The BLOOM
Mostly there is darkness.
The Stillborn Dragon Uköll
escaped his egg and ate the Sun and the earth was plunged into pitch
black.
Almost all that moves is dead. The
Replicator Races – ghoul, lich, nemesis shadow – hunt for the
remnants of life – kill it – raise it. This is a compulsion, the
transfer of half-life across into the Umbrarere – “The Threshing
Floor” of death - and the resultant rush of absence sustains them, makes
them stronger.
If they discover and overcome a
village, new revenants crawl from the wreckage, zombie or skeleton,
depending. A ghoul will eat the eyes. The shadow take only its
warmth. The lich will bind the arms, say a prayer over it, sanctify
it it. Cover it in jewelry.
The raised dead shamble about, blind,
mindless – or a mind only at a great distance, feebly trying to
guide the corpse with whispers.
The remnants of mankind light fires,
but it is a cold blue fire that the dead cannot detect – it is made
from captured wraiths or specters fastened to great kilns, wheeled
along with the milking aroch herds. It does not warm or cook – but
there is light of sorts at least. Meat is forbidden – the great
hunts are through the swathes of carnivorous plant forests. These
alone eat the dead, and make their substance digestible again to man.
The dead exist in two places at once,
and so can move about and dimly see the world's broken architecture,
but seldom each other. On the earth it is dark. The Umbrarere is in
layers, like with like. Similar types of see each other as through a
mist. Further distant taxonomies not at all.
The The Stillborn Dragon Uköll
ate the Sun and shrouded it, but it still resides in his stomach. At
intervals it illuminates everything.
The shambling mindless dead light up.
Aureoles in bright colors suspend over their heads, like angler fish,
except that they are the prey. Everything becomes visible. The
Drainers : Vampires and Specters and Wraiths and even Wights that
walk undetected among man, fall on them, take their energy, the
energy of the consumed but not quite digested sun.
At the peak of the Bloom, everything
comes back to revenants, and the Skeletons and Zombies reorganize
themselves against attack. And are overcome. Their memories only
half work. But some ultimately survive, and the flicker of
intelligence persists. And they evolve. Into the other forms of
dead.
Perhaps they can somehow evolve back
into man, or something nearly man. Mankind proper hangs on, and
hunts. The Drainers provide light. The Replicators are threats.
Both must be killed, but never drawing attention, never being seen.
To be seen is to attract more of them.
During a bloom, Replicators make for
the survivors, suddenly brightly lit against the glowing landscape.
It is best top keep far away from the masses of skeletons and zombies
during this time, but can prove difficult, as they move like water,
washing toward you, filling the emptiness. Sometimes replicators
farm zombies, for this very purpose, bloodhounds to find their hidden
hosts. To make more zombies. It's like zombie sonar - you let the thing wander about until it runs into something.
