Werewolf the Podcast: Dark Sorcerers to the Fore. (Episode 212)

Well, it has come to the big day. The werewolf has dropped from the battlements of his lordships castle and raided the camp de Perigod. Death and horror has taken the men there. They should back down. Should they not. Oh no. What they do is they bring forth there own dark magic. A dark and satanic sorcerer. Antzindepantz is brought forward to deliver a potion of plague to the fortress. Oh its getting right exciting, int it. 

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Transcript

Lord Percy Duke of Northumberland.

I write a report of after the attack on our walls. I write for the story of this night. As always, I write so that those that come after us realise my greatness. I mean our Godly work.

Lo, what dismal view doth meet mine eye from this high perch of broken stone and shuddering wall—

Yon camp of demons in mortal garb, those mercenary Bastards, foul-born sons of war and coin,

Who even now do slumber in the mud' midst pools of blood not wholly theirs.

The moon, that pale-brow'd mistress of the night, hath turned her face from us,

Ashamed, perchance, to cast her silver lamp upon such wretched pageantry.

The clouds, thick as sin and blacker still, do gird the sky in mourning,

And rain, like sorrow wept by God Himself, falls heavy, falls hard, falls unending.

Below, where fire once roared in hearth and hall,

Now stirs the stench of iron and opened flesh—

And from these ramparts, o high and grim with siege,

Our men—good men, broken by long hours and longer screams—

They cast the Bastards down.

Wounded wretches, gasping, clutching walls with blood-slicked hands,

Thrown to earth like carrion scraps unto the dogs that birthed them.

Some live—nay, not for long—

Their moans muffled in the mire, drowned 'neath death and storm.

A horror, aye. A cruelty, mayhap.

Yet I cannot chide them.

For here, we who wake yet do not live,

Besieged by devils not of Hell but man,

Must needs do that which chills the soul

To see the morrow.

This war, this sullen wound that gapes and weeps across the land,

It strips the flesh from gentler things: from mercy, law, and love.

It

William Marshall

I fall from the battlements in my Werewolf form—a black shadow in the darkening night. My rage I release in a gloaming, offending roar of rage. I land in the mire at the base of the wall. Death is already walking here. There are a few broken bodies scattered about, live and dead, all with grievous wounds. 

These mercenaries care so little for life and value their compatriots so little that they have been left to lie in the mud. A man lies face down in the mire. He has gone from this plain, but I take some of my anger at these men out on the corpse. 

As I worry the body, another man broken in many ways from a long fall and distressing wounds crawls away from me. He yells for help. I grab the back of his bloody armour and flip him onto his back. I look down on him. I wonder what he sees. If he sees at all, he cries for his mother and a woman called Eleni. Maybe a sweetheart, a daughter. He will not live long, so it is time to use him as a tool to create terror. 

I lean over him to make sure he can see me in my fullest form. His eyes are unfocused. The light is leaving them. His soul is passing to wherever it belongs in the future. 

He coughs, and blood is emitted from his mouth and nose. I lift him by his armoured chest from the ground. Pain now wracks him as his broken parts move. He screams—a bloody scream. A final scream, and as he does so, his life light goes out. He is dead.

I tear the now-dead head from his shoulders. I lick the blood from the available wounds. The beast I am needs feeding at times. I cast the body against the stonework behind me. It thuds and falls.

I sense men running in the night before me. I sense their fear now as they move away. I throw the still helmeted head at one of the retreating cowards. It strikes him, and he slips and falls and yells as he struggles to get to his feet once more. I am on him. His fellows leave him as they see me as a shadow. He is on his hands and knees, constantly slipping and falling as he tries to gain his feet.

'No, no, no...' He cries as he sees me stride towards him.

The night is dark and dreary. Rain has meant that the ground is muddy, where many feet have passed. I follow. I am the predator this night, and I follow. Taking the weakest first. 

I catch up with the poor fellow as he wallows in the mud. He swings what must be a damaged leg. I can smell the blood that washes from a bitter wound that he has gained. The man is dead. He just does not know it yet. I move around the stumbling thing, and he crawls blindly into my legs. 

I see his confusion as he looks about him. The night is solid. The night has become wet fur. He places a hand out in front and touches me. He touches the clawed feet. I can sense the confusion and the strangeness that he feels. He looks up, and I reveal my burning eyes—those eyes of fire. The pits of Hell are visible—his future revealed. 

I let fly a kick that shatters the man's collarbone and shoulder girdle. He wails at his ill-treatment. He suffers the damage loudly. I hope the other bastards hear him. I grab the man's head. I remove the helm. I grab the hair and lift him to my eye level. He hangs limply, burbling. I take a clawed paw and slowly reach inside him. He shudders on my inserted arm. He fails. I rip my arm free, blood gouts as it mingles with the rain. 

The man is no fun now. I drop the body and turn towards the bastard's camp, running to get there and cause a night of horror for them. 

Lord Percy Duke of Northumberland.

The wind howls through broken arrow slits, and the scent of blood and rain mingles on the battlements. I shiver not just at the cold but at the sounds I hear. I clutch my cloak about me to combat at least one of these. I continue to mentally form my prose. 

Hark now! What sound breaks through the storm,

not thunder—though it shakes the very marrow—

but cries. Oh God, the cries!

Not war cries, no—not that brutish music we have long grown deaf to—

but terror, unstrung and raw.

The Bastards scream.

From yon black mire and tattered tents,

Where once their laughter mocked the night,

There rises now a shrieking dirge, a hymn to chaos sung in gurgled throats.

And then—there! I saw it!

By firelight's flicker and the storm's cruel strobe,

A shadow vast, four-limbed and yet too long,

Too hungry, too cursed to be of mortal stock.

A wolf, say you? Nay, not so.

A beast born of nightmare's womb and baptised in the blood of men.

Fur blacker than the grave's own veil, matted with gore and soot,

Its eyes! Saints preserve me—its eyes like burning coals set in a furnace of hate and judgment.

It moves with the silence of thought, and strikes like wrath incarnate.

One man it clove from groin to gullet with but a sweep of claw,

Another it bore aloft screaming, his limbs flailing like straw in wind,

And dashed him down—a sack of meat and bone.

We saw them flee.

Veterans, cut-throats, devourers of coin and conscience—

Men who have slit throats for breakfast and laughed with entrails on their boots—

They ran.

They ran as children do from the dark,

Stumbling through mud, forgetting swords, weeping for mothers they barely named.

And I—I who have stood amidst the smoke of battle and the bitter aftermath of such.

I who have conjured kings and clowns with the stroke of my feathered pen—

I did tremble.

Yet… in this terror, this reaper of man's cruelty,

There burned a justice.

No wild beast this, no mindless hound of Hell—

But something righteous cloaked in dread,

A devil, aye—but a devil on our side.

So I dared to breathe, and whisper to the storm:

'Let him feast, O monstrous friend.

For better a demon that defends the innocent,

Than angels who stand idly by.'

And with that, the screams did fade to sobs, and sobs to silence.

And still the beast prowls.

And we who live behind these strong proud walls dare not pray for its end

For in its shadow, we are safe.

Gervais

It is the morn. The sun has risen, and the day has come. The rain stopped. The bitterness not.

I sit on the battlements, looking out over the camp. The ants in that nest are busy clearing that which was left after William's mission. A pile of bodies is forming on the eastern side. Many were lost in the night. Dead horses are visible. Many of them. They are ripped and torn. We can see that from here. I shudder. Thank God? Is that the deity I have to thank that the monster is on our side?

I reach for a bottle with hope. Nothing, so I cast it over the walls and hear it fall. It does not break. It could not in that bloody mud at the base of the castle. 

'Open the gates!' I hear shouted, and my interest turns to them. The giant doors swing open, and a naked man walks unsteadily through them. The man, William, is spattered in mud and gore. The defenders greet him as he walks. Some cheer. Some do not. It is a complicated morning. A complicated start to the day as some mourn and others celebrate. After a battle, there are many feelings felt. The feeling that I have is that there is a lack of wine. 

William makes his way to a horse trough. Once there, he dunks his head into the water and rinses some of the macabre mess that coats him from his skin. I watch Welly, his squire, run to him. He carries a rough blanket and some sort of clothing. William cleans himself as best he can. He dries and rubs himself down with the blanket, then puts on a tunic, tying the waist with a rope belt. 

'Wil!' I shout. 

He turns to me and smiles, raising a hand in greeting. 

'How goes it, Gervais?' He asks. I can hear the resignation in his voice.  

'It is not perfect.' I tell him. 

He laughs. 'Why is that, my friend?'

I grab an empty bottle and turn it upside down, showing its lack of wine.

Trumpets flair in the encampment outside. I see lines of horsemen form up with the Brave cock the Count's Herald at their fore. He is dressed splendidly. I can see that from this distance. Maybe this is him coming to give us a worthy surrender or to bid us farewell in their retreat. They can not want to fight after the night they have just had. Can they.

As I watch the column approach, William and Percy join me at the top of the gates. The armour of William lies where he left it, and over a fresh gambon and cloth, Welly and William rush to replace it on his body. 

Sir Percy Lord and Duke of Northumberland and Direct descendant of Noble King Arthur. 

I will continue my story as it should be heard.

Now broke the morn in brilliance pure and gold,

The sun, as if God's eye, did cast its gaze

Upon a land blood-soaked and newly still.

The black of night had passed with screaming breath—

For lo! a beast, a devil cloaked in fur,

Did visit on the Bastards dread and wrath.

This werewolf—huge, of sinew fierce and black,

With eyes afire and heart like burning coal—

Did stalk' mid tents and slumbering men of war.

It was no common beast, but something cursed,

Some vengeance made of muscle, fang, and howl.

Its talons rent through steel as through mere cloth,

And cries did echo through the vale and hill

As Bastard men were torn from sleep to death.

No champion rose. No captain held the line.

The camp was thrown to chaos, dread, and ruin,

And where fire should warm, it only burned with fear.

But when the bright and careless sun did rise,

And larks did sing as though the earth knew not

What carnage dark had danced beneath the moon,

The Bastards rallied round their Count de Périgod—

A man more bone than blood, a husk of pride,

Who, scorched in ego, called upon a fiend.

He brought—a sorcerer. Pale, long of limb,

And stoopèd like a question never answered.

This mage, this conjurer of foul intent,

Did boil in pots a broth of pestilence.

From rotted root and fungus wet with slime,

From livered toads and secret words of sin,

He brewed a death to ride the wind to walls—

A storm to steal the breath from babes and lords.

Now to the gate did come, with strut and pomp,

A herald bold, in crimson hat and plume.

He called himself the Brave Cock (no jest made),

And crowed in accent tangled, thick with wine

And French enough to curdle cheese and sense.

He read aloud, or tried, a threat full grim—

That if the folk within did not yield sword,

Then ruin would upon them surely fall,

By magic gas and mercenary rage.

And to this speech, this cockerel's grand decree,

Sir William Marshal came with iron brow.

No poet he, nor orator by trade,

But forged of war and straight as tempered steel.

He looked upon the herald, laughed but once,

And with a soldier's heart and soldier's tongue,

Told them, in tone both firm and unrefined,

To fuck off—and meant every sacred word.

No courtly bow, no flourish of retreat—

The gates slammed shut with final, mighty thump.

And thus the sun looked on a castle proud,

Its men resolved, its ladies armed in hope,

Its stones prepared to stand 'gainst fate and fire.

And far below, among the tented waste,

The Bastards plotted, angry, sick with fear,

With magic at their side, and doom in hand.

Yet o'er it all, like shadow cloaked in smoke,

The beast still watched, unseen upon the hill.

The wolf that fought not for coin, crown, or creed,

But only that which howls within the just.

The Count de Périgod.

What vile being of Satan was sent our way in the night. These evil men that hold this fort against us are willing to use ungodly methods against us. They are inhuman. They are vile. They murdered Sister Em and took only her head. Well, if this is their manner, it will not be said that I will not use everything that I can against them. They use dark magic; I can use dark magic. I can use dark magic and justify it in the outcome it will engender. 

We have been at their gates this morning to do more than they did. To offer them warning and offer them a method to extract themselves. All I wish is their surrender and the head of one man. Only one man has to die, the child murderer Willaim Marshall. It is hard to say the man's name as bitterness bites at me as I say it. 

I think William must have dark powers himself. He seems to have some power over the men in the keep. He seems to have the Lord bewitched. Why else would he let this murderer, this evil man, talk for him at the gate. My knowledge of the Lord, as passed down to me by my father, is that Tancerville is a godly Christian man. Maybe our actions this day will allow him to come back into the light. To break this spell, and we can become friends as he and my father once were. I pray to God that this is what happens. 

My brave herald had gone forth to talk to the Lord de Tancerville to seek reason with him. But oh no, he was cursed and abused from the battlements by the Vile man himself. William, being cowardly and villainous, would not give himself to save his home. Oh no. He would let all die in his retinue. What a coward. What a puss-filled abscess of a man he is. He would choose to let others die for his evil actions. The Lord de Tancerville must be under his spell. He must be.

Well, William had summoned a demon, but God's bright and cleansing sun drove it from this earthly plain with the aid of the exorcism of Bishop Rosent de Perigord. Now, hopefully, he will turn his back so that the dark sorcerer Antzindeepantz can do his fowl duty.

Antzindeepantz

I am the dread sorcerer, a practitioner of corrupted nature and soulcraft. My object this day: to concoct a Plague Draught, a volatile miasmic potion designed not merely to poison bodies but to spread despair, disease, and madness within the besieged walls of an enemy's castle.

To unmake a household, you do not knock at the gate—you rot the lungs of the cook and the cradle of the babe.

The base of the brew, my medium of corruption, has many ingredients:

Black Toad Bile – Collected from the belly of swamp toads raised in still water under a new moon; the base fluid, thick and acidic, breaks down skin and bone on prolonged contact.

Septic Grave Oil – Distilled from the melted fat of plague victims buried in unconsecrated ground. It carries the stink and spiritual resonance of hopeless death.

The Core Ingredients. The vectors of suffering:

Lung Moss – A grey fungus harvested from the lungs of the recently drowned; when dried and burned, its spores cause violent coughing, fever, and suffocation.

Rotted Infant Teeth – Nine, always nine, stolen from dead children; soaked in bile to leach out their lingering soul-echoes of innocence betrayed.

Despair Lilies – Grown only in cemeteries where the dead were never mourned. Their scent dulls hope, and prolonged exposure drives animals to starvation.

Scab of a Leper Saint – Blasphemously taken from a martyr's relic, crushed into powder to mock divine protection.

The ingredients for the infusion of will. The potions Cursed Spirits & Intent:

A Whispered Curse – Repeated with every stir: "Come hunger, come filth, come the rat's red eye."

Binding of a Homeless Ghost – A spirit that died unremembered and unburied, trapped in the liquid to infect the dreams of the afflicted.

A Thread of Wedding Veil – Stolen from a widow. Used to ensure that the potion will unravel bonds of love and harmony inside the walls.

The potions catalysts and Activators:

Molten Bloodstone Dust – Heated until it sizzles, then added to cause the potion to fume and rise in thick green vapours when exposed to air.

Rat's Milk – Collected at midnight from plague-fed rodents. Poured last to seal the brew and bind it to vermin.

You may wonder at the method of deployment. Well, once brewed, the Plague Draught is stored in clay amphorae marked with sigils of disease. These are then hurled by catapult or trebuchet over the walls of the target castle. Upon shattering, the potion creates a cloud of pestilent vapour and seeps into the soil, clothing, food stores, and wounds.

The grievous symptoms appear within hours:

Fever dreams and hallucinations

Bleeding from eyes and gums

Weeping skin pustules

Rapid spread of coughing illness and malaise

Whispers heard in darkness, driving some to madness

Finally, the dark magical properties of the evil draft.

Self-replicating rot: The essence of the potion causes mundane diseases to mutate, confounding healers and priests.

Wards Fail: Unless consecrated within 24 hours, the castle's protective magic weakens.

Ghost Bloom: The ghosts of the dead do not depart. They linger, visible, feeding on the living's fear.

The pots are ready. Now, we throw them forth.

Brave cock bring forth the trebuchets I am ready to start my work.