Timothy Ferguson's Blog

Sometimes the Cheshire Cat, Alan Moore, and Hank Green smash together. Could a magical fumble create a new apocalypse, that’s at the fringes of modern science?

Life on Earth is made of proteins and these could theoretically be either the type we have, or a second type which is a mirror image of the ones that actually exists. This difference is called “chirality” which is Greek for “handedness”. All life on earth all has the same chirality, and for a while when people were looking for life on Mars, one of the things that they thought would demonstrate that it had clearly developed independently would be if it had the opposite chirality. Why life on earth is homochiral, and why it has the particular option it has, rather than the alternative, is way beyond what we need here for gaming purposes.

A long time ago I was reading Alan Moore’s League Extraordinary of Gentlemen: Black Dossier. I have only ever stolen one idea from it for Ars Magica, which I don’t think anyone has ever used, which is that in some covenants people burst into song for no reason. Alan Moore says that Alice Liddell, of Alice in Wonderland fame, died of starvation after her second adventure, because the molecules in her body were isomers of what they should have been, so she could not absorb nutrients from regular food. He published that in 2007.

In 2024 34 scientists, including two Nobel laureates, published an open letter in Science magazine called “Confronting risks of mirror life”. Their key concern is that humans can now synthesize proteins, including reverse chirality proteins, and are making moves toward creating artificial life. There’s the potential to create complete organisms which are made of proteins with reversed chirality. They note that life made with reverse chirality might not be recognized, attacked, or digested by those with standard chirality. This life might still consume carbon and oxygen so they are concerned that even mirrored life didn’t become a plague, that ignored immune systems and standard chiral bacteriophages, it might nonetheless lock a huge amount of resources out of the biosphere.

In Mythic Europe a magus might create mirrored life due to a lab failure, such that player characters need to eliminate it entirely with Perdo magic. Alternatively a magus with mirrors or reflections as a sigil might always create complex mirror life and not notice, because the creatures reach their duration and vanish before they starve. When they try to make a long-lasting animals and their creatures keep starving, they might seek help to explain the odd limit on their spellcasting. A character returning from Twilight might have been reversed like Alice, and need to create inverted food to allow them to survive.

HG Wells has a character who has a similar thing happen to him, and can prove it to others because all of the scars on his body are on the reverse of the side his associates recall. This character, Gottfried Plattner is thrown into a Limbo-like afterlife by an explosive green powder that seems native to this other place. He returns in a similarly explosive way. This is presumably a form of vis.

If antichiral life is not digested normally, this might lead to a local folk saint. One of the easily detected miracles used to determine potential sainthood is incorruptibility. A dead body that doesn’t decay may become a relic, even if it is the body of a magus, because God cheats and makes good the lack on fake relics. If the body has Hermetic makings, like a Criamon magus as an example, what can the players do to keep the order’s secrets? Can you steal a corpse that’s now a relic? Can you change its appearance? Can you reverse its chirality back to normal so that it decays? Has the veneration drawn a faerie or demon that has been supporting the folk cult with magical powers that are misidentified as miracles?

Happy new year!

A few interesting things in the community. Darkwing has a thread on the Atlas Forum where people are discussing his ideas on materials they’d like authors in the community to work on. May I ask you to seriously consider participating in this? https://forum.atlas-games.com/t/30-days-of-product-ideas/176549

Mythic Europe Magazine
Submissions are open and I’ve accepted and laid out five articles. Currently it’s 29 pages including art and covers, so it’s smaller than the first one. I hope to have it out in April 2026. I also have a few other authors whose pieces are yet to arrive. Regardless, the price will be set on a cents per page basis, so if it’s smaller the price will be lower.

I’ve not written a piece myself. My earlier hope, to write a piece based on the Island of Doctor Moreau and stat up all of the creatures, won’t be possible because I have just finished a sprint for Ars Magica Monsters Volume 2 and need a break before I (hopefully) catch up on my backlog with AMM3 as an “Every Day In May” sprint. I’m thinking of an article where I replace the covenant finance rules in ArM5:DE with the Ordeal rules from Mystery Cults or the Labor point rules from City and Guild.

Cheshire
I’m going to move to the drafting stage on my Cheshire material. It hasn’t given me a coherent theme like the Cornwall research did, so it’s likely to be a set of possible covenants with nearby adventures. It won’t have the gazetteer feel of Cornwall. Chester itself is strangely devoid of the sort of folklore I usually find by this stage of the research.

You’ll still be getting some episodes of the rough research but there’s a definite end to the process of burrowing into books in sight. I have a couple of books still in note form that have not become episodes, because I’m keeping them to one a month. I have three books still coming from secondhand dealers on various other continents, and they may add to the folklore pile. Those aside the only other books I’m still wanting to digest for this are Sir Gawain and the Green Knight which is from the Wirral, and the Alice books, which I’ve been rereading and I’m once again sure they have surprisingly little to offer beyond monsters and free art.

The ideas for covenants which I’m working on are:

On the salt road through Longdendale, up through the mountains
At Beeston Castle, which starts being constructed in 1220

Saga frames would include

The Sleeping King under Alderley Edge. (Possibly with a route to Becoming as a character death alternative.)
The Green Knight (with the beheading game as an Ordeal). One of the authors I’m following is very heavily influenced by the Celtic Cult of the Head, but I’m old enough to remember when every roleplaying game had guys with trench coats and katanas, so I’m shy of going there.
The Court in Wonderland. One of the authors I’m following suggests that Carrol’s characters are based on a local guising troupe and that has potential as a mystery cult.

In terms of costs, I don’t see a way to do this properly without at least two maps, and that’s paid art, which means this will eventually be a paid supplement rather than “pay what you want”.

Other things
I literally don’t know what I’m doing after that. Returning to Venice? Rewriting Sanctuary of Ice for ArM5DE, complete with the missing covenants and the one I added since? My focus is to keep building my skills so that I can eventually do something the size of Venice again.

Here are a few pieces of useful material from Further Legends and Traditions of Cheshire by Frederick Woods, that suit Ars Magica games.

Birkenhead Hall

The lady of the hall became convinced her husband was having an affair with the maid. After seething for a while, she pushed the maid over the bannisters and fled with all of the portable valuables in the house, to live in a convent in France. The lord returned from some sort of travel and found the corpse of the maid shattered on the floor of the house’s entryway. He had the maid buried in his primary holding in Wales. She has haunted the hall since.

There are options here for retelling the story. If the lady of the hall was wrong, then the ghost wants revenge and can’t really have it, so she haunts. Woods says the lord died old, alone and embittered, but there’s the possibility that he instead continued his relationship with the ghost. This leads to the question of if you can have True Love, which in Ars Magica basically comes from the Divine, at the expense of your marriage, which is also blessed by God. The point I’d make is that in some codes of chivalry, marriage precludes True Love. In Arthurian epitome, Lancelot and Guinevere have True Love.

Capesthorne

This has much the same story of a moving peat island as mentioned in the Christina Hole notes. There’s an added detail that the man became ill and the woman nursed him back to heath during the storm.

Davenham Bridge

Some of the locals haunt a bridge here by dressing as skeletons and dancing with a “coffin” prop that also seems to dance. This is to keep the bridge clear at night to allow smugglers to use it without delay.

Dunham Massey

This manor is haunted by a a mason who was pushed from the roof. A master-mason found his adding an architecturally-unsuitable capstone to a column and, in a fit of anger, killed him. The ghost of the mason wanders the hall, moaning sadly at minor defects in the craftwork.

The Gatley Groaner

There was an enormously annoying man who died, but the joy of his neighbours was tempered when his ghost started wandering the street. He was chanting about how he’d never sold unwatered milk or true weight in flour. They had their parson put together a team for a “praying down”. By tradition this requires seven priests. In this case, all seven held candles. One cuts the ghost off from its grave, then the others hold it in place while another draws a chalk circle about it. They then join hands and pray about it so that it shrinks until the local parson can bind it under a rock near his gate.

Gentleman Higgins of Knutsford

Higgins was a surgeon by day and a highwayman by night. He used to sneak out after his wife fell asleep, using woolen socks to muffle the hoof falls of his horse while near his house. He was eventually caught when he discussed a murder with more familiarity of the scene that was generally known. While in prison he forged an almost-perfect pardon and had it posted to his jailer. Once it was detected he was hung rapidly.

Leasowe

There’s a man who who spends a day speaking to a mermaid on his boat and she gives him a ring to remember her by. He dies of wasting five days later. This is no surprise to anyone, because this is entirely expected in local folklore.

Longdendale

I’ve collected a lot of Longdendale stories and have skipped Sir Ro previously because he’s obviously Ulysses. He goes away on crusade and is captured. He takes years to come home. His neighbor tries to marry his supposed widow. When he returns he is unrecognizable, but he has somehow retained the half of a wedding ring he divided with his wife before leaving. He sends her the piece by servant, she recognizes him, and the neighbour is sent off with a flea in his ear. In the Woods version he returns home by miracle: he falls asleep in his cell and awakens on a hillside he’s familiar with near his home. So, a miracle brings the man home.

Marple

There’s an area of Marple called “No man’s land” where there’s effectively no mundane law. A man stole some linen that was being stretched by the river. The court case was long and held in Chester. At the end, the city did not particularly want to pay the costs of the trial. Why they were asked to is not clear in the story. One of their clerks discovered that this tiny part of the river was actually owned by a little village in Derbyshire. That village was also refuses to pay the costs. In practice this means there’s no one to enforce problems on this land, because there’s no-one to pay wages here, and even if there were, there’s no organisation willing to try cases.

Sir Gaultier of Hughenden

This gentleman and his lady had their own episode.

Sandbach Crosses

These were raised by King Peada to celebrate his betrothal in 615. They are holy and have images of Christ upon them. That Peada’s bride knifed him in the throat doesn’t seem to have affected their Dominion aura.

Spurstow Hall

There’s a house here, or perhaps an inn, where rich pedlars, or relations of the owner, do not leave alive. Eventually the servants inform on the owners and the dead are found buried under the pantry, each given a small barrel of brandy and left to starve to death.

A young man off to meet his girlfriend overheard a group of men plotting to attack a farmer’s house and rape his daughter. These were the sons of a local lord so he couldn’t go to the authorities, but he warned the farmer. In a perfect example of why there’s a crime called “housebreaking” the men quietly dug a hole in the side of the house, and then one checked the coast was clear by shoving his head through. The farmer bought his axe down on the man’s neck at this point, and refused to give his head back to his brothers. The body was taken in secret to a churchyard, but wherever a corpse is carried becomes a public right of way, and a headless ghost walks its length.

Toft: Ghost Trees?

There’s a group of chestnut trees here where a woman asked to be buried. She also requested a bag of nuts be buried with her. Woods does not say what type, but let’s go with chestnuts for thematic continuity. This was so she’d have snacks while waiting for Judgement. Her ghost has dropped one of these nuts and it was the ancestor of a patch of local trees. These seem like a Mentem vis source.

The Tushingham Ghost Duck
Woods notes his extraordinary skill at finding ghost ducks. This was a pet duck that annoyed the patrons of an inn, so the innkeeper killed, but did not eat it. She instead buried it beneath a staircase. The ghost of the duck would trip, chase and bite people, so as is traditional in Cheshire the local pastor called together a crack team of twelve priests and they prayed down the duck. This is the ghost that was shrunk so small it could go into a bottle.

Folklore notes

The surname “Pelling” is a sign of faerie blood. A long time ago a Welsh farmer saw some faeries dancing and captured one, taking her as his wife. She would never give her name, but using the same stealth he used to watch her people dance, he snuck close and heard the faerie woman mourning the loss of their sister, Penelope. Once the man told his wife h knew her name she placed a new prohibition on him, that she would be forced to leave if he ever struck her with iron. They lived together many years and had children, but one day a horse was playing up and he tried to slap it with its bridle. He missed and hit his wife with the bit, so she vanished. The Pellings are all descended from Penelope.

If a woman is married in her shift, her new husband does not take on her debts. She changes in the vestry, generally.

A baby needs to be carried upstairs before birth, so it will rise in life. To allow this, lying in rooms are always on the ground floor. If there’s no suitable staircase, a person may step up onto a chair to complete the ritual. Failure to do this may cause Flaws based on ill-luck.

At funerals it is customary for all present to touch the hand of the corpse. It is unlucky not to. This may be an echo of the belief that if the murderer touches the corpse of a victim, it will begin to bleed.

Woods mentions two festivals of interest. Blazing the wheat involves running around the field with flaming branches to scare off evil spirits. He places it on “Old Christmas Night” which is January the 6th. This name for the Feast of the Epiphany doesn’t make sense in 1220, because the synchronization of calendars under Gregory XIII, which shifts the year sufficient days for there to be an “old Christmas Day” in January, is still 263 years in the future. England didn’t harmonize until 1752, which causes the drift of eleven days.

There’s a tradition in Maying where young folk go around the village and put up greenery that jokingly refers to the character of the person who owns the door. So, a young man expected to marry in the next year would get a branch of broom, for example, or a woman who was fair get a branch of pear. He lists several other examples, but if you weren’t in on the cant, you’d never really work out what a particular tree meant.

Students demand a holiday on Oak Apple Day, which is the 29th of May, with a traditional song.

The heraldic symbol of the Breteon family is a bear muzzle. A knight of the family was disturbed at dinner by a servant and, in a fit of anger, chased him through the house, finally killing him with his sword. When he turned himself in to the king he was tasked with finding a way to muzzle a bear in three days, or being fed to one. He succeeded in muzzling one of the bears in the tower, and kept the device as his (ahem) device.

The Davenport family has a felon’s head in a noose as their device. This may be because they were the king’s foresters for Macclesfield and had the right to pass death sentences. The other versions of the story are that an ancestor either killed one of the king’s messengers or was cowardly in battle, and they were given the device as a punishment.

A used parson’s wig is a charm against witches. That’s a minor magic item. I wonder if it works while it is still sitting atop the parson? A sort of hidden weapon in the fight against evil?

Robert Herrick’s elegy for willow trees seems to suit a dryad that feeds on, and perhaps relieves, sorrow. I’m interested in her grove as a vis source for a covenant, but for it to work, the magi need the local people to have passionate, tragic affairs. I could see the dryad making wicker crowns that are sold in the Merceria in Venice.

First Herrick’s poem, then two versions of the Dryad of the Forlorn.

Thou art to all lost love the best,
The only true plant found,
Wherewith young men and maids distrest
And left of love, are crown’d.

When once the lover’s rose is dead
Or laid aside forlorn,
Then willow-garlands, ’bout the head,
Bedew’d with tears, are worn.

When with neglect, the lover’s bane,
Poor maids rewarded be,
For their love lost their only gain
Is but a wreath from thee.

And underneath thy cooling shade,
When weary of the light,
The love-spent youth, and love-sick maid,
Come to weep out the night.

Faerie Might: 20
Characteristics: Int +1, Per +1, Pre 0, Com +3, Str 0, Sta 0, Dex 0, Qik 0
Size: -1
Virtues and Flaws: Greater Faerie Power, Cognizant Within Role, Faerie Sight, Faerie Speech, Feast of the Fae (tears of jilted lovers), Humanoid Faerie, Increased Faerie Might, Lesser Faerie Powers, Observant, Restricted Might (winter), Small Frame, Sovereign Ward (requited love), Vunerable to Iron. Vulnerable to injury to her tree.
Personality Traits: Compassionate +3
Reputation: Where lovers go to weep (local) +1
Combat: n/a
Soak: 0
Wound Penalties –1 (1-4), –3 (5-8), –5 (9-12), Incapacitated (13–16), Dead (17+)
Pretenses: Athletics 3 (dancing), Awareness 5 (humans), Charm 5 (sorrowful people), Etiquette 3 (faerie court), Faerie Speech 5 (conversation), Music 6 (woodwinds)
Powers:
Craft Magical Trinket: 10 points, Int 0, Mentem
Creates a wicker circlet that grants the Clear Thinker Virtue until removed.
Coils of the Entangling Plants: 2 points, Init.–2, Herbam: as the spell of the same name, ArM5 page 138.
Consoling Sound : 3 points, Init –3, Mentem: May create disenchantment with a lover while the target can hear the dryad or the moving leaves of her tree. (Variant of Enthralling Sound).
Extended Glamour: 0 points, constant, Mentem.
Equipment:
Vis: 4 pawns Mentem, in tree’s wood.
Appearance: A quiet, consoling woman who waits in the shade by the river.
Source: Based on the Lesser Nymph in Realms of Power: Faerie page 73.

Desola is a grandmotherly figure who sells wickerwork in the Merceria, generally headbands and masks. This dryad’s tree is in a Venetian garden behind the house in which is lives. This is mysterious because the gardens in Venice are like enormous buried tubs. The tree isn’t where it is naturally. There must be a story there: moving trees is difficult, particularly if the dryad cannot be pacified.

Desola’s stall iso one of the less fantastical in the Merceria. Her reputation is well-established among the matrons of the city. A visit to her stall is, in some families, a rite of passage. She also has a sideline with priests unable to keep their thoughts pure.

Faerie Might: 20
Characteristics: Int +1, Per +1, Pre 0, Com +3, Str 0, Sta 0, Dex 0, Qik 0
Size: -1
Virtues and Flaws: Greater Faerie Power, Cognizant Within Role, Faerie Sight, Faerie Speech, Feast of the Fae (tears of jilted lovers), Increased Faerie Might, Lesser Faerie Powers, Observant, Passes for Human, Restricted Might (winter), Small Frame, Sovereign Ward (requited love), Vulnerable to injury to her tree.
Personality Traits: Compassionate +3
Reputation: An aid to the broken-hearted (Venetian matrons) +3
Combat: n/a
Soak: 0
Wound Penalties –1 (1-4), –3 (5-8), –5 (9-12), Incapacitated (13–16), Dead (17+)
Pretenses: Athletics 3 (boating), Awareness 5 (shunned lovers), Charm 5 (sorrowful people), Etiquette 3 (faerie court), Faerie Speech 5 (conversation), Music 6 (woodwinds)
Powers:
Craft Magical Trinket: 10 points, Int 0, Mentem
Creates a wicker circlet, mask, or bracelet that grants the Clear Thinker Virtue until removed.
Coils of the Entangling Plants: 2 points, Init.–2, Herbam: as the spell of the same name, ArM5 page 138.
Consoling Sound : 3 points, Init –3, Mentem: May create disenchantment with a lover while the target can hear the dryad or the moving leaves of her tree. (Variant of Enthralling Sound).
Guide: 3 points, Init -1, Mentem. Desola uses this power to draw in customers, but carefully never uses it to advise people about their love affairs. Doing so prevents her using Feast of the Fae with a weeping person.
Equipment:
Vis: 4 pawns Mentem, a handkerchief. Uses this to dab at the eyes of her patrons. As an option, this is an External Vis Source (Faerie Greater Virtue) which provides the holder with the Intuition Minor Virtue.
Appearance: A quiet, consoling woman who waits in the shade by the river.
Source: Based on the Lesser Nymph in Realms of Power: Faerie page 73.

There’s a cryptid found in Longdendale, a mountain pass in the Peak District of England. It’s a slug the size of a horse, with a head that looks like that of a whale. It has at least one eye, which swivels madly in its socket. Boneless makes a grating noise as it travels. It doesn’t seem linked to any Realm: it might just be an animal that has risen up out of the caves that riddle the Peak.

Characteristics: Cun –2, Per +4, Pre –2, Com –2, Str +10, Sta +3, Dex –1, Qik –6

Size: +3

Virtues and Flaws: Magic Animal, 9 x Large, Finds salt mildly poisonous.

Personality Traits: Hungry +3, Patient +2

Combat: Bite: Init –6, Attack +5, Defense +5, Damage +14

This bite is made using a tongue covered in tiny, rasping teeth.

Soak: 0

Fatigue Levels: OK, 0/0, -1/–1, -3/–3, -5/–5, Unconscious

Wound Penalties: –1 (1-8), –3 (9-16), –5 (17–24), Incapacitated (25-32), Dead (33+).

Abilities: Awareness 9 (predators), Brawl 5 (bite), Swim 5 (river).

Vis: Nil.

Appearance: a slug the size of a horse, with an oddly-shaped head.

Source: Based on the Sarmatian Sea Snails in Transforming Mythic Europe, page 57.

One of the annoying things in my Cheshire folklore review is that I keep finding excellent spots for covenants, but little folklore around them to support campaigns. I discovered there’s a mineral found only in a couple of places, called “blue john” and though that it was likely useful as a vis source. Blue John is only mined in Casleton, which is slightly north of the area of Cheshire we are interested in. Some local folklore says that the Romans mined it, but that seem unlikely given the lack of archaeological finds. They did mine lead in the area, which could allow the reuse of the faerie-haunted lead mine in Antagonists.

Blue John is chemically fluorite, although the color is unusual. I’d have sworn that House Tremere used a lot of fluorite. Back when I was writingthe book I bought myself a polished pebble for each book and the one for True Lineages is a fluorite, because there’s a lot of it about in Transylvania. I can’t however, find any reference to it in the books, and the vast majority of the mineral found in Transylvania is green, so it likely has different magical effects to blue john. Folklore on the use of this stone in magical practice seems sparse. The claim by William Adam, an early local historian, that Latin drinking vessels called vasa murrhina were made from this stone is unlikely. There are two examples, and these seem to have been made from a deposit in Iraq. This is one of those things which clearly should be a vis source, and yet, oddly, folklore provides us with little assistance in developing it.

This story, from Arthur Conan Doyle, suggests that the mine for blue john intersects with a vast underground network of lightless caves. This is inhabited by an ecology of troglofauna, including a surviving subspecies of cave bear.

Characteristics: Cun +3*, Per 0, Pre 0, Com -5, Str +10, Sta +4, Dex +2, Qik +2*
* The narrator says the bear is cunning and quick, so I’ve made it markedly smarter and swifter than a brown bear, despite its increased size.
Size: +4*
* Note that this makes the cave bear the mass of an elephant. It may be that the witness in the story was so afraid that his estimation of size (“ten times that of any bear ever seen on earth”) was in error.
Confidence Score: 1 (3)
Virtues and Flaws: Ferocity (when injured), Improved Characteristics (x2), Tough, Greedy (minor), Reclusive
Qualities: Aggressive, Ambush predator*, Extra Natural Weapons (claws), Fast Runner, Grapple, Hardy, Imposing Appearance, Large Claws, Pursuit Predator, Tough Hide, Trogobite**
* It is an ambush, rather than a pursuit predator. This grants the Ability Hunt 4, with specialisation in ambush..It can use this ability to move quietly to slowly stalk prey.
** Has evolved in darkness, such that it finds sunlight painful and navigates by hearing and scent. This does not change its statistics, only how it appears and acts in play.
Personality Traits: Brave +3, Slothful +3, Aggressive +2
Reputations: Ferocious (local) 2
Combat:
Claws: Init +2, Attack +13, Defense +9, Damage +14
Teeth: Init +2, Attack +11, Defense +7, Damage +11
Grapple: Init +2, Attack +7, Defense +5, Damage n/a
Soak: +10
Fatigue Levels: OK, 0/0, -1/-1, -3/-3, -5, Unconscious
Wound Penalties: -1 (1-8), -3 (9-16), -5 (17-24), Incapacitated (25-32), Dead (33+)
Abilities: Athletics 3 (endurance), Awareness 4 (prey), Brawl 5 (claws), Hunt 4 (ambush), Survival 5 (foraging), Swim 3 (against the current)
Natural Weapons: Large Claws: Init 0, Atk +5, Def +3, Dam +4; Teeth: Init 0, Atk +3, Def +1, Dam +1. The bear’s tough hide and thick fur combine to give it a Protection of +3.
Source: The (Brown) Bear, The Book of Beasts page 2.
Appearance: ” I have said that he reared like a bear, and there was something bear-like – if one could conceive a bear which was ten-fold the bulk of any bear seen upon earth – in his whole pose and attitude, in his great crooked forelegs with their ivory-white claws, in his rugged skin, and in his red, gaping mouth, fringed with monstrous fangs. Only in one point did he differ from the bear, or from any other creature which walks the earth, and even at that supreme moment a shudder of horror passed over me as I observed that the eyes which glistened in the glow of my lantern were huge, projecting bulbs, white and sightless. “

The Librivox reader for the following story is Chiquito Crasto. Thanks to him and his production team.

***

The following narrative was found among the papers of Dr. James Hardcastle, who died of phthisis on February 4th, 1908, at 36, Upper Coventry Flats, South Kensington. Those who knew him best, while refusing to express an opinion upon this particular statement, are unanimous in asserting that he was a man of a sober and scientific turn of mind, absolutely devoid of imagination, and most unlikely to invent any abnormal series of events. The paper was contained in an envelope, which was docketed, “A Short Account of the Circumstances which occurred near Miss Allerton’s Farm in North-West Derbyshire in the Spring of Last Year.” The envelope was sealed, and on the other side was written in pencil -DEAR SEATON, – “It may interest, and perhaps pain you, to know that the incredulity with which you met my story has prevented me from ever opening my mouth upon the subject again. I leave this record after my death, and perhaps strangers may be found to have more confidence in me than my friend.”

Inquiry has failed to elicit who this Seaton may have been. I may add that the visit of the deceased to Allerton’s Farm, and the general nature of the alarm there, apart from his particular explanation, have been absolutely established. With this foreword I append his account exactly as he left it. It is in the form of a diary, some entries in which have been expanded, while a few have been erased.

April 17. – Already I feel the benefit of this wonderful upland air. The farm of the Allertons lies fourteen hundred and twenty feet above sea-level, so it may well be a bracing climate. Beyond the usual morning cough I have very little discomfort, and, what with the fresh milk and the home-grown mutton, I have every chance of putting on weight. I think Saunderson will be pleased.

The two Miss Allertons are charmingly quaint and kind, two dear little hard-working old maids, who are ready to lavish all the heart which might have gone out to husband and to children upon an invalid stranger. Truly, the old maid is a most useful person, one of the reserve forces of the community. They talk of the superfluous woman, but what would the poor superfluous man do without her kindly presence? By the way, in their simplicity they very quickly let out the reason why Saunderson recommended their farm. The Professor rose from the ranks himself, and I believe that in his youth he was not above scaring crows in these very fields.

It is a most lonely spot, and the walks are picturesque in the extreme. The farm consists of grazing land lying at the bottom of an irregular valley. On each side are the fantastic limestone hills, formed of rock so soft that you can break it away with your hands. All this country is hollow. Could you strike it with some gigantic hammer it would boom like a drum, or possibly cave in altogether and expose some huge subterranean sea. A great sea there must surely be, for on all sides the streams run into the mountain itself, never to reappear. There are gaps everywhere amid the rocks, and when you pass through them you find yourself in great caverns, which wind down into the bowels of the earth. I have a small bicycle lamp, and it is a perpetual joy to me to carry it into these weird solitudes, and to see the wonderful silver and black effect when I throw its light upon the stalactites which drape the lofty roofs. Shut off the lamp, and you are in the blackest darkness. Turn it on, and it is a scene from the Arabian Nights.

But there is one of these strange openings in the earth which has a special interest, for it is the handiwork, not of nature, but of man. I had never heard of Blue John when I came to these parts. It is the name given to a peculiar mineral of a beautiful purple shade, which is only found at one or two places in the world. It is so rare that an ordinary vase of Blue John would be valued at a great price. The Romans, with that extraordinary instinct of theirs, discovered that it was to be found in this valley, and sank a horizontal shaft deep into the mountain side. The opening of their mine has been called Blue John Gap, a clean-cut arch in the rock, the mouth all overgrown with bushes. It is a goodly passage which the Roman miners have cut, and it intersects some of the great water-worn caves, so that if you enter Blue John Gap you would do well to mark your steps and to have a good store of candles, or you may never make your way back to the daylight again. I have not yet gone deeply into it, but this very day I stood at the mouth of the arched tunnel, and peering down into the black recesses beyond, I vowed that when my health returned I would devote some holiday to exploring those mysterious depths and finding out for myself how far the Roman had penetrated into the Derbyshire hills.

Strange how superstitious these countrymen are! I should have thought better of young Armitage, for he is a man of some education and character, and a very fine fellow for his station in life. I was standing at the Blue John Gap when he came across the field to me.

“Well, doctor,” said he, “you’re not afraid, anyhow.”

“Afraid!” I answered. “Afraid of what?”

“Of it,” said he, with a jerk of his thumb towards the black vault, “of the Terror that lives in the Blue John Cave.”

How absurdly easy it is for a legend to arise in a lonely countryside! I examined him as to the reasons for his weird belief. It seems that from time to time sheep have been missing from the fields, carried bodily away, according to Armitage. That they could have wandered away of their own accord and disappeared among the mountains was an explanation to which he would not listen. On one occasion a pool of blood had been found, and some tufts of wool. That also, I pointed out, could be explained in a perfectly natural way. Further, the nights upon which sheep disappeared were invariably very dark, cloudy nights with no moon. This I met with the obvious retort that those were the nights which a commonplace sheep-stealer would naturally choose for his work. On one occasion a gap had been made in a wall, and some of the stones scattered for a considerable distance. Human agency again, in my opinion. Finally, Armitage clinched all his arguments by telling me that he had actually heard the Creature – indeed, that anyone could hear it who remained long enough at the Gap. It was a distant roaring of an immense volume. I could not but smile at this, knowing, as I do, the strange reverberations which come out of an underground water system running amid the chasms of a limestone formation. My incredulity annoyed Armitage so that he turned and left me with some abruptness.

And now comes the queer point about the whole business. I was still standing near the mouth of the cave turning over in my mind the various statements of Armitage, and reflecting how readily they could be explained away, when suddenly, from the depth of the tunnel beside me, there issued a most extraordinary sound. How shall I describe it? First of all, it seemed to be a great distance away, far down in the bowels of the earth. Secondly, in spite of this suggestion of distance, it was very loud. Lastly, it was not a boom, nor a crash, such as one would associate with falling water or tumbling rock, but it was a high whine, tremulous and vibrating, almost like the whinnying of a horse. It was certainly a most remarkable experience, and one which for a moment, I must admit, gave a new significance to Armitage’s words. I waited by the Blue John Gap for half an hour or more, but there was no return of the sound, so at last I wandered back to the farmhouse, rather mystified by what had occurred. Decidedly I shall explore that cavern when my strength is restored. Of course, Armitage’s explanation is too absurd for discussion, and yet that sound was certainly very strange. It still rings in my ears as I write.

April 20. – In the last three days I have made several expeditions to the Blue John Gap, and have even penetrated some short distance, but my bicycle lantern is so small and weak that I dare not trust myself very far. I shall do the thing more systematically. I have heard no sound at all, and could almost believe that I had been the victim of some hallucination suggested, perhaps, by Armitage’s conversation. Of course, the whole idea is absurd, and yet I must confess that those bushes at the entrance of the cave do present an appearance as if some heavy creature had forced its way through them. I begin to be keenly interested. I have said nothing to the Miss Allertons, for they are quite superstitious enough already, but I have bought some candles, and mean to investigate for myself.

I observed this morning that among the numerous tufts of sheep’s wool which lay among the bushes near the cavern there was one which was smeared with blood. Of course, my reason tells me that if sheep wander into such rocky places they are likely to injure themselves, and yet somehow that splash of crimson gave me a sudden shock, and for a moment I found myself shrinking back in horror from the old Roman arch. A fetid breath seemed to ooze from the black depths into which I peered. Could it indeed be possible that some nameless thing, some dreadful presence, was lurking down yonder? I should have been incapable of such feelings in the days of my strength, but one grows more nervous and fanciful when one’s health is shaken.

For the moment I weakened in my resolution, and was ready to leave the secret of the old mine, if one exists, for ever unsolved. But tonight my interest has returned and my nerves grown more steady. Tomorrow I trust that I shall have gone more deeply into this matter.

April 22. – Let me try and set down as accurately as I can my extraordinary experience of yesterday. I started in the afternoon, and made my way to the Blue John Gap. I confess that my misgivings returned as I gazed into its depths, and I wished that I had brought a companion to share my exploration. Finally, with a return of resolution, I lit my candle, pushed my way through the briars, and descended into the rocky shaft.

It went down at an acute angle for some fifty feet, the floor being covered with broken stone. Thence there extended a long, straight passage cut in the solid rock. I am no geologist, but the lining of this corridor was certainly of some harder material than limestone, for there were points where I could actually see the tool-marks which the old miners had left in their excavation, as fresh as if they had been done yesterday. Down this strange, old-world corridor I stumbled, my feeble flame throwing a dim circle of light around me, which made the shadows beyond the more threatening and obscure. Finally, I came to a spot where the Roman tunnel opened into a water-worn cavern – a huge hall, hung with long white icicles of lime deposit. From this central chamber I could dimly perceive that a number of passages worn by the subterranean streams wound away into the depths of the earth. I was standing there wondering whether I had better return, or whether I dare venture farther into this dangerous labyrinth, when my eyes fell upon something at my feet which strongly arrested my attention.

The greater part of the floor of the cavern was covered with boulders of rock or with hard incrustations of lime, but at this particular point there had been a drip from the distant roof, which had left a patch of soft mud. In the very centre of this there was a huge mark – an ill-defined blotch, deep, broad and irregular, as if a great boulder had fallen upon it. No loose stone lay near, however, nor was there anything to account for the impression. It was far too large to be caused by any possible animal, and besides, there was only the one, and the patch of mud was of such a size that no reasonable stride could have covered it. As I rose from the examination of that singular mark and then looked round into the black shadows which hemmed me in, I must confess that I felt for a moment a most unpleasant sinking of my heart, and that, do what I could, the candle trembled in my outstretched hand.

I soon recovered my nerve, however, when I reflected how absurd it was to associate so huge and shapeless a mark with the track of any known animal. Even an elephant could not have produced it. I determined, therefore, that I would not be scared by vague and senseless fears from carrying out my exploration. Before proceeding, I took good note of a curious rock formation in the wall by which I could recognize the entrance of the Roman tunnel. The precaution was very necessary, for the great cave, so far as I could see it, was intersected by passages. Having made sure of my position, and reassured myself by examining my spare candles and my matches, I advanced slowly over the rocky and uneven surface of the cavern.

And now I come to the point where I met with such sudden and desperate disaster. A stream, some twenty feet broad, ran across my path, and I walked for some little distance along the bank to find a spot where I could cross dry-shod. Finally, I came to a place where a single flat boulder lay near the centre, which I could reach in a stride. As it chanced, however, the rock had been cut away and made top-heavy by the rush of the stream, so that it tilted over as I landed on it and shot me into the ice-cold water. My candle went out, and I found myself floundering about in utter and absolute darkness.

I staggered to my feet again, more amused than alarmed by my adventure. The candle had fallen from my hand, and was lost in the stream, but I had two others in my pocket, so that it was of no importance. I got one of them ready, and drew out my box of matches to light it. Only then did I realize my position. The box had been soaked in my fall into the river. It was impossible to strike the matches.

A cold hand seemed to close round my heart as I realized my position. The darkness was opaque and horrible. It was so utter, one put one’s hand up to one’s face as if to press off something solid. I stood still, and by an effort I steadied myself. I tried to reconstruct in my mind a map of the floor of the cavern as I had last seen it. Alas! the bearings which had impressed themselves upon my mind were high on the wall, and not to be found by touch. Still, I remembered in a general way how the sides were situated, and I hoped that by groping my way along them I should at last come to the opening of the Roman tunnel. Moving very slowly, and continually striking against the rocks, I set out on this desperate quest.

But I very soon realized how impossible it was. In that black, velvety darkness one lost all one’s bearings in an instant. Before I had made a dozen paces, I was utterly bewildered as to my whereabouts. The rippling of the stream, which was the one sound audible, showed me where it lay, but the moment that I left its bank I was utterly lost. The idea of finding my way back in absolute darkness through that limestone labyrinth was clearly an impossible one.

I sat down upon a boulder and reflected upon my unfortunate plight. I had not told anyone that I proposed to come to the Blue John mine, and it was unlikely that a search party would come after me. Therefore I must trust to my own resources to get clear of the danger. There was only one hope, and that was that the matches might dry. When I fell into the river, only half of me had got thoroughly wet. My left shoulder had remained above the water. I took the box of matches, therefore, and put it into my left armpit. The moist air of the cavern might possibly be counteracted by the heat of my body, but even so, I knew that I could not hope to get a light for many hours. Meanwhile there was nothing for it but to wait.

By good luck I had slipped several biscuits into my pocket before I left the farm-house. These I now devoured, and washed them down with a draught from that wretched stream which had been the cause of all my misfortunes. Then I felt about for a comfortable seat among the rocks, and, having discovered a place where I could get a support for my back, I stretched out my legs and settled myself down to wait. I was wretchedly damp and cold, but I tried to cheer myself with the reflection that modern science prescribed open windows and walks in all weather for my disease. Gradually, lulled by the monotonous gurgle of the stream, and by the absolute darkness, I sank into an uneasy slumber.

How long this lasted I cannot say. It may have been for an hour, it may have been for several. Suddenly I sat up on my rock couch, with every nerve thrilling and every sense acutely on the alert. Beyond all doubt I had heard a sound – some sound very distinct from the gurgling of the waters. It had passed, but the reverberation of it still lingered in my ear. Was it a search party? They would most certainly have shouted, and vague as this sound was which had wakened me, it was very distinct from the human voice. I sat palpitating and hardly daring to breathe. There it was again! And again! Now it had become continuous. It was a tread – yes, surely it was the tread of some living creature. But what a tread it was! It gave one the impression of enormous weight carried upon sponge-like feet, which gave forth a muffled but ear-filling sound. The darkness was as complete as ever, but the tread was regular and decisive. And it was coming beyond all question in my direction.

My skin grew cold, and my hair stood on end as I listened to that steady and ponderous footfall. There was some creature there, and surely by the speed of its advance, it was one which could see in the dark. I crouched low on my rock and tried to blend myself into it. The steps grew nearer still, then stopped, and presently I was aware of a loud lapping and gurgling. The creature was drinking at the stream. Then again there was silence, broken by a succession of long sniffs and snorts of tremendous volume and energy. Had it caught the scent of me? My own nostrils were filled by a low fetid odour, mephitic and abominable. Then I heard the steps again. They were on my side of the stream now. The stones rattled within a few yards of where I lay. Hardly daring to breathe, I crouched upon my rock. Then the steps drew away. I heard the splash as it returned across the river, and the sound died away into the distance in the direction from which it had come.

For a long time I lay upon the rock, too much horrified to move. I thought of the sound which I had heard coming from the depths of the cave, of Armitage’s fears, of the strange impression in the mud, and now came this final and absolute proof that there was indeed some inconceivable monster, something utterly unearthly and dreadful, which lurked in the hollow of the mountain. Of its nature or form I could frame no conception, save that it was both light-footed and gigantic. The combat between my reason, which told me that such things could not be, and my senses, which told me that they were, raged within me as I lay. Finally, I was almost ready to persuade myself that this experience had been part of some evil dream, and that my abnormal condition might have conjured up an hallucination. But there remained one final experience which removed the last possibility of doubt from my mind.

I had taken my matches from my armpit and felt them. They seemed perfectly hard and dry. Stooping down into a crevice of the rocks, I tried one of them. To my delight it took fire at once. I lit the candle, and, with a terrified backward glance into the obscure depths of the cavern, I hurried in the direction of the Roman passage. As I did so I passed the patch of mud on which I had seen the huge imprint. Now I stood astonished before it, for there were three similar imprints upon its surface, enormous in size, irregular in outline, of a depth which indicated the ponderous weight which had left them. Then a great terror surged over me. Stooping and shading my candle with my hand, I ran in a frenzy of fear to the rocky archway, hastened up it, and never stopped until, with weary feet and panting lungs, I rushed up the final slope of stones, broke through the tangle of briars, and flung myself exhausted upon the soft grass under the peaceful light of the stars. It was three in the morning when I reached the farm-house, and today I am all unstrung and quivering after my terrific adventure. As yet I have told no one. I must move warily in the matter. What would the poor lonely women, or the uneducated yokels here think of it if I were to tell them my experience? Let me go to someone who can understand and advise.

April 25. – I was laid up in bed for two days after my incredible adventure in the cavern. I use the adjective with a very definite meaning, for I have had an experience since which has shocked me almost as much as the other. I have said that I was looking round for someone who could advise me. There is a Dr. Mark Johnson who practices some few miles away, to whom I had a note of recommendation from Professor Saunderson. To him I drove, when I was strong enough to get about, and I recounted to him my whole strange experience. He listened intently, and then carefully examined me, paying special attention to my reflexes and to the pupils of my eyes. When he had finished, he refused to discuss my adventure, saying that it was entirely beyond him, but he gave me the card of a Mr. Picton at Castleton, with the advice that I should instantly go to him and tell him the story exactly as I had done to himself. He was, according to my adviser, the very man who was pre-eminently suited to help me. I went on to the station, therefore, and made my way to the little town, which is some ten miles away. Mr. Picton appeared to be a man of importance, as his brass plate was displayed upon the door of a considerable building on the outskirts of the town. I was about to ring his bell, when some misgiving came into my mind, and, crossing to a neighbouring shop, I asked the man behind the counter if he could tell me anything of Mr. Picton. “Why,” said he, “he is the best mad doctor in Derbyshire, and yonder is his asylum.” You can imagine that it was not long before I had shaken the dust of Castleton from my feet and returned to the farm, cursing all unimaginative pedants who cannot conceive that there may be things in creation which have never yet chanced to come across their mole’s vision. After all, now that I am cooler, I can afford to admit that I have been no more sympathetic to Armitage than Dr. Johnson has been to me.

April 27. When I was a student I had the reputation of being a man of courage and enterprise. I remember that when there was a ghost-hunt at Coltbridge it was I who sat up in the haunted house. Is it advancing years (after all, I am only thirty-five), or is it this physical malady which has caused degeneration? Certainly my heart quails when I think of that horrible cavern in the hill, and the certainty that it has some monstrous occupant. What shall I do? There is not an hour in the day that I do not debate the question. If I say nothing, then the mystery remains unsolved. If I do say anything, then I have the alternative of mad alarm over the whole countryside, or of absolute incredulity which may end in consigning me to an asylum. On the whole, I think that my best course is to wait, and to prepare for some expedition which shall be more deliberate and better thought out than the last. As a first step I have been to Castleton and obtained a few essentials – a large acetylene lantern for one thing, and a good double-barrelled sporting rifle for another. The latter I have hired, but I have bought a dozen heavy game cartridges, which would bring down a rhinoceros. Now I am ready for my troglodyte friend. Give me better health and a little spate of energy, and I shall try conclusions with him yet. But who and what is he? Ah! there is the question which stands between me and my sleep. How many theories do I form, only to discard each in turn! It is all so utterly unthinkable. And yet the cry, the footmark, the tread in the cavern – no reasoning can get past these I think of the old-world legends of dragons and of other monsters. Were they, perhaps, not such fairy-tales as we have thought? Can it be that there is some fact which underlies them, and am I, of all mortals, the one who is chosen to expose it?

May 3. – For several days I have been laid up by the vagaries of an English spring, and during those days there have been developments, the true and sinister meaning of which no one can appreciate save myself. I may say that we have had cloudy and moonless nights of late, which according to my information were the seasons upon which sheep disappeared. Well, sheep have disappeared. Two of Miss Allerton’s, one of old Pearson’s of the Cat Walk, and one of Mrs. Moulton’s. Four in all during three nights. No trace is left of them at all, and the countryside is buzzing with rumours of gipsies and of sheep-stealers.

But there is something more serious than that. Young Armitage has disappeared also. He left his moorland cottage early on Wednesday night and has never been heard of since. He was an unattached man, so there is less sensation than would otherwise be the case. The popular explanation is that he owes money, and has found a situation in some other part of the country, whence he will presently write for his belongings. But I have grave misgivings. Is it not much more likely that the recent tragedy of the sheep has caused him to take some steps which may have ended in his own destruction? He may, for example, have lain in wait for the creature and been carried off by it into the recesses of the mountains. What an inconceivable fate for a civilized Englishman of the twentieth century! And yet I feel that it is possible and even probable. But in that case, how far am I answerable both for his death and for any other mishap which may occur? Surely with the knowledge I already possess it must be my duty to see that something is done, or if necessary to do it myself. It must be the latter, for this morning I went down to the local police-station and told my story. The inspector entered it all in a large book and bowed me out with commendable gravity, but I heard a burst of laughter before I had got down his garden path. No doubt he was recounting my adventure to his family.

June 10. – I am writing this, propped up in bed, six weeks after my last entry in this journal. I have gone through a terrible shock both to mind and body, arising from such an experience as has seldom befallen a human being before. But I have attained my end. The danger from the Terror which dwells in the Blue John Gap has passed never to return. Thus much at least I, a broken invalid, have done for the common good. Let me now recount what occurred as clearly as I may.

The night of Friday, May 3rd, was dark and cloudy – the very night for the monster to walk. About eleven o’clock I went from the farm-house with my lantern and my rifle, having first left a note upon the table of my bedroom in which I said that, if I were missing, search should be made for me in the direction of the Gap. I made my way to the mouth of the Roman shaft, and, having perched myself among the rocks close to the opening, I shut off my lantern and waited patiently with my loaded rifle ready to my hand.

It was a melancholy vigil. All down the winding valley I could see the scattered lights of the farm-houses, and the church clock of Chapel-le-Dale tolling the hours came faintly to my ears. These tokens of my fellow-men served only to make my own position seem the more lonely, and to call for a greater effort to overcome the terror which tempted me continually to get back to the farm, and abandon for ever this dangerous quest. And yet there lies deep in every man a rooted self-respect which makes it hard for him to turn back from that which he has once undertaken. This feeling of personal pride was my salvation now, and it was that alone which held me fast when every instinct of my nature was dragging me away. I am glad now that I had the strength. In spite of all that is has cost me, my manhood is at least above reproach.

Twelve o’clock struck in the distant church, then one, then two. It was the darkest hour of the night. The clouds were drifting low, and there was not a star in the sky. An owl was hooting somewhere among the rocks, but no other sound, save the gentle sough of the wind, came to my ears. And then suddenly I heard it! From far away down the tunnel came those muffled steps, so soft and yet so ponderous. I heard also the rattle of stones as they gave way under that giant tread. They drew nearer. They were close upon me. I heard the crashing of the bushes round the entrance, and then dimly through the darkness I was conscious of the loom of some enormous shape, some monstrous inchoate creature, passing swiftly and very silently out from the tunnel. I was paralysed with fear and amazement. Long as I had waited, now that it had actually come I was unprepared for the shock. I lay motionless and breathless, whilst the great dark mass whisked by me and was swallowed up in the night.

But now I nerved myself for its return. No sound came from the sleeping countryside to tell of the horror which was loose. In no way could I judge how far off it was, what it was doing, or when it might be back. But not a second time should my nerve fail me, not a second time should it pass unchallenged. I swore it between my clenched teeth as I laid my cocked rifle across the rock.

And yet it nearly happened. There was no warning of approach now as the creature passed over the grass. Suddenly, like a dark, drifting shadow, the huge bulk loomed up once more before me, making for the entrance of the cave. Again came that paralysis of volition which held my crooked forefinger impotent upon the trigger. But with a desperate effort I shook it off. Even as the brushwood rustled, and the monstrous beast blended with the shadow of the Gap, I fired at the retreating form. In the blaze of the gun I caught a glimpse of a great shaggy mass, something with rough and bristling hair of a withered grey colour, fading away to white in its lower parts, the huge body supported upon short, thick, curving legs. I had just that glance, and then I heard the rattle of the stones as the creature tore down into its burrow. In an instant, with a triumphant revulsion of feeling, I had cast my fears to the wind, and uncovering my powerful lantern, with my rifle in my hand, I sprang down from my rock and rushed after the monster down the old Roman shaft.

My splendid lamp cast a brilliant flood of vivid light in front of me, very different from the yellow glimmer which had aided me down the same passage only twelve days before. As I ran, I saw the great beast lurching along before me, its huge bulk filling up the whole space from wall to wall. Its hair looked like coarse faded oakum, and hung down in long, dense masses which swayed as it moved. It was like an enormous unclipped sheep in its fleece, but in size it was far larger than the largest elephant, and its breadth seemed to be nearly as great as its height. It fills me with amazement now to think that I should have dared to follow such a horror into the bowels of the earth, but when one’s blood is up, and when one’s quarry seems to be flying, the old primeval hunting-spirit awakes and prudence is cast to the wind. Rifle in hand, I ran at the top of my speed upon the trail of the monster.

I had seen that the creature was swift. Now I was to find out to my cost that it was also very cunning. I had imagined that it was in panic flight, and that I had only to pursue it. The idea that it might turn upon me never entered my excited brain. I have already explained that the passage down which I was racing opened into a great central cave. Into this I rushed, fearful lest I should lose all trace of the beast. But he had turned upon his own traces, and in a moment we were face to face.

That picture, seen in the brilliant white light of the lantern, is etched for ever upon my brain. He had reared up on his hind legs as a bear would do, and stood above me, enormous, menacing – such a creature as no nightmare had ever brought to my imagination. I have said that he reared like a bear, and there was something bear-like – if one could conceive a bear which was ten-fold the bulk of any bear seen upon earth – in his whole pose and attitude, in his great crooked forelegs with their ivory-white claws, in his rugged skin, and in his red, gaping mouth, fringed with monstrous fangs. Only in one point did he differ from the bear, or from any other creature which walks the earth, and even at that supreme moment a shudder of horror passed over me as I observed that the eyes which glistened in the glow of my lantern were huge, projecting bulbs, white and sightless. For a moment his great paws swung over my head. The next he fell forward upon me, I and my broken lantern crashed to the earth, and I remember no more.

When I came to myself I was back in the farm-house of the Allertons. Two days had passed since my terrible adventure in the Blue John Gap. It seems that I had lain all night in the cave insensible from concussion of the brain, with my left arm and two ribs badly fractured. In the morning my note had been found, a search party of a dozen farmers assembled, and I had been tracked down and carried back to my bedroom, where I had lain in high delirium ever since. There was, it seems, no sign of the creature, and no bloodstain which would show that my bullet had found him as he passed. Save for my own plight and the marks upon the mud, there was nothing to prove that what I said was true.

Six weeks have now elapsed, and I am able to sit out once more in the sunshine. Just opposite me is the steep hillside, grey with shaly rock, and yonder on its flank is the dark cleft which marks the opening of the Blue John Gap. But it is no longer a source of terror. Never again through that ill-omened tunnel shall any strange shape flit out into the world of men. The educated and the scientific, the Dr. Johnsons and the like, may smile at my narrative, but the poorer folk of the countryside had never a doubt as to its truth. On the day after my recovering consciousness they assembled in their hundreds round the Blue John Gap. As the Castleton Courier said:

“It was useless for our correspondent, or for any of the adventurous gentlemen who had come from Matlock, Buxton, and other parts, to offer to descend, to explore the cave to the end, and to finally test the extraordinary narrative of Dr. James Hardcastle. The country people had taken the matter into their own hands, and from an early hour of the morning they had worked hard in stopping up the entrance of the tunnel. There is a sharp slope where the shaft begins, and great boulders, rolled along by many willing hands, were thrust down it until the Gap was absolutely sealed. So ends the episode which has caused such excitement throughout the country. Local opinion is fiercely divided upon the subject. On the one hand are those who point to Dr. Hardcastle’s impaired health, and to the possibility of cerebral lesions of tubercular origin giving rise to strange hallucinations. Some idee fixe, according to these gentlemen, caused the doctor to wander down the tunnel, and a fall among the rocks was sufficient to account for his injuries. On the other hand, a legend of a strange creature in the Gap has existed for some months back, and the farmers look upon Dr. Hardcastle’s narrative and his personal injuries as a final corroboration. So the matter stands, and so the matter will continue to stand, for no definite solution seems to us to be now possible. It transcends human wit to give any scientific explanation which could cover the alleged facts.”

Perhaps before the Courier published these words they would have been wise to send their representative to me. I have thought the matter out, as no one else has occasion to do, and it is possible that I might have removed some of the more obvious difficulties of the narrative and brought it one degree nearer to scientific acceptance. Let me then write down the only explanation which seems to me to elucidate what I know to my cost to have been a series of facts. My theory may seem to be wildly improbable, but at least no one can venture to say that it is impossible.

My view is – and it was formed, as is shown by my diary, before my personal adventure – that in this part of England there is a vast subterranean lake or sea, which is fed by the great number of streams which pass down through the limestone. Where there is a large collection of water there must also be some evaporation, mists or rain, and a possibility of vegetation. This in turn suggests that there may be animal life, arising, as the vegetable life would also do, from those seeds and types which had been introduced at an early period of the world’s history, when communication with the outer air was more easy. This place had then developed a fauna and flora of its own, including such monsters as the one which I had seen, which may well have been the old cave-bear, enormously enlarged and modified by its new environment. For countless aeons the internal and the external creation had kept apart, growing steadily away from each other. Then there had come some rift in the depths of the mountain which had enabled one creature to wander up and, by means of the Roman tunnel, to reach the open air. Like all subterranean life, it had lost the power of sight, but this had no doubt been compensated for by nature in other directions. Certainly it had some means of finding its way about, and of hunting down the sheep upon the hillside. As to its choice of dark nights, it is part of my theory that light was painful to those great white eyeballs, and that it was only a pitch-black world which it could tolerate. Perhaps, indeed, it was the glare of my lantern which saved my life at that awful moment when we were face to face. So I read the riddle. I leave these facts behind me, and if you can explain them, do so; or if you choose to doubt them, do so. Neither your belief nor your incredulity can alter them, nor affect one whose task is nearly over.

So ended the strange narrative of Dr. James Hardcastle.


Image note: He had reared up on his hind legs as a bear would do… “The Terror of Blue John Gap” by Harry Rountree The Strand Magazine, 1910.

Robert Herrick was sometimes called the last Elizabethan poet. He was hundreds of years later, but his style echoes the Tudor belief in a Merry England filled with bucolic peasants. These two poems follow the idea that faeries are tiny and use pieces of insects to make machinery. Note also that faeries are Christians in these poems: they say grace before meals and have priests. In Elizabeth’s reign there was a deal of comment as to the Catholicism of faeries, and ifthey could be convinced to break from Romish customs.

Our reader today is Thomas Copeland. Thanks to him and his Librivox production team.

***

THE FAIRY TEMPLE; OR, OBERON’S CHAPEL

Temples thou hast seen, I know,
and rich for in and outward show;
survey this chapel built, alone,
without lime without lime, or wood, or stone.
Then say if thous hast seen more fine
Thane this, the faeries once, now thine.
The temple
A way enchaced with glass and beads
There is, that to the Chapel leads;
Whose structure, for his holy rest,
Is here the Halcyon’s curious nest;
Into the which who looks, shall see
His Temple of Idolatry;
Where he of god-heads has such store,
As Rome’s Pantheon had not more.
His house of Rimmon this he calls,
Girt with small bones, instead of walls.
First in a niche, more black than jet,
His idol-cricket there is set;
Then in a polish’d oval by
There stands his idol-beetle-fly;
Next, in an arch, akin to this,
His idol-canker seated is.
Then in a round, is placed by these
His golden god, Cantharides.
So that where’er ye look, ye see
No capital, no cornice free,
Or frieze, from this fine frippery.
Now this the Fairies would have known,
Theirs is a mixt religion:
And some have heard the elves it call
Part Pagan, part Papistical.
If unto me all tongues were granted,
I could not speak the saints here painted.
Saint Tit, Saint Nit, Saint Is, Saint Itis,
Who ‘gainst Mab’s state placed here right is.
Saint Will o’ th’ Wisp, of no great bigness,
But, alias, call’d here FATUUS IGNIS.
Saint Frip, Saint Trip, Saint Fill, Saint Filly;—
Neither those other saint-ships will I
Here go about for to recite
Their number, almost infinite;
Which, one by one, here set down are
In this most curious calendar.
First, at the entrance of the gate,
A little puppet-priest doth wait,
Who squeaks to all the comers there,
‘Favour your tongues, who enter here.
‘Pure hands bring hither, without stain.’
A second pules, ‘Hence, hence, profane!’
Hard by, i’ th’ shell of half a nut,
The holy-water there is put;
A little brush of squirrels’ hairs,
Composed of odd, not even pairs,
Stands in the platter, or close by,
To purge the fairy family.
Near to the altar stands the priest,
There offering up the holy-grist;
Ducking in mood and perfect tense,
With (much good do’t him) reverence.
The altar is not here four-square,
Nor in a form triangular;
Nor made of glass, or wood, or stone,
But of a little transverse bone;
Which boys and bruckel’d children call
(Playing for points and pins) cockall.
Whose linen-drapery is a thin,
Subtile, and ductile codling’s skin;
Which o’er the board is smoothly spread
With little seal-work damasked.
The fringe that circumbinds it, too,
Is spangle-work of trembling dew,
Which, gently gleaming, makes a show,
Like frost-work glitt’ring on the snow.
Upon this fetuous board doth stand
Something for shew-bread, and at hand
(Just in the middle of the altar)
Upon an end, the Fairy-psalter,
Graced with the trout-flies’ curious wings,
Which serve for watchet ribbonings.
Now, we must know, the elves are led
Right by the Rubric, which they read:
And if report of them be true,
They have their text for what they do;
Ay, and their book of canons too.
And, as Sir Thomas Parson tells,
They have their book of articles;
And if that Fairy knight not lies
They have their book of homilies;
And other Scriptures, that design
A short, but righteous discipline.
The bason stands the board upon
To take the free-oblation;
A little pin-dust, which they hold
More precious than we prize our gold;
Which charity they give to many
Poor of the parish, if there’s any.
Upon the ends of these neat rails,
Hatch’d with the silver-light of snails,
The elves, in formal manner, fix
Two pure and holy candlesticks,
In either which a tall small bent
Burns for the altar’s ornament.
For sanctity, they have, to these,
Their curious copes and surplices
Of cleanest cobweb, hanging by
In their religious vestery.
They have their ash-pans and their brooms,
To purge the chapel and the rooms;
Their many mumbling mass-priests here,
And many a dapper chorister.
Their ush’ring vergers here likewise,
Their canons and their chaunteries;
Of cloister-monks they have enow,
Ay, and their abbey-lubbers too:—
And if their legend do not lie,
They much affect the papacy;
And since the last is dead, there’s hope
Elve Boniface shall next be Pope.
They have their cups and chalices,
Their pardons and indulgences,
Their beads of nits, bells, books, and wax-
Candles, forsooth, and other knacks;
Their holy oil, their fasting-spittle,
Their sacred salt here, not a little.
Dry chips, old shoes, rags, grease, and bones,
Beside their fumigations.
Many a trifle, too, and trinket,
And for what use, scarce man would think it.
Next then, upon the chanter’s side
An apple’s-core is hung up dried,
With rattling kernels, which is rung
To call to morn and even-song.
The saint, to which the most he prays
And offers incense nights and days,
The lady of the lobster is,
Whose foot-pace he doth stroke and kiss,
And, humbly, chives of saffron brings
For his most cheerful offerings.
When, after these, he’s paid his vows,
He lowly to the altar bows;
And then he dons the silk-worm’s shed,
Like a Turk’s turban on his head,
And reverently departeth thence,
Hid in a cloud of frankincense;
And by the glow-worm’s light well guided,
Goes to the Feast that’s now provided.

OBERON’S FEAST

Shapcot! To the fairy state
I with discretion dedicate:
Because they prizest things that are
Curious and unfamiliar.
Take first the feast; these dishes gone,
We’ll see the fairy court anon.
A little mushroom-table spread,
After short prayers, they set on bread,
A moon-parch’d grain of purest wheat,
With some small glitt’ring grit, to eat
His choice bits with; then in a trice
They make a feast less great than nice.
But all this while his eye is served,
We must not think his ear was sterved;
But that there was in place to stir
His spleen, the chirring grasshopper,
The merry cricket, puling fly,
The piping gnat for minstrelsy.
And now, we must imagine first,
The elves present, to quench his thirst,
A pure seed-pearl of infant dew,
Brought and besweeten’d in a blue
And pregnant violet; which done,
His kitling eyes begin to run
Quite through the table, where he spies
The horns of papery butterflies,
Of which he eats; and tastes a little
Of that we call the cuckoo’s spittle;
A little fuz-ball pudding stands
By, yet not blessed by his hands,
That was too coarse; but then forthwith
He ventures boldly on the pith
Of sugar’d rush, and eats the sagge
And well-bestrutted bees’ sweet bag;
Gladding his palate with some store
Of emmets’ eggs; what would he more?
But beards of mice, a newt’s stew’d thigh,
A bloated earwig, and a fly;
With the red-capt worm, that’s shut
Within the concave of a nut,
Brown as his tooth. A little moth,
Late fatten’d in a piece of cloth;
With wither’d cherries, mandrakes’ ears,
Moles’ eyes: to these the slain stag’s tears;
The unctuous dewlaps of a snail,
The broke-heart of a nightingale
O’ercome in music; with a wine
Ne’er ravish’d from the flattering vine,
But gently prest from the soft side
Of the most sweet and dainty bride,
Brought in a dainty daisy, which
He fully quaffs up, to bewitch
His blood to height; this done, commended
Grace by his priest; The feast is ended.

The folklore for the Cheshire book is feeling a bit sparse. Leigh Egerton’s Ballads & Legends of Cheshire from 1867 claims that Cheshire lacks folklore because it has no mountains. Cornwall had enough folklore for a book, so I thought this was silliness. That being said, the richest folklore I’ve found has been in Longdendale, which is a mountain pass into the Peak District, so he may have a point.

The following pieces come from Traditions and Customs of Cheshire by Christina Hole. Note that even short pieces can be suitable for gaming, because we need colour for our Virtues, Flaws, Boons, and Hooks. So, if I say “In Cheshire people think pigs can see the wind”, as an example, that’s a hint that a magus with an Auram specialty might have a boar as a familiar.

Vis source / plot hook: Alabaster is used as a panacea for sickness in sheep. The easiest way to get it is to steal it from the tombs of rich people. They use it as a cheaper substitute than for marble. It seems an odd choice to steal tomb decorations, powder them, and then stuff them in sheep. At the least this may annoy ghosts, but it could also tainjt the wool, milk and meat of these sheep.

Background / plot hook: Servants in Cheshire are hired at annual fairs. By tradition a servant who changes employers departs their old job on December 26 and begins the new one on January 2. Covenants seeking servants may be drawn into this system.

Bells are rung at at 8 pm. From Michaelmas to Lady-Day the bells also rings the date, as well as the hours.

The pancake bell begins the feast of Shrove Tuesday. Shrove games include football, footraces, a ball of silk thrown into the crowd for people to scrimmage over, and an archery competition with a silver arrow as a prize. They also play tip cat and prison bars, which are cricketish wide games.

Minor magical item / Curse? : When the wheat is almost harvested, the final little piece is twisted into a sheaf and tied with a ribbon. People pitch sickles at it to “cut the neck”. The person who hits it gets a small prize from the landowner, and keeps it as a luck charm for the next year. After the neck is cut the farmhands go to a high point and make a loud declaration “Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! This is to gie notice that Mr X has gin the seck a turn, and sent the t’owd hare into Mr Y’s standing corn. Wow! Wow! Wow!” Note that “corn” in this sense is the main grain crop of the farm, not maize. The last person to cut their crop has the old hare for the year, which seems unlucky or shameful.

Marler rituals: Marl is a mix of clay and lime that is used as fertilizer. It is dug out of pits. The marlers only dig marl for the part of the year when spreading it is useful, so they have an annual celebration as they close the pit. They bull-bait in the pit itself and beg money. They sing the praises of their benefactors The traditional cry is led by their festival captain, the Lord of the Soil: “Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! This is to give notice that Mr X has given us marlers part of 100 pounds and to whomever will do the same we will give thanks and praise!” His retinue then yell “Largesse! Largesse! Largesse!” Note that if they are given a sixpence or more, they say “part of 1000 pounds” Note that’s a story, so a faerie might steal their thousand pounds, even though it doesn’t really exist. Sacrificing bulls in pits seems ritualistic.

Flaw: Looking into an owl’s nest causes lifelong melancholia.

Familiar / vis source: At Urkinton Hall is a walled garden filled with blackbirds. The ancestor of these was a blackbird into which a group of priests had forced a ghost. This makes some of them oddly tied to the art of Mentem and to necromancy. Exorcising ghosts into animals, even dead animals, is common in Cheshire. These exorcisms are usually performed in teams that make the ghost smaller and smaller until it can be shoved into an animal or, in one case, a bottle.

Creature: The Gabrel Ratchets are flying hounds that haunt the night. “Gabrel” in this case is a dialectic word for “corpse” not a reference to the archangel Gabriel, although I’ve seen that link made in some other areas. They are led or followed by a flying hunter who is variously stated to be the Devil, a local squire of great wickedness, or Odin (according to Hole but I’m not sure where she gets that last one from). You’ll be left unmolested if you lie face down in the road until they are gone.

Plot hook: “Chowlering” is the local name for the Autumn custom of boys roaming the fields with stones to throw at birds, scaring them off newly planted seeds. They hit something odd.

Dragonflies dislike snakes and hover over them to warn people.
Cats can sense the coming weather.

The Eager River takes three lives per year. Hole says it is named after the Aegir, the Norse gods. That seems a stretch. The Dee River is, in contrast, holy, and creates lights to aid the recovery of corpses.

If you find a drowned corpse you will be haunted if you do not bury the person in the proper fashion. This is an oddity: elsewhere there’s a feeling that stealing corpses from the sea might be unlucky. It’s also odd given that there are wreckers active on the Wirral: why they aren’t haunted is not all that clear. Perhaps they bury corpses properly after stealing their goods?

Favours source: the Lady of Reedsmere is accused of being unfaithful, and her husband says he won’t believe her innocence unless the island floated around the lake. Fortunately for her, the island was mass of peat and a storm broke it off from the floor of the lake. It moved about the lake randomly for the next few decades. The weather and severing of the peat island’s link to the lakebed are relatively simple with Hermetic magic.

There are a lot of saint’s wells in Cheshire, including the well used for water by Cheshire monastery. Many are also wishing wells. These oddly don’t need coins: many accept pins, rags or stones thrown in special ways. Well dressing is a common practice, generally annually.

Nantwhich’s brine wells, which are used in salt-making, are blessed annually. They are freezingly cold: the pits in which the wells are found are so cold many women can only stay in them for half an hour at a time. These women, wych-wallers, are known for their swearing, and perhaps cursing in the mystical sense.

In Neston, each Easter Monday, there’s a festival called the Riding of the Lord. A man rides along the main street on a donkey. He is jeered at and pelted with rotten food. He is paid for this, but why no-one seems to know what the point of it is beyond custom. Is he a scapegoat? Does this give a Tormenting supernatural being as a flaw?

There’s a May Queen or Queen of Roses in many areas.

In Cheshire the spirits of the dead were expected to be more present for the two days of All Souls and All Saints. Children go souling, which is going from house to house singing a traditional song, and being given small spiced cakes or coins in exchange. In Ars Magica terms this is a Feast of the Dead, but it is gathered by children…or things pretending to be children. THey are folllowed by the hoddening horse, which is a huge, simple puppet with a horse’s skull. Mummers also do plays on these days, which are called “soul-caking plays”.Apple bobbing, apples on string and bonfires all occur.

Mistletoe is called “all heal” and thought broadly curative. People don’t kiss under it: instead they use “kissing bushes”. These are iron rings threaded with evergreens and ribbons, with apples and candle hanging underneath. If they are not taken down they turn into goblins on Candlemas Day.

People stage fake funerals in the Wirral to carry coffins full of salt past customs collectors.

In Tabley Old Hall there was a dinner of local magnates where one man though another was being too familiar with his wife. They fought, and the husband was killed before his wife, who then committed suicide on the spot. The host, who must have had ice in their viens, swore everyone to secrecy and sealed the bodies in a windowless room. The ghosts of the couple are often seen.

A ghostly procession bring home a dead crusader. It is followed by a weeping woman, who might be either his wife or mistress. Why they do this repeatedly is not clear.

There’s a haunted sand-hole in Knutsford. A tax collector was murdered by his inn’s landlord, who stole the money that had been collected and buried the body in the sand. He saw a corps walking toward him whenever he passed the sand hole.

Around Knutsford, on special occasions, they use pale sand to draw patterns in the streets, which are beautiful and used for festivals, and may have reog vis in them.

The bridge at Faradon has two child ghosts, of boys thrown over the side by their uncle to claim their property.

In Brereton all of the ghosts of the area come once a year to process to the churchyard, filling the streets. They seem to treat this as a festive event, but the humans stay away.

There’s a knightly crusader who promises to come back dead or alive, and returns to terrify his wife with his retinue of skull-faced cavalry.

The Wiirral: one day there’s a huge spinning pillar of smoke, twenty yards cross and high as a church steeple. It makes a terrible noise. Is this a Fury?

St Werburgh caused magical sleep to allow her relics to be taken from the people at the [lace where she died.

There’s a monk whop sells his soul to the devil for three wishes. These as much pork as he can eat, as much wine as he can drink, and ten bales of hay from a particular place. The place is a beach, so the Devil can’t deliver, and the tenants of the monastery plow the beach each year in commemoration.

I wanted to wrote up the Moston Dragon as a a monster of the month, but the folklore surrounding it is not detailed enough to extend it past variation on the generic stats given in Realms of power Faerie (page). It is suitable for a combat encounter. The creature’s lair was at Dragon Lake. It had three layers of fangs, six claws on each foot, and had a tail strong enough to crush a bear. As dragons go this one was on the smaller but more ferocious end of the spectrum. A local nobleman weakened it by showering it with arrows, then finished it with a sword-thrust. It was a scaled dragon, and these are usually sufficiently armoured that arrows are little trouble for them, but not in this case, arguing for a lower Soak score.

One variant of the story I saw, from Tom and Sue Hughes, indicated that Motram’s population lived by harvesting marvelous apples from a field that the dragon took possession of. The apples were as large as a human head and particularly flavorful. This may be a modern evolution because I’ve only seen it on their site. It works as a vis source regardless.

Moston Dragon

The Moston dragon is unusual for an orm, in that it is not poisonous. It lacks the acidic blood, corrosive slime or venomous saliva of other orms. It compensates for this by being stronger than average, and having more claws and teeth than usual.
Faerie Might: 20 (Animal)
Characteristics: Cun 0, Per –2, Pre –6, Com –6, Str+4, Sta +2, Dex +2, Qik -1
Size: +1
Virtues and Flaws: Large, Faerie Beast; Faerie Sight, Incognizant, Increased
Characteristics, 3 x Increased Might (adjusted with size increase or decrease).
Personality Traits: Hungry +3
Combat: Fangs: Init –2, Attack +14, Defense +3, Damage +10
Constriction (one target maximum): Init 0, Attack +9, Defense +5*, Damage +10
Claws: Init –1, Attack +11, Defense +10, Damage +7
*+6 to Defense against grapple attacks
Size +2
Soak: If using the version where the creature is weakened with arrows, +3, if using the version where it is immune to arrows so the knight engages with his sword +8.
Wound Penalties:–1 (1-7), –3 (8-14), –5 (15-21), Incapacitated (22-28), Dead (29+)
Powers:
Constrict:: When successfully struck with a constrict attack, the character is encoiled by the dragon’s tail and unable to use mêlée weapons. The dragon automatically does damage in
each subsequent round, without requiring an Attack roll. The victim may still Soak damage. At the end of each round, including the round in which the constriction attack succeeds, the character may attempt to break free by an opposed Strength roll. To do this, the victim rolls
Strength + a stress die, and compares it to the orm’s Strength + a stress die. Success indicates the victim is free, and may attack normally in the following round. For each character assisting a victim to break free, add +1 to the Strength roll, but an assistant is unable to attack the orm in that round. A character unable to break free for 30 seconds (6 combat rounds) needs to make deprivation rolls, as described on page 179 of ArM5.
Pretenses: Area Lore 3 (watering points for prey), Athletics 5 [Swim), Awareness 3 (prey), Brawl 7 (crushing), Hunt 4 [children), Stealth 3 (stalking prey)
Equipment: None
Vis: 4 pawns, in a snakeskin.
Appearance: Oddly cat-like head. Often drawn eating a baby.
Source: based on the Orm statistics in RoP:F 99-100.

Image from “Ballads and Legends of Cheshire [Collected and edited by E. L, with illustrations.] L.P” / Leigh, Egerton. (British Library CC0]

On St Stephen’s Day young men kill a wren, dress in motley, then tour about asking for money to bury the wren. As a personal aside I’ve previously been told the Jenny Wren was a sort of pagan survival in Cornwall, perhaps a celebration of the Queen of Birds, which would make this a Rego or Auram. The wren becomes king, the story says when the birds agree that whoever can fly highest will be their ruler. When the eagle reached his apogee the wren, who had hidden in the eagle’s feathers, took off and flew slightly higher. I have been told this is a Cornish story but I suspect that it’s Irish. That’s likely not the approach here. Some Christians believed that wrens would tell their hiding places to viking raiders. They also believed that a wren had betrayed St Stephen to his pursuers. This could imply that wrens house infernal spirits or dark faeries. This could explain why its bad luck for the men to bury the wren on your doorstep. In Irish stories there’s also a spirit that lures men away, and she can take the shape of a wren. She’s a variant of the queen of the banshees of one region of Ireland, as I distantly recall. I’ve not seen a Cheshire repetition of this idea, but it gives an extra option of a demon or dark faerie.

Demonic Wren

Infernal Might:5 (Animal)
Characteristics: Cun -1, Per +3, Pre -7* , Com 0, Str -10, Sta +2, Dex +1, Qik +7
* +6 when attempting to scare or intimidate, due to the Corrupted Beast Flaw.
Size: -5
Confidence Score: 1 (3)
Virtues and Flaws: Corrupted Beast, Ferocity (attack), Keen Vision, Fragile Constitution, Lesser Infernal Power, Tainted With Evil
Qualities: Accomplished Flier, Keen Eyesight.
Personality Traits: Nosy +6
Reputations: Enjoys betrayal +3
Combat:
Talons: Init +8, Attack +4, Defense +10, Damage -8
Soak: -3
Powers:
Crushing the Will,* 2 points, Init 0, Mentem: This Power saps the courage and vitality of its target, leaving them afraid, tired, and withdrawn. All Personality Trait rolls suffer a -3 modifier, and the target may not spend Confidence Points to increase other rolls. Each use of this Power
lasts until the victim has slept for at least six hours.
Protection of the Close Friend, 0 points, Init +3, Mentem: The chosen victim of the wren cannot act directly against it without extreme provocation; it would be akin to attacking one’s own mother. The victim may be as angry as they like with the demon, but actually physically opposing it requires a huge effort of will, which must be repeated every time the victim wants to renew their attacks.
Where you gonna run to? 1 point, Mentem: The wren draws attention to itself, and any concealed object nearby, with its song. All characters within Sight range gain +3 on Perception-based rolls to find the wren or the thing it is drawing attention to. The wren’s song can last for a Diameter, and it may move while it sings, following a fleeing victim.
* Swap this out for something that does damage if a combat encounter is desired.
Fatigue Levels: OK, 0/0, -1, -3, -5, Unconscious
Wound Penalties: -1 (1), -3 (2), -5 (3), Incapacitated (4), Dead (5+)
Abilities: Area Lore 6 (Hiding places), Athletics 5 (swift flight), Awareness 4 (spotting prey), Brawl 1 (talons), Hunt 9 (hiding people), Survival 6 (forest)
Equipment: None
Vis: 1 pawn, body. Tainted.
Source: based on the falcon statistics from Book of Mundane Beasts, made less dangerous and smaller, then run through the Corrupted Beast rules in RoP:I (pp.77-8). The Crushing the Will Power comes from RoP:I page 60. The Protection of the Close Friend power comes from RoP:I p 57.
Appearance: A small, brown bird with a needle beak designed for catching insects. Distorted by demonic possession: flaming eyeballs, oddly mobile growths, or shedding rotting plumage as examples.

The speedwells I know best are Veronica longiflora, which have tall spikes coated in a cone of flowers. I’m used to them being purple, but there are other cultivars around in the modern day. Their scientific genus is Veronica. I presume the Cheshire speedwells in 1220 are a little less glamourous, because the Veronica family includes a broad range of plants. If you pick a Speedwell of Virtue, it causes thunder. presumably this is an Auram source.

When I originally wrote these monsters up I was considering the chimeras as adulterations which could be seen before the person fades into Twilight. Adulterations are the parts of a person that won’t get through the filter into Criamon’s Pure Land. Some are as a small as a little spirit, while others are….well, enough of Flambeau that it can be mistaken for him in entirety. I was also working on the idea that heartbeasts are adulterations. Then I realised it could be done far more simply: I mentioned those ideas so you can use them in your game if you prefer that interpretation. In Realms of Power: Infernal (p.72) there are tiny demons called “maggots” that burrow into the ear and influence the infected person’s mind using their Evocation power. These chimeras seem to be a huge variant of the maggot. We may assume the narrator has Second Sight, allowing them to be seen.

***

Beneath a broad grey sky, upon a vast and dusty plain devoid of grass, and where not even a nettle or a thistle was to be seen, I met several men who walked bowed down to the ground.

Each one carried upon his back an enormous Chimera as heavy as a sack of flour or coal, or as the equipment of a Roman foot-soldier.

But the monstrous beast was not a dead weight, rather she enveloped and oppressed the men with her powerful and elastic muscles, and clawed with her two vast talons at the breast of her mount. Her fabulous head reposed upon the brow of the man like one of those horrible casques by which ancient warriors hoped to add to the terrors of the enemy.

I questioned one of the men, asking him why they went so. He replied that he knew nothing, neither he nor the others, but that evidently they went somewhere, since they were urged on by an unconquerable desire to walk.

Very curiously, none of the wayfarers seemed to be irritated by the ferocious beast hanging at his neck and cleaving to his back: one had said that he considered it as a part of himself. These grave and weary faces bore witness to no despair. Beneath the splenetic cupola of the heavens, their feet trudging through the dust of an earth as desolate as the sky, they journeyed onwards with the resigned faces of men condemned to hope for ever. So the train passed me and faded into the atmosphere of the horizon at the place where the planet unveils herself to the curiosity of the human eye.

During several moments I obstinately endeavoured to comprehend this mystery; but irresistible Indifference soon threw herself upon me, nor was I more heavily dejected thereby than they by their crushing Chimeras.

***

Order: Tempters (Greater Maggots)
Infernal Might: 15 (Animal)
Characteristics: Int +2, Per 0, Pre -1, Com +2, Str +3, Sta +3, Dex -1, Qik -1
Size: -2
Virtues and Flaws: Weak Willed
Reputations: None
Hierarchy: 0
Personality Traits: Selfish +5
Combat:
Barbed Beak: Init +1, Attack +6, Defense +6, Damage +5
Hooked Claws: Init +1, Attack +5, Defense +5, Damage +8
The chimera prefers to command the victim to fight on its behalf. In a round when it attacks with its beak it cannot also whisper thoughts in its mount’s ear. It does not get its Strength scores added to the beak’s damage because its neck is thin and spindly. It cannot fight with both claws unless it releases its victim. Once it hooks a victim it can do automatic damage each round, but this can be resisted by successfully grappling with the chimera, to unhook its claws from a victim’s flesh.
Soak: +4: uses the body of the victim as armor. Players who do not care if they hit the victim reduce this to +2, and may hit the victim on fumbled Attack rolls.
Fatigue Levels: OK, -1, -5, Unconscious
Wound Penalties: -1 (1-3),-3 (4-6), -5 (0-12), Incapacitated (13-)
Abilities: Brawl 5 (barbed beak)
Powers:
Endurance of the Walker, 0 points, Init +1, Mentem: Any creature hooked by a chimera is oblivious to pain caused while walking, or from the claws of the demon. They still suffer any Wound or Fatigue penalties caused by their injuries or malaises, but they are not aware of them.
Possession, variable points, Init +2, Mentem: See Chapter 4: Infernal Legions, Demonic Powers. Can only be used on hooked victims.
Coagulation, 1 point, Init -1, Corpus: See Chapter 4: Infernal Legions, Demonic Powers. Obsession, 1 to 3 points, Init -5, Vim: Pilgrimage. See Chapter 4: Infernal Legions, Demonic Powers. Can only use this power on victims which it has hooked with its claws.
Weakness: Abhorrent Material (fennel)
Vis: 2 pawns of Vim vis, in claws
Appearance: A creature like a deformed ostrich that rest on the bowed back of its victim and lays its head over the skull and onto the bridge of the nose..