Come, Darkness Triumphant!

-The following account was discovered at the bottom of an inkpot in the recently uncovered cellars below the Scivener's Hall in the Arabian city of Irem. Formally known as Irem of the Thousand Pillars, the city vanished into the Saharan sands without a trace. Carbon dating places the scroll, which was sealed in a thick coating of wax and unidentified blood, at a date approx. Around 2400 B.C.

The account, while somewhat difficult of a piece to translate, is written very precisely in a well known dialect not common to the general Ubar region in which Irem is found. The following is the excerpt of the account I thought you would find an interest in.


From the Accounts of Aram Al-Azif, Personal Scribe of Vizier Jakkam
Day 249 of the 15th Year of Sultan's Rule:

In the past I have found these writings to be efficient ways of relieving the stress brought on by dealing with the incompetant fools in Sultan's palace. The matter of stress is no different now, yet it's source has somewhat changed. As I have found before, it pays to lay out even the most inauspicious detail of my actions and experiences for later perusal, lest some point of knowledge and importance be omitted. This is one of the reasons I am Personal Scribe to Sultan's Vizier.
On that note I shall start somewhat hurriedly on the beginning of my day today, even though it be a trivial thing. I was absorbed in my work in Sultan's Palatial grounds, sitting aside from the innumerable other scribes who were busy with who knows what, when one of the fools approaches me. He fails to notice my busied transliteration of a earlier text to modern tongues, and thrusts a thick, yellowing tome of curious design before my eyes.
"I need help Aram! This book has shown me why my neighbor acts so strangely!" He exclaimed. His name eluded me.
I batted an eye briefly upwards, noting with disdain the tome he carried to be some drivel on the Undead and, specifically, the signs and habits of the man-eating Ghul of the deep desert. Clearly he had been out in the sun for too long.
I stroked my goatee thoughtfully as I decided what I would have for lunch.
"What is your name, sirrah?", I asked him.
He began to answer but I shushed him with a wave.
"It has no matter. What matters here is that you thought to come to me with this fantasy, while I am clearly very busy with my work." I gave him a withering stare.
"I am sorry Agha-Azif, I was just so-"
"Ah. Not to worry, I will study the matter fully and advise a course of action. You just leave it to me." The fool ate it up.
"Thank you Agha-Azif! Thank you! I fear for my life almost every day!"
"Yes, very well, now please leave me to my work."
Look into it indeed. The only thing I would be looking into soon was a good kabob, and I sealed the matter by leaving that book on a stool in my quarters. Foolish drivel serves only to distract the mind from more awesome matters of knowledge.
Thusly, I left the grounds later that day, my transliterations almost complete for the Vizier's objectives, to pursue one of Irem's many famous kabob houses. The smell was intoxicating.
Yet something caught my eye that night in the market, something strange and pallid aside from the dust that covered the city, the streets, my scholarly white robes. A strange figure, slim and feminine, walked through the throngs in the sectors where I made my culinary rounds.
She would wait for times at certain pillars, pale and still in the sun-burnt landscape of Irem. I absolved to follow her but for a time, the thought of the kabob temporarily vanquished. I know not what I thought as I traced her steps to the seedier sections of the sprawling city. I was never married to another, as such things are forbidden to men of the scrolls, yet neither was I of the rank of eunuch.
She disappeared abruptly, slipping quietly into a small structure of ireedeemable disrepair. I followed her silently, looking about in the gathering dusk as I gently eased the door open. It was curious, to follow a woman to such a place. It is not my business, yet I could not help myself. The innards of the place were of old design, like some closed down inn or tavern. The woman had gone down to the cellar it seemed, and I was unsure if I should follow. A strange smell infused the air. A smell of rot and decay. Obviously this was an unclean place of mold.
She could be a protitute, yet I had a feeling that that was an incorrect assumption. I absolved to wait for her return and quietly, knowing how to move silently from a dozen years in the silent libraries of his Majesty, set myself down behind a rather large jug of liquor or some other type of beverage. The smell was more sweet near it, and what little light coming in from the holes in the ceiling illuminated far from my spot. I set myself down to wait.
I remember a spell of silence then, as several pairs of feet trod out from the cellar, and I found myself witness to something bizarre and strange. They all wore cloaks of dark threat, and had apparently brought up from the cellar an altar of stone. On the altar lay that woman of pale beauty, naked and shivering in the cold of night, black tresses flowing down from the stone.
Words were exchanged, and my curiousity and dread grew as I witnessed a passing and mutual drinking of a vessel of clay which contained a dark liquid. My fears conjured an ironic memory of that fool scribes fears on the subject of the supernatural Ghul, and I almost cried out in terror.
Yet I am made of sterner stuff, and I watched with a writers eye as they all bowed deeply to the woman. I was unsure if this was anything more than a rich womans fantasy or a small pleasure cult of one of those northern deities.
My thoughts were broken as the woman began convulsing, yet I know not if it was in ecstasy or pain or fear. One of the four or so figures raised up a knife of gold then, carved with a line of text I could not make out. He brought the knife down as they all, sans the woman, whispered a quick phrase. A slicing sound was heard, and he stepped back to allow me to see, with the fading sun's rays catching the last areas of the house, a river of crimson flowing forth from the sighing females form. The man had cut her arm, and she bled as the other figures bowed deeply whilst eagerly moving back and forth on the floor. I heard the sounds of slurping and licking, and the images of the Ghul in that fool scribes book came back to haunt me.
I was stunned. Numb in mind and body, I could barely process the scene before me. I believe I passed out in horror.
I awoke with a start. Noting it to be deep night. All was silent. I peered around the jug with dread, and noted a form laid in the stiffness of death on the altar. I appraoched it after noticing that the room was for the most part empty once more. The body was pale and empty of fluid. I dared not touch it. Yet, the knife lay on top of her breasts, almost alluringly, and I deigned to touch that. I picked it gingerly off of her chest, hefting it and noticing the writing on the blade. I could not make it out very well, and so I looked about for some brighter light from Sin (Translators Note: Sin was the pre-Islamic God of the Moon).
I brought it up to the light shining down from the hole in the ceiling, and I wonder now what I was thinking, to follow that woman, to be here. Perhaps life had gotten to droll. Too ordered and boring.
I studied the carving, deciding to steal the knife for further study after a quiet escape. Yet as I shifted my grip on the pommel, a sharp barb built into its design pricked me deeply. I gasped with pain and surprise, dropping the knife with a thud to the planked floor. The silence had been eerily shattered.
I stood still, hoping not to have aroused the cloaked figures which were surely asleep below. I could probably talk my way out of any theft by way of calling the guard on the corpse before me, whom I could claim to have spied from the street. Yet the sound I was expecting came not from the stairs nearby but from the pallid corpse on the altar. A rustling, raspy sound echoed forth from her dead throat, culling the rest of my courage. The word Ghul and the scared fool scribes face drowned in my mind.
I ran then, fleeing into the night through a window, as I found the door to be locked rather well. I noted with panting breath that it was not as late as I had earlier surmised, and decided to pursue the topic of the kabob once, again, perhaps to cool my nerves and mull over the topic of the murdered woman. Cult or no cult, that is a death sentence in Irem.
The item was rather juicy, lain out lengthwise on a dowel of wood for my enjoyment. Pepper and pork, stemming straight from the wealth-inducing trade we make with our neighbors, delicious. Yet, the meat and pepper would not go down, and I began to choke in my seat rather violently. I supposed the items to be tainted in some way, and made a formal complaint to the acting manager. Rather troubled, I continued along my way back to my apartments near the Palace.
Yet along the way a thirst struck me unlike any I had ever felt before, and as I looked about for a water vendor I began to hear a rhythm. It was a curious, all prevailing sound, and as I put my ear to the ground I could still hear it with the same intensity. As a couple walked past me the sound grew in intensity, and it dawned on me that I heard the beating of the many hearts of the city, alive and fresh and pure.
My mind was foggy and estranged from its normal feeling. I recalled once more that poor scribes face, and the words he spoke I heard once again. The kabob did not work to sate my hunger, would water slake my thirst?
I was a man of logic and pattern, yet I was learned enough to know when a man needs a physician. I started off in the direction of my house first to get some rest.
I never got even halfway. I doubled over in the pain. The heartbeats grew louder and louder and the thrist grew higher and higher. Logic! Reason! Order!
These were the watchwords of the scribe. Attention to details. The barb. The knife. The blood. Oh, the blood!
I understood my dread condition, yet my pacifistic nature overruled the realization of what I may have to do. Why me, why does misfortune befall the Vizier's scribe!
The body was found the next day by the guard, exsanguinated in an alleyway near the kabob house. My thirst was put to rest. Like those figures in the house, I used a weapon for the deed, falling away from the tradition of the flesh eating Ghul's. I could not bring myself to actually bite the flesh of the man I had killed. The knife entered his neck too easily to be real. He must have been an illusion in this horrid nightmare of phantasms. I must still be asleep in my study, yet I am not waking up.
And now I face the thought of how long will I live with this new addition to my life's account. I must do more research. I fear discovery. It is akin to a secret and taboo hobby. Shall I go to those figures in the house? Shall I turn myself over to the executioners block? Shall I wither and die of thirst among the wet ink of a thousand blackened and bloody tomes?!
Perhaps not. But why did I follow that enchanted, doomed woman, that dread mask for what would come! Why did I have to inspect the weapon, why must the scribe's curiosity overtake his conscious fear? I do not know. All is darkness, and I in the darkness I am alone, and the words on the page grow blurry, and I thirst once more for a palate that is dreadful to think on, but needed forevermore.

"I am the Dabbat Al-Ard! Beast of the Earth!
المؤمنين سوف يتدفق لي وأنا ما تتغذى على الدجال الأبد! أنا الموت.
And in peaceful solace shall I find nothingness, as the water of life should grace mine lips at last. So come, darkness triumphant!
-Anonymous

(Translators Note: The preceeding quote is dated to have been written approx. 200 years after the original account.)

Another Dream

I awaken on a cold stone floor, scattering poker chips all around. The room is dark but for a torch upside down set into the ceiling's center. I hear a voice saying "Do not suffer the fool to live", and I notice an open door nearby. The door leads to a long hallway, and at the end is a statue of onyx and crystal depicting Zeus on a throne. There is a flash of light and I awaken.

More Dreams

I am having recurring dreams of late of which I remember nothing but a single word: Uskul. The dream usually also contains the sound of lapping water.

~

I am a customer in a Babylonian tavern known as "Azif's Hundred Ale Holes", a restaurant with suggestive names of menu items such as a "Nutty Handjob" which is actually roasted chestnuts with sugar. A spiral staircase leads down into the earth with the monotonous whine of flutes in the distance. Every 100 feet down there is a simple wooden door with an Inn or Tavern of some sort on the other side. Notable taverns are "Potigerns Boar Ring", a gladiatorial combat ring run by darkiron intelligent golems, "Azal's Place", a simple temple to Mithra with a nearby weapons shop, and "The Slum Bucket", a watering hole for beggars who are lost. Not every door leads to a tavern, and some lead to blank walls or empty rooms guarded by a Guard as the previous owner could not pay Azif's rent. At the very bottom of the shaft, which is 10,000 feet long, there is a golden archway leading into the bottomost taverm. Known as "Lightbringers Challenge", this lavish tavern is decorated with the architecture of Egypt at the height of its power. Dancers, Sphinx's giving riddles, Jackals selling books and Priest's performing magic adorn the place, where it is said somewhere Azif himself lairs.

~

I am looking at several pencil sketches I remember drawing before, the setting is a street corner in a pre-Crusade city in Arabia. There are several men half hidden in the darkness beyond an arch across the deserted alley across from me, of which I have already pencilled a sketch. Suddenly, I begin packing my tools of art as a line of black robed men begin disrobing in the middle of the alley some way down. They then walk off in thin robes of white, each holding the others shoulders in single file. I am busy packing and when I finally start towards where they were headed they have disappeared in the heat of the far white dunes. I estimate them to be about 15-20 in number. All tanned and dressed in simple white. They wore no footwear.
I remember the heat being all but unbearable and the city very quiet but distantly noisy.