Benjamin D. Richards

Doriaur men'Golanis is a member of the Golan tribe, nomads that roam the wastes of Desolate Evening. Into his skin he has bound the teeth of six wind thogs, a bear, and a genetorn, all terrible predators he has met on his terms. The shaman bindings give him the speed of wind, strength of three men, and bones as strong as iron. His spear is called Skysong and is a writing-spear, covered with runes. Today he and his men are roaming in the hills above the Frozen Marsh, where a cold wind blows from the Shadow of Qor.

The hills are steep, covered with shale and hardy tussock. The hunting band are garbed in deerskin and mail, ghillied and green-stained to keep them unseen; still it is cold, a wraith's wind as the Golan call it. So when they crest the hill and find a vale of green trees, they are delighted.

"What's this?" says Doriaur, looking about at the evergreens. His keen ears detect the burble of a spring. "How fortunate for us, eh? Shelter, maybe a bit of warmth." They carry hatchets, and together it is not long before they sit around a decent fire, spitting with pine resin.

But the day is yet young, and the men have yet to find prey. Once they are warmed, they become restless. Doriaur is a veteran hunter, and he has a proposition.

"There is running water here, and that's going to attract some good-sized prey. There'll be bird nests high in the trees - fishhawks or hill gulls maybe, this close to the Marsh. Probably some rabbits burrowed in about the roots. If we're lucky, there are antelope in here somewhere. And it looks like there's only the one way way in. That means easy hunting, men;" and he stands, a brand from the fire in one hand.

Half an hour later the vale is in flames.

The roar of the fire drowns out any sound from within. If there were animals sheltering from the wraith's wind, their cries go unheard. At one point a bird rises flaming from the column of smoke, only to fall back, its feathers consumed.

Doriaur leads his men into the vale again, poking at the ash and cinders with their spears as they go, in case the detritus obscures a sudden hollow. From time to time one stoops to fetch a blackened carcass from the ground. Charcoal is not good eating, but it keeps well, and can be reversed by fire spirits kept back at the camp.

Smoke fills the air, billowing from blackened stumps and eddying around newly-revealed rocks. Uphill, the fire rages on, consuming the last of the trees. The stream is choked with ash when they reach it.

"Is there something up by the spring?" asks one man.

Doriaur squints into the smoke. "I think you're right. Better scout it together - it's not safe this close to the Shadow." And so they make their way through the smoking, smoldering forest floor.

There is a figure kneeling beside the spring. It is gray - with ash or by nature, Doriaur cannot tell at this distance. "You there! What are you doing in our hunting ground?"

The figure turns. It has been weeping. As the smoke billows, Doriaur realizes it is not baun. Horns curl back from its temples; its face is dominated by a goat-like muzzle.

"Demon," he gasps, and levels his spear. At his words, the qor lifts itself to its cloven feet. Points of emerald light flicker beneath its fur. The great skeleton of its wings unfolds slowly.

"Every day I came here to pray," whispers the demon. "I watched the saplings become trees, saw the snowbells bloom after the storms. I drank of the water of the earth, laughed with the bullfrogs. This was my place. What have you done here?"

Doriaur realizes the qor's hooves are planted on the air. Lightning dances through its wings. "Easy, men," he says. "There are ten of us. We can take him."

The demon exhales. A livid green spark arcs along its forearm, the fur there standing on end. "On my soul, it is my sin that I hoped you would say that," it says. "If you value this world so little, perhaps it is time you left it."

Sarcophagus of Mur

Holds an ancient and powerful body.

Abilities

The Sarcophagus itself is not special, although it is of great antiquity and has excellent preservative powers. It is the ancient corpse within that attracts interest.

The corpse is that of a tall and strange being, with six arms and four tiny legs. It has been carefully embalmed, clad in bandages of silk over jade plates set with emeralds. The mummy is bound in chains of various ages. Yet for all its strange form and uncomfortable restraints, the creature still appears sleek and proud.

This corpse and its trappings have great mystic power. Its long torso houses well-developed chakra pathways that death has not stilled. More impressively, the lower body actually contains a secondary chakra system. It can hold multiple spells in place for hours without noticeable strain.

These abilities are not available to any but the corpse itself, but here its other ability comes into play. Its trappings include a number of ghost anchors along the spine, and spirits may inhabit the body to magnify their natural abilities. Throughout the ages, this has been used by warlock summoners and wandering ghosts, by magicians with the gift of astral projection, even by curious nature spirits and feckless elementals. All have gained power through the possession.

Creator

Long ago in the Early Insect Epoch, great forces made war. The peoples of the day aligned in great hives, but there was one among them who did not owe loyalty to race or nation. It called itself Mur, and it was powerful indeed, a sorcerer without rival.

Mur pursued its own goals, often to the detriment of the hives. To modern races this would be regarded as simple antisocial practice, but to the hives, it was unrivaled sociopathy, the most profound and unnatural malfunction. They could not comprehend an individual with no higher allegiances. So a group of rivals of many races came together as friends to put an end to Mur's reign of terror.

The hunters pursued Mur through this world and into others. They harried it beneath the pearly spires of Cuud and along the obsidian skyways of the Drak Immensity, both lost to history. Ultimately they caught Mur in the ley city of Apheliopol far above the continent later called Upper Riftsea, trapping the sorcerer within the force beam that brought the Sun of Sher to Riftsea in that forgotten age.

Then they executed Mur, taking great pains to keep it from coming back from the dead. They embalmed the corpse, implanted jade needles and ghost anchors into the body, and then used sorcery to place one of their number into the body itself. Not only did this grant them a measure of Mur's great power, it also prevented its spirit from returning to reclaim its body.

History

The hunters circulated Mur's body among their number, taking turns with its power in an attempt to keep their various cities happy. Eventually this policy failed, and one side held onto the Sarcophagus too long. At first they used it in war; then they used it in peace; and eventually they put it aside in favor of other technologies.

Mur took this chance, and returned to the body. Its powers had dwindled but little over the years, and the sorcerer was able to dominate Apheliopol and many of the lands around it, becoming undead emperor of the region later known as Riftsea.

After many years, a new band of heroes rose up to overthrow the tyrant. They fought Mur with the hooked spears of their people, but it fought back without fear and cast them away with unnatural strength. They tricked it into the solar force beam again, but it had prepared counterspells and would not be snared the same way twice. Ultimately, they sought the aid of a wandering and wise spirit by the seashore, a figure of clay and salt who knew well the ways of ghosts.

The spirit told them to make a shirt of silk and jade, so fine that any emperor would desire it, and present it to the tyrant. This they did, bowing before their enemy, and Mur reveled in their debasement before donning the shirt. But it was a trap, immobilizing the sorcerer long enough for the heroes to rise up and bind it with chains, forcing it back into the Sarcophagus for the last time.

In years to come, the descendants of those heroes guarded the Sarcophagus of Mur, waiting for it to leave. Some say the sorcerer grew tired of this torment and went to wander the world as a ghost; others, that it went mad and was drawn down to some ancient Hell, or repented and attained enlightenment. Whatever the case, the body was empty again, but the guardians yet stood to their posts, just in case.

Ages came and went, and the Early Insect Epoch gave way to the Wars of the Sacred Geometry. The Tomb of Mur and its deadly contents fell from the sky and landed on Upper Riftsea, where they were discovered centuries later by bronze-clad warrior-priests of the Late Epoch. The hive mages of Unnesher took possession of the corpse of Mur, and used it to preserve the wisdom of their high priests. When they fell to the Stain Scream legions, the corpse became a shock warrior. And so it went, changing hands and accumulating scars. One jade plate was broken; an emerald split in half; a finger was chopped off, and some say, eaten as an elixir by some forgotten wizard.

At some point during the early fifteenth century, the Sarcophagus was acquired by a traveler. The locals regarded this merchant with curiosity. She had no exoskeleton to protect her pale flesh, and grew a thick mane of hair from her head; she had only two arms, two legs, and two eyes. It seemed she was fleeing persecution in a foreign land, and as she was willing to settle and cooperate with the hives, she was welcomed. They called her Pala, the Last Black Star, and taught one another magic.

The descendants of Pala's cadre inhabited a quarter of the hive city Charara East a hundred years later, and were spared when the Apex Draconis conquered the region. None suspected that they were practitioners of forbidden magic and religion, or that their ancestors had fled Apex tyranny. The Palaan Colony reintegrated into Apex society and promptly made connections with the mystic underground.

The Sarcophagus of Mur found its way back to Upper Riftsea, where the apprentice cities were founded, and was used by warlocks and necromancers to call up beings the Apexes would rather stayed down. After the Apexes fell, these cults continued in much the same way, only now they could use their esoteric wisdom to dominate others. The Sarcophagus eventually accumulated a temple and staff, and was used by magistrates and priests to question the dead.

But Upper Riftsea was doomed, and the Sarcophagus had to be removed again. It was carried down to the surface, but did not meet with a warm reception among the West Baun tribes, and eventually was set aside in a museum within the Spires of Noon. The facility was abandoned during the Second Shadow War, and rediscovered by archaeologists in the early days of the Sahel Nouveau. Before it could be taken back to Brightsea, a group of exiled magicians claimed the museum, and set about using its contents for their own purposes.

The Sarcophagus of Mur remains in the Sahel Nouveau, once more in use. Its long history is almost entirely undocumented, and although its current owners have figured out how to use it, they have no idea what it is they hold.

Clearance finally came through yesterday, so I archived my things and spent one last night in the lower T-space habitat before making the transition down to human-space. Back in the Milky Way again, for the first time in decades.

I'm standing in a migou KBO terminal looking out at the stars - stars of my ancestors, although I don't know whether any of the local bodies are visible from Earth. This place must be new; the fungi didn't have phase ports in the Perseus Arm when I came through on my way to the intergalactic bridges. It's even got human-congruous facilities, foot-sized steps beside the crawlways and ramps, and I have a feeling the hive cells can pressurize and warm themselves up to Terran standards. Not that I need such comforts; the body I got out-galaxy is vacuum proofed and home to a few very useful upgrades.

This body is part of the reason I couldn't come back until recently. It was too much of an investment, but too expensive to ship back. That's the reason most travel is still via migou cranial extraction. I still remember the trip out, months of endless black outside, nothing but my thoughts for company. I've still got my old silver key somewhere, but the new body's got silver implants right in the brain; I can tap the Dreamlands while I'm awake, call my friends up in T-space and tell them we transited down alright, check my flight time on the next Mason fold out of this hub system, catch up with old friends in New Ulthar who can't afford the trip into the waking realms.

But there's been dream emigration for years, now. No big news. Era of peace and prosperity... or so they say. I'm back in the Milky Way because they need old soldiers.

I was on military service during the last dust-up with the Ghoul Worlds. That's what we called them, unofficially of course; it just happens that there are a lot of ghouls amongst the swarming multitudes that make up the various feuding nation-states of the 'Post-Terrestrial Atmospheric Polities'. My squad and I were brains in jars, remote-operating disposable bodies from a Mason ship in orbit around whatever planet we were reducing. (Ghoulworlders still live on planets.) I found out halfway through that I was the only human in a squad of Deep One and Ghoul brains. It was quite disturbing; I'd been unconsciously assigning human identities to my buddies. If I ever get species prejudice, I remind myself of that indiscretion on my part.

Anyway, I got good at low-profile missions, the kind of thing where you can't just drop nukes on a city or send a slaved shoggoth through a building. The Ghouls tended to respond with Awakening Storms, R'l weapons imported from the Others, and nobody wins when the Sleeper wakes. That's why I was in demand out there over the galactic gulf: I'm subtle, I fix problems without exposing whole habitats to vacuum or T-space swarms. And that's why they wanted me back in the Milky Way.

I'm surprised at the destination: I'll be taking the Mason folder all the way to the Galilean orbitals around old Jupiter. You don't normally get permission to enter Sol system these days; the whole inner system is off-limits, a monument to millions of years of Yith and Old One history. Most of human history is out here between the stars; we gave up dirt eons ago. There are a few Ghoul Worlds in the outer system, though: Titan, Enceladus, anything with a gravity well that the migou hadn't colonized before the alliance. Most of the Galilean orbitals are military, protecting the inner system from blundering sublight Ghoul World colony ships and archaeo-raiders. We don't want anyone getting at the secrets of the Yith before we do.

So. Sol System. Military space stations, in one of the biggest blockades in allied space. Somebody's killing people, and they don't know who, or how. They think it's a sleeper cell of Ghoul agents. This is going to need a delicate touch, and I'm the gentlest hunter in two galaxies.