An Excerpt from the Tome of Sable Chains: Creation of Visanguka

 

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“Kanego told me that lions of the bush will not attack men without provocation, but will lie in the grass and let one pass. He added that stories of lions breaking down doors to kill people are lies; these are men. Lions have shame, man does not."   - Perfect Lions, Perfect Leaders by Allen F. Roberts

The creation of a visanguka is a mighty feat of sorcery involving perfect timing and self-control. It is a thing a mage may be proud of, for the process is long and fraught.

To begin, the sorcerer should first obtain two animals, a lion and a rat. These are starved to death. Maggots are allowed to gestate in the corpses, and are fed and fattened until they become huge and furry. The maggot of the lion will provide the visanguka with the ability to change shape and wield the weapons at a lion’s disposal. The maggot of the rat will provide the visanguka with a complete lack of shame, so that it will kill without reason or remorse.

While the maggots are grown, the sorcerer shall prepare an amulet. The amulet is to be charged with components that make one invisible: a shard of glass from a smartphone screen, which people stare at to the exclusion of all else around them; the vocal cords of one who has gone unheard – for example, an innocent man who has been hung in spite of protesting his guiltlessness or a victim of rape who screamed for help that never came, or who is disbelieved; an insect of the order hemiptera family reduviidae, who we walk by without noticing. These are the sorts of components that the evocator must charge the amulet with. This will provide the assassin with the ability to walk invisible and soundless, unseen, unheard, and unnoticed, into any compound, no matter how well secured.

The mage meanwhile should also create a child from clay and weave a basket. Let the child be as perfect as the mage can make it, of a size that indicates he is a newborn, and sculpted with his mouth closed. If the child is smaller it is well, but if it is too small, the sorcery will fail.  Let the basket have a lid that can be secured closed, and straps that allow the mage to fasten the basket to his body so that it rests against his stomach. The reeds of the basket must be woven in such a way that the sign of VULDRA VORN ZELAR is clear upon all of its sides.

When all is in readiness, the mage is to place the amulet around the neck of the child of clay. He then places the lion maggot in his mouth and blows it along with his life’s breath into the right nostril of the child. The same is to be done with the rat maggot, saving that the nostril should be the left one.

The child should then be placed into the basket and the basked closed, secured, and sealed with the mage’s emission (hence the sorcerer must be a potent male). The mage must then strap the basket to his belly, never taking it off for any reason for a time of one hundred and eleven days and nights. It is crucial that the cessation of this period of time coincides with the new moon! At the end of this time, upon nightfall and if the moon is new, the mage should open the basket. If the sorcery has been successful, the mouth of the clay child will have opened. If it is closed, no further sorcery can be worked upon this effigy and the mage must begin again! But if the mouth is open, all is well and he may continue.

The sorcerer is then to cut his wrist, giving the child to suck upon the wound. The sorcerer must wait for the child’s eyes to open and ultimately must judge for themselves when the child’s grey flesh has flushed with the color of life. He should then close the lid and fasten it again. Daily, the child will seem to change back into clay, and this feeding must be repeated again at nightfall for another one hundred and eleven days. Again, the wizard must never remove the basket from his body for any reason unless he is willing to begin anew, for removing the basket will cause the spell to fail. This is a time of great peril, for the child is hungry and will need more and more blood to sup upon as it grows! A careless wizard will be drained entirely of his life force and yet if the child is given too little to feed upon, it will die. The mage must wait until the clay child’s chest rises and falls as though it breathes and for its skin to have the hue of vitality before he withholds his blood for the remainder of the day. If the wizard judges well, the child will live and can be removed from the basket at the end of the second one hundred and elven day period. Thus released, it must be fed on the flesh of a human murder victim chosen at random and will then grow quicky, attaining the size and wisdom of an adult (though it will never talk, having been fashioned by necessity with no tongue) in not more than three months.

Once all this has happened, the mage will have a powerful servant; a visanguka lion-man who can spread terror and enact revenge at the sorcerer’s demand.

Death of a Cat and Dragons as Hoarders

I spent most of the day yesterday helping my mom clean the basement out.  My mom is something of a hoarder.  Not an extreme case by any means, we aren't talking about foot-wide pathways through stacked items or anything, but the basement has accumulated a lot of stuff over the years, as basements do, and she's had a hard time getting rid of a lot of it because much of it is meaningful to her in some way - my grandmother's four poster beds, or my great grandmother's nightstand.  And of course, old things from when my sister and I were little kids.  Stuff like that.

The hoarding thing never made sense to me until about two years ago when one of our cats died very, very suddenly.  She was a sweet little orange cat we got from a shelter and named Biscotti.  She had come to the shelter weighing only three pounds even though she was about two years old, they thought, and they had to put weight on her before they could spay her.  For a cat, she was clumsy, but she made up for it with determination.  We got two from the shelter and they were a study in contrasts - Cappuccino, a big, mostly white patch tabby, is so graceful you would almost swear that he levitated rather than jumped.  When Biscotti made the same jump, she wouldn't quite get there, she'd get her forepaws on the thing she had jumped to and then scrabble up with her rear legs.  Very un-catlike in some ways.

One of her eyes watered and she would constantly get crusties there, which I would wipe off with a wet ball of cotton on a daily basis. Cappuccino, on the other hand, never got crusties.  He is big, even for a male, and muscular, and fast, and powerful.  I wonder if he might not have a bit of Maine Coon in him, he's such a big beautiful bastard.  She was little, even for a female, with stubby legs that reminded me a little of munchkin cats, and she got fat quickly.  When we got her she was five or six pounds, and she got up to 11 before we put her on a diet.  She would eat ANYTHING.  She was a stray from what we were told, not feral, much too easy to handle for that, but a stray of some kind, and I think, based on her weight when the shelter got her, she must have been starving.

In spite of all this, she was kind of in charge, between the two cats.  When she wanted a piece of territory, she did this thing where she would come right up to whoever was in it and sit down right next to them with absolutely no regard for personal space.  She managed to conquer most of the household that way, except for a few places she begrudgingly shared with Cappuccino.  I say begrudgingly, but really, it wasn't - they cuddled together, and she would hold him down and groom him, like he was a big, stupid kitten.

She groomed me, too.  She would come to my bed when I was lying down and get up near my head and lick my hair and head.  Or sometimes when she was at the top of the cat tree, if I walked up to her and leaned my head against the platform she was on, she'd groom me.  Her breath was a little fishy, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.  It sent little shivers racing down my spine, like getting a massage sometimes does.  She was affectionate to me, like I was a big, stupid kitten too.  And she luxuriated in being pet and scratched as only cats can.  One of the things I feel like she taught me is that love IS touch, in some sense.  When she died it hit me like a truck, way harder than when any of my grandparents died, almost as hard as loosing some of my friends had, and I wondered why that was.  I think the sense of touch is connected to love the way the sense of smell is connected to memory - there's probably some amazing brain chemistry there somewhere.  I don't know that much about the brain, but it seems to me that it was in large part because we touched each other so often and so unselfconsciously that it hurt so much to lose her.

Anyway, she was about five when she died, we think.  She used to wake me up in the morning at the crack of dawn to be fed, as is the way of cats.  And on this particular morning, which was Independence Day, 2021, she woke me up, and I fed them both, and then went to go write, because early morning is often when I write these days, and they were fine.  About a half an hour later I heard one of those low moans cats sometimes make when they are really upset come from the other room, and I thought there must be some animal or something outside, because the two cats we had never fought, but it sounded serious, so I went to go check it out.

She was lying on the floor with her arms out like she was trying to scratch, and Cappuccino was sniffing at her.  Her hind legs were kind of bunched up like she was going to jump or something, but her belly and forelegs were flat on the floor and it looked like all her muscles were tensed.  An odd position, one I had never seen a cat in before.  I knew something was wrong, but not what.  She made this sound like she was trying to vomit the biggest vomit ever, maybe, this heart-wrenching, guttural, mucus-filled exhalation - I had a girlfriend describe something similar issuing from me one time when I apparently OD'ed and stopped breathing for a few minutes.  I guess I made a similar sound when I started breathing again.  She said she had never been more grateful for such a disgusting sound.  But maybe in Biscotti's case it was the death rattle?  I'm not sure, but that was that.  Her body totally relaxed after she made that noise, and she died.  I don't think thirty seconds had passed from the time I first heard the moan.

I rushed her to the emergency vet, but I knew when I was putting her in the carrier that she was gone.  She was so limp in my hands, her body just kind of folded and slid into the carrier.  I remember being very thankful it was Independence Day at 5 AM because there was literally no one on the road and I tore ass over to the vet, going like 80 in a 35 zone most of the time.  But it was too late, and I knew it was too late.  I just couldn't let go without trying though.

Speaking of letting go, this is where the story comes back to hoarding.  After she died, I remembered I had brushed her the day before, and I went to the garbage and it was only like paper and stuff, and her fur.  And I took a ball of her fur out, and put it in a little plastic bag.  It was like I just couldn't let this thing go, even though it was trash.  It was her somehow - the two had become connected in my mind and if I had not been able to retrieve the fur before the bag went down the chute or got carried off by the trash guys, I would have been very upset, and felt like I threw her out somehow.  She had become her fur in my mind, with all the emotional weight of the living being.

And that was the moment I understood hoarding.

So.  My mom isn't that bad of a hoarder, but she's had forty years of living in the same place and the death of both her parents, her great aunt, both of my dad's parents, etc, and stuff just builds up.  There's no actual filth thank god, but there's lots of stuff in the basement.

My dad has tried to help her with this stuff, but he doesn't understand and is not sympathetic to the fact that she has formed emotional attachments to it, so when he tries to help her with it, it deteriorates into arguments in the best tradition of people who have been married for fifty years.  Somehow though, when I suggest she let something go, maybe it's the way I do it, she can let it go. Maybe it's because I let her go through it.  Maybe it's because when she sees something that makes her sentimental, I say ok, mom, take a picture of it if you want to remember it, and then let's let it go.  We made really good headway today, I took out like three big bags of trash, two bags to drop off to goodwill, and I took the last little bit of crap I had over there, left when I went to school in the nineties.  Even my dad was happy with the sheer volume of stuff that went out.  But of course, there really were some treasures mixed in with the junk.  One thing was a picture of my Great Uncle Bud from WW1.  It lists him as US of A Company B 339th Machine Gun Battalion (I think - if anyone else can make out the writing and thinks it's something else, let me know).  I think these things were filled out by the family, but I'm not sure.

My Great Uncle Bud was a quiet man from rural Iowa.  And also apparently a motherfucking machine gunner in World War One.  I remember seeing his uniform many years ago over at my Great Aunt's, and being struck by how small it was.  People were smaller then.  The diet has changed and I think the additional protein makes people bigger.  In Japan, you can see this generationally as more meat has been added to the diet - my wife's brothers are both like over six feet tall.  Her dad is about my size, maybe a little smaller.  I never met her grandpa, but I'm told he was about the same size as her grandma, who, granted, was old and hunched as hell, but stood perhaps a little over four feet tall.

A motherfucking machine gunner.  Jesus.

The experience made me think about the word "hoard" and the nature of a hoard, and I wondered if anyone has done dragons as hoarders in the sense that they are emotionally attached to the items in their hoard.  The reason they know you stole a single gold piece is because that was a gold piece their grandfather dragon was given by his mate, Arenisamalirestasiya the Cobalt, as a weregild for killing one of their hatchlings.  And that other gold piece came from the treasury of the Lord Potentate of Rilenas, the Grey Capital, when the dragon took vengeance upon him for denial of the monthly tribute of cattle.  He melted and burned the entire treasury excepting that one piece.  And on and on and on, all the items have a story or provenance and in some way they ARE that experience or that being for the hoarder, and loosing the item is like loosing that experience or that being.

100 Names for Small Gods (or Cats) and a Short Pome about Cats (or Small Gods)

I did say there would be occasional cats!  And I need a break from writing dreary pretentious depressing egotistical bullshit.

I was reading the Wizards as Clerics of Magic post by semiurge and it made me resurrect this list, which I was working on last week before I got distracted...  This was originally intended as a list of names for small gods or cats (or small gods who manifest as cats) (or appellations for a cat god).  It also strikes me that these "small gods" or spirits might be called on by magic users to do certain things.  I have not actually detailed the powers or spells associated with each name - I think in some cases there is something pretty obvious, but in others it isn't immediately clear what propitiating such a god (or cat, I mean let's face it they are more or less synonymous anyway) might get you.  My hope is that the names are evocative enough that you can think of something (or several somethings) that fit the bill.

Also, at the very end of this is an imitatio of We Real Cool by Gwendolyn Brooks that involves cats.  I was fortunate enough to meet her briefly while she was still incarnated here in Chicago.  She was a lovely woman and meeting her was an inspiration.  I mention this here both because I took direct inspiration from her for the poem and also because she encouraged me to read poetry, and I would like to pass that encouragement on to other people.  I hope you enjoy it and even if you don't that you continue to read poetry.

1. Mellowpaw*
2. Mr. Sound
3. Ambassador Azrael Extraordinary
4. Wild Widow Diligent
5. Mickey Barcode
6. Artemis Ruqualash
7. The Glacier
8. Zeppelin Bone
9. Judicial System
10. Soft Red Glow
11. Gravity Need Not Apply
12. Precision Instrument
13. Possession Is Nine Tenths of the Law
14. Open the Door Close the Door Open the Door
15. Mercury Gaze
16. This Is For You
17. Murderclaw*
18. Silence of the Aeons
19. Assigned Viewing
20. Virtue of Inaction
21. Death Prophet
22. Bonnie Billy Bewildering
23. Zipslide Flipside Zoomwilder
24. Effortless Grace
25. Twill Trill Ear Drill
26. Unconscious Desire
27. Drag It From the Sky
28. Effective Technique
29. Once More but Faster and Slyer
30. Drifting Bit of Fur
31. Take the Babies and Run
32. Grandfather Ruin
33. Edith Escape Claws
34. Saul of the Sumptuous Banquet
35. Amadeus Attitude
36. Obdurate Octavia Outrageous
37. Mona Low Moan
38. The Wiggler
39. Randy Randall One-eye
40. Silky Soft Saboteur
41. Lightning Follows Me
42. Fastest Path
43. I Will Leave A Marcus
44. Nate Abhors a Vacuum
45. Thomas Turning Tail & Timothy Twisting Tail (these always show up together)
46. Perhaps I Didn’t Think This Through
47. Izzy Edible
48. Twilight’s Heavy Burden
49. Critical Hit
50. Special Handling
51. Current Resident
52. Relaxed Atmosphere
53. All Things Must Be Devoured
54. Cruthington Murder Mitten
55. Depth Perception
56. Sleek Sweet Susan Deepsleep
57. Now How Do I Get Down
58. Withering Look
59. Shady Sheamus Shameless
60. Jellobelly the Pirate
61. Soft Killer
62. The Infanticide
63. Megakratheon**
64. This Is My Stomach There Are Many Like It But This One Is Mine
65. Howling Fury
66. The Hidden Thing
67. Sleep Deprived
68. Rogue Agent
69. Slick Sammy Switchblade
70. Loosed Upon The World
71. Vasebreaker
72. The Surly Churl
73. Emperor Steven Eventide
74. Number Six
75. Willing Prisoner
76. Tell Me About the Rabbits
77. Double Action
78. Marvelous Mildred Midwinter
79. The Moon in Daylight
80. Ethan Socksbury of Fethingham
81. Slackmaster J
82. Beauty Set to Music
83. The Zorn of Zorna
84. Ivan Invisible
85. I Go Unnoticed
86. The Thorn
87. Diffident Dancer
88. Best In Life
89. The Squint
90. Harold Herald of Heroes
91. Real Gone
92. The Hip Gahn
93. Wholly Devoid of Sympathy
94. Softest Fur In the Universe
95. Enjambment
96. Anapest Dactyl
97. The Missing Ingredient
98. Is It Breakable
99. I Was Made For This Box
100. High Frequency

We Hunt Prey

(with apologies to Gwendolyn Brooks)


We hunt prey. We
Spring-play. We


Flop-sleep. We
Dream deep. We


Bump-flit. We
Snarl spit. We


Jump-fly. We
Sneak-spy. We


Trill-speak. We
Zoom-streak. We


Fast blur. We
Soft purr.

* Twins

** https://grandcommodore.blogspot.com/2022/08/the-secret-places-of-megakratheon.html

The Centzon Totochtin

In Aztec Mythology, the goddess Mayahuel rules both fertility and the maguey or agave plant. Along with the god Patecatl, she protects the maguey and its fermented sap, or pulque. One night, in a fit of passion, Patecatl and Mayahuel consummated their relationship and Mayahuel found herself pregnant.

She gave birth to the Centzon Totochtin or 400 Divine Rabbits, who were nurtured on pulque from her many breasts, and grew into the Gods of Drunkenness. These divine rabbits travel through the land, holding frequent parties and gatherings and deliver the gift of drunkenness to the people, with each Rabbit representing the different ways in which a person can experience intoxication.

They include Tepoztecatl, Texcatzonatl, and Tlilhua.

Here we have three of the Centzon Totochin.

Tlilhua ("one who has ink")

 Ometochtli ("two-rabbit")

Macuiltochtli ("five-rabbit" - center)

Guarding Mictlantechutli

The Sunkillers arrayed for battle

As usual, this cat was exceptionally well behaved.  Here he is yawning.

28 MM Reaver - Legio Mortis' Rex Submersi (and a note on the Signum Nobilis)

 After I finished the 28 MM Warhound, I found myself wanting to do another titan, another long, detailed project that would push me to learn new modeling and painting techniques.  The Warlord had just been released, and Forge World was still dealing only in British Pounds, but even with a good exchange rate, the Warlord was very hard to justify!  Maybe one of these days....

But I was (eventually) able to talk myself into buying a Reaver.  The Reaver kit, for those of you who have never worked with one, is fantastic.  I actually found it a much easier and more manageable build than the Warhound.  I am certain some of that was the experience I had gained from the Warhound, but it was also about how the Reaver stands vs. the Warhound, how the weight of the upper carapace balances, and how in general the parts fit each other.  Anyway, here she is:

Some Secutarii (and a teeny bit of a knight) for scale

I like the way the red color turned out on this model.

I'm happy with the way the eagle and banner on the carapace turned out.

Some of the alternate weapons.  Is that a vortex missile in your pocket?

Detail on one of the knees

I went ...er... a little nuts on the kill markers on the volcano cannon

I promise I painted the interior as well, at some point if there is interest I'll hunt those photos down (or take new ones) and post them.

The happy 28mm family!  with some Secutarii...

Banner obverse (or can I only use that word for coins?)

Banner reverse

I had a friend of mine who is a master with photoshop help me with the banner.  I found some appropriate graphics, but he was able to put everything together in photoshop.  If anyone is interested, I still have the files, which could serve as a jumping off point for your own banner.  Let me know and I would be happy to share the files with you.

The one thing about the banner as it currently stands is that the signum nobilis is wrong.  The signum nobilis is the part of the banner that indicates the titan's maniple or battlegroup and the titan's place in that battlegroup.  At the time, I don't think the words "signum nobilis" had been used by GW.  When you look at older banners from GW, they get it wrong too.  I've circled the signum nobilis from an older HH book here:

Here is a newer version, from one of the Adeptus Titanicus books:

Different symbols are used for different titans.  The symbols above are the "standard" if one can be said to exist.  The crossed axes is a warlord - the black color of the axes means that this is the Warlord's banner that we are looking at.  The single axes are two Reavers, and the funky shape that looks like a table are the Warhounds.  This is most likely an Axiom maniple with the Warlord acting as the Princeps Primaris.

I love these banners, the intricacy and symbolism of them.  Here are a few more, again with their signum nobilis (nobiles?) circled.  I think the Imperial Hunters is showing an Axiom Maniple and the Godbreakers are showing a Venator maniple with the Reaver leading.

The Gryphonicus banner is showing a larger battlegroup (maniples are limited at five titans, I believe).  I think the makeup of the Gryphonicus battlegroup is:

• 1 Warlord
• 4 Reavers
• 3 Warhounds

You can make a lot of different maniples with that combination!

I'm guessing a little more with the Infernus banner but assuming the central flame is not symbolic of a titan, it looks like they might be running two Reavers and three Warhounds, possibly a Ferrox or Janissary Maniple.

At some point in the near future I may do another 28mm Titan, but for now, I'm quite happy to continue working on my Adeptus Titanicus scale warlord for my Central American inspired battlegroup tentatively named the Legio Solis.  Cognomen - the Sun Killers.

Once again, this cat was exceptionally well-behaved.