At least one or two of these posts have been inspired be recently starting to play Age of Wonders 4.
And, well, here’s another one.
Long story short, one of the expansion packs let you play as a Cthulhu-esque character type called an Eldritch Sovereign. Technically, though they’re transformed mortals rather than Cthulhus to begin with, but they still fit the “scary, unknowable beings who crawled out from another dimension” archetype.
FYI, I accidentally made mine kinda hot…
All of which is to say, if anyone in Realmgard could become pals with Cthulhu through sheer force of personality, it’s our Dunstana Darkstone.
© J.B. Norman — Published by Emona Literary Services™
As Kat reclines happily on her beloved plaid couch, she suddenly realises that she tastes Purple, smells F-Sharp, and can hear whispers in her head in a language that she’s sure she’s never heard before and yet somehow understands perfectly.
She frowns.
That’s a bad sign.
And she’s sure this is somehow Dunstana’s fault.
She swears, if Dunstana has somehow initiated the Apocalypse, she could have at least had the decency to do it after Kat finished her between-naps nap.
The door opens and that sensation of her senses… sensing the wrong thing goes gets worse.
“Hey, Kat,” Dunstana says happily. “Meet my new friend!”
“Gah!” Kat cries, tumbling from her couch as some… thing floats into the room following Dunstana.
She – Kat thinks the figure looks like a she. Or, at least the ghost of a she.
She’s floating and sort of shimmering and that sound of languages Kat doesn’t understand but also does seems to be centred around her. Her skin is pale, her eyes are glowing with strange light, her hair is billowing in a wind that isn’t there. Little spheres of light of slowly orbiting her as she floats there in the doorway.
“Isn’t she great?” Dunstana asks, grinning broadly – as if she was showing off a new puppy or something.
“Uh huh,” Kat says sceptically.
“I’m going to call you Jennifer. You look like a Jennifer,” Dunstana declares.
“You may name us any name your mortal mind deems suitable,” the floating figures replies. “For you could not comprehend our truest Name even if we should tell you.”
“So, uh, you’re not from around here, are you?” Kat ventures.
“We are come from Afar,” the floating figure answers. “From out of the Space between spaces and a Time that was already ancient when Old was young and Time was not yet reckoned, and your kind yet cowered in caves, cleaving close to their little fires to ward off the things walking in the night and nor had they yet learned to walk upright.”
“Oh,” Dunstana says with a nod. “Is that in Pelayo?”
“One question. Are you going to try to eat our brains, bones, or souls?” Kat asks.
“No, little mortal,” the floating figure says.
“Are you going to take over the world?”
“We have no desire for the conquest of this realm. It would not suit our Designs.”
“So…” Kat mutters. “That’s a no?”
“I wish my other friends could float like that. I wish I could float like that,” Dunstana notes.
She looks up at the floating figure.
“Can you teach me to float like that?”
“So, uh, Jennifer. What brings you to Porthaven?” Kat asks.
“We have come from Afar,” the floating figure says. “We have tread upon many realms of many worlds, and have deemed some to be goodly and pleasing and suitable to our will. We are told this realm is home to something called chocolate cake. We are intrigued.”
She looks down at Dunstana.
“Tiny one, acquire for us chocolate cake,” she commands, with a voice that could move mountains and drive back oceans.
“If I do, can you teach me how to float?”
Now, I’m pretty sure I didn’t write that in proper iambic pentameter, but I’ve never been able to make sense of how metre is supposed to work…
If anything, ‘Many are the fallen and dark is hour at day’s ending.’ sounds more like Anglo-Saxon poetry than Shakespeare.
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