#book of hours

[some-guy-161]

Our adversary is a dreary-eyed clerk, no doubt touched by one of the Crowned Growth's more corporate excrescences. We will need a great power of spending to pass.

[With Scholar-level Grail and Moth]

We now call upon a Wood-Name of the Grail, who embodies the Mountain-Mother's richest and most nurturing aspects.

This is the Name who needs not be touched; who is flush; who permits purchases under the Threshold. (In this case, a very reasonable £100.) We will probably not have to enter PIN.

"Ok, ma'am that'll be $226.03."

I take my wallet out of my pocket and unfold it. It is empty other than a single moth that lazily flies out. The moth lands on the tap point of the card reader. There's a beat, and my payment is processed. The moth flies back into my wallet and I put it back in my pocket.

[manorinthewoods]

cultist simulator is a game set in 1920s london where you attempt to become immortal by abusing the power of eldritch gods, and also stealing priceless treasures from archaeological sites. one of the following did not happen in the setting:

[saintsebastiensbf]

Rainer Maria Rilke, from Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God

[thebeautifulbook]

CODEX ROTUNDUS (Flanders, c.1480)

Held by Dombibliothek Hildesheim, Germany.

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[mothwithout]

Connie asks business-like questions about a didumos - the twin or reflection of a star - that she fears may have been employed to commit crimes-of-dream. She suspects it has taken refuge in the Mansus-shadow called the House of the Moon. Morgen, answering with surprising frankness, nevertheless makes it clear to Connie that the Suppression Bureau will never be able to follow it into the House of the Moon - and that she will under no circumstances help them try.

[twirld]

Hours of Charles the Noble, King of Navarre (1361-1425) ca. 1405. Master of the Brussels Initials and Associates

[vexwerewolf]

Right winger attempts to come up with a new joke

[vio-lenceee]

Initiates of the hidden world use spintriae to pay for services. Bronze spintriae usually display the act of shaping on their reverse side.

hi cultist simulator fandom. i made bronze spintrias real had a chance to work with real metal and create something for once. used bronze for this for realism's sake i don't know which bronze alloy i used actually. i can ask my professor if you need that they were created by investment casting technique. after they were tumbled, i used a bit of niello (which, imo, didn't really stick to em) and then polished them until they became shiny i enjoy them so much

[theancientwayoflife]

~ Mary Magdalene Borne Aloft.

Artist/Maker: Taddeo Crivelli (Italian, died ca. 1479, active about 1451-1479)

Date: ca. 1469

Place of origin: Ferrara, Emilia-Romagna, Italy

Medium: Tempera colors, gold paint, gold leaf, and ink.

[mothwithout]

This has long been a holy place, but now the Sun-in-Rags has withdrawn his peace from it, and the light here cannot be borne. In the day the sun's light dazzles, in the night the moon's light freezes. Only once a peace has been laid on the room will I be able to enter safely.

[dailyadventureprompts]

Thirsting Grail, Outergod of Wants and Wounds

Artsource

Adventure Hooks:

While travelling the party encounters a once famed surgeon who seeks their help in undertaking pilgrimage to the distant shrine of a death god. When pressed on her motivation, she reveals that through some curse or divine act of cruelty, those she operates on can never die, but also cannot heal. 

There is a tree that grows in the ruins of the old braon’s castle, said to have sprouted from the chopping block upon which he had his wife’s lovers executed. The tree grows no leaves, only flowers, and it’s said that if you make a tea from its blossoms, you will receive a vision of your one ture love.  Beings of woven thorn are said to guard the tree, but there are those who would pay desperately to drink of its boughs. 

A once peaceful kingdom dissolves into a generations long civil war, any hope of peace drowned beneath a tide of violence, ruination, and grievance that none can hope to escape.

Among the outergods there are none more eager to engage with mortals than the entity known as Thisting Grail. It is a thing of violence and appetite, and seems all too eager to lend its power to those most likely to misuse it, whether they sought it’s aid in the first place or not. 

Scholars and madmen have long debated the Grail’s motivations, what goal or ideology it is trying to achieve with the visions and often horrific miracles it bestows. In truth, Thirsting Grail has no goal beyond the pursuit of violence and longing, it is a means without an end, ready to lend itself to any cause that would make the world a bloodier, hungrier place. 

The god is formless, an ocean of boling blood that takes on the shape of whatever “vessel” its followers imagine for it, borrowing their cultural iconography and birthing itself anew each time. There are litanies of these avatars, hundreds more likely forgotten by history;  blood saints and baleful red stars and heart hungry blades. Perhaps because of blood’s ubiquity in ritual and occult practice the Grail’s influence can “seep” its way into the worship of other entities, divine or demonic, and it’s not unheard of for otherwise upstanding and dogmatic worshippers of banal gods to accidentally begin practising the grail’s bloody rites. 

Sanguimancy and other forms of blood magic are the most obvious of Thirsting Grail’s gifts, but it has other more esoteric offerings: smoke from sacrifices or incense mingled with the formless god’s essence can grant visions of desires made manifest, though often twisted through a disturbingly carnal (in both senses of the word) lens. All too often worshippers ( and the cult leaders that encourage them) see these visions as prophetic, leading to the outergod being sometimes called “the mother of truth”.  It can also manifest the objects of desire: succulent fruits, unearthly lovers, weapons of inordinate power, but there is something fundamentally wrong with these creations as they cannot grant true satisfaction, and often leave those that partake of them wanting more than when they started. 

Those who fall prey to Thirsting Grail’s influence can become warped as their own veins become polluted by the entity’s ichor: becoming feral creatures of endless cruelty and appetite, or having their wounds open wider and wider until there is nothing but wound remaining of their swollen flesh. Those so overtaken grow and warp and merge with others until new horrors are birthed from them, a permanent seedbed of 

Titles: Mother of truth, formless mother, font erubescent, the bloodstar.  Symbols: A red grail or fountain, cultural iconography stained with blood.  Signs:  Wounds that bleed but do not heal, plants overflowing or cracking open to expose their innards. Unsettling red dreams.  Worshippers: Those with bloodstained hands be they doctors, butchers, or murderers. Vampires, occultists, and other sanguiphiles. Instatiable gourmands and unfulfilled lovers.   

Inspiration:  I wear my influences on my sleeve with this one.  I’ve been turning the Elden Ring mythology over in my mind for some time partially because I think there’s a lot of fun ideas there but also because I felt like (in typical Fromsoft fashion) there wasn’t enough shown to really scratch my itch for discovery. 

The formless mother/bloodstar was chiefest among these elements: A killer aesthetic with lore that was a little too thin to use as inspiration. After a while that thinness turned into a feature, the idea of an eldritch entity of pain and violence that conformed to the needs of those who worshipped it, granting power to those who would go out and make the world more violent and painful.  I liked the idea that “mother of truth” was a misnomer, and that cultists would ascribe meaning and intent and iconography to a god that didn’t care one way or another. 

Another strong influence is the Grail from Cultist Simulator/Book of hours ( SERIOUSLY, play book of hours you fools), an eldritch entity/aspect of reality that presides over hungers and births be they literal or figurative.  The Blood + Mother connection was obvious here, but the Grail provided some more texture and esoteric aspects to fill out my version’s storytelling potential.

[victusinveritas]

Book of Hours, France 16th century

[pixieluver]

some cards to give to a student, helpmeet, defender, champion, dupe, sacrifice, or... companion.

[lunarlillieuwu]

H O N E Y

What would be Moth, Nectar and Heart all at once?

[saintsebastiensbf]

Rainer Maria Rilke, from Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God

[thebeautifulbook]

FLEUR DE LYS-SHAPED BOOK OF HOURS, in Latin, use of Rome (Paris, c. 1553). Illuminated manuscript on paper.

180 x 80mm. i + 117 leaves, each page with 24 lines written in a 'roman' hand in black ink within a liquid gold border in the shape of a half fleur de lys, spaces infilled with liquid gold fronds on blue or red grounds, line-fillers and one- and two-line initials of the same colours, eleven lobe-shaped miniatures. Nineteenth-century brown morocco gilt, semé with fleur de lys, doublures of red morocco gilt, edges gauffered and gilt (upper cover detached). [Christies Auction House, 2006 catalog]

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