Miscellanous Setting Notes for the Feudal Future

Space is Big, and Writers (Typically) Have No Sense of Scale.

So, if you don't mind my indulgence, some setting notes.

• Earth has a population of 10 billion people. Yet most people are not urbanites. Those on Earth proper are spread out across all of its landmass (including Antartica) and do not cluster in coastal cities, reducing the congestion of population accordingly. Further relieving this pressure are the floating settlements on the oceans, and their seabed counterparts deep below the waves. High-speed rail transit forms relgional networks that link up at major hubs into a global network. Air travel links with orbital connections to complete the Earth transit network. The orbital habitation is half the population, clustered around the Lagrange points using the model from the Universal Century timeline of the Gundam franchise (sans terminology).
• Mars and Venus are similarly populated, maintaining familiarity with Earth-normal living standards for extra-planetary populations; this practice repeated itself outside of the Terran System. Terraforming efforts are minimized by preferring Earth-like planets when viable, but the means to change a planet into something suitable for Mankind does exist and has for some time- including the means to increase or decrease the gravity of a world into Earth-friendly ranges.
• Faster Than Light Travel exists. Multiple forms exist, but most people know only of the hyperspace travel that requires starships with FTL drives. Gate-based travel exists. (Yes, that means that the gate at Garmil's Gate is a literal stargate.) The reason for both FTL travel and space-based population expansion stems from the same reason as the following technologies: The Nephalim and their Fallen Angel fathers.
• Mecha: Powered armor arose during the Wars of the Damned in the era immediately after the Coming of the Azure Flames. It was the best option to leverage a reduced Mankind's odds against the undead horde of the Necromancer, allowing a single man to fight against a thousand or more at a time- unarmed. Armed suits increased the leverage yet again, reducing the hordes from billions to nothing within a few generations, a deed done when The Emperor arose to establish the Empire of Man over the ruined Earth and bring war to the Nephalim. Giant robots arose when they became needed to fight the great monsters as well as the Nephalim and their fathers face-to-face. First those of the Real Robot sort, and then when the Church escaped its hobbling it joined in earnest and the Super Robots came in their wake to allow Man to fight Angel on even footing.
• Blasters: Arose when the need for firepower exceeding what then-conventional firearms allowed, with the creation of practical plasma-casting technology. Using the existing infrastructure to minimize downtime during the turnover, and increase redundancy, a situation akin to the 19th century's introduction of the metallic cartridge occurred. The first generation blasters were conversions of conventional cartridge firearms; the second generation were purpose-designed and built to use plasma cartridges, but could use more conventional ones if required. Eventually blasters became the norm, and the older firearms became historical relics like those they formerly displaced. Newer technologies are eliminating the need for shells, but those are naval technologies only at this time.
• Cloning/Drones/AI: Either banned or highly-regulated by the Church. Bodies with ego but no soul are ridiculously open to demonic possession, so to prevent demonic Terminator incidents these are banned from usage or highly restricted. Alas, this ban passed only after a high-profile incident in the past; the possessed AI warship is still out there, and still seeking to Kill All Humans. The use of cloning is strictly and tightly regulated, allowing for medical usage so long as it is neither contrary to dogma nor otherwise a criminal act. In either case, the Inquisitors are not shy about nuking the site from orbit just to be sure. This means that vehicles of all sizes still have men at the controls, with only some levels of remote piloting allowed.
• Personal Weapons: Most people carry a knife, or walk with a cane or staff. Those able to afford a blaster pistol carry it, and few places are so foolish or venal as to ban the practice and try to enforce it. Beam swords are commonplace for noblemen, knights, and those aspiring to such status (often gentlemen).
• Medical technology: In a properly established and maintain facility, almost nothing immediately fatal will keep you down; gene therapy (see Cloning), self-derived clones of vital parts (clone your own liver; swap it out for a damaged one), and similar such technologies along with therapeutic techniques to support recovery make many injuries survivable. Lost limbs remain an issue, but for now cyborg replacements are the norm and are fitted as soon as possible.

And that's just some of them. Merry Christmas, folks.

World Building: The Hidden City & Its Defenders

The Hidden City is one of the successors to the Old World destroyed by the Coming of the Azure Flames, and like the others it had ties to the twin conspiracies that foolishly destroyed that world in their hubris. In this case, the founder of the Hidden City was a programmer, engineer, and occultist by the name of Roger M. Ire. Inspired by Disney's Tron as a boy, he pursued programming and engineering as he got older; these lead him into philosophy as a sideline in university, which is also when he got into the occult and recruited to DARPA.

Once initiated into the Deep State, Ire would gain access to secret information Disney used to inform Tron, going on to realize the concept and figure out how to make real the postulated digitization of real matter into a digital construct. In doing so, he pushed for and contributed to several patent-making advances in computer and network hardwarve, software, and firmware; these patents allowed him a passive and clean income that freed him from needing to maintain a cover identity as most do.

The occultist side of the twin conspiracies saw the potential in his work, and gave him the cover he needed to get out of the known hubs of IT and engineering in favor of hiding in plain site in Minneapolis. He hid his work under the guise of medical technology research, gaining access to power and network resources needed for his laboratory; in this lab, he did what--again, through Disney--was fictionalized in Tron: Legacy: the creation of a virtual city-state that people could freely transit to and from.

But Roger Ire, by now, was no naive idealist like fictional Kevin Flynn. His studies of the occult led him to conclude that programming was so much like sorcery that they had to be related somehow, and his presence around medical research of all sorts lead him to conclude that DNA has to be some form of code--therefore, a symbol representing a thing that has effects in reality, which therefore can be manipulated to make effects that he desired. He concluded that the solutions to several long-standing known issues of Mankind could at last be solved, permanently, and drew up a few plans to do so.

That was when his contacts in the occultist conspiracy also informed him of the Grand Ritual plan. He--like Solador's Archmage--saw through immediately as hubris destined to fail and bring ruin, and he moved to execute a survival plan. He took a big gamble, as he suspected that the Minneapolis area was a convergence of hidden energy, and devised devices that he--at the time--did not fully understand to tap into it to use as emergency power to keep the Hidden City online.

When the Azure Flames hit, he sealed the lab to all physical access and put the taps into place before taking one last trip through the transit portal to the Hidden City and hoped for the best. Instead of facing oblivion, he found himself faced with a crisis of power surging into the system; he was right about the power source, but had no idea that it had been dormant and came to live in the wake of 90% of Mankind being either nuked to ashes or consumed in the waves of blue-white flames that followed. The Hidden City, then a small thing, grew into a gleaming metropolis in the blink of an eye as Roger struggles to use what threatened to overwhelm him in maddening sequences of program resolution and iteration from the inside.

To cope with the surges, Roger connected to the Internet knowing that the Deep State installations meant for Continuity of Government would be online, connected, and hardened enough to stay up. With the power at his command, he got into the local systems and usurped their automated tools so that he installed and integrated additional transit portals throughout the world and then secured these facilities to his command alone. It was during this crisis that Roger became aware of what went on outside in realspace, becoming aware of The Necromancer and the undead horde he controlled.

At this moment, Roger had a sudden thought: "This is my mission, to reformat the whole of Creation and bring it into the perfect system."

The Hidden City would, over the years, grow both in virtual and real population. During the time of The Necromancer is when Roger--now known as The First Founder--started recruiting real people to operate in realspace as his agents. (N.B.: This is a big part of the Solador story; Roger sends an agent to overthrow The Archmage.) It is here that Roger, and his growing body of disciples, turn the power of The Hidden City to making super-solders.

Roger and his disciples created their first model based on a need for deniability and concealment, but when action became necessary great power could be put to hand. As this first cadre was a small one, a focus on quality in power to make competency in acumen was the goal and (as all of them were survivors of the Old World) they used a Japanese model as their basis: The masked heroes of the tokukatsu genre and their animated counterparts.

They then blended this model with an older American one, that of DC's Captain Marvel (a.k.a. "Shazam"), giving each agent a secure passcode keyed to their unique genetic code- a sample of which Roger kept on file as a security failsafe. Later iterations and revisions would refine this concept until there was a clear gradation of power, granted by demonstrated quality of character as well as loyalty to The Hidden City (and, by extension, to Roger), and Roger decided to foster this via deliberate generational eugenics improvement. The goal? To create the ideal agent of the City and its interests as the Guardians of Civilization.

And, unnoticed by most, this was when Roger's fall into hubris became complete.

World Building: The Wars of the Damned

The Wars of the Damned.

This is the time that comes in the wake of the Coming of the Azure Flames that destroyed the Old World, ending with the rise of the Empire of Man. In addition to The Necromancer and The Archmage, other notable figures arose from the ashes in various parts of the world and became dominant in their regions. Because of the global reach of The Necromancer, most of these figures first went to war with The Necromancer in order to secure their base of power- always including a survivor population that rallied to that figure's banner due to their obvious power to oppose the Master of All Flesh.

That means that Solador and The Archmage are one example of many, and not all of them are human. These regional players, separated from one another geographically, are what kept The Necromancer in check enough to wear him down over time. However, they did not do this emergently; they had the covert aid of The Hidden City, providing intelligence and intervention as required when required. The Necromancer comes to recognize that he has a hidden enemy aiding his opponents rather swiftly, and even comes to know The Hidden City, but never touches it because he never figures out how to get to it. (Dude never saw Tron, and no one told him, so that idea never occurred to him.)

This period lasted a couple of centuries, with the tipping point being the Empire of Man destroying The Necromancer and his Empire of the Dead (at that time, with the aid of The Hidden City). The Empire would go on to conquer all of the remaining players, except The Hidden City, in turn until Mankind once more was uncontested master of Earth.

This entire period would last five centuries, from the cataclysm of the Azure Flames to the final conquest of The Empire of Man. As with the fall of Western Rome, the period of chaos and instability was actually rather small. The length stems from the conflict between the successor states that arose from the ashes, and once one party realized it was a kingmaker it played the field until it chose a king.

(World Building) The Necromancer

The Necromancer is the first of the big players to arise in the wake of the Azure Flames. Like all of the others, he is a consequence of the pre-cataclysm conspiracies to establish a global tyranny. Unlike them, he is a consequence in the most literal sense: he had no ties to either of the conspiracies, and instead arose because of the effects of their failure.

The Necromancer was a ghetto kid, son of a waste of a mother and abandoned before birth by his father, and kept in check only so much as it kept his mother in the good graces of the authorities. He got shot when a firefight between street gangs broke out over a particular corner of the drug trade, and the gang-bangers (being notoriously incompetent shooters) cared not where their fire went. As he got rushed to the hospital, the cataclysm began; he was abandoned at the operating table, dismissed as a worthless punk kid better off dead, and left to die.

As he died, Christopher Walken appeared to him. Only it wasn't Walken, but someone appearing as Walken did in The Prophecy, calling himself an angel of God and offering the boy a chance for revenge- to make the world feel his pain, listen to his word, and obey his commands. The boy agreed, and the angel--who is Satan--gave the boy over to Legion.

Legion is the source of The Necromancer's power. He does not control the boy, as the boy is not dead and Satan forbade Legion controlling the living. Legion abides because his desires are being fulfilled, as he now controls billions of corpses, but chafes at being subject to a boy's borrowed authority (as he serves as Satan's anchor on Earth). Satan is the deniable Grand Vizier to The Necromancer, playing the boy like a fiddle as he knows the boy's psychology and pushes his buttons as a master pianist plays the keys.

The Necromancer has other henchmen at his disposal, which are the damned souls of the worst of Mankind allowed to take up the dead flesh at The Necromancer's disposal and walk the Earth once more to fulfill The Necromancer's will. Other damned souls are yoked to serve as immaterial shades, advising The Necromancer. All of these are withdrawn once Satan removes his support, albeit not at once, and their removal serves to track progress in the war against The Necromancer; until that support is withdrawn, they return time and again to menace the enemies of The Necromancer.

The Necromancer, billed as "Master of All Flesh", endures for as long as he does because he and Legion cooperate. They erect a worldwide Empire of the Dead, complete with ziggurats and sacrifices, following Satan's advice. However, Satan (being the Supreme Deceiver) ultimately betrays both his human and his demonic ally once their usefulness is at an end and he shifts his allegiance to the Empire of Man. Knowing his allies' weaknesses, Satan elevates the Empire and enables their conquest of The Necromancer; providing verifiable proof of The Necromancer's actions drives the Empire of Man's propaganda efforts that galvanize the people to support the Emperor. The Necromancer ends his life as it began: mortally wounded, on a table, and abandoned to die. The Emperor, at the final moment, recognizes that his enemy is truly at his end and gives him the mercy of a swift, painless death. The Necromancer then goes to Hell.

The final death of The Necromancer marks the end of the first phase of the world post-cataclysm, and the shift from surviving in a hostile ruined world to the rise into a recovered world filled with terrible purpose and horrific fury at that which ruined what came before.

Future History: The Coming of the Empire of Man

This is typical of father-to-child home instruction in the Empire, which is the most education on history that most Imperial children get and is mirrored in Imperial propaganda (i.e. all their media), and differs only in the tone and vocabulary used. This would be typical of a doctor to his children, or someone of similar rank, but not part of the Empire's true elite.

What is now called "The Old World" or "The Age of Wonders" ended in a cataclysm, the Azure Flames. What we now know, centuries later, is that this was a divine subversion of an infernal conspiracy's attempt to utilize a mass human sacrifice to power a ritual summoning to bring their master into this world. The ritual failed, the destruction ruined a corrupt civilization, and allowed for the release of a different infernal entity: Legion.

It also put down a judgement on all alive past the age of reason, condemning their corpses to Legion upon death. It also allowed Legion to take any other man's corpse that it slew as the beast it was, but we know now that there was a catch: Legion had to use a human agent and work through him. No agent? Banished once more to realms beyond Man's reach. This is the origin of the villain and traitor known as "The Necromancer", and the source of his immense power.

The infernal conspiracy had its turncoats and sandbaggers. Two of them we now know as The Archmage of Solador, and the Founder of The City-State. We know of the existence of a score of others. These would become, along with The Necromancer, the Dark Lords that dominated the era after the Coming of the Azure Flames known now as "The Wars of the Damned".

The chaos brought about by the rampant sin of our predecessors had one mercy, now also known to be divinely granted, in the transformation of one righteous man into the legendary Ken, father of the race that would allow our Emperor the time and territory needed to gather the remnant of the faithful together into our glorious Empire and build us into a single nation capable of winning our world back from the Dark Lords.

Now, as we near five centuries since the Azure Flames ended the Age of Wonders, the Empire put down The Necromancer and ended Legion's threat. Other Dark Lords hide from the Empire, knowing we are mighty and armed with more than muscle and machines. Their ruinous powers cannot withstand our faith. One by one, we shall put all of them to the sword and burn their blighted lands to ash before claiming them as our own once more. Go forth, my son, and serve the Emperor with all your heart. The Emperor will lead us to victory, to true freedom, and bring cleansing fire to all who defy what is commanded of us.

Note that this is not the actual truth of the Empire of Man. The actual truth is that it is another "Dark Lord", born of the same conspiracy that caused the cataclysm. The Empire deliberately models itself on Warhammer 40000's Imperium of Man, and its own inspirations, and as its technical proficiency increases more things out of those inspirations appear. However, the Empire does have one quirk of its own: it does not have a military- it IS the military; there is no civilian life. Every man is a soldier. Every woman is a nurse. This grants total control over the population under permanent wartime conditions, and permanent subjection to military authority; the religious overtones are the mockery of a true faith, with the Emperor as a Priest-King. While talking a lot about purity and opposition to the supernatural, it harbors a hidden elite with powers of their own. Thus the Empire is, in truth, a militant cult- one that officially celebrates and unofficially hates its allies.

The New Barbarians-10

I agreed to have Ken and Jack stay on, trading the trading of their skills and knowledge for lodging and protection over the Winter. I have to say that this was quite the experience. All of us, young and old alike, spent time with Jack and Ken. We were now in a state of mind, after all of the weirdness going on, that left us open to the idea of shamanism an answer to the inevitable issue of our technologies becoming unable to use due to power or other expendables running out. What happened, however, was not what I expected.

Sure, the guided shamanic journeys we took to encounter and become familiar with our ancestors took some getting used to. Unlike before, now these spirits could manifest physically so we need not rely on altered states and other methods that left reasonable doubt in place. No, we saw them; all of us, all at once. Look, sound, touch- all very real to us. We learned the truths of our pasts, truths left out of the histories, and we learned of the old gods and the past of contact with North America and all of that. It turned out that my choosing a longhouse design was no accident, but instead inspiration from an ancestor who also did so, and that was just one of the early revelations.

As for Ken, he told us more about the zeds, and of other emerging unnatural threats that he encountered--he dealt with a Japanese snow monster last Winter--and warned us of the common threat these things possessed: the ability to mimic living men and women, play on our natural affinities, and use them as a path to preying upon us. I didn't know at the time (but I should have), but he did carry on affairs with some of the women; his sons, in time, would be born and raised amongst us and in time transform into thing-eaters as he was.

The real breakthrough, however, was that some of our children came to the attention of certain spirits of the wind and water. These acquired some affinity with, and control over, those very natural elements. This was something new, something that neither Ken nor Jack had any experience with, so we had to work with it using what we knew. Because this was a mark of spiritual calling, as it were, we thought of it as a form of shamanism and proceeded accordingly. The secrets of the water spirits included healing and cleansing, something we needed; the secrets of the wind gave us ears we otherwise needed a radio for, and both of them had means of fighting by wielding wind or water as weapons- applied physics would find a new home here.

We didn't have much in the way of names for what we created over that Winter. All that we knew for certain was that we were now possessed with a supernatural connection of our own, and we would need it in the years to come when the fuels ran out, the cells ran dry, the ammunition was gone, and all of the associated technologies became so much useless junk.

To Split Rock Lighthouse-12

(From an entry labelled April 5th, 2013)

I’m still on the boat. It’s currently tied to a dock at a place somewhere that used to be Canada, and the endless winter weather not only abated, but Spring hit like a lion. Sure, it’s still cold here on the lake but the snow’s gone and with it the winter chill. The days are notably longer and Ken’s told me of survivor communities setting up crops. As for myself, I’ve been thinking of what to do now, and I’ve bugged Ken with questions as part of making sense of what happened.

Ken did me a solid and cleaned out the Lighthouse. If I want to go back, I can and Ken said he’d be okay with me doing that, but he would rather that I start over somewhere else. I’m inclined to take his advice and do that. Fake borders, lines on maps and such, don’t matter anymore so I think I’ll stay up here in Canada for now. This place where I’m docked has a small survivor group here, mostly made up of border folk so it’s mixed American and Canadian people- and, quite frankly, those things don’t matter anymore either. We’re just people now.

While Yuki’s truly dead and gone now—Ken made sure of that—the zombies are not. Out here they’re few and far between, but the thing is that everyone that was alive when the disaster hit—with some exceptions, such as Ken—is cursed (for lack of a better term) to turn and rise once they die. I’m not sure if that’s going to be true for babies conceived, but not yet born, and if it’s true of children we make now then shit is going to be bad for generations yet. However, Ken told me about something that makes this worse: the zombies has a leader, a dominant will that runs the dead as a hive-mind entity. Ken calls it “The Necromancer” and says that he’s fought this thing once already, escaping what used to be the Twin Cities—where this Necromancer rules from—and is now an increasingly alien necropolis.

Ken’s also taken me aside and given me some praise for keeping it together through all of this crazy stuff. He thinks that I’d be an asset to this group of survivors, and says I should stay here for a while at the very least to finish recovering from it. There’s a couple of head-doctors here, so at the least I can talk it out. Keeping this journal is also something he said was a smart thing to do, as it let me shed a lot of stress that would otherwise have crushed my mind and driven me nuts. I haven’t flipped out, drunk myself to death or otherwise killed myself, managed to adapt in very adverse conditions and so on and Ken respects that. At this time, I really needed to hear that I’m not a useless fleshbag marking time until I switch teams.

Time to take on the future.

To Split Rock Lighthouse-09

(From an entry dated March 4th, 2013)

The problem with being the only man on a boat is that you have to sleep some time, and I’m not that good at doing this boat stuff. I didn’t want someone climbing aboard and eating me, so I stayed way offshore and used the anchor to keep the boat in place, after I found the owner’s manual—I did not expect to find it, but there it was so I read it—and carefully read up on how to do it right. I ate, I drank, I slept and woke up not eaten by a grue so I figured that I did something right.

I also woke up to see Ken waiting for me in the galley. This didn’t set right with me, so I walked in warily. He put down a bowl full of corn flakes, and that was enough for me to stick around. He told me of his encounter with Yuki.

She’s dead. Let’s get that out of the way. All of the endless winter stuff will soon abate and the natural cycle will reassert itself, I assume. Ken told me that he surprised Yuki, making her think that he was me just long enough to get the deciding blow: a knife in the throat. That didn’t stop Yuki from a long fight in an attempt to take him with her. Even with a blade stuck in her neck, and her powers over weather nullified, the full physical prowess she displayed—which I already saw glimpses of before I fled—made her out to be truly monstrous. Ken walked away bleeding and injured, but Yuki died.

Ken said nothing about the child, other than Yuki didn’t have it when he made his move, so I don’t live with any concern over the slaughter of a pregnant woman, however inhuman she was. No, what hurt was what he said next. “Yuki Onna? Yuki no Onna, the Snow Maiden? You had a bona-fide Japanese monster in your bed and you couldn’t figure it out?” He didn’t let up. “No wonder she flipped out over the zombies and me running around out there. She planned on setting herself up here, Queen of an Eternal Winter Wonderland, with you as her captive man-candy and eventually extort survivors for relief from the ice and cold- just enough to stay alive and pay her tribute.”

Sucker. He called me a sucker, and he was right. Played on my sympathy, timed things to make her move most effective, quickly turned on me and pulled classic abusive girlfriend maneuvers on me to mess with my head. Sneaking out, quite frankly, was the smartest move I did in this whole affair. But I’m not sure that it’s quite over yet. Ken’s sticking around me, and he’s not the idle type; I have every reason to believe that something yet unfinished is coming for me as a loose end, and Ken is using me as bait to get at it- and both of us know it.

To Split Rock Lighthouse-08

(From an entry dated March 31st, 2013)

I might as well not exist. Yuki’s gone all super-villainess on me. She Witch-Queen Yuki, flying out there regularly—despite being obviously pregnant now—and freezing zombie herds solid before shattering them with hail storms. Spring doesn’t exist anymore either; Yuki, I swear, single-handedly fixed the weather to be in a permanent Winter and whether it’s idyllic or horrific depends entirely on her mood. It’s late March, and the snow is as thick now as it was in January. I just hide in the house or in the tower now, listening to the radio, and stay out of Yuki’s way; nothing I can say or do can sway her now and I want to stay alive.

In part the radio chatter, such as it is, is what keeps me going. I hear more and more chatter about the zombie-eating man. Writing this journal is the other thing, documenting just how everything is completely upside down now after the disaster. Either way, this is utterly insane; I’m keeping it together entirely through these tenuous ties to the outside world, such as they are. The plan remains the same, however, and that plan is to bug out as soon as I can; overland routes are not an option now, unfortunately, so I’ve been making a rope long enough to scale the cliff face and strong enough to hold me, my gear and maybe a canoe. It’s gotta work.

(From an entry dated April 3rd, 2013)

I’m out. It took a lot of hiding, facilitated by Yuki being obsessed with keeping the undead away, but I did manage to get out. I did not get out without help, however. As I sneaked out I found him, the zombie-eating man, sneaking in. I got to say that he’s as scary-looking as the reports say: skin white as snow, eyes a sickly yellow in blackened sockets, totally hairless and a lean and athletic build showing him to be an experienced and skilled tracker and killer. He came for Yuki. He found me, and—much to my amazement—he decided to hold off on Yuki and help me escape instead.

He said that his name was Ken, that the whole world is overrun by the undead, and that Yuki is not the first supernatural thing other than a zombie that he’s come across. He climbed up the cliff face from below, having stolen an abandoned boat to get here, and he helped me back down and into the boat. Then we talked a bit as he warmed me up, and I told him everything about Yuki. He told me to go after he began climbing back up to the lighthouse, to leave Yuki to him, and not to go to Duluth or Two Harbors, but instead head for the old Canadian border.

I don’t know why, but I trusted him and I did as he asked. Once out of sight, I kept along the coast and wondered “What now?”

To Split Rock Lighthouse-06

(From an entry dated February 24th)

Someone broke in from Two Harbors today. The man called himself “Dave”, and he was not at all calm or collected. Yuki and I listened to him for the whole of the morning. The man rambled on for much of this time about zombies, straight out of Romero moves or that TV show I never watched. (Yuki mentioned the many videogames, but I didn’t play them either.) According to Yuki, Dave described the bog-standard zombie initially until the last hour or so when he started talking about mutant zombies of a sort that mimic the living. They talked, ran, and were superhuman in ability; Yuki speculated that this is due to their lack of a need to pace themselves.

Someone broke in from Two Harbors today. The man called himself “Dave”, and he was not at all calm or collected. Yuki and I listened to him for the whole of the morning. The man rambled on for much of this time about zombies, straight out of Romero moves or that TV show I never watched. (Yuki mentioned the many videogames, but I didn’t play them either.) According to Yuki, Dave described the bog-standard zombie initially until the last hour or so when he started talking about mutant zombies of a sort that mimic the living. They talked, ran, and were superhuman in ability; Yuki speculated that this is due to their lack of a need to pace themselves.

Yuki took him to get him clean and fed. This meant going outside again, and that was when I saw Yuki freeze Dave solid and shatter his frozen form. She came back inside, and she snapped me out of my shock. She said that Dave was himself a zombie, one of those mutants, and a degenerating one at that. She claimed that he would have degenerated into your usual shambling flesh-eater within hours, and then come for us once he turned, so she killed him to protect us- all three of us.

I am no longer certain that I am sane. I witnessed the impossible, the literally impossible, and yet this woman who calls herself Yuki Onna tells me that she did it to protect me and our child. She said this as if freezing people to death was no different than shooting them in the head. Did she freeze that group of college kids in the car? This must be how Odysseus felt while with Circe, because I’m certainly afraid of this superwoman now, and yet the world beyond this lighthouse is probably no better overall- and likely to be much worse.

As for that child, if Yuki is real—and this is real—then her being with child is also real and that child is not human even if I am its—yes, “it”—father. I cannot delude myself into thinking that staying here is an option, not if she’s at all capable of turning that power on me. Now all of the oddities make sense, and once more I can hear the geeks and nerds back on campus laughing at me; I’ve become one big punch line to them, but for me this is becoming the protagonist of a horror story.

I just need to hold out until the season changes. Once the snow melts and the ice fades, I can make a run for it. If I can keep Yuki happy until then, I can escape from this place. As much I don’t like abandoning this lighthouse, I don’t think I have a choice anymore. In the meantime, I need to do what I can to keep others away; I can use that time to scout my way out of here when the time comes for me.

To Split Rock Lighthouse-05

(From an entry dated February 21st.)

I’ve taken to doing my radio contact from the top of the lighthouse during the day, looking out over Lake Superior towards Duluth. Yuki joins me, keeping a vigil for the promised FEMA rescue group. I’m told by the FEMA man on the radio that the disaster somehow the use of a heretofore unknown, but often theorized, bio-weapon and because of its effects FEMA has to shift away from its known disaster plans for the population to an entirely different plan- one that, fortunately, they were prepared to execute. Because of this need to shift plans, their response to holdouts like us is much delayed.

Yuki listens in utter silence when the FEMA man is on the air. She’s still not in favor of us going with them, but this is something else. When he pauses, she whispers into my ear, and she says that this man sounds like he’s affected by something. So, to nip this in the bud, I recorded the radio broadcasts and ran them through the editing suite on my laptop to show Yuki that she’s hearing things. Once I show her that he, at worst, is letting his fatigue interfere with his speaking then I thought that Yuki would back down and then I’d have the chance to convince her to go my way on this.

Well, that was the plan. It turns out that the voice patterns betray the man, albeit in ways that are subtle to ears not accustomed to searching for this difference. Long story short, Yuki’s right to be concerned. I don’t agree that he sounds like a dead man faking at being alive, but Yuki insists that we’re listening to a dead man and I’m just not familiar with the difference. “Not all of us didn’t listen to the old stories,” eh?

The world has suffered a global disaster, there’s a bio-weapon running around, and I’m trapped in a lighthouse with a Japanese girl who’s pregnant with my child and dancing around claiming that she can see spirits and dead people. The geeks in the anime club, if they could see this, would swear that I am now living out some hack comic writer’s fantasies in a multi-genre mashup that would only get on the stands or on the air in Japan. (No one in Hollywood would ever catch this pitch. That’s for sure.) I’m not sure which is worse: the possibility of this being a zombie apocalypse, or the possibility that my “wife” is insane.

At least Winter is on its way out. Soon February will be done, and the transition out of this and into Spring will begin. I think that getting Yuki to focus on this seasonal transition will be good enough to keep her mind in the real world and not off in Crazytown. Whatever’s holding up FEMA will certainly clear up once the snow and ice melt away. I have no reason to believe that rescue will be later than the end of next month.

The Treasure of the Iron Range-12

“You expected otherwise?” Ken said as Gabriel walked into view from nowhere.

Gabriel approached, but Ken felt no fear. He tore off an ear and chewed on it.

“Oh no.” Gabriel said, “But you did surprise me with your earnest attitude. No whining, no moping, no ‘But I’ve got to do this boring old shit that I hate’ crap that I’m so used to sweeping away to get a monkey to do what I want.”

“Just needed a second opinion is all.” Ken said, cracking open the skull and getting at the brain, “Some super-powerful guy shows up out of nowhere, talks like something out of an old movie and has me wanting to screw over his buddy- and I’m supposed to just go with it? You’ll forgive me if I’m a wee bit skeptical.”

Gabriel clapped his hands and smiled. “It’s been a very, very long time since I found myself a monkey that finally got what’s going on.”

Ken finished chewing some brains. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

Gabriel now got close to Ken. “Maybe the old man was right about your kind after all.”

“I figured that there was something you weren’t telling me about this.” Ken said, “That’s why I got that second opinion. Deeds don’t exist in vacuums, especially something that crosses streams like some dude using a European name and talking angels and demons wanting little old me to take on some ancient monster of a First Nations’ mythology. Once I got up to speed about this hunt you wanted me to do, I figured out that context.”

Gabriel took a seat across from Ken. “Go on. This should be amusing.”

Ken swallowed the eyes whole, one after the other. “I found it quite interesting that you’d send me against an ancient entity whose legendary prowess, and hunger, was so similar to my own. That’s when I recalled your words, that you still served loyally despite what you thought of Mankind, and put that together with something else I recalled from many years ago.”

“Which was?”

“The enemy can’t create, only imitate—only repurpose, rectify, remix—and therefore imitations can’t be better than the original.”

Gabriel nodded. “True, true. Go on.”

Ken finished the last of the soft bits, and now broke down the stripped skull into chip-sized bits. “I also recalled that you lot don’t reckon time as we do. ‘Wibbley-wobbley, timey-whimy’ as some of us call it, so I figured that the imitation and the original need not appear in the same place in linear time.”

“Go on. This is good.”

“This was a set-up alright, but not about me and the Necromancer. This is about the big picture, about long after I’m done here. I needed something that he had to complete myself, from your point of view.” Ken said, mixing the bone bits with some water and drinking it down, “And now, that’s done. By consuming Wendigo, I take on the curse and—because I’m the original—I fix it into a strong trait that makes myself into a subrrace that breeds true. I’m now, potentially, the father of a race of Men.”

Gabriel smiled, and took back his sword.

“Correct. Now, that wasn’t so bad, was it?”

“You’re still a dick, Gabby.”

The Treasure of the Iron Range-11

Ken smelled Wendigo’s foul essence as the cracks in the sarcophagus worsened, and soon became so palpable that he could taste it. He did not hesitate to attack, rushing it and thrusting Gabriel’s sword through one of the cracks. Within came a primal howl of pain, sending Wendigo into a frenzy that fueled his efforts to burst free of his prison. Knowing that his advantage soon would be gone Ken thrust the sword through more cracks, wounding his prey again and again before he had to fall back. As he got clear, the last blows from within shattered the sarcophagus- Wendigo was free.

The old demon, his long-dessicated corpse burning in places, locked eyes with Ken and saw that Ken wielded Gabriel’s sword. Words in a tongue long lost to time flew from Wendigo’s mouth as if they were hurled stones, but still both could not escape the similarity between them: both white as snow, both apex predators, both with inescapable drives and the means to satisfy them. Had Wendigo been fully in his power, as he was in life, only being a hirsute giant would meaningfully differentiate the two.

Ken and Wendigo now circled each other, like rival predators fighting over territory often do when they challenge each other, and both knew that this would not be a fight over status. This was for life itself, to true and eternal death, as neither would allow the other to survive. Despite similarities, Ken and Wendigo noticed fundamental and irreconcilable differences. All this they both knew without a doubt within a moment’s consideration, and that is why both of them pounced to attack.

Wendigo, still quite weak and already wounded, nonetheless struck hard against Ken and bloodied him bare-handed. Ken, once more filled with strength beyond previous expression, cut deep into Wendigo and flame licked at the wound. Wendigo picked up a club and used it against Ken, forcing him to block; Wendigo kept Ken on the back foot, slamming that club at him relentlessly, backing him up until Ken dodged an overhead blow while backed against the ruined sarcophagus and took off that hand.

Wendigo punched Ken and sent him reeling, giving the fiend time enough to pick up his severed hand and reattach it as it nothing happened, and then turning to cave in Ken’s skull with the club. Again Ken got out of the way, and this time Ken took off a leg at the knee. Wendigo fell over face-first, and this time Ken torched the severed limb, burning it to ash. Wendigo got up on his one remaining leg, but already Ken was upon him. First his arms, and then his other leg, got cut away and burned to ash in turn at Ken’s hands.

Wendigo howled, knowing what this meant for him. Desperation and defiance, mixed together into a horrific scream of pathetic tones, nearly deafened Ken as he stalked towards Wendigo’s limbless form. Off came Wendigo’s head, and Ken consumed its bits.

“Well done, monkey.”

The Treasure of the Iron Range-10

The next step, as Ken saw it, was to make his way into the mine. Down there were certain to be more of The Necromancer’s undead thralls, including the last of the more intelligent leader thralls. Ken knew that he was expected, and this would not be nearly so easy to execute as his antics on the surface. He expected that he would find a more dangerous opposition down there, one that needed no light or fresh air, and the constricted corridors of the old mine made his mobility moot. This time it was a fight of might, not maneuver.

Ken’s expectations got met on the way down. A far more aggressive response met him early, and Ken in turn demonstrated that he knew how to handle a longsword in confined quarters. Once he saw that the sword’s flames didn’t burn him, or that the blade didn’t cut him, Ken laughed long at the enemies before him. As their severed limbs and torsos caught fire and burnt to ash—some falling down the shaft, reduced to ash before impact—Ken heard the dull roar of more of them awaiting him below, and the laughter grew louder. He felt no fear.

Ken came out of the shaft swinging, cleaving through the undead and rotting flesh and burning them to ash before they could get a withered claw on him. Fury uncommonly expressed energized his form, and he continued to laugh at the absurdity as he hewed through the undead horde as if they were so many bales of hay. When the horde attempted to flank him, he quickly hewed his way out and then resumed the assault. They tried and failed multiple times, so at last the leader compelled their retreat and Ken eagerly pursued them- cutting them down without mercy.

As he reached the very bottom of the mine, where the thralls worked anew at long-dead veins to create underground a ritual space around which they unearthed a massive sarcophagus of silver that shown as if it were reflecting a full moon on a cloudless night. Before him now stood a great and large abomination that once was an ordinary man, now distorted into a caricature formerly seen only in the fiction of the Old World. On its face Ken felt the great presence of The Necromancer pushing down upon him like a giant bearing down on his very soul.

Ken drew the sword, blue-white flame flaring in The Necromancer’s presence, high over his head as he readied to strike. The Necromancer, directly possessing his amalgamated thrall-gestalt, did not waste words and charged Ken. Ken severed an arm, but still got spun about and tumbled off his line. As the severed flame burned to ash, a new one grew in its place. Ken, seeing how this would go, drew deep into his inner strength; with uncanny speed, Ken dodged the monster and severed limb after limb until he sliced the thrall down to no flesh at all.

The sarcophagus cracked.

The Treasure of the Iron Range-09

Ken figured that The Necromancer would have a presence on the surface waiting for him, and he was right. As he approached the old mine, he saw many patrolling undead marching in close order. These pickets patrolled in concentric circles, starting a mile out, and alternating in direction. The sheer size of the undead presence told Ken that his taunt made its mark, and the more life-like behavior told him that one of those more dangerous minions likely monitored this presence so the big man didn’t need to do it all himself.

Ken sat in a tree, downwind, and watched. Stealth seemed the obvious approach; sneak in, get the leader, the cohesion collapses and then create plenty of chaos to inhibit recovery before moving on to the next phase. However, Ken didn’t want to seek out his target; instead, he wanted the target to come to him. That’s why Ken drew the sword and dropped down on the patrol passing beneath him, reducing it to blue-flamed ash piles within seconds. He ambushed patrol after patrol, destroying each in turn, and soon knowing that there was a gaping hole in the outer defenses that could not be ignored.

As Ken expected, the remaining security patrols flooded down his way, but they did not arrive in any manner that could contain him. He went from one to the next, his laughter getting louder as more of then burned to ash before him, and none of The Necromancer’s undead thralls could so much as get a touch on Ken. He kept on cutting them down and burning them to ash, knowing that soon his target had to appear to salvage the situation. By the time that one could see ash piles all about for a few hundred yards, Ken’s expectation got fulfilled.

The leader, arriving with a bodyguard of a score of corpse-men, was indeed life-like as Ken expected. So was his bodyguard, and all of them armed with crude clubs—likely debris picked up from around the mine’s entrance—that showed them as being a more significant threat. Yet, once they saw Ken and the sword in his hands, they showed fear. That fear meant hesitation, and hesitation gave Ken an opening so Ken attacked.

This was not Ken’s first time fighting the life-like legionnaires of The Necromancer, as he’d been part of a raid upon the Necropolis itself some years before and encountered such minions then, so he had a firm idea of what to expect from them. Before they could regain composure, Ken already struck down a quarter of their number. Even then, and with supernatural will imposing itself upon them to attack, they still could not wholly commit. This sliver of a difference was all that Ken needed to put them all down.

Ken soon had the leader at his mercy. Armless, legless, backed up against a tree- helpless now against a foe stronger than expected. Ken took off the leader’s head and said “You can’t stop me, Necromancer.”

The Treasure of the Iron Range-08

When the sun rose, and Ken awoke, he saw the “gift” still lay cradled in his arms: a sword, firm in its scabbard, just like out of the stained-glass windows of Old World temples. He got to his feet, and after he stretched himself out of his lingering slumber he took up that scabbard and drew that sword. In a tongue dead millennia before the Old World’s destruction, a tongue that Ken knew from studies done in his life before now, he read the inscription put into the sword’s cross-guard: “Cast in the Name of God, Ye Not Guilty.”

“An executioner’s sword.” Ken said, and it became clear now what Gabriel thought of him: a slayer, sanctioned by powers beyond mortal comprehension, of those deemed beyond redemption. As he examined the sword, he noticed another inscription—in an even more obscure tongue—on the blade itself. Ken eyed that inscription with great care, and then held the blade as far away from himself as he could before speaking that word. The blade erupted in flames, blue-white flames just like those that he saw destroy the Old World, and now Ken comprehended the matter fully: to destroy Wendigo utterly, he be consumed by the uttermost fire of Creation itself.

Ken extinguished the flames by a repeated utterance, and then put away the sword. Ken broke camp, such as it was, and then made his way back to the open pit mine. Unlike last time, Ken ambushed the patrols instead of evading them. He destroyed them faster than the leaders could react, and then he moved inward and cleaved his way through the corpse-laborers mindlessly hacking away with rusted pics. Then, when the leaders finally reacted he cleaved his way through the ad-hoc militia of dead men and made his way to those leaders- or, rather, leader. The other two he previously saw were not there.

Without effort he hacked apart that leader—first arms, then legs—and then beheaded the now-limbless corpse-man. He picked up the severed dead head and stared into its lifeless eyes.

“I’m in your digs, gankin’ your mans, and I’m gonna get your treasure. You think you can stop me? Come at me, bro.”

Then he tossed the head aloft and carved it in half before it hit the ground. If that didn’t get The Necromancer’s attention, then Ken had no idea what would. To be certain, Ken scoured that open site and destroyed every last undead thing that he found. He burned what he destroyed, incinerating them and reducing them to ash. Once satisfied that he utterly destroyed The Necromancer’s presence at this old open-pit mine, he walked away from the scourged site and let his senses guide him to the next site- and the one that he knows will be more dangerous to handle: the old underground mine that formerly was a historical preservation site during the waning days of the Old World.

Ken felt a malevolent presence. This was the place; now’s the time.

The Treasure of the Iron Range-07

“The Creator—God, if you prefer—intended for what you call ‘The Azure Flames’ (how poetic!) to be much less destructive than what it was. However, there are plenty of those who defy him-“

“Like you?”

“Oh no, monkey-boy, not at all.” Gabriel said, “While I don’t know why your kind has his favor, and I still think that you’re not worthy of that favor, I am still loyal and do as I am told.”

“This ought to be good.” Ken said, and he bit into another piece.

“As I said, God has his enemies. Your kind has words for them, and those monkeys that they swayed to their cause. These enemies are of my kind, and so work differently from what your minds can comprehend.”

“Fallen angels and demons,” Ken said, “and their human cultists, right?”

“You’ve been paying attention! Good monkey.” Gabriel said, and patted Ken on the head, “The other entities—the spirits that some of your kind deal with—are lesser than my kind, to put this into a context that monkey-brains can comprehend, so we are talking about the primal powers of Creation.”

Ken didn’t hear, smell or taste any lies from Gabriel, yet.

“The enemy had two groups of cultists, spread across a great many subsets. One was a rather ordinary group of power-obsessed individuals who loved like monkeys often love this world, the sort you so often slaughtered in great numbers in your old life. The other group, the older one, trafficked with—and congressed with—the enemy regularly for the sort of power that monkeys can otherwise only steal by guile or raw will.”

Ken nodded, watching Gabriel pace around him as he often stalked prey.

“The monkeys got out of hand, and when their big attempt to steal the power unleashed at God’s hands when—against my expectations—a critical mass of you monkeys actually proved to be as good as expected and thus proved yourselves ready for the next step that cascaded into ‘The Azure Flames’. What you’re seeing now is the cleaning of that great mess.”

“Interesting.” Ken said, “Let me guess: The Necromancer is meant to clean out the humans not sufficiently up to standards, and then I’m here to clean him out when he’s done?”

Gabriel clapped, slowly. “Very good! You’re one clever monkey, but that’s not quite all of it. Far beyond this place, and this time, there are others who have vital roles to play. Some of them will be villains, as your kind sees things, and some will be heroes. All I can say for you, specifically, is that you’ll never do your job by yourself; it’s too big and will take too long.”

Ken mulled over those words. “I thought so. Now, about Wendigo in particular.”

“Ah, yes.” Gabriel said, “The moment at hand. You reflect him. This is no accident, monkey. Yet he is beyond your might, and outside the plan.”

Gabriel dropped a blanket before Ken.

“Use this. Do your job.”

The Treasure of the Iron Range-06

Ken culled another zombie from The Necromancer’s uncounted horde of undead thralls, sneaking in under cover of darkness and ambushing a sentry lurching about its patrol of a dig site. After he dragged the lifeless corpse away, and then began consuming it, Ken also mulled over a plan. Ken knew that The Necromancer, whatever else that villain was, was not a fool; it was wise to presume that The Necromancer would be wary of Ken intervening.

Ken chewed on the flesh of his meal. Even now, The Necromancer’s presence—through his horde—felt palpable to him. That presence, if it focused itself upon Wendigo, would be more than he could handle. Somehow, Ken must separate his target from his enemy and keep them apart long enough to put Wendigo down for good. Then there was that ally of his enemy, the one whose very presence radiated power beyond mortal means, and yet did not seem so dissonant as his enemy.

What of this thing that allied itself to The Necromancer? Would he—it—intervene? If it did, what would it do and how would it do that? Why did it look like a young Christopher Walken from some Old World horror film? Ken tossed the now-meatless bone aside, and heard it hit something other than a tree, rock or dirt- and then felt that same eerie presence.

“You’re a curious monkey.”

Ken leapt to his feet. Out from the darkness he saw a man-like figure appear—approach—him.

“Would you prefer a more familiar form?”

The figure changed its shape, appearing as that now-dead actor, and now Ken remembered.

“Gabriel.” Ken said, “That is your name, isn’t it?”

“In your tongue, so that’s good enough.” Gabriel said.

Ken took in a deep breath, drawing in through his nose and exhaling through his mouth, flexing himself without thinking as if he prepared for a fight. He smelled stale incense barely masking a rot off of Gabriel.

“Your kind calls mine ‘angels’.” Gabriel said, “Yes, the monkey I look like mimicked me well, and I must say that inspiring your kind can be quite entertaining. The story, however, I made up.”

“You’re not here to chat over dinner.” Ken said.

“True.” Gabriel said, “I’m here because I caught your little trick the other day. The ‘see-through-another’s-eyes’ trick that you did I found very interesting. I had to know what new monkey came up with this stuff. I’ve been following you now for weeks.”

Ken gave Gabriel a disbelieving look.

“Time doesn’t work the same way for us as it does for you.”

“So,” Ken said as he assessed Gabriel’s body language, “if you’re watching me, then why talk to me now?”

“Because you’re about to do something rash and stupid, and—as much as I’d love to watch you do your monkey-thing and fail spectacularly—I have my orders.”

“Which are?”

“There’s more to what’s going on than you’ve figured out—that you could ever figure out—on your own.”

"Tell me."

The Treasure of the Iron Range-05

Ken’s mind returned from the past. Still before him stood the water spirit, still shaped as a man, and still holding Ken’s head in its hands.

“I’ve known stories of other giants, from other places, in days like those.” Ken said, “This is one of that race?”

The spirit nodded. “Wendigo slumbers fitfully. Unable to exact its revenge as it wished, only now and again does it remind the world that it exists when a shade possesses a man.”

“Nephilim.” Ken said, “The spawn of angels and women, forbidden by God.”

“Yes. That is the word from across the seas for that race.”

“And thus Wendigo is an old and powerful demon.”

Again, the spirit nodded. “We also know that word.”

Ken looked at the spirit before him with a discerning eye and a disdainful scowl.

“I find it interesting that this demon and I share so many salient qualities.” Ken said.

“Predators are more alike than different.” The spirit turned away and faded into the lake.

“I see.” Ken said, “Farewell.”



Ken walked away from the edge of the water and sat against a tree. Ken calmed his body, and then his mind. He slowed his breathing, making it steady in its pace and deep in its action—breath in, breath out, breath in, breath out—and once more banished the noisome distractions of the world. As his mind calmed, Ken reviewed what he knew: The Necromancer sought to unearth a long-dead ancient demon, one originally of a race spawned in a time before the Old World’s reckoning of Man’s past, slain before Civilization reached these shores, and banished shortly thereafter into a prison made of its own grave. It was an insatiable monster, craving manflesh without thought or sentiment, a beast with naught by animal cunning in its life. It was no less a monster in death, and being dead it fell into the reach of The Necromancer.

Ken recalled that he knew of many survivors, holding out as far as they can from what both Ken and his fellow survivors now called The Necropolis—the seat of The Necromancer’s power, where the dead are legion—and that these survivors now formed the core around which new communities now formed, communities that opposed The Necromancer. He recalled thwarting undead hunting squads, seeking survivors to slay and assimilate into the undead horde. Having a powerful demon, once more clad in flesh, dedicated to this task would be a risk that The Necromancer would be willing to take even if its hunger proved to turn against that villain should undead flesh serve well enough as food.

Ken remembered the powerful presence by The Necromancer when he examined the memories of the zombie thrall, and then saw that The Necromancer relied on this ally to be the safeguard against any threat of Wendigo turning against The Necromancer. If Wendigo could be brought to heel using this ally’s power, then it could be effectively used by The Necromancer. Wendigo must be destroyed.

The Treasure of the Iron Range-04

The young hero sat before the fire, deep into a drug-induced trance. The elder danced about both man and fire, beseeching the spirits to aid the young man in overcoming the curse. Soon the wind turned harsh and cold, and with that biting chill came an oppressive presence. The elder splashed water into the young man’s face, breaking the trance.

“It is here.” The elder thrust the young man’s spear into his hands. “Go forth.”

The young man, spear in hand, took to his feat. The fire no longer warmed him, as the flames flickered from the chilling, cutting wind coming from the oppressive presence before them both. His eyes showed, faintly outlined, a great and monstrous giant-sized man-like figure.

“You are a shade!” The young man shook his spear at the foul spirit. “A shadow of a dead monster, unwanted and unneeded amongst the people- be gone!”

The great shade of Wendigo roared at them, blasting the warmth from their flesh with the force of a gust of cold winter wind. Unable to speak, and still mad with hunger, Wendigo’s shade leaped over the fire and bowled the young man over. Both men saw that the shade, for all intents and purposes, was no different than if it were still wreathed in flesh and thus lost their fear of it.

The elder drew a long ember from the fire and jabbed the shade in the flank, searing it and causing it to howl in pain and roll off the young man. The young man followed that example and thrust his spear into the fire, skewering an ember upon the point. When he turned to face the shade, it again stood ready to pounce, but hesitated.

“Now!” the elder said, throwing a ragged leather pouch at the shade, which it rent asunder with its clawed hands. The sands, powders and fetish cords fell upon the shade’s form as if it were flour upon an invisible form, making itself apparent even to the most dim of eyes. It flailed about, screaming as if it were burned by it, and then other unseen forces grappled its limbs and held it in place.

“Strike now!” the elder said, and the young man attacked. His spear pierced the revealed shade, driving the ember into its spectral form. The man then took another ember and did it again. Wendigo’s shade fell to the ground, as if dragged down by the forces holding it fast. The young man impaled one ember after another into it, and soon the shade’s form caught fire. The fire soon consumed it utterly, as each burning ember flared and burnt the shade’s form from within. The young man’s final strike was to its heart, but through its mouth, force-feeding his now-charred spear shaft as well as the ember on its tip down its throat and impaling it to the earth.

As the burning subsided, a rain storm began that washed clean the man, the elder and the ground. The curse lifted.