The Nightmare I

The forests outside of Medius stretched for as far west as anyone cared to travel. It was hard to imagine what happened to people who walked west and continued to walk through the ceaseless trees, over the limitless moss, and beneath the maternal canopy of leaves. Perhaps they simply wandered on until they died. It wasn't a hard explanation. After all, humans of all creatures were heavily dependent on each other for food and shelter, and a spirit could easily get lost in the strange, endless trees.

Iskra, for this reason, never really cared to look that far west of Sunnveil. Many, many superstitions had cropped up among the wild ones such as herself as to the nature of the "west" itself, and they thought the direction was an ill omen.

However, the hyena demon did lead the small company of men that Jack had entrusted her with in that general direction. Further west, the villages were more acclimated to the sort of climate that Rasvamaal offered to its denizens. Perfect for recruitment.

[ EXP: 200 || +1 TEXP (1st post) ]

Her incubus, Run Rivers, or as he preferred to be called, Rivers, had scoped out this place before hand. He was an excellent spy when he wasn't goofing off, and this village was a pretty balanced trading village. There wasn't anything about them that Iskra found particularly sympathetic. For one, they traded in furs and skins of dangerous beasts. They kept various parts as grotesque charms, especially from mystic beasts, as these fetishes were reputed to remove and ward away all manner of ills.

Rivers had a big heart, however. He tried to convince some of the villagers to come to Rasvamaal of their own volition. The audacious humans, however, refused. They were a proud sort. They loved their homeland. They loved their way of life. They loved skinning offending animals and profiting off of their bodies.

They'd receive little mercy from the matriarchal demon. Their perverseness put them far out of the safe harbor of her favor that the Kokabiel worshipers resided in.

This place would come to ruin.

[ EXP: 200 || +1 TEXP (2nd thread) ]

Naturally, there was an "okay" way to go about this. She could have simply gone to the village of mostly-men and asked them kindly if they'd be interested in a life of ease in a city. They could have all of the women they wanted any day of the week, and the region would be protected from the wars and raids that frequently affected smaller villages such as their own.

But she didn't feel like it, not when she could smell tannin on the air.

It was a familiar smell. When Lethe's parents, hunters themselves, attacked her clan and stole their skins, they dipped the skins in the acrid fluid.

Now, Iskra didn't know much about the small company of soldiers that she'd been given the use of except that they represented and fed off of certain things in the same way that Jack represented pride and fed off of pride.

There were two kinds with her: sloth and fear.

Sloth had the ability to trap people in sleep, but their eyes were strange. These, she outfitted with hats and sent into the village in the late night.

[ EXP: 209 || +1 TEXP (5th post) ]

This resulted in an odd sort of localized plague. Simply put, people were going to sleep and not waking back up. The tanners and trappers had little knowledge of spiritual things outside of their own usually-wrong superstitions and their experiences with mystic animals. Most mystic animals had no spells more complex than hiding from others or simply blasting another creature with some element. The ability to cause a human being lethargy until he simply fell asleep, dreaming, and never woke back up, was far beyond the sort of thing that they thought of as "magic", and they had none of the experience that urbanites had with sophisticated spirits and magic. The kami generally steered clear of their disreputable sort.

The result was predictable pandemonium. All manner of lies and stories flew about. Some attributed things to the work of witches. Others fabricated a story of a vengeful wild spirit out to destroy them for their trade. Yet a third group insisted that it was some new disease and that none touch the dead that lie about.

[ EXP: 210 || +1 TEXP (2nd thread) ]

Such an environment was perfect for the fear spirits to come into. Not only did they feed on the general paranoia that the random sleepers caused, but they visited nightmares and anxiety upon the people who remained alive until they were quite besides themselves with concern for their lives and their futures.

Common sense might dictate that people under the influence of such intense fright surrounding a location would fly to a new place, but they didn't immediately. Firstly, there was nowhere for them to take their trade. Tanning was quite the filthy business. Leather and hides were essential, yes, but the process of getting them was fairly gross. First of all, there was the actual process of hunting an animal. This habit invariably resulted in the hair and habitation of the hunters being filled to the brim with bloodsucking insects, the kind that carried diseases that would lay any weaker breed low with illness and completely bedridden. They were accustomed to these diseases, which made them a bit less concerned about the negative effects of poor hygiene.

[ EXP: 216 ]

Second of all, there was the skinning process itself. It was a bloody job, yet another instance where diseases could easily hop from prey to predator. Dirt and blood caked the knives and hands of the workers as they tore the skin from its home. These skins, of course, were also caked with dirt and gore. To remove these things, the skin would be soaked in water. This part was innocuous enough: the product was usually reasonably clean. They took pumice stones and heavier rocks to pound the skins and clear them of "scraps", that is, fat and muscle that was too stubborn to come off during the initial skinning and soaking.

If the skin was to become leather, and for most creatures like her with an unattractive coat, this was the destiny they had in mind, they'd have to remove the hair. The options were: soaking the skin in urine, finding an expensive mixture of lime and similarly caustic substances, or simply letting it putrefy for a short time. All of these options had a tendency to produce an unholy smell.

[ EXP: 204 ]

If the skin was simply allowed to rot, the tanners would dip it into saltwater and continue the processing as normal. The hairs were then carefully scraped off with a semi-dull blade.

The disguising process didn't halt there. The skins had to be softened. This was done with feces, usually either that of a dog or that of a bird. A common alternative were discarded brains from the butcher, but the place she was targeting simply had feces in larger supply due to their overwhelmingly large population of hunting dogs and falcons. The droppings were placed in water, and the tanners would knead the skins in the toilet water for hours at a time to get them to the proper softness.

And finally, the humans would have their disgusting leather. They would drink from it. They would wear it. The practice itself was so irreconcilably backwards, and the other humans seemed to agree in an odd sort of way that didn't keep them from continuing to purchase from the leather makers. They needed the goods, after all.

[ EXP: 205 ]

This meant, however, that there were few places they could go that would accept their trade inside of their towns. Indeed, they had been regulated to these far, far away outskirts as a form of containment. Traders usually came one at a time to pick up the skins, and they only came when there was a pressing need and demand for the disgusting product. Where would they go without this haven for their way of life?

She imagined that the same skills that gave them the strength to hunt down and forcibly steal the skins from animals might make them into serviceable builders. There were some women among them that would make good prostitutes. There were a few young children who would make good soldiers one day. In short, she aimed to hijack and dismantle their way of life and turn it to something she found more constructive.

After all, they weren't hunters in the same way she was. They didn't kill to eat meat, though meat was a byproduct of their trade. They didn't kill with their own strength either. They used devices.

[ EXP: 207 ]

Devices like sharp sticks, bows, and arrows. It was because they were weak, but she imagined that as humans they couldn't help such a thing. Their jaws were completely inefficient for the purpose that her jaws were designed. Maybe it was wrong for her to hold them to her standards, but making leather from the sort of creature that she was remained unforgivable in her mind.

So after weeks and weeks of chaos, she simply glided into the village one day. She wasn't in her normal, spotty-haired form, however. She appeared as a simple man, fair of skin with long, dark hair. His carriage was that of a warrior. Now this wasn't unusual. New traders and people seeking to have a relationship with the leathermaking village visited fairly frequently. What was unusual, however, was the situation at the time of Iskra's arrival.

The streets were formerly abuzz with activity. Now they lay silent as a desolation. Everyone huddled in their homes. The men took fewer trips to hunt and trap because of superstitions revolving around this new plague.

[ EXP: 210 ]

Their wives and children had additionally grown gaunt. There was less meat to go around and less things to trade away for fruits and vegetables. Vitamin deficiencies had seized the population and added more symptoms to the mysterious "disease".

All Iskra had to do was go door to door and ask if this was the sort of life that they really wanted for themselves and their families. She explained that the trade of tanning itself had brought this curse upon them, and that if they followed her to her new village, she could show them a new and safer way to live.

This pitch was very effective for the men who actually had families. A few of the singles moved as well, especially the young men who didn't appreciate the lifestyle passed down to them by their fathers.

At the end of it all, she'd sent a considerable exodus to Rasvamaal. They fled the doomed city...

Well, it wasn't really doomed until she told the demons at her command that she wanted it destroyed with anyone remaining. They were happy to oblige.

[ EXP: 207 || +1 TEXP (5th post) ]