Fierce Firelight

Monster Eater - Chapter 1

David

What strategies can a man employ when the only reliable foodstuff is the flesh of supernatural predators? Things whose breath may be fatal, whose bodies may be metal, whose eyes may control the mind?

In the face of this many men turn to cannibalism and other Faustian bargains.

Ramec must depart his home in the underworld sanctuary of Kalas Da, a place fed and comforted by a strand of the World Fungus.

He must forge his path to the surface in a world of absolute darkness and privation, where light is the beacon of death.

Ramec goes knowing only that there can be no categorization of the predators of the deep and that the humans of the underworld can be the most dangerous of all.

He will be transformed, because every moment in the chaos of the underworld commands death or adaptation. 

 ---
Art by Dan Sullivan: "Xenostygian"

I've been inspired by fantastic depictions of civilizations and their privations in the deep underworld for a long time, probably beginning with descriptions of the confined-space planes in the old Manual of the Planes, deepening with the phenomenal Underdark, and culminating in the epoch-making Veins of the Earth.

So far, I've written about four chapters of Monster Eater.

Support the show