1 The BLOOM

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.

This is the Bloom.

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.