heeeey what's this yup it's me i bet you all forgot i was writing underworld spooks before it was cool
have some belated halloween
inspired by
@ManusDomini's
Lookshy and
@TenfoldShields's
Out of the Eater (go read it it's great an pretty recent so you don't have a crazy backlog to go through)
Those who walk behind
Lesser Dead
Dead by Forced March
A thousand slaves march in a file, riders at their flanks, whips snapping across their backs. They are not bound by chains, for if they were, they would have to stop every hour, as another falls. The sick. The old. The starving. The young. The weak. They cannot endure another mile, and so they fall. They are left their in the dust to rot, watching the backs of their companions passing them by, one after the other. They don't care. They can't afford to; they would die too. And so these backs are the last sight of the dying, and to that sight their souls cling in fury and betrayal.
Those who walk behind are the ghosts of those who died because they could not keep up with a relentless march and so were abandoned. They manifest in beleaguered legions on the retreat and in caravans of refugees, but even much more commonly, among slaves. These tormented souls latch on to the sight of someone for whom they held feelings of companionship, who 'betrayed' them by walking on, and fester in contact with them, a ghostly, sentient disease.
Those who walk behind have no real body at first, immaterial or otherwise. They exist as a diffuse presence in the vicinity of their victim, and always manifest at their back. They are a whisper in the ear, a face glimpsed in a mirror, footsteps echoing one's own, creaking planks. When the victim turns, there is nothing - nothing but another cold breath on their shoulder. The manifestations increase in frequency and potency over time, putting the victim through increasing stress and unease, as if someone were always watching. They cannot sleep; their door opens in the night; something heavy sits on their chest at night; a voice mockingly tells them of their crime; they are cold even in the noonday sun.
It is possible to reject the influence of those who walk behind by steadfastly refusing to acknowledge their existence, putting oneself in a state of mind in which glimpses and whispers are rejected as mere tricks of the mind. Being in a tight-knit community, distracted by other people, helps. This is why, though these ghosts have a name known to exorcists, most communities deliberately avoid giving them one. Failing this, the fear and unease of the victim acts as worship for the ghost, which feeds on it and grows more bloated, more potent, more real. Eventually, as the victim becomes a shadow of its former self, eyes circled with deep dark rings, only skin on their bones, always shivering, the ghost begins to walk of its own rhythm, no more in lock-step with them. Step by step, it takes shape. Glancing behind one's shoulder reveals a known face - perhaps that of the dead, but perhaps that any of countless others who died on the march, flowing in and out of each other.
In a crowd, the ghost cannot kill, though it might get very close. But it is there, watching. Its face could be that of anyone. Its presence drives the victim to panic, seeking safety alone, in a place where they can see the threat coming and identify it.
And once they are alone, the ghost gently taps their shoulder.
Once a victim of those who walk behind has died of the spiritual infection, their soul is drawn out and consumed by the ghost, fusing with it, giving it more reality but confusing its memories and sense of self. It projects its perceived betrayal on another person to whom the victim was personally close, and the cycle begins again.
Necromancers and Exorcists
Necromancers find those who walk behind to have great potential, but to be difficult to properly use. As spies or assassins, they are incredibly difficult to deter: lacking a proper body, even immaterial, they often elude even the senses of trained spirit-hunters, and cannot be slain with a salt-encrusted sword to the heart (not until the last stages of their manifestation, at any rate). However, they also invariably grow emotionally obsessive over whichever target they were told to shadow, and are not stealthy at all in the conventional sense - the glimpses, whispers, and echoing steps are an unavoidable aspect of their nature. Properly used, the ghosts can wield great benefits, but victims who are not overworked slaves with no recourse have a much easier time dealing with the threat.
Though exorcists are rarely called upon to deal with those who walk behind, the protocols for handling these shades is well-trod, and can even be performed by mere apprentices - it is merely time-consuming. The would-be exorcist must shadow the afflicted exactly as the ghost does, staying at their back and sleeping next to them for three days and nights. On the third night, the ghost will detach itself from the victim and latch onto the exorcist; in that moment, they must close their eyes, turn around, and loudly abjure the ghost with proper prayers and blandishments. A struggle of will must occur, but unless the ghost has been allowed to feast on many souls, training and resolve will see one through the ordeal, and disperse the shade utterly.
The Fox-Breath
Aberration
A hundred men and women, so starved and sickly one cannot differentiate them, huddle together in the cold. When dawn comes, so will the whip. They will be fed, a little, 'enough to keep them going' as it is said, but never enough, always so little a few die each week. Their steaming breaths mingle, filled with craving, with desperation and despair.
Many mortals are born blessed with a strong will, a clever spirit, a yearning soul. Many carry in their blood the echoes of long-ago ancestors of renown, gods or Dragons whose faintest traces still linger. Many are born so, and in such circumstance that this will and this power never amounts to anything more than enduring the whip one more day than they might have otherwise. But their soul still yearns. Their soul still feels the outrage of this suffering.
The Fox-Breath is born of the lungs of those who waste away slowly at the hands of an uncaring world. It is the po, the base soul of hunger, slipping out of its shackles at night. It bubbles out of the mouth with a few drops of blood, draws on night-time shadows and the breaths of others too weak to resist its pull, to form a dark, vulpine shape of air and darkness, slinking along walls and floors and ceilings. Because its master is still alive, it is bound to the higher soul, and cannot manifest in full; but because it is bound, it is smarter than it might otherwise be. This intelligence is its downfall and its tragedy.
The Fox-Breath seeks to feed its mortal self. It sneaks into supply camps, pulling light items of food (it has little strength) to bring them back to its sleeping place. It squeezes itself into canteens, drinks all of their water, and comes back slow and bloated to gently spit the precious liquid back into the sleeping mouth. On occasions it will find soldiers who have harmed its waking self and brand them in their sleep with claw marks and bites. It may even, rarely, steal the keys off a guard's belt and slide them into the master's hand. Then it will find rest in his lungs.
The Fox-Breath almost never helps. The mortal does not remember its actions except as the vaguest of dreams, and cannot wake while it is gone. Often, angry soldiers barge in the slaves' quarters, looking for stolen food, and find it with the poor mortal, who has no idea how he got it. He protests his innocence in vain, and soon protests no more. If he wakes up early enough, he may quickly ingest the stolen contents, and must hope there will be no bread crumbs in his beard for the guards to find. And what to do with keys? Starved, broken by abuse, can he even hope to attempt escape, much less survive?
Most who manifest the Fox-Breath do not live long enough to see it develop further, and their keepers are none the wiser for it. But if the ghost is cunning enough, the waking self stealthy enough, the guards oblivious enough - the body is strengthened over time, and with it the soul. The Fox-Breath is emboldened. More than this, it is angry. Angry that no matter how much it steals, without its efforts everything would return to before, and its true self would die. So the Fox-Breath decides to feed it more.
The intermediate stages of the Fox-Breath's development are not kind to anyone. It drinks the sleeping breath of the mortal's companions, stealing their strength for his sake when they are already weak and ill, often causing their deaths. It finds the most ruthless of guards and slithers down their throat so it can eat their liver and feed the master their blood. It gnaws at chains, bites the whip's rope, haunts the dreams of those too powerful to kill. The mortal grows strong, too strong, too obviously so; black veins spread through their skin, their eyes take on a golden tinge, their teeth sharpen, their backs and shoulders become wide with muscle. These are telltale signs; even the most ignorant slave-mongers usually keep exorcists at hand, and though this ghost is rarer than most, they can pinpoint the symptoms. The poor mortal, who has no choice in this, has no way to hide his condition. The usual prescription is ritual execution in a circle of salt - such an expense typically leads angry masters to ruthless cruelty towards the rest of the slaves once the deed is done.
Very rarely, in camps where enough thousands of slaves are kept in such conditions that the ghost's works goes unnoticed until too late, the Fox-Breath can reach satiation. Having strengthened its mortal self enough, it nudges him awake at night, while it is manifested. In the moment of awakening with half his soul outside his body, the mortal is transformed. He becomes ghost-blooded, with an instinctive awareness and grasp of his own two souls. He is the higher self, cold and thinking and full of memories and care, and can drink breath, slip through the tiniest opening, see clearly in the night, and pierce the shroud of immateriality. The Fox is his lower self, ravenous and ferocious and strong and fluid as shadow, and under his command. He may bid it regurgitate the lower souls of those companions who died to feed the once-man. With shadows answering his will, blood boiling in his presence, wind muffling his footsteps, a pack of hungry ghosts at his heels, the man can escape easily. Or…
The prescribed remedy when a slave camp has been lost to the Fox-Breath is a Wyld Hunt.
Necromancers and Exorcists
Necromancers who hear of the presence of a Fox-Breath manifestation often offer their help for free in ridding the place of the threat, for the ghost is its own reward. A bag made out of the lung of a sheep or swine may confuse the beast; by lying in wait and using the proper scented herbs and beckoning words, a necromancer may lure the ghost into the bag, then plug it with a stopper made of rock salt. This severs the connection of the soul to the body, killing the unfortunate mortal in his sleep; the reward is a sealed hungry ghost which the necromancer may tame, train, or simply bind with magic. The Fox-Breath is very valued; while weaker in battle than most hungry ghosts, it is also smarter, stealthier, and more tame.
Exorcists know of the most simple remedy to the Fox-Breath, and those with good-natured inclinations are often frustrated at its lack of use. Execution in a circle of salt is expensive and cruel, but it is quick and avoids rewarding slaves for what is seen as a curse and likely a manifestation of some sin and vice. In truth, feeding the mortal, healing their body and allowing them plentiful rest will cause the ghost to fuse back with them over time, solving the issue.
The Unmourned
Greater Dead
Drive a thousand slaves to their death for the sake of your grand work. Have their broken bodies fall of the steps of the ziggurat they build. Drag their mangled remains from the firedust mine that cooked them alive. Pick them up in the coca fields where they fell. Tell yourselves they are only slaves, less than you, whether by birth or capture; that this is their lot in life, and that it is just. But in your heart you know they are human, and human souls who died in pain do not rest easily. All, even the least of your kind, deserve at least a proper funeral. So you heap their bodies in a great pile, and set fire to that pile, and tell yourself that it is good, that it is right, that it is enough. Fire cleanses. You would give them nothing more, but you will at least give them this.
Fire does cleanse. Many souls whose lives were too filled with pain find themselves too light to hold on. What is there for them to cling to in this world? They fall to Lethe.
Sometimes, it is not enough.
Fire cleanses and sometimes it cleanses the soul of all that is not its rage, its pain, its sorrow. It cleanses it to lethal purity and hardens it like clay in the kiln. A pyre does not leave enough remains for a hungry ghost to inhabit; it banishes them, but sometimes that is not enough. A thousand souls burn together, melt together, seek to hang on to bones and cracked teeth, their identity seared away. They cannot tell themselves from each other. They merge, fuse. The pyre is a crucible.
In the Underworld, the Unmourned manifests first as a tumorous growth in the dark soil. That cyst has an ashen tone and a flesh-like consistency; if pierced, one may find that it is filled with ashes, charred bones, and black tar. Piercing that cyst early enough can save many lives, but it is rarely done: the Unmourned are born in the mirror-places of slave camps, razed cities, or plague-ravaged lands, anywhere too many bodies were burned together with no more funeral rites than a single torch. Such places tend to be either empty of higher ghosts who could see the threat, or already haunted by mad roaming shades. So the tumor grows.
It takes months, sometimes years, for the Unmourned to metastasize. Over times it bloats to the dimension of tall buildings, and sends out fleshy tendrils across the ground in fractal patterns that are not without beauty; they drain Essence from the soil of the Underworld. The lords of the dead, when they chance upon a grown, but not yet bursting tumor, often set up a careful perimeter and a complex system of taps to control its growth, for the nascent Unmourned acts as a potent Demesne. Inside its shell of meat, the broken souls congeal and fuse over time, bound by the consumed Essence. They share dreams in that state: dreams of their lives of pain, of the agony of their death, of the anger and bitterness to never have received a prayer, a funeral offering.
Their dreams echo in the living world. The area which mirrors that where the tumor grows is slowly tainted. Though not yet a shadowland, the veil between worlds grows thin; the Unmourned's dreams plague the nights of those still living there, their voices sometimes echo on the wind; if there is plant life, its roots and branches may be found to be oddly supple, oddly bulbous, almost like organs. The effects are subtle, and rarely noticed - in no small part because the phenomenon is itself rare.
When the dream ends, the cyst bursts into pyreflame. From its core is born a grotesque giant, made of the remains of the dead, a thing of bone, burned muscle, cracked wood and kindling, hiding its no-face with an animal skull, shrouded in greenish flame. A corpse without a tomb. Its cacophony of minds has grown obsessed with only one thing: the funeral that was denied it. It reaches out into the living world, where it has already carved doors in the dreams of mortals. Every night, it pulls them in. Those living in the affected area find themselves plagued with the most vivid dreams of walking in an endless darkness, to reach a place where sits a corpse-master; and they are bound to honor him. With their bare hands they must break stone and assemble it into a mausoleum. They must find salt and offerings. They must make a funeral place worthy of a thousand kings.
Once victims have been pulled to the Underworld once in their dreams, leaving the tainted grounds will do them no good. The work they do at night denies them rest. They grow sickly, tired, thin as reeds. Much of the food they eat finds no purchase in their stomachs - instead at night they carry it as pristine meals to their new masters. Slaves must work an endless shift, taskmasters find themselves on the wrong hand of a whip, and guards answer to a new lord more terrible than any they've known before. Even as all grow to realize the reality of their plight, they find themselves unable to speak of it while awake, not unless they are asked by someone whose authority they feel is greater than their corpse-master - typically one of the Exalted. They labor in silent agony. When they die of wasting, their souls journey to the mausoleum, where they are to work forever.
Uprooting the infection is both necessary and, while not
difficult, extremely expensive. The afflicted carry it wherever they go, and the land slowly grows corrupted. Individual treatment with dream-suppressing drugs over weeks can release one from the pull, but given the status of the victim, is almost never done. The area itself must be ritually purified with salt and prayer at great cost. The most efficient way of dealing with the Unmourned is also the most risky: a group of powerful warriors sleeping in the area until they too are pulled into the Underworld at night, where they may fight and defeat the Unmourned - a reckless endeavour; even a kinship of Dragons will find themselves at a difficulty from the environment alone, to say nothing of the army of slaves.
If nothing is done, the inevitable result is the tearing of the veil and the transformation of the area into a shadowland. The Unmourned's mausoleum manifests as a looming shadow in the day and a true building at night. The Unmourned seeks to expand its dominion and make its endless funeral all the more grandiose: strong slaves and soldiers are made into warriors bearing animal skulls and a pyreflame brand on their bodies, and are given no choice but to hunt down and capture more slaves. A small dominion of the dead arises in Creation and in the Underworld both, bent towards no other purpose but the commemoration of death. A burning corpse sits in its burial chamber, and will find no peace until a nation's worth of people weep for it, tear their hair in grief, sing its songs in tribute, burn the offerings in its name. Perhaps, then, the door of that burial chamber might be closed… But the dead are not known for being easily sated.
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