#koumtash

[mrspectacularity]

Thorns Of Alheid

The Thorns Of Alheid is an incredibly sickening illness that once decimated early Koumtashian colonies and settlements laid out in the exploration of the lands of Koumtash and as such have scared medical history with it’s grimace-inducing nature as an unusual plague and parasite. They start first as spores in a since that the parasite forms from pollen-like growths that attached to various hair-lined brambles that upon being allowed to slip under the skin through scratches begin rapidly metamorphosing into mites or a kind. These mites irritate the skin within a scratch, making a once harmless abrasion slowly into a deep and foreboding little gash, the scratch spreading open and deepening until blood is drawn to the surface and quickly coagulates, forming a rancid sustenance for the jawless mites who feed similarly to maggots until they pupate at a later stage in the infection. Soon after the mites pupate, muscle soreness is reported by most victims as their bones seem to lose fortitude and become somewhat worn and arthritic while on the skin level, little abrasive bumps begin to form, slowly growing longer outwards and inwards, hardening and becoming sharper until they resemble thorns similar to that of a rose, although these thorns are often of a dark maroon or fuchsia coloring, Slowly but surely, the infection then spreads through the tissue of the veins as the disease the mites carry infects and causes the veins themselves t become a darker color that’s often clearly viable through the skin as it lurches through the area of contact over a matter of days before reaching the heart. At this point, any home for curing or successful treatment of any kind should be dashed as the victim is bound to become fatigued and sluggish to a crippling degree until an inevitable death by heart attack. But just shortly after death, perhaps less than a few moments of the heart actually ceasing beating, the body will rise back to life, soulless and under control of the disease as it forces the host to attack and infect as many people as it can before it fully shuts down up to a weak after reanimation. By this time, the body will be riddled with thorns of a sickening dark purple-red tinge that prove sharp as an arrowhead and just as venomous as one might be.But inevitably, the mysterious growths will overwhelm the host’s body and cause it to tear apart from within, causing the body to die at last, the remains growing into a wild and mangled mass of sharp protrusions which will often putrefy and fuse to the surface where it falls dead, becoming an obstacle on which others might scrape themselves and continue the cycle of infection until the organism dies from lack of blood on which to feed and mites to contain and sustain itself from within.

[mrspectacularity]

A Dense Study Of Vampires

"In halcyon days long gone and far yet to come, the gods dwell upon a plain above almost all things, bubbled from outsiders and mortals by forces of divine action upheld since the beginning of time itself, if such a projection of the concept such as that upheld by mortals can be made towards how our creators perceive actions as happening or having happened in sequence. Such naturally neurotic beings of grand, usually almost singular power with an existential command over the aspects of the world as it is now known now. For when a god is created, the world is, was and will change, as the gods themselves seem to converge upon our existence, embracing the world and therefore enveloping us in arms of such powers and realities as anger, love, war, concentration, joy, sorrow, and so forth. Even the oceans and the beings within it's depths have gods such as ours, some of which are said dwell themselves within a deep black ocean among the stars thought to be far beyond the reaches of man. A horizon-less plain of desolateness. It is from this darkness, however, that many unknown beings have come and gone in their various plights and ventures through the cosmos created by our spectacular divines above, be them creations of our mothers and fathers as well or not." -Joana The Calmer, 'A Feature Of The Stars'

Vampires have existed for quite a long time, seemingly since before the dawn of the golden age of man, as a gnawing fear at the back of the skull of mankind. Manlike creatures who could often times pass for purely human in the brightest light of the moon and even many times in the sunlight as well. The vampire is told to be a beast of burden that came from the stars to plague the minds of the lustful or bloodthirsty. A vampire, in it's truest form, resembles a sea jelly in many ways, being somewhat translucent and tinged with any number of hues, though most often they are as red as the blood they crave. They are seemingly gelatinous, though are said to linger in the air like silk stands on the wind, a mangle of tendrils and tumorous lobes that seem to faintly appear in the darkness of a night sky. They are told to have once drifted down from the stars in many numbers all across the world as lost travelers from somewhere in the stars, vaguely pulsating beings of incredibly dull glow that fell upon the necks of women and men of ill intent or overt lust, seeming absorb into the skin like a phantom into a fog, leaving the host deadened to the outside world unless truly killed through an attack upon a vampire's few vital areas upon the third day of deep rest.

Upon the third and final day of rest for a newfound host, however, a vampire reawakens in it's body, changed and momentarily starved for blood which might quench a potentially lethal thirst that might send the host into shock and devastate the vampire within. Any blood may do, but above all else, a mortal's blood seems to quench thirst most effectively, the flavor of life seeming incredibly addictive to the youngest of the race to awaken while leaving a mature specimen in a euphoric rush. But should a vampire be properly sated with the blood of any other, it seems they prove far less...ravenous and more sated, composed even. Vampire, while having proved a fear for mankind have shown to be comparatively docile beings within the realms of man-beasts, many times proving more composed and witty than the average man of even the modern era.

When a vampire comes into the form of a mortal, they share a life and mind with them, holding true to the personalities of their hosts as well as giving away memories and attributes gained through previous lives. They may seem, at first, alien to their once close loved ones, but of the few accounts that remain intact in archives around the world, it’s said that in many aspects a vampire is simply a co-inhabited vessel dominated first by it’s original ego and guided in a synchronous dance through life by the hand of the secondary entity. But upon fusion of the two personalities, a vampire may not be removed, nor the physiological changes reversed. The curse and gift of vampirism is permanent and so it’s rare that one might charm a vampire to gift them with the immortal cycle of life as one of the blood drinking awakened.

Vampires are indeed known to grant their cyclical existence onto mortals, transfusing their blood with a mortal a transferring some fragment of their true being into them. Upon the ritual of vampiric infusion, one will fall into a week’s long deathly slumber, remaining deeply at rest as a transformation none to similar to that of a host becoming an awakened. Upon awakening, a freshly minted vampire will seem to experience nearly no change to the core tenants of their personality immediately, but over time one might com to notice a cease or even a possible reverse of the aging process for a short time, a return to youth and a sudden slowing of the effects of the curse of time.

At this point, the more familiar changes might happen, such as the exchange of normal pupils with those more closely resembling the squiggling mazes of black pit found in the eyes of deep sea fish. Though round and perfectly dark from a distance, the vampire’s eyes are truly not simple circles but complicated mazes of dark black trenches surrounded by barely luminous irises that allow for sight beyond imagination in the dark. As well, a vampire’s heart might show change, becoming larger and more chambered than a human’s, allowing blood to circulate from the digestive track to the rest of the body in only oments of consumption. The rest of the body seems to become a system of muscles and a mixture of digestive and circulatory organs.

A vampire may also grow twisted and old in spirit if it were to do terrible things such as turn feral and murder all in it’s path to sate an out of control and ever increasing bloodlust, causing it’s host to in turn become inhuman and even ugly and incredibly sensitive to  the light of the sun, often times bursting into flame at the head, throat and chest upon contact with it’s beams. Others might have lived long, fulfilling lives and have gained the favor of the benevolent sun, able to walk among the waking mortals in daytime, covertly partaking in the joys of the life it might find on the mortal plain.

Some say they have met the undead and lived to tell tales of long conversations with seemingly long-lived young specimens with that titular haze in their skin and hair as well as an inhuman air to the eyes, one that might seem like a glow dimly silhouetting utterly alien pupils that would constrict and focus in peculiar ways. Surely if not the eyes than the mouth would often prove an encounter with the awakened, such glimmers and glimpses from a mouth of unnaturally shaped teeth of a wide variety could give undeniable proof of a close quarters meeting with Nosferatu -that is if one were to survive to tell the tale. But should one meet the beasts, may they know the eloquent gaze of an 'unblooded' as they call themselves. those who have not fed upon the mortals without care and become utterly addicted.

Vampires are told by most to be creations of the first god of the abyss, Alheid, god of blood and vitality, child of a nameless king from one of the old kingdoms of Koumtash now washed away by sands and Myazma, who sent forth a child of man devoted to the goddess of venomous intent to seduce the king while possessed by the abyssal goddess and birth the first true god of the abyss. To this commune of man and demon humanity owes the plague of infections of the blood and a grown immunity to illnesses once passed. Vampires worship this god above all others and are often quoted as telling of the great, life-giving “Starsea Of MensIs”, an endless ocean of vitality in another realm from which all of their kind are spawned and launched aimlessly into the cosmos to find their own paths, to live and live again over and over through many bodies, sharing a mind and form with m any humans over time in a sort of repeated tandem dance with many partners who come and go with the cycle of life and death.

[mrspectacularity]

Tortugaunte Monks

Tortugaunte Monks or The Turtle Monks Of Terabius are a group centered around an appropriated belief held by the Ortugan turtle-men of Koumtash who believe that the universe rests on the back of a massive sea turtle's shell as it swims alongside other turtles through a sea of time. The Tortugaunte have themselves taken such a system of faith and philosophy into deeper consideration, enveloping their own faith in the gods of The Somnifery, believing the great turtle to itself to be an amalgamation of two Centralian gods, Somas and Terabius with Terabius being the shell of the turtle and the turtle itself being Somas. Terabius, being god of the earth, is told to embody the earth under our feet itself, he himself being enveloped by the sea goddess Lusciana as she quells a rage now hidden deep within himself. As Terabius rests on Somas, she carries the world through the abyss, protecting all existence from evil. From this complicated core belief, other more simpler tenants and poems have been birthed to guide the monks in their philosophies. A famous poem summarizing a core tenant of the Tortugaunte's philosophy goes as such.

"The earth is my mother's shield and the earth's mother is my mother. The shield is my shell and the shell rests on my mother's back. I bare the weight of the shell upon my back for my mother bares the weight of myself upon her shell. The only way I may alleviate such a horrid weight is to become one with my mother's shell. When I become one with the earth I become one with the mother's weight and I become one with my mother's shield."

Thought translated from an ancient dialect of the Ortugan peoples as they were originally written in the middle of the Olden Era by a unnamed spiritual explorer who visited the lands of Koumtash and fond himself falling in love with the kind hearts of the Ortugan peoples, the immediate meaning behind such a psalm is that one must find ones with them self, their fellow men, and their creator, Somas The Allmother. This untitled poem and ode to the Tortugaunte way of life also conveys a more mystical belief that by devoting to the Allmother, they devote their being in death to strengthening the bond between the earth and the divine heavens. The Tortugaunte Monestary started in northern Verdon but eventually would grow to a number of small places of practice throughout the north-eastern and eastern coastal provinces of Verdon. It's not uncommon to witness a pilgrim to the monastery traveling along the shores of eastern Verdon carrying a large metal tortoise-shell made of cast iron strapped upon their back, struggling against it's weight on a spiritual journey throughout the lands before they can ascend to the highest ranks of the Tortugaunte fellowship.