpockets, muggers, and murderers.

The unluckiest few he takes into his hands and he bends and breaks and nibbles away at them, until they're unfit for any path through life but as beggars. He'll come back for them, years down the line, when they're thoroughly steeped in despair, and he'll eat their souls and leave their empty bodies in the gutter. He does the same to those in his gang, tearing the ghost from them as they hang from the gallows and the gibbets.

He is

Mister Mittenbiter

HD: 5 AC: 15 ATK: 1d8 cane smack and 1d8 bite, plus Mutilator SAV: 12 MOV: As ogre INT: As evil man who is used to manipulating children and obsequious social inferiors ML: 6
No. Appearing: 1 plus 1d6-2 nasty children (stat as goblins, equipped with shivs and razors and other such improvised weapons)

Aura of Gentility: It's not mind control, it requires no save, but Mister Mittenbiter is surrounded by a feeling that he's better than you and he can do what he wants - if you are accustomed to feeling that you are better than others, you feel that he is an equal.

Mutilator: All of Mister Mittenbiter's attacks that deal damage also deal a wound. He is a brute well-acquainted with how to hurt and mangle.