earth devours man

What follows is a thick green miscellany.

The title of this post come from the most interesting search term used to find this blog of late. I am sufficent of a pontificator that I feel obliged to point out the humble tragedy encoded in the lowercase usage of that term. Planet Earth does not devour all mankind, earth devours man, soil consumes an individual bloke. How sad. How very glum and dreary and quietly beautiful.

I have quite a thing for soil. It is everything to us as biological entities living our allotted span betwixt spawning and senescence, and if anything is holy, dirt should be holy. It is a living substrate consisting of planet-dust and dead ancestors and it can magically transubstantiate into whatever the fuck we need to survive. Hundertwasser also considered it something of a necessity for human survival that shit be considered holy. I tend to agree, taking out nutrients from the soil and then throwing them away is unforgivably stupid and destroys civilisations as sure as any ravening horde ever did.

Recycle your shit

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I get a lot of inspiration from contemplation of psychedelic experiences. Most of my own are half a life ago.  I am, however, aware that the building blocks of every hallucinatory experience are available to some extent to the conscious mind. Additionally, I've read a lot on the matter, enough to know that numinous experience, in all its grandeur and terror and unflinching ferocity is available to everyone, all they need are the tools and techniques - be they Baptist gospel choirs, shrooms, self-flagellation or Tolkien.

I also know that numous experience is responsible for art just as much as art is responsible for numinous experience and that so much of what is called fantasy is fundamentally about visionary states.

Of particular interest to me is  Northern Renaissance painting and its depictions of psychedelic hellish Weirdness. With which stuff I shall now bombard thee.




There is nothing like this stuff in D&D

Ryckaert painting translated as Dance of the Leprechauns (!)



Like nothing else in the world

It should be noted that these are produced by extremely pious individuals at a time of religious ferment and that the Reformation probably played a role in inspiring these apocalyptic images. That said, this shit is fucked up in a very particularly psychedelic way, very similar to the hallucinatory style of John the Revelator's book and potentially influenced by the outbreaks of ergotism that afflicted Northern Europe in them days. I don't think that this stuff is necessarily produced under the influence of hallucinogens but I think it was produced in a time and by a culture seriously obsessed with visionary experience. Likewise, I don't subscribe to the idea that Jesus was a mushroom but I do think it a lttle bit weird that this fringe apocalyptic visionary cult has become such a force for the suppression of individual visionary exploration.

And I'm veering into the political again.

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Here's some fluff from the Middenmurk which I will preface with an explanation. In Tolkien's On Fairy Stories (which someone should publish together with Lovecraft's Supernatural Horror in Literature, they are deeply resonant with one another those two essays) the good Prof. laments the diminishment of the original fairies from noble and wild otherworldy entities to cutesy little flower sprites. I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment and am interested in a parallel departure from the incredibly fucking boring WoW-style contemporary unflappable sexy person elf to something more intellectually disabled or dissociative or flamboyantly maniacal and fey. So Elfland is a weird place and elves are inherently transgressive, like this guy;

I don't know who made this photo but its impact is undeniable

-A Howe: 'neath a grassy mound on shrouded moors is a inverted kingdom of brilliantly hued strangeness. Elongated greenish heron-folk, Twiggy-men and barely coalescent dwimmer-crafty courtiers attend the Equinoctial Court. Blasted grim and silent chicken-footed geezers toil at weaving and smith-work, and capering Hinky-punks prostrate at the feet of the wayward angels who seem ostensibly to reign for the majority of the time. These three are; Salmagunde, who is the Bride of Badgers, clad in autumnal leaves and greyish mucus, and Chymic Flankette who is a horned man of bluish stony visage, and the Laird Impregnable - Magister of Silt and invisible for centuries, all are stewards of carnivorous twilight.

Mostly these three seem to reign but for the frequent Holy-Days when stolen human children are given sceptre and diadem and the Oranges of Infinite Justice and called upon to arbitrate various untranslatable infractions, the punishment of which seems always to be recitation of substandard poetry, or flaying alive for less serious transgressions.


After reading speculation that St. Nick is partly a memory of the Bishop of Turkey and partly an avatar of Amanita muscaria I thought it would be interesting to use what I know of shroomlore to create a more interesting midwinter festive figure.

Upon the Night of Blackest Yule there is a sound on the roof of the hovel and an elder shaman antler-crowned and skinny climbs through the smoke-hole to bestow magic piss into the mouths of the sleepers. When they awake it is into a dream of fierce and brilliant vitality. In their minds they run like young horses across a steppe with the winds of a gathering storm rippling the grass, waves of gleaming sunlight racing across the bright-green sea. Then they are plunged into grey darkness, embedded in a glutinous substance and screaming through densest silence. Then they are unity itself, then splintered into such a multiplicity that they can never, ever, ever get back together. When they wake a second time they are changed.

Save vs. poison, success means transcendental insight is gained (+1 WIS), failure means an ill-dream of anguish and forgetfulness haunts the waking world (level drain)

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Elves

As I have promised I am going to present my conceptualisation of elves for the Middenmurk setting, or rather, for the “Northern Marches” – the ad hoc term I will use for the (semi) civilised lands nearest to the Middenmurk dungeon. As a matter of course I am assuming that the Middenmurk will be flexible like any other Megadungeon, having certain assumptions about flavour and texture associated with it but fairly much unattached to a specific setting so people can stick it where they want it. Which is a way of saying I’m not making a sandbox but I am doing bits and pieces of setting stuff.

So, I conceive of elves of the Northern Marches as being very much unlike the elves of Tolkien’s legendarium and, as such, fairly much different from elves as presented in D&D and role-playing games in general. The starting point for the approach I am making is the idea of elves as being objects of fear to peasants within the Mediaeval paradigm. Elves are fundamentally supernatural entities from beyond the fields we know that visit the world of the everyday to cause trouble for inscrutable reasons. Elves can be helpful but are associated with sickness and ill-luck, with nightmares, curdled milk, blighted crops and, worst of all, stolen babies.

The word elf is etymologically connected with the word oaf, which is associated with the idea of the changeling child; weird, uncouth, fey and shunned by the community. In this context elves can be seen as a kind of mythic explanation for a variety of intellectual disabilities, developmental disorders and mental illnesses. They can also be the explanation for manic creativity and savant abilities and psychopathic disregard for the well-being of others.

The idea of entities that will come in the night and steal your child is a deep-rooted and primordial fear. I guess this makes elves the perfect primitive psychological projection of the unknown other.

I am fond of the idea that elves are different and otherworldly, but not necessarily graceful and beautiful. They are merely different. They exist in a kind of strange parasitic relationship to human communities, possessed of uncanny secrets of the otherworld and with great capacity to help mankind, but a capriciousness and proclivity to inflict harm with casual detachment.

Additionally, and significantly, elves live among human beings like cuckoos. Elf PC’s will be changeling children or foundling urchins or uncanny strangers who are tolerated for a while by the superstitious peasants of the Northern Marches. They will always be on the margins of society, however, and always be a little odd. The association of elf and oaf – a word derived from elf - informs my conception.

Devil’s in the Details: Elves (oafs, changelings, hogboys, wights, Yule-lads, Fae)

Yes, I am well aware that James Maliszewski has already presented elves in this format. I have the utmost respect for James and think him a capital fellow, however, his Eld are from a fundamentally different paradigm to my elves (though they are similarly quite sinister) and I think there is space enough for both to exist (and let’s face it, James is the king of the OSR blog-o-sphere and I am a swineherd from the outlying provinces).

As I did with dwarfs I am presenting some aspects of elves as being analogous to real-world human psychological and developmental disorders. I do this in the interests of remaining faithful to the original subject matter as I see it, i.e. within a Mediaeval paradigm, these disorders are explained by and attributable to supernatural agents. Any offence caused by this approach is unintentional and I apologise in advance.

Many Elves (d20 thrice)

1. Speak in a raspy whisper.
2. Fear the colour red, won’t touch it and refuse to wear red garments.
3. Laugh at funerals, cry at glad tidings and show no compassion.
4. Make strange bestial noises, seemingly without being aware of what they are doing.
5. Have the ears of an ass, which they hide beneath some kind of headgear.
6. Appear to be perpetually adolescent, but with ancient eyes - or - appear wizened with age, but bright-eyed and hale.
7. Have a tail like a cow’s, which they conceal beneath clothing.
8. Have a strange floral or herbal fragrance.
9. Don’t tend to come in out of the rain or in any other way avoid discomfort.
10. Skulk around bone-yards, crossroads and other such ill-omened places
11. Feel compelled to build cairns of stones and little idols of sticks at random places.
12. Have the eyes of a falcon and stare at people in an unsettling manner.
13. Eat insects, snails and spiders.
14. Occasionally go into a trancelike state where they murmur in a long-forgotten tongue and rock back and forth.
15. Creep around at night and do odd jobs for people.
16. Dislike iron and avoid touching iron objects.
17. Have teeth which are disconcertingly sharp.
18. Periodically give away money and valuables.
19. Have skin which is cold to the touch.
20. Sing songs of unearthly beauty.

Some Elves (d16, 1d3 times)

1. Have a vacant, open-mouthed, idiotic expression.
2. Have no sense of privacy or modesty.
3. Have a sharp, feral, countenance.
4. Fear the sun and shroud themselves in layers of cloth to avoid its rays.
5. Harass and ride livestock to amuse themselves.
6. Take delight in frightening people with cruel pranks.
7. Cast a pale shadow.
8. Tend to attract the attention of various small animals.
9. Habitually sleep in ditches, up trees, or under hedges.
10. Are androgynous.
11. Creep around at night and peer through windows.
12. Crave butter and cream and will pay almost any price to get hold of it.
13. Are very lustful and seductive.
14. Move with feline grace.
15. Destroy things for no apparent reason.
16. Are very tall and gaunt or small and childlike.

Common Travelling Gear (d16 thrice)

1. A hazel switch
2. A small pouch containing (1d6) 1. Henbane 2. Dried Elf-Cap Mushroom 3. Datura 4. Mandrake 5. Belladonna 6. Diviner’s Sage
3. A stone that looks like a toad
4. A tall dunce’s cap
5. Ragged finery, tattered and befouled
6. An ancient bronze dagger.
7. A bone flute.
8. A sprig of mistletoe
9. An old shillelagh
10. A shortbow and quiver of arrows
11. An archaic corselet of bronze scale armour
12. A staff inscribed with ancient secrets in runes or ogham
13. A rote or lyre
14. A lock of human hair
15. A collection of elf-shot
16. Golden chains from a barrow-tomb

Very Silly

I was absolutely delighted to discover that Joesky had statted up and produced a very detailed description and ecology of the Woosie, based upon this little drawing I did at his request. Here is his description.

I'm working on elves and fanatics at the moment. Elves are going to be weird and a little creepy, as you'd expect from the kind of people who'd steal your child and replace it with one of their own.

Fanatics are how I am going to translate clerics. I like crusading zealots filled with divine inspiration to be wielding pitchforks and threshing flails, frothing at the mouth and pronouncing prophecies of doom. Religion in the Middle Ages wasn't always nice and I find traditional D&D bland pantheism to be far too tolerant.