#brass god idols manufacturers

[theadvityastatues]

BUY HOME DECORE BRASS SCULPTURES FROM THE ADVITYA. Wall Hangings, Puja Essentials, home decor products and a lot more. Just like our name, each item is unique in itself.

[bhoowx]

Gopura Kalasam - Gold Plating Art Studio LLP

Gopura Kalasam price Gold Plated for Aesthetic temple Gopurams - Call +916383910192 | Bronze Idols Manufacturer in Chennai.

#gopurakalasam #Bronzeidol #brassidol #templegopurakalasam

Gopura kalasam, Temple gopura kalasam

[nirmalahandicrafts]

Lord Hanuman God Idol, Handcrafted God Statues, We are Indian manufacturer of Brass and Bronze Items. Contact us for Wholesale Items.

Please Visit: nirmalahandicraft.com

or call/whatsapp 078773 38302

[darbarcraft]

Light up your Space with Brass pooja accessories at Darbar Craft

Darbar Craft offers an elegant mix of spirituality with artistry in the range of superior quality brass pooja accessories.The Vastu-sensitive brass pooja items of Darbar Craft bring harmony, peace, and positive energy into your home. Handcrafted by skilled artisans, these items go well as a combination of traditional values and modern aesthetic appeal-hence they are ideal for gracing your home decor and daily rituals.

In the collection of Darbar Craft is this most beloved piece: the brass Ganesh idol. The Ganesh idol that represents wisdom, which removes all obstacles-is an essential piece for new ventures and good blessings for success. It goes well with the Brass Lakshmi Idol, goddess of wealth and prosperity, and unlocks the flow of financial abundance and fortune in your home during Diwali. We also have  Laxmi- Ganesh idols together, these brass idols are good additions to your pooja during Diwali that can bring a harmonious and prosperous family scenario.

Brass God Idols Collection

Apart from the Brass Ganesh Idol, there are many more Brass god idols available at Darbar Craft that you could opt for to fulfill your spiritual requirements. Each idol is crafted with great care to reflect various deities, thus making the perfect choice for an embellishment in your pooja room or even as a decorative piece across your house. Some of the famous Brass God Idols are as follows:

- Brass Shiva Idol: A reminder of transcendence, used for personal development and rebirth.

-  Brass Chakra Avatar Vishnu Idol: it symbolizes protection and preserving, hence very good to radiate peace and harmony in the home. That is why they put it in their homes. They install this at their home to reduce stress and make it more peaceful.

  -  Brass Laddu Gopal and Radha Krishna Idol: This idol symbolizes love and compassion and hence attracts joy and devotion to your space.

  -  Brass Lakshmi Idol : The goddess of wealth and prosperity, this can attract financial success and plenty of good things in your life.

- Brass RamDarbar : Best symbol for bringing strength and protection to ignite the bold-constructive energies in your home.

And many more brass idols like Maa Durga, Balaji, Hanuman, Maa Kali, Maa Saraswati, Ayappa Swamy, SaiBaba, Kartikey and Garud Dev, are not only spiritual but also ornamental to adorn your home beautifully. Each piece is crafted with great care to perfect a well-rounded balance of beauty, spirituality, and durability.

Ornate Brass Pooja Essentials

Darbar Craft also presents the complete range of pooja essentials that enhance your worship rituals. These accessories are functional and decorative, made of premium brass and are designed to usher a serene and spiritual atmosphere at the place of worship. Some of the pooja items available are:

Brass Diya: Basic requirement for lighting during pooja, considered to bring light and positivity into your home.

Incense sticks holder: Incense sticks and fragrance can beautify this pooja space. Brass aarti plates are a must for ceremonial occasions.

Brass bells: These bells call the gods to it, creating an atmosphere before proceeding further in prayer.

Brass Pooja Thali: These thalis make your Pooja accessories more pure and also helps having them at one place.

These pooja accessories, when used along with a brass Ganesh idol or any other brass god idols, help create an ambiance of spiritual energy and serenity in your home.

Decorative Wall Hangings and Sculptures

In addition to brass idols, Darbar Craft has an extremely beautiful collection of decorative wall hangings, crystal trees and animal sculptures manufactured with premium brass. These are crafted to fill all the empty spaces in your home and give it character. The shubh labh wall hanging contains intricate designs that reflect the taste and style of the person and follow all the Vastu principles. This makes it perfect to enhance flow. From traditional motifs to modern designs, Darbar Craft adds elegance and spirituality to your decorations.

Why Darbar Craft?

Darbar Craft is also so keen on quality and detail with its superior Craftsmanship. Brass Ganesh idol, brass god idol, and each piece of home decor is created under the eyes of a master craftsman; hence you are assured that the final product is not only beautiful but also durable, in the process. Several items are even designed to attract positive energy, peace, and prosperity into your home according to the principles of Vastu.

[indiancorporategift]

https://www.indiancorporategift.com/all-corporate-gifts

Phone no-8178152173

ICG are the best Corporate Divine Gifts & Promotional God Gifts Manufacturer,Importer,Vendors,Suppliers in Delhi,Noida,Gurgaon,India We provide complete range of Divine Gifts like Metal Idol Statues, Antique Finish Synthetic Deity Statues , Ashta Chowki Laxmi Ganesh, Blessing Buddha, Chowki Ganesh With Design in all sizes. These  products are supplied in bulk quantities to Corporate companies in Delhi, Noida, gurgaon, India & entire world. Customization of  these products with clients logo printing is also our forte. Promotional Divine Religious Idols : These are the exotic and divine collection of Gods idols, that are commonly found in Indian homes. These Religious idols are available for all religions and are made up of various types of premium quality materials, such as, copper, metal and resin. The best part is that they can be customised as per the clients requirement in terms of Size , Shape  and Price. If you are seeking a profile-raising product that is both useful and easy to carry by your target audience, try our promotional Divine Gifts  like Krishna or Hanuman Idol Statue, that can be picked up in large numbers for a reasonable price. At any charity event that your enterprise has sponsored, or a business conference or a press meet, or at a corporate event, you could surprise your potential clients with these extremely useful Divine Gifts or Religious ,Sentimental and close to heart Gifts. Brass Pooja Thali -  Brass pooja Thalis have become very popular as a Divine or Aesthetic Gift during festival times especially during Diwali as they come in beautiful packing . Top it all the box can be customised with your company Logo if taken in bulk quantities.   While you gift them with something they can make use of on a regular basis you can also make sure you stay in their sight and hence in their minds. All you need to do is explore our extensive designs for Brass Pooja Thali and pick up a design and a colour that complements your business or company profile. Small God idols for pooja room /Small God idols for  Car Dashboard or for Office Desktops : These are your Strength during Dark moments . For most of us, the presence of a God idol at home or at our workplace gives us the strength to soldier on through the adversities that life throws at us. To find the God idol that you want, simply  go through our vast collection below and search for it using the most commonly used name of that God. Shopping for idols this way gives you the option to compare prices and make the best use of deals and discounts that are available. We can also make replica of any Idol or Statue if required in bulk.

[sudhir3903902]

How to Bulk Order Puja Items Online At Low Price and Authentic Also?

 Nitya is a one-stop shop for all of your puja samagri requirements. To help you strengthen the foundation of your family’s traditions, we offer natural puja hawav cups, dhoop cones, handmade agarbatti, goddess dresses, crystals, and accessories.

Our story began in 2020, with over 8 years of marketing and manufacturing experience in the natural DHOOP industry for national brands. Nitya built its own network of devoted customers and now offers an online store for all of your puja needs. Our staff and clients are happy because of our ethical standards and visionary approach, and they stay that way because they know we’re always learning and growing to improve our services and products.

You don’t need to worry or sacrifice your hectic schedule to make arrangements for puja goods and other necessities. To assist you, we are nearby. You can order worship supplies online from the convenience of your home or workplace. All puja products are available in our online store for puja.

Our company is dedicated to crafting and sourcing products that meet the highest standards of purity, authenticity, and effectiveness. We take pride in offering a diverse range of products that cater to the needs of individuals, households, temples, and other religious institutions.

At Nitya , we prioritize customer satisfaction and strive to provide a seamless shopping experience. Our team of dedicated professionals is always ready to assist you with any inquiries, product selection, or support you may require. We value our customers’ feedback and continuously work towards improving our offerings and services.

Quality is of utmost importance to us. We carefully select our raw materials and work closely with skilled artisans to create products that are not only functional but also aesthetically pleasing. Our manufacturing processes adhere to strict quality control measures to ensure that every item we produce meets the highest standards.

We understand the value of tradition and culture, and our products reflect that understanding. From daily puja items to brass pooja accessories, traditional terracotta dias, cotton wicks, ghee wicks, and havan samagri, our product range covers a wide spectrum of essential items for your spiritual practices.

Nitya is committed to promoting and preserving Indian traditions and rituals. We believe that by providing authentic and high-quality products, we can help individuals and communities connect with their spirituality and experience the divine grace associated with these ancient practices.

Choose Nitya as your trusted partner for all your Pooja and Havan needs, and embark on a spiritual journey that is rooted in tradition, authenticity, and devotion.

Product Range: Despite your busy schedule, you won’t have to bother about making plans for puja supplies and other requirements . We are close by and ready to help. You can place an online order from the comfort of your home or place of employment. This is an illustration of the puja items we have accessible in our online store. Our Product ranges included Daily Puja Items, Brass Pooja Accessories, Brass Deepam, Kerala Standing Diyas, Traditional terracotta dias, Cotton wicks, Ghee wicks, Havan Samagri, Shanksh, Conch, Mata ki Chunni, Prasadam, God Idols, God Statues made of Brass, terracotta, poly resin. Eco friendly Ganpati, Kumkum boxes, Roli, Puja Thali, Guruji Collections, Haldi, Mukut,Chawal, Pure Chandan Sandal Sticks, Khadau, Akhand Diya, Indian Return Gifts for Housewarming and Other religious occasions, Urli, Home Decor, Spiritual Decor, Navratri Gifts, Laddu Gopal Phool Bangla and Dress accessories, Dandiya Sticks, Camphor, Sambrani Cups, cow dung DiyasRangoli Colors, Holi Colors, Diwali Gifts, Rakhi for brother, Jingle bells, Diwali decoration items, Artificial marigold garlands, Healing and Reiki Crystal product range, Christmas Gifts, Karva chauth thali, rakhi thali, incense stick, Rudrakshas, Panchpatra, Saligrama, dry fruits, and many more products of religious or puja items that help with intense sensation.

With our filtered pooja boxes, directing worship consistently or for special occasions like weddings and other occasions has become easier. They are complete pooja units that have been hand-stuffed with everything you need. Shiv Parvati, Laxmi Ganesh, Maa Durga, Navratri, Diwali, Holi, Haldi, Mehendi, Wedding, and Shivratri Pooja Boxes are among the future offerings we have for you. Choose one of these based on your preferences and requirements to ensure that your puja runs smoothly. Our selection of incense, diyas, and candles meets all of your needs, whether you’re using them for venerating rituals or to create a certain aesthetic motif for your home. We have a wide variety of traditional lights to choose from, including candles and diyas for Diwali as well as Akhand diyas for decoration. The selection of mood-enhancing candles and incense ensures a fragrant addition to your home

Quality Assurance: At Nitya , we prioritize quality and authenticity. We source our materials from trusted suppliers and follow strict quality control measures throughout the manufacturing process. Our products undergo rigorous testing to ensure they meet the highest standards of purity and effectiveness.

Customer Satisfaction: We strive to provide a seamless shopping experience and excellent customer service. Our team of dedicated professionals is always ready to assist you with any inquiries, product selection, or assistance you may require. We value your feedback and continuously work towards improving our offerings and services.

Embrace Tradition with Nitya : Whether you are a devotee seeking daily puja items or a priest organizing grand havan ceremonies, Nitya is your one-stop destination for all your Pooja and Havan related needs. We are committed to preserving and promoting Indian traditions through our high-quality products.

Choose Nitya and embark on a spiritual journey enriched with divine grace and timeless rituals.

Order Now — https://nityapuja.in/

[theadvitya]

How to Maintain Your Brass Articles

Brass pieces are a popular addition to any decor, but they can be tricky to take care of. Here are a few tips to help you keep your brass looking its best.

Start by dusting your brass murti regularly with a soft cloth. This will help keep them clean and free of dirt and dust buildup.

If your brass pieces are dirty or tarnished, you can clean them with a mild soap and water solution. Be sure to rinse them thoroughly afterward to remove the entire soap residue.

To protect your brass pieces from tarnishing, apply a light coat of wax or polish. Be sure to rub it in well and reapply as needed.

Brass Elephant Statue With Inlay Work

Following these simple tips, you can keep your brass looking beautiful for years to come!

What Is Brass?

Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc. It's often used in decorative items because it has a beautiful golden color that tarnishes over time to give it a more antique look. One of the great things about brass is that it's easy to care for. All you need is mild soap and warm water. You can either hand wash or soak your Hindu god statues in a bathtub. If you're using a dishwasher, only put them on the top rack.

Brass Panchmukhi Dancing Ganesha

Benefits of Brass Articles

There are many benefits to owning brass statues. They are sturdy and will last for years with the correct care. Brass is also a beautiful metal that will add a touch of luxury to any room. The best part is that brass is easy to maintain. A simple polish now and then is all you need to keep your brass shining. Make sure to use a cloth that is not abrasive, as this will damage the surface of the brass. Follow these simple steps, and your brass articles will look new for years. Cleaning and Maintenance Tips for Your Brass Articles

Just like your favorite outfit, your brass articles need special care to keep them looking their best.

Here are a few tips to help:

Clean your brass God idols with a damp cloth regularly. This will remove any dirt or fingerprints that may build up over time.

To polish your brass, use a soft cloth and brass polish. Follow the manufacturer's instructions closely, as over-polishing can damage the finish.

Store your God idols for Pooja room in a cool, dry place. Excessive heat or humidity can cause them to tarnish more quickly.

You've just got your beautiful new brass statue or a brass murti, and you want to ensure it lasts a lifetime!

Brass Saraswati Playing Veena On Peacock

Here are some tips on how to maintain your brass article:

Keep your brass article in a dry place.

Don't expose your brass article to direct sunlight.

Clean your brass article with a soft cloth regularly.

Apply a coat of brass polish every few months to keep it shining bright.

Thanks for reading, and remember to keep your brass article looking beautiful for years to come!

Where to Buy Quality Brass Artifacts

Getting quality brass statue can be tricky but essential to maintaining your pieces. When shopping for brass articles, look for pieces that are free from defects like chips and scratches and check for any signs of corrosion.

If you’re shopping online, read the descriptions carefully, double-check the measurements, and read up on customer reviews to get an idea of what other people think about the product. You can also check out local or flea markets for unique, one-of-a-kind pieces. Another option is to find antique stores with knowledgeable staff who can give you all the information you need about a particular piece before you buy it. Then, make sure that the store has a return policy in case there’s something wrong with the piece, and you need to return it.

[differentwombatluminary]

Recycled Elephant Flip Flop Sculpture

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Embossed Wooden Elephant Trunk

Murano Glass Elephant Sculpture Midcentury, Italy, circa 1960

Ask an Interior Designer: Work

Elephant decor in a bedroom emphasizes love and faithfulness. In a child’s room, the placement of https://www.elephantparade.com/shop/elephants an elephant represents knowledge and will bring academic success. Various other concepts were explored for this later commission as attested by preparatory drawings. It is likely that the drawings were used so that the patron could make a decision about which design he wanted. This included a drawing of the figure of Time holding a scythe and simultaneously the obelisk.

The red granite obelisk was discovered in 1665 during excavations near the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva. It had probably been brought to Rome in the first century AD for the temple to the Egyptian goddess Isis that was located there. The obelisk was originally erected by Pharaoh Apries of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty of Egypt, about 580 BC, in his capital Sais. This Painted Elephant Made In MetalEnamelPainting Work. We use quality approved paints in our entire process thereby ensuring in long durational life. Moreover, we offer them with customized solution.

Craft n Kraft A Big Manufacture Of Handmade Product.

With their meticulously groomed horse manes and detailed contours of their parakeet feathers, these creatures want to be proudly displayed.

If you’ve ever completed an interior redecorating project, perhaps you’ve considered feng shui—the ancient Chinese practice of creating flow and balance in the home.

These Elephant Statue are available in the market at most genuine prices. Hindu Religious God Statue Multi Color Elephant For Best Wishes, A beautiful Brass statue of Elephant. An Elephant represents wisdom, divine knowledge and royal power. Its Item Is Natural Multicolor Made In India By Nirmala handicrafts. And Elephant is Decorative Item For Home Décor, Gift To Friends And Relatives.

There have been many well-made elephant sculptures over the years, but those made by Hertha Baller, Walter Bosse and Abraham Palatnik are often thought to be among the most beautiful. We hold expertise in designing and crafting a vast gamut of wooden elephant pair statues. These elephant pair statues are crafted using finest-grade material and advanced hand tools, thus ensuring that these comply with the modern and traditional designs.

The stunning quality Synthetic, Fiber, Metallic Fiber, Brass, Metal, Iron, Bone, Wooden and Resin Handicrafts are here. Fall in love with the astounding decorative handmade collection with mind blowing finishing, You will be amazed by seeing our beautiful table decor, home decor, paintings. Jewellery, clutches, furniture, gifting items, wall decor, god idols, figurines, mirror frames and many more variety in huge ready stock under one roof atNirmala Handicrafts. With our expertise and trustworthiness, we are engaged in offering an optimum quality range of Wooden Carving Elephant. This figurines are made with Wood having colour Embossed finishing which gives it an attractive look.

It also welcomes the addition of figurines that bring good fortune, like a dragon, Mandarin ducks or an elephant. Our entire product range is intricately carved by expert artisans and is available in different sizes. We offer the entire product range with customized facility thereby delivering the entire product range with utmost precision. These have excellent polish Intricate carving Fine Finish. We are instrumental in manufacturing, supplying and wholesaling a wide gamut of Wooden Elephant Statues to our esteemed clients. These products are carefully designed and crafted by knowledgeable craftsmen, using premium-grade material and advanced hand tools.

Embossed Wooden Elephant Trunk

We at nirmala handicrafts have a huge variety in marble items, iron musicians, dancing dolls and other figurines. Best japuri handicrafts metal art work with fine colour finishing. Multi colour makes it the most attractive decorative item.

Nirmala Handicrafts Hindu Religious God Statue Multi Color Elephant For Best Wishes, A beautiful Brass statue of Elephant. Its Item Is Natural Multicolor Made In India By Craft n Kraft. And Elephant is Decorative Item For Home Decor, Gift To Friends And Relatives. Craft n Kraft A Big Manufacture Of Handmade Product. Feng Shui practitioners believe that elephants should have their trunks facing upwards to represent prosperity, good luck, and success.

Murano Glass Elephant Sculpture Midcentury, Italy, circa 1960

In many cultures, an elephant symbolizes good luck, power, wisdom and fertility. And because feng shui is intentional about the placement of items in of the home, decorating goes beyond surface-level style. Embark on your safari today and find a fascinating collection of vintage, modern and antique animal sculptures on 1stDibs. Keep in mind, the entryway of your home isn’t the only spot for an elephant statue. According to Housing.com, elephant figurines can be placed in other areas of the house for similar good fortune. Leveraging on expertise of our skilled workmen, we have been engaged in manufacturing a wide gamut of Elephant Statues.

Ask an Interior Designer: Work

This product is looking gracefull in any kind of place.This is best in quality as well as best in class.Its gives you great standard and choice. Please provide an operational contact phone number for shipping at the time of checkout. Gotta catch them all Go To Post Gotta catch them all! For your convenience, we offer multiple payment methods, including all major credit cards and PayPal. For many purchases we also offer financing options or wire transfer.

These truly whimsical home decor masterpieces offer a variety of functional uses that are certain to attract collectors of all types. All items go through an inspection process to ensure each product has met LM Treasures quality guidelines and is packaged to arrive safely. Elephant sculpture made of tessellated marble stone and brass inlay with two patinated brass tusks. We will be restocking many of our popular items in January. Please reach out to us for restocking and lead time inquiries.

Black Colour makes it the most attractive decorative item. We are specialized in Rajasthani traditional art. Find the amazing wood artefacts with best ever painting. We are Wholesalers and Exporters having amazing variety of fine artefacts and best hardworking artisans.

Learn more about payment options on 1stdibs. Cast brass standing elephant on a textured pedestal with nice patina. Elephant figurines placed inside the front door, near the home’s entrance, have two meanings. Not only does each piece make an impact in our social conservation efforts and the lives of many Kenyans, it makes a beautiful statement and conversation piece inin your home and garden. If you are interested in learning more about our process of collecting, washing, blocking, carving, smoothing, and perfecting our small batch artwork, click here to watch a short video.

Its Item Is Natural Multicolor Made In India . And Elephant is Decorative Item For Home Decor, Gift To Friends And Relatives.A Big Manufacture Of Handmade Product. It required lot of patience and skill to carve another elephant through the small holes created on the main elephant body. They are well polished and finished to give smooth shine.

[vivekc45]

Brass idols manufacturers- They have the ideal Diwali gift

Since Diwali is just a few days away, the gift season is also here. It is an auspicious time of the year that can make your Diwali full of special memories and gifts. This Diwali, you can find many potent brass murti manufacturers in Delhi who make beautiful idols and murtis. You might be wondering what those beautiful murtis must be made of? The answer is brass. Brass is an amazing metal element which is widely used by several manufacturers out there for making idols and various other gift items. Brass gift items are very popular these days and are widely used by the people of India during the festive seasons like Diwali. So if you are a businessman or a wholesaler, you can make huge money, this Diwali, by selling various brass-made idols or murtis:

Here are some examples of several brass gift items that you might choose to buy this Diwali:

Brass Radha -Krishna murti

Every single people of India is well acquainted of Radha -Krishna and their amazing and divine love story. If you are a businessman and planning to sell brass gifts then you might find a lot of radhakrishna brass statue manufacturers in India whomake amazing and good quality Radha Krishna idols. By buying these idols from a trusted radhakrishna statue brass manufacturers you can make this Diwali special for the people out there.

Brass ganesh statues             

Lord Ganeshais a Hindu deity who is also known as Siddhi data. His idols are very famous across India. Gifting someone a Ganesh Idol symbolizes that you are wishing him or her a good start of anything. So, this Diwali you can target the customers of north India and also some people from Maharashtra as Lord  Ganesh is the most popular deity amongst all the other Gods, in those places. You can also buy Ganesh idols online for ganeshchaturthi   and other festivals like Diwali etc. You are sure to earn huge profit if you sell these idols made of brass this festive season.

Laxmi-Ganesh pair Idol

Worshiping the pair of Laxmi and Ganesh is very popular in the Hindu culture. Goddess Laxmi is known as the goddess of wealth and Lord Ganesha is the God of Intellect and aptitude and also, he is the Siddhi data. Usually, people worship them both to receive wealth and wisdom together. You can look for many brass GaneshaLaxmi pair supplier in India both online and offline. These gift items can go trending this Diwali because, who does not want to receive wealth and aptitude together?

Final words:

This festive season, you can make your business go lucrative by some amazing brass made idols. You can buy them in bulk from various brass Products Suppliers in India and sell for making money. Other than the above mentioned gifts you can go for other types of idols also. There are plenty of god figures manufacturers from where you can choose your choice of an idol for selling.

[rpgsandbox]

The Old Gods are no more. The battles have ceased. The titans have fallen.

From the age of reverence, only myths remain. From the age of sacrifices, the citadels of brass, the Sister-Blades of obsidian, and the divine heralds, only ashes remain. Lost rituals, forgotten graves, faceless frescos, and broken idols. Yet, all stones someday crack, and all sleepers must wake. Your time has come.  

You are a Chosen One, a flame bearer, a hero in the Wildlands.

Which god will you wake? How will you forge your legend?

This is GODS. Welcome to the Wildlands!

                                The Tomb (Art by Sergey Vasnev)

GODS is a dark fantasy tabletop roleplaying game created by Bastien Lecouffe Deharme and Julien Blondel.

Designed by long time friends, roleplayers, and Dark Fantasy fans, GODS is a love song to the legendary writers and artists who defined the genre, such as Robert E. Howard, Karl E. Wagner, Michael Moorcock, Glen Cook or Frank Frazetta.

The game invites the players to play heroes seeking high adventure in the Wildlands, a brutal land abandoned and forgotten by the gods. From one-shots adventures to massive campaigns, GODS will offer a variety of game modes and provide a modern and adult gaming experience, supported by a d10 system that favors gameplay, narrative and fun without leaving simulation and realism aside.

GODS is, above all, a game based on adventure, epic quests, and exploration: a journey to the far reaches of the Wildlands, its lost cities, titanic scenery, primeval forests, and forgotten ruins. Attached to the standards of Dark Fantasy, the game is full of action, magic, rituals, and epic battles. It will satisfy players with a taste for atmosphere, mystery, and diplomacy, with a subtle dose of poetry: a brutal world, epic and dark, where fighters, shamans, thieves and other heroes often have to write their legend in blood.

                    Avhorean Rider (Art by Bastien Lecouffe Deharme)

A land so vast no cartographer could ever map it all.

A land that was once the playground of giants and fantastic creatures, and where humans are now building empires and civilizations.

A land forgotten by its own gods.

From the small villages to the cities and capitals, men are left to fight for their survival. Their fate is in their hands, and civilizations seem to collapse faster than they grow. The grim Cult of the Black Sun is spreading like the plague, preaching the Words of the One, and providing insights to the men and women in need of answers, in exchange of their allegiance.

Untamed, the Wildlands call for heroes. Men and women chasing their own destiny. Adventurers brave or crazy enough to take on the roads and uncover the dark secrets left behind in the ruins of a forgotten world.

The Wildlands (Art by Gary Jamroz-Palma, Blake Rottinger, Sergey Vasnev & Bastien Lecouffe Deharme)

The old and forgotten gods are preparing their awakening.

To do so, they need the men and women of the Wildlands to remember them. To believe in them once again. They are choosing their heroes. They are choosing the men and women who will become their voices and their hands among the mortals.

GODS invites players to play exceptional people – characters who all have this little “something” special that make them step out of the ordinary. Whether they are the most talented hunter of the village, the warrior who never gives up, the blacksmith whose craft makes people travel from long distances or even the weirdo of the town who claims that she can hear voices, they all have this energy that makes people wonder if they might have been chosen by the gods…

And you are one of them.

You are a Chosen One.

                  Sevire La Rouge (Art by Bastien Lecouffe Deharme)

To reach the humans they have chosen, on the spiritual and physical level, the Old Gods  infuse man-made objects with a fragment of their spirits. Weapons, tools, jewelry or any type of artefacts. Those manufactured objects invested with a piece of a god’s soul are called Shards. They are the vectors of the divine favors, providing the Chosen Ones with a physical symbol of the god, a tool, an emblem, a link, a companion, that will help them fulfill their destiny.

On their path, the characters may encounter and wield one of these rare and precious objects. Through the Shards, the Chosen Ones develop a link with their gods, receive favors and powers, to help them forge their legend and wake their gods.

In game, the Shards will evolve and accumulate powers in accordance to the choices of the characters and the strength of the link built between the Chosen Ones and their gods.

          Confusing Faces (Art by Nekro & Bastien Lecouffe Deharme)

          Samples of Shards (Art by Nekro & Bastien Lecouffe Deharme)

There are several types of magic in the Wildlands. One of them is "sacrificial magic".

The relationship between humans and gods have always been built on exchanges between services and favors, pledges of reverence and signs of recognition, forbidden thoughts and encouraged acts. Priests and believers used to find communion with their gods through rituals and ceremonies.

Since the gods disappeared, the link between the divine and humans was broken. But recently, men and women have found a way to reconnect with the gods. The odd ones, the shamans and the druids, the seers and the oracles, they all feel the energy of the gods rising. Where the Chosen Ones receive divine favors through the Shards, these address to the gods through the practice of sacrificial magic.

Sacrificial magic requires rituals that vary depending of the gods they are made to. From blood sacrifices to destruction of valuable materials, they sometimes require specific actions to be performed. The few who receive answers from the divine energies through those rituals are also considered Chosen.

                      Ool Necromancer (Art by Pierre Raveneau)

Throughout the Wildlands, the Cult of the Black Sun spreads like black ink on blank parchment. Its fanatical priests preach the arrival of a new Prophet, the Word of the One and the advent of his dogma. Through the weapons of his Priest-Soldiers, the Cult prepares the Wildlands to the return of the Black Sun.

For the cultists, the sun is the “Eye of the One”. When men are finally worthy of the trust of the One, only then will the One God close his eye, and the sun will become black, and men will find the way to their creator, in the comfort of the “Primordial Darkness and the Holy Trust”.

The Chosen Ones are considered enemies of the One God, and the Cult is actively tracking them. Any form of magic performed by anyone other than a priest of the Black Sun is considered heretical. This includes the use of the Shards, and the individuals who build any type of link with the Old Gods.

               Priest of the Black Sun (Art by Anastasia Balakchina)

The rules of GODS are based on the TOTEM SYSTEM and use 10-sided dice to manage gaming phases. Combat, magic, negotiation, enchantment of objects or simple travels and adventures: all technical aspects use the same mechanics. Characters are defined by Traits associated to a number of dice. When a character performs an action, the player simply rolls a number of dice equal to the score of the Trait used, generally a number between 1D and 3D. Whenever a character undertakes an action where the outcome is uncertain, the player rolls a number of 10-sided dice equal to the score of the Trait at hand and compares the result of each die to a Difficulty ranging from 1 to 10. The more results that are equal to or higher than the Difficulty, the more successful the character is.

To shoot with a bow, the Accuracy Trait is used. Let’s say that the character’s score is 2D, meaning that the player rolls two dice against a Difficulty of 5, 7, or 9 depending on the distance, size, and speed of the target. If at least one die rolls equal to or higher than the Difficulty, the shot hits home. If both dice are successful, the shot may hit a vulnerable area and inflict more damage, reflecting the higher degree of success.

In accordance with their background practical experience, and chosen Profile, the players’ characters will also have Skills and Specialties that will grant Bonuses to their actions, as well as dice pools called Reserves from which they can draw to improve their chances. However, these Reserves represent the characters’ innermost resources, and drawing from them will be exhausting. As they travel together and grow used to each other, the characters can strengthen the unity of their Party and acquire new collective abilities, from simple Bonuses to innovative storytelling options such as save points.

Game Options

In addition to these basic rules, GODS includes voting phases, options, and advanced rules that let the players customize their gaming experience and directly influence their universe.

The Divine Influence also adds an extra dimension to the game. It makes use of dice of three different colors that the players will blindly draw from a pouch. Depending on the color of the dice rolled and kept, the results of the action will have different consequences and will alter the characters’ relationship with the world.

Just like some video games offer various levels of difficulty, GODS lets the players choose their Game Mode and decide how realistic, supernatural, and dangerous their characters’ world will be. Some players will crave action, bigger-than-life events, and titanic fights against gigantic creatures, while others might prefer a realistic, mysterious, fantastic atmosphere. After all, why limit oneself to a single playstyle when several are equally suited to the same universe?

GODS proposes three main Game Modes, which will influence not only the universe and its atmosphere, but also the rules, options, and abilities granted to the players and gamemaster.

REGULAR EDITION

The Core rulebook (est. to be around 460 pages) and the Gamemaster book (est. to be around 180 pages) will be printed in US Letter format, on a high quality paper in full color, with a hardcover and printed endsheets. Each book will have a black ribbon and head and tail bands. The Gamemaster screen will have three pannels printed in landscape format on a heavy board, and will have a glossy varnish on the outside, and a matt varnish on the inside to prevent light reflexion.

DELUXE EDITION

The GODS Deluxe edition is an upgrade to the regular edition and will be printed in limited numbers. The Core rulebook, the Gamemaster book and the Gamemaster screen will all benefit from the deluxe treatment.

The Deluxe edition will have a matt varnish finish, with spotted UV on the design, gold foil, brass gilded edge and two brass ribbons for each books. The Core rulebook, the Gamemaster book and the Gamemaster screen will be include in a slipcase to finish this deluxe set.

Deluxe version of the Core rulebook, and the slipcase for the Core rulebook, the Gamemaster book and the screen.

                           The Low Market (Art by Sergey Vasnev)

                       The Purple Guard (Art by Pierre Raveneau)

Kickstarter campaign ends: Thu, March 28 2019 2:59 PM UTC +00:00

Website: [GODS-RPG] [Arkhane Asylum (french)]

[arvindhandicrafts]

designer pearl necklace

The best handicrafts in Jodhpur with amazing quality and timely services. Bring this for the gifting purpose or use it to decorate your own house. The best birthday gift, anniversary gift, and corporate gift item.

Find out the best variety of handmade items for the WHOLESALE deals only with Arvind handicrafts.

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We are WHOLESALERS, MANUFACTURER & EXPORTERS having an incredible variety of fine artifacts? 😅

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You will be astonished by seeing our marvelous table decor, home decor, animal sculptures, brass articles, paintings. jewelry, clutches, furniture, gift items, wall decor, god idols, figurines, mirror frames, photo frames and many more variables in huge ready stock under one roof with the best ever quality. 💙

 Handicraft is About Processing Materials by Hand With Hand Tools.

Handmade Handicrafts Articles highly recommended for decorating your place. The material utilized in the product is natural and industrially processed.

Our USP at Arvind Handicrafts is to provide the best handmade handcrafted articles made by the finest artisans around the globe.

 Established in 1981, ArvindHandicrafts offers a wide array of gifting, decor and utility products. It has a surprising collection of table, lamp, photo frame, stool, side table, almirah, furniture, wall decor and what not!

Based out of Jodhpur, Rajasthan, we use premium quality essential materials, primarily metal and wood, to create these eclectic pieces. We have an in-house team of skilled artisans who work diligently and with the utmost precision. We do not believe in compromising with the quality of products and our manufacturing process is streamlined to offer you only the best.

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We also, use a bone inlay technique. Handed down through generations, an inlay is a technique of embedding fragments of contrasting material into cavities created on a base object. Discarded bones of deceased camels due to natural causes are used in the bone inlay.

Quality & Luxury are the core attributes of our brand - from the finishing of the handcrafted pieces to the beautiful packaging box that a customer receives, to the shopping experience. We follow a customer-centric approach as we believe quality and customer satisfaction are the keys to success.

Our products carry the magnetic appeal of the Indian culture that promises exclusivity, beauty, dignity, and style. we are expecting exposure and seeking to the network by connecting with more people around the world.

Custom orders are welcome. Thanks for stopping by!

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[theadvityastatues]

https://www.theadvitya.in/

[makermax]

Home Temple Decoration that is must for you

Temples are an essential part of all religious persons and an essential aspect of Indian Hindu homes. It is considered auspicious to have a pooja mandir at home. It is believed that if gods have a place in our lives, they should have a place in our homes too. The holy idols should have a proper place for them to reside. One should also have a designated space where one can meditate or worship under the grace of gods. Therefore every Indian Hindu home, small or big, has a place for a mandir.

Create a place to worship at home and place your holy idols with a mandir for home from The Advitya Brass Pooja essentials manufacturers in India. Get a temple for a home in intricate designs that showcase the beauty of our culture and tradition. Find designs inspired by ancient temple architectures that splendidly display traditional arches, jharokha patterns, carved pillars, and tall shikhara, bringing forth an authentic Indian vibe and a spiritual feeling.

Brass Kerala Traditional Handcrafted Kalash Deepak Lamp/Panchmukhi Diya

Create a meditative and peaceful ambiance in your puja room with the Brass Standing Diya Set of 2. It is built with a sturdy base and ample space to hold the oil/desi ghee and batti for a longer lighting duration. Brass Standing Diya Set of 2 is ideal for gifting purposes as well.

Creation of the finest artisans, the Brass oil Diya's that we offer is well reckoned as the ideal traditional lamps. Our Traditional Brass Lamps are designed and crafted using the finest quality brass in compliance with the standards. These pooja accessories online India is coated with high-quality brass lacquer and has long-lasting shine.

Elephant Design Brass Bell

Brass Elephant Face Wall Hanging for Wall or Door Decor Size with hand-painted art & best unique gift for friends and family. Perfect choice for a contemporary home setting. It is non-toxic that can be kept in children.

Lend a hint of decoration to your home with this Lord Ganesha brass wall hanging with a bell. Exquisitely designed, this wall hanging has a unique antique look. This gorgeous and exquisite figure is perfect for your home decor as a wall hanging. It is made of brass in an antique finish. It's a beautiful keepsake for your home. It’s a multipurpose decorative embellishment for all modern homes. The Mandir accessories online India has been designed intelligently and features a Lord Ganesha wall hanging with Bell. The wall hanging is bright and beautiful for any temple or home. Skilled artisans have enthusiastically handcrafted and colored this product using various conventional techniques.

Incense Diya Stand Set Of 3

The set of incense diya stand sets is handcrafted. The product is made of brass. It comes with a diya, incense, and a stand with a tortoise base. The height of the stand is 5.5. Inch and the width are 8 inches combined. Use this multiutility diya and incense set as a gift; buy now.

Tortoise lamp made up of high brass with good craftsmanship and beautiful designs. It is perfectly suitable for your pooja room and decoration during Navarathri, Karthigai deepam, and other festivals. You can also gift this for various special occasions like housewarmings etc.

[statuearts365]

Marble Ram Darbar Statue

Marble Ram Darbar Statue

You talk to God, you're religious. God talks to you, you're psychotic. - Doris Egan

Recent reports say that the environmentalists are urging the ganesha idol makers to go green on this ganesh chaturthi. In this festival the household idols are carried to the sea shore, where they are immersed into the seabed. Environmentalists don't have an issue with this concept, though they have a certain discomfort with the material used in the idol making. Usually plaster of paris is used to give the idol a robust look and shape whereas environmentalists insist on using clay and green paints.

This festival also give us an opportunity to take a quick glance on the statue making industry. In India gods and goddess statues are in great demand. These statues make up for 70% of the statues made in the india, just next to the politicians. Just like any other art form, sculpture industry thrives on its patrons. In the past Indian sculpture artists too depended on the royal patrons however with commercialization and corporate money being pumped into it, this industry is now breathing a new lease of life.

Why Gods Statues Are So Popular

As per ancient Hindu scriptures, god sculptures add to the well being of one's house and is also a great source of decoration. These statues are usually made up of marble, brass or wood. They are usually priced as per the material used and craftsmanship. Some of the most popular god statues include goddess Lakshmi statue, Marble religious statues, marble temples, marble temple of Ram Darbar, Jesus Christ statue, stone carving of Lord Ganesha etc. Out of these Lord Ganesha's statue is one of the most popular and common sculpture which could be found in almost all the Hindu household.

The Chinese Threat

God statues exporters specially from India and other Asian countries benefit from the fact that such talent is very costly in the west and with the help of internet these guys have been able to grab a torrent of orders from Europe and North America. Masons set themselves to mastering the needs of foreigners, and offer them sculpture as per their requirement at unbeatable prices.

China in its attempt to improve their market share, manufactures such statues in bulk at throw away prices and is threatening to put other sculptors out of work. Recession did slow down their pace a bit, though the signs of revival are for every one to see.

The Passing Shot

Across the globe, sculptors produce permanent works of art and work on a variety of materials like stone, bronze, clay, wood, metal, steel etc. While making sculptures, sculptors use different techniques and methods such as tempera, sandblasting, enamel and oil-painting. One of the limitation with the gods statue makers is that they cant experiment much keeping the religious feeling in mind.

God sculptures have been an important part of our ancient life. They depict our culture and traditions and reveal the history of legends and important figures as well. God statues exporters not only bring forex to the country, they are also preserving an art form and spreading it beyond the borders.

See more:- https://statuearts.com/products/-marble-ram-darbar-statue

[alchemisland]

Read this story what I wrote pls, The Antiquarian and the Devil's Dog

The week we spent cleaning out Great Grandad’s house was an eventful one. More exciting at least than the days previous spent in various offices gathering the correct permissions to enter the old place. In the oldest parts of the house damp rotted the old floorboards until they warped, collapsing under their own weight leaving perilous apertures eager to swallow clumsy steppers. Agencies were reluctant to hand over the keys without first checking everyone’s insurance ad nauseum.

The old stone stairs leading to the basement, chipped from a thousand previous descents, looked liable to break if one wasn’t selective with their boot placement.  It’s funny, I thought, if you fell through one of those holes and ended up in the basement, you’d be avoiding the dangerous stairs; the lesser of two evils. Note to inform the insurance company of a possible loophole. Desperate to avoid litigation on our part, the agencies agreed that we could enter under supervision.

The world had changed since this place was last inhabited. When the door finally opened, stubborn in its frame after years of neglect, it seemed a room unstuck in time. Dust particles hung in the air and as they danced I wondered what secrets they were privy to, and whether they had been the component atoms of a larger host previously. Even her ghosts were bent and haggard with age, bones wilting in the oppressive dank. A hundred years ago the servants were so afraid of the myriad spectres said to inhabit the long halls and shadowed staircases that they had refused to enter certain rooms, but no such reports have been filed in nigh on seventy years. If those same ghosts existed now, they languished apathetically in the walls, stirring only occasionally to rattle the pipes or drag their boots. Curios and trinkets plundered at the height of Empire decorated every mantel in the house and although it went unsaid, everyone in the family was petrified of stumbling across something less than savoury.  Just to be sure we cross referenced some of the dates in our literature and found the Nazi party came a little after Bryn’s time. Spared of that anxiety we set to looking, for what we weren’t sure. Something of value, some seemingly insignificant object that might illuminate this murky character.

Bryn, God rest him, was a renaissance man in the style of the natural philosophers of his age; a doctor, an artist, a war hero, an antiquarian and amateur archaeologist all rolled into one. Of course it would be remiss not to mention his more illicit interests like bootlegging alcohol and collecting occult manuscripts, but the more sordid of the two pastimes fell by the wayside when he raised his station in society, becoming an educated and respected member of a prominent archaeological interest group. Selous’ Sweat they called themselves, in tribute to the conservationist and African big-game hunter of the same name.

Selous some of these artefacts for mad stacks, I thought with a smirk.

Everything in the house had a double coating of dust. Doing our rounds and cataloguing the cabinets of curiosities meant that doors long undisturbed were opened, both literally and figuratively. Turning the handle of one particular door, I saw it led to an upstairs sitting room on a landing between two flights of stairs, one spiralling down towards the sitting room, although there was scarcely room to sit amidst the Grecian urns and Japanese decorative plates precariously hanging from the walls, and the other up towards the darkroom on the top floor. The sitting room was strangely devoid of clutter except for an enormous table. The rounded surface was a dark mahogany, polished until shining with a protective glass covering placed on top.

I wondered why a table, even one so fine as this, was given a room to itself above the other priceless artefacts in the catalogue, which included a Han dynasty vase, the glasses worn by W.B. Yeats in his twilight years and an enormous set of ornate mirrors purchased at auction when one of the grand manors in Kilkenny was forced to liquidate all non-holdings related assets following the collapse of the family after the war. The mirrors, according to the former owner Mrs. Fitzbannion, were the pride of their manor house. Mrs. Fitzbannion hung the mirrors in the centre of the main hall, ensuring all visitors knew the extent of their wealth. The frames were carved to represent natural wonders, a pinecone here, an antler there, and each coated in burnished gold leaf. Gold had faded to brass in the intervening years, as if the mirror losing its place of prominence in its household stole the last scion of lustre from it altogether, and I wondered had the mirror ever been so ostentatious as described.

Inspecting the table, I ran my finger along the protective glass panel and found no trace of dust. Doubly curious. Bryn was an adventurer and had no shortage of vigour in his old age, but he was still not one for dusting. Attributing his longevity and stamina to a liquid concoction that he called Lightning Wine, part alcoholic cocktail, part vegetable juice with a hint of soda water. In truth I had only agreed to help with this jumped-up Spring cleaning session in the hopes of finding a vat of the naughty sauce hidden in a secret panel, which I would ferry out under my coat and imbibe later on with the lads.

I knelt on my haunches to inspect the legs of the table, wondering if they might shed light on the mystery. Clean as a whistle below too. Ivory. That was it. The legs were made of ivory. Holy shit, was this stuff even legal anymore? I heard a story in school that at one time ivory was so coveted they had to remove the tusks from museum specimens to discourage robbers, low-hanging fruit and all that. My sister volunteered in the Natural History Museum in Dublin while studying zoology and recounted wondrous tales over dinner about their storage rooms in the inner-city; numerous thylacine specimens, gigantic Irish elk antlers and wooden storage crates full of elephant tusks, corridor after corridor of specimen jars like one imagines Noah’s Ark appeared at capacity. Into the table legs were carved detailed images of warriors armed with spears facing down ferocious lions. No doubt an artwork of such fine craftsmanship was either manufactured by British labourers merely basing their work on an existing tribal peace, or worse, plundered from a deposed native royalty, like that Malaysian ruby. Something else there too, a piece of paper placed under one of the legs to balance it. I pulled the parchment out slowly, like the highest-stakes game of Jenga you can imagine and saw that it was written in blue ink. Unmistakably the spider-like scrawl of Great Grandad Bryn; prone to eccentricity and hyperbole in his cups though. I doubt any of what was written should be taken as gospel, but damned if it doesn’t make for a spooky story. The following are the excerpts from what I assume was a field diary, kept as part of his funding agreement with the local museums. They would fund his expeditions and as long as he provided colourful commentary and witticisms enough to draw a crowd. They proudly patronised his occasional dalliances into the otherworldly in the spirit of derring-do! Bryn mentions early in the text that he keeps a formal and an informal diary, the latter only for his own perusal. If what I read is his own private correspondence, then why hide it?

April 1928.

I, Martin Bryn-Kolkiln, wish to commit to paper the strange events of Friday last, April 9th 1928. For the first time in some weeks I have had time enough to sit down and gather my thoughts, my rest of late being much disturbed by strange fancies and day-time delusions. My postprandial scribblings have long been a stable of my working week and no servant dares to stir past my quarters upon noticing the glow neath the door that signals its occupancy. Lately the notepad remains devoid of ink or flourish and I strain my ears to catch the scratching of a passing servant stepping a mite too hard on the creaky floorboard, hoping to catch some snippet of gossip in the scullery that might rouse my wrist to swiftness. In less fanciful terms I have been much beset by idleness and my usual studious nature replaced by bouts of idleness and procrastination. I do not fear that you will judge me too harshly for my slovenliness though once I recount my adventure in full.

I find the drone of chatter where people have gathered too distracting to complete any serious writing, even the purchase of army-grade ear plugs have not relieved the issue, much to my chagrin after spending a pound on three pairs of the things; like wine stoppers or sink plugs made of orange and purple rubber, orange for left, purple for right. These tooth-shaped kernels wouldn’t have looked out of place in an orthodontic institute. A little avatar waving during check ups to remind the boys that oral hygiene at the front was as important as at home, especially if you urchins want little Bonnie Bouncybreasts to embrace you upon returning. I found them to be of little use, not providing the extreme level of silence and concentration I require to fully immerse.

Having only recently returned from fieldwork overseas in the Mesopotamia where I witnessed many strange and exotic sights investigating the discovery of a buried idol neath the sands of the former fertile crescent. The enormous desert sun rising over the pillars of former Hittite settlements. The clearness of the sky above the dunes, a matte-painting of stars in every hue, twinkling blues that shone blinding for a moment then disappeared. White ones and yellow ones and even a fiery red one, which my manservant Fayzad informed me was Venus. The primary goal of my journey was to investigate a buried Marduk idol, the dark god and King of the immortals in the Babylonian pantheon. The curio was found in a sepulchre hidden beneath the site of an existing mosque destroyed by shelling in 1917. Of course this provided ample fuel for speculation about templar treasure and a host of other religious conspiracies but the effigy was a strange artefact to be sure.

I visited other sites of historical interest while in that neck of the woods; a Chaldean astrological site situated in a hollow nested between two steep bluffs of yellow rock, deep in the valley of a dried river basin. I also surveyed a site for a possible future expedition where my colleagues speculate a Phoenician horde may be entombed neath the sand. My preliminary assessment of the site found it in some disrepair so I should not think to patronise such a dig.

The journey from the train station in London towards Matfield in Kent where I am currently dwelling is punctuated with occasional wondrous natural vignettes in the form of wild horses cresting grassy knolls ‘gainst the backdrop of God’s own country, white blossoms on trees, ranks of saplings, small now but they would grow enormous when the vernal bloom came. It seemed almost a shame to ignore the vistas to my left, given how I had pined for them while away. In the trenches I saw men commit countless words to paper trying to capture the essence of what made a simple thing beautiful, and for many this was how they prevented hollowing. Not a literal hollowing, like the way the flesh gives way to pockets of nothingness when carved by machine gun bullets; hollow like the head of a broken doll. Hollow like the hull of a ghost ship.

I attempted to conduct my preliminary report of sites I’d visited but through my rubber stoppers I could make out the voice of an inebriated Scot over the usual din. To make matters worse another veteran was seated in the opposite carriage, alone. The poor creature must have been exposed to gas in some forgotten melee, of which he was perhaps the surviving witness. Across the British Isles there was a thousand such sad scenes. Beneath the sea and in dank caves where no sunlight can penetrate things can still grow, only in exciting new varieties to accommodate unfavourable conditions - glassy fish with transparent scales living near the mouths of sulphur craters learned to take sustenance from the black clouds, and so it was with the war too. Boys went away and still grew to manhood despite the regular trials and tribulations that mark this winding path from adolescence, but the end product was of an altogether different beat.

Pineapple gas by the sound of his consistent hacking cough, and each time he did so it knelled the end of my creative spells, but I bore no ill-will. I had been privy to some sadness in my time. Even now in my deepest sleeps I bolt upright, clammy, imagining that I have faltered a moment more and disappeared into that ochre venom.

I saw a boy killed once. Fourteen years old. His name was Charlie but everyone called him Twig, all limbs and tussled curls beneath his cap. He lied to the recruiting sergeants, charming them with his memorised rhetoric. One of Kitchener’s own Praetorian. The boy came down from Doncaster at the beginning of Kitchener’s volunteer push, part of a pals brigade with men from the local foundries. This motley crew called themselves the Flint Walrus in tribute to Treasure Island. Twig caught a sniper bullet to the head laying wire in a thicket outside Nare.

Upon returning I informed colleagues and close friends of my intent to convalesce, retiring to my chambers in solitude for a fortnight to document my trip, both for official record and in a more personal tone for my memoirs. It came as a reluctant surprise then when a letter arrived, delivered by hand, requesting my urgent presence at the servants graveyard on the grounds of the Powers Estate. The letter spoke of a strange discovery when work for a proposed pleasure garden began requiring the removal of several headstones. The author of the note, which was neither signed nor written in a hand I recognised, went on to state that he or she supposed that their discovery would be pertinent to my historical interest.

This mysterious invitation stoked the embers of my imagination ablaze. I was suddenly keen to reevaluate my proposed ‘mental wellbeing day’, instead thinking perhaps I took those days on the insistence of my wife, nothing more.

I set off that same balmy spring evening, taking only a light jacket and houndstooth peak cap by way of protection; no rain had been forecast. The rest of the note had described the process of the dig, which had already concluded so I would not require my field tools. The closing statement ran shivers of terror through my body. The scribe, although an amateur, was firm in his words and confident in his assessment that they had uninterred the skeleton of an enormous hellhound, three times larger that the most gargantuan canine of Siberia.

My mind was on fire with vivid images of shadowy hyenas howling, pooling stinking saliva in the sharp corners of its mouth. I wondered might their excavation have uncovered Black Shuck or some descendent; an enormous dog or wolf-like creature that stalked the leafy abbeys and quiet lanes of Suffolk in the early 15th century. The dog stood a keen seven feet in length, allowing for an inch either end, and weighed 200 pounds, around the average weight of a heavyweight pugilist. So bulky was the creature that the thudding sound of its footfalls would rouse the people from their sleep and into a panic. There are records in the abbey’s archive there that describe one such incident, another visit from the Black Shuck. He came in the night, a terrible formless thing, moving unseen like mist. The panicked citizenry had heard that same familiar padding and the warning bell had been sounded. An early-warning system was present in most larger townships since the Viking raids, sending the denizens of the town spilling towards the abbey. Room was made for all people to seek shelter in the house of God. The assembled clergymen did their best to bolt the door by placing large timbers across it in a x pattern but it took no time at all for the enormous beast to barge through, a hulking mass of muscle, rippled and bulging as if cast in alabaster. The archives do not mention how the beast was slain. The last word on the matter is not even a word but a sketch of a boulder by one Father Nestin Goodfaythe, showing where the beast is supposedly interred on hallowed ground, underneath a weeping willow near the west wall of the piper’s rest, a section of the cemetery reserved for the church musicians.

As a boy Eileen the wet nurse, a dumpy and severe custodian from Blessington in County Wicklow, would enthrall and horrify my brothers and I with stories of the dog-headed men who inhabited the mist prone Northern slopes and secluded islands of the south pacific. I recall one particularly horrifying tale concerning one such legion of canine-men living in the hills during Arthur’s reign; they would bound down from the treeline and attack the neighbouring townlands and holdfasts, snapping up ewes and even small children in their fierce jaws, wet with gleaming viscera. The men, if that, had the head of a canine - green eyes, a wet black snout like a button extending out from their face, small ears that curved inward like a pitbull. Arthur had dispatched a troupe of his finest knights after numerous reports that the raids had increased in frequency as the vernal equinox approached. I think it was Sir Galahad, noted for his bravery, dilligence and cunning with a blade, that beheaded the leader of the tribe. Galahad had positioned his knights on a bluff overlooking a mill, ensuring that animals had been left to pasture in a paddock purposefully left ajar. Although shaped like stocky men, the dog-headed tribe had neither the cunning nor craft necessary to defeat the combined brain-trust of the round table. When the dog-headed men ran from the treeline toward the open paddock and the helpless ewes within, Galahad and his knights perched above pushed a collection of large boulders over the lip of the bluff. The sun shone on their glistening silver plate mail and in that moment it seemed a second sun had risen.These sunlight sentinels stood from their subterfuge to watch the falling rocks, admiring a cunning plan brought to fruition. The dog-men driven by baser desires could scarcely crane their heads from the meal in front and must have only heard the smaller pebbles loosed by the rumbling reaching the foot of the mountain before it was too late. The largest of the ten boulders thrown was perfectly round like the head of a morning star, one half granite with the other hemisphere coated in moss and twinkling mika. If the folklore had any inkling of truth after so many successive generations of embellishments this boulder was the last remnant of a statue that had stood a thousand years ago, raised by the giants who ruled Albion then. The statue depicted one of their kings, bearded and stern on a carved throne, sceptre in his left hand, the right raised up as if swearing testimony. Who knows though, sources from the time mention neither the melee nor the antiquity. Giants are often added to existing historical accounts or fables to scare children from the left-hand path. A sketch from the time does exist though, which may point to the truth at the centre of the legend. Drawn by eminent medieval antiquarian Father Lamhsa O’Dhuiningh of Tipperary during his trip to the four corners of Eireann documenting mesolithic sites and areas of sufficient proximity to resources that might serve as a site for future plantations, the pencil drawing shows a hill leading down to a mill, and just barely peeping at the top the picture the rounded granite head of a statue can be seen just above the tips of the highest trees. Whether this confirms that men of enormous stature ruled here once or that men who are already decided on a notion can rarely be swayed and will almost always reach for the most circumstantial of evidence rather than admitting fault. There’s also a brief mention of these giants allying with an ancient Saxon King in the Mabinogion, a compendium of myths rooted in historical fact compiled in the 13th and 14th century. The two sides, once bitter rivals, put aside their differences to drain a large area of swampland where the brackish waters and greenish miasma that hung over the water like a cloud caused disease to humans, giants and their livestock. Perhaps these giants had hounds of equal size in this area millenia ago?

I cycled to the train station within half an hour and caught an evening train toward the site. Upon detramming it was only a short stroll past the hamlet to the foreboding stone fortress that was the Powers Estate. I am not shy to hard work but let me say this on the matter; I’d wager Isidore of Seville, eminent though he was in his then budding field of zoology, did not have his plans to relax scuppered at every turn. He probably shut his bestiary with a dull thud, removed his working sandals and held his feet aloft to rest, stating ‘Come Jackalope or Jackdaw Prince I’ll not stir from this velvet cocoon ‘til rested!’ I promised myself that if the invitation hadn’t arrived by letter I would have refused a man face-to-face, but lies to oneself are lies to God also and I whispered my apology into the inky night sky. The sky was flecked with silver dots like an enormous glowing wisp out of space had poked a hole in the fabric of our world, allowing a sliver of otherworldly pearlescence to shine through.

There was an ominous gathering of clouds just above the rounded domes of the main compound. There were smaller follys, fountains and hound master's lodgings on the grounds too but they paled in comparison to the oppressive majesty of the Grand Lodge. The design was an eclectic mix of Eastern and Western classical art styles, rounded arches and marble pillars dappled with grey and obsidian, gargoyles with contorted faces and forked tongues lolling out of their pursed half mouths and other misshapen oddities perched on the buttresses. French tapestries and Roman marbles on every landing, enormous paintings of the glorious hunt in gilded frames on every inch of spare wall, Pictish stones looted from the Scottish soil decorated the fish pond, inscribed with mysterious runes that no doubt held some arcane and eldritch knowledge.

Casement Power, younger brother of the late Lord Richard, inherited no property or bonds but was allowed an extremely modest annual allowance. He spent his days hunting but no hound could satiate his warrior spirit. He travelled to furthest Africa shooting the largest game. It was there he spoke with cannibal tribes and saw serpents of enormous size unfurl endlessly and slither away into the brown water. The tribes in the swamps of Zaire spoke of a living dinosaur inhabiting the marshes where the vegetation was dense and the jungle heat so volatile that no man could settle. He also had collected many curios and tribal artworks on his expeditions. The remnants of his conquests nailed to the walls as trophies; skulls of every size, strange tusked things, toothless sharks, an Ibex skull with three horns. Enormous mammoth tusks from Siberia carved with runes framed all the double doors, and crossed spears above every mirror.

The pride of the collection was a piece co-owned by the brothers; one of the Elgin Marbles. An incredible bust of a centaur in glorious pose, bow poised to fire, enormously muscled but not so as to be grotesque. The centaur did not appear a wild thing, and had a looked of melancholy wisdom about his furrowed brow.

Somewhere in the house, although I cannot recall where, the skeleton of the beast that hunted the denizens of Gevaudan. I do know for a fact that this grizzly exhibit does exist as it is listed on the manifesto of items in the portion of Stately Homes of England dedicated to the Powers plot. I cannot verify as to the validity of the article but I'd vouch that many a French peasant eats well selling a hundred such cryptozoological items. I shudder to think of the smallfolk who suffered under the beasts reign of terror. The beast was cunning and successfully avoided waves of eager bounty hunters looking to claim the sizeable reward. It would never attack a group as it is in nature. The ewe that strays from the flock makes light work for wolves and worse. Servant girls would be found dismembered and grossly mutilated only moments after leaving the security of the settlement. The flesh was not always consumed either. The beast was not hunting out necessity and instead fulfilling some sick perversion. Poisoned and drunk on the blood humankind. Could the hell hound I am to examine be a relation of this come to England, or worse, brought?

I have heard tales from reputable sources of large cats loose on the moors. Some escaped from circuses and private menageries, others former pets released by their owners after quadrupling in size. Perhaps these amateurs had merely uncovered the remains of an exotic pet. The grounds were no stranger to beasts from the dark continent; crimson parrots in enormous metal cages, striped fish that glowed when the moonlight fell on the pond, peacocks from India striding the grounds magnificently, ducks from Canada. Would it be completely out of question for a jungle cat to have made this castle its home? I think not.

On his extensive travels around China and Africa studying prehistoric art Richard Power collected priceless artworks and looted great tombs of their treasures years before the arrival of most Western antiquarians. His current horde included petroglyphs, gilded sarcophagi and even a mummified cat from a Witch's Bazaar outside Khartoum. If Richard Powers was alive today he would sit coiled atop his twinkling dubloons with plumes of smoke trailing from either nostril, content to wait for judgement day in the cavernous treasury rumoured to exist beneath the house. Now this ‘conspiracy’ is slightly more believable than the tales of vampirism and prostitutes found frozen, their last moments of panic etched on their disgusted countenance, bodies drained entirely of blood. That’s Maine Wood’s Bosch if you ask me, but a treasury filled with Egyptian secrets… That is more intriguing. An underground river flows out beneath the walls of the house into the Mighty Sa-hen-esh river, perpetually vomiting galloping white horses to dash against the rocks. One can easily imagine a boat snaking the bends by night, illuminated by a single lantern, a chest full of smuggled artefacts in tow. Now that I've written this all out, I see that this could also serve a convenient way to covertly bring a big cat into the grounds, all without alerting the law.

The East Wing of the house consisted of one long corridor lined with equally-spaced doors on either side in alternating colours. The pattern was blue left, red right, green left, gold right and so on for several meters. Suits of old plate mail were nailed to plinths in the spaces between each entrance, some with their visors up, revealing the shadowy nothingness within, their arms tight to the torso and bent at the elbow clutching tight on their halberds. Others had their visors down holding their shields near their torso with swords sheathed. Their heraldic crests were emblazoned there in majestic golds and silvers, with gold-leaf tassels dangling from the sides.

According to the rumours all of the suits with closed visors contained embalmed corpses; some of them acting as metalurgic mausoleums for deceased heirs. and others containing corpses looted from the Valley of Kings pre-Napoleonic rediscovery, and the only way to tell heir from ancient was by examining the crests. Some of which were said to be false artworks created specifically to be understood by members of a secret order, like Templars or Rosicrucians, only confined to worship of Ancient Egyptian deities. I don’t know whether any credence should be paid to the rumours but I can say with some authority that Rich Powers did have a penchant for symbolism and numerology. If there ever was some eccentric left in the Arab Sun too long, present company excluded, who would commission these wonderful artworks for such a convoluted purpose, it was him. The late custodian of the Baronage passed some seventy years ago but rumours of his interest in the occult abound still.

Many of the great houses had fallen to destitution in recent years as their custodians gathered dust on gilded thrones, having sent the best of their heirs to serve in France among the officer classes. Although the bulk of the BEF was made up of working class men, miners and teachers, the aristocratic classes were decimated. Such was the way of war. These men playing chess with the lives of the small folk would, to fulfill their end of whatever faustian pact could've caused such a prolonged and terrible slaughter, had to give up their own sons. Of course not all these elderly Lords were callous in sending their offspring to foreign soil, perchance to die. Many wrote letters to school chums and former colleagues now occupying lofty administrative positions requesting exclusion for their boys in exchange for kind press or monetary reward. All such offers were of course denied. What kind of message would that send to the powerful gentry of the country, who held much sway with the royals, that some men's sons may live and others still must away to Hades? I fear the recruiting offices would have been empty by that very evening and the recruiting sergeants left in a right awkward position, and forced to become creative with the methods their jingoistic crusade employed. Powers had lost three sons in the war, two at Mons during the terrible combat there, and another at Ypres. The angels had not seen fit to protect them. That dread sound of motorcycle tyres scraping on pebbles as it stirs to a halt, the clicking of medals on a uniform breast as the messenger spans the drive, the measured footfalls of a military gait approaching the door, closer now and the parent white-faced behind knowing what dread news awaits.

Again canines find a way to embroil themselves. Many parents report seeing ominous black dogs in the morning mist in the days and hours before the bad news arrives from overseas, and the black dog is a symbol of significance in the practice of reading tea-leaves, rather a Victorian fancy but it has its practitioners and defenders still. I believe Siegfried Sassoon’s mother employed the help of a medium in an attempt to communicate with her deceased son - the poor creature.

Folklore and farmyard chatter aside; the Powers had deep roots here. A Powers had lived on this land since at least 1640. Who knew what secrets those whispering old stones might yield to those inclined to hear.

Fortunately the Lord has a nephew, strong, sensible and of age. Lord Nigel Power, Earl of Sookford and 3rd Baron of Westian, current custodian of the Powers Estate was not an unkind man, scholarly and stoic like the Greek philosophers he admired and quoted in his cups, but always keen to share a nod and chat in passing. Not to give the impression that we are acquainted for I hardly know the man but to don my hat in passing, occasionally passing comment if the weather be fine or noteworthily tempestuous. Word around the fountain says that Lord Power intends to put his vast knowledge of the classical world to use in his retirement, wherein he hopes to compile in seven volumes a history of the Peloponnesian Wars in the Bronze Age Aegean Sea.

His deceased Uncle wished for the construction of a Pleasure Garden in his honour, following the sale of his assets. His advanced age will account for why they are currently constructing a most Victorian folly.

I wonder did Richard glean any smidge of happiness or any notion of the arcane knowledge he sought from his archives in the long evening of his life, waiting to meet his sons and commend their bravery in heaven. Perhaps it's true what is said about a man who lives to bury his children; he dies two deaths; the first when everything he was before fragments and scatters to dust and the second when he truly expires, a husk eagerly awaiting the trot of Mort’s destrier - foul Black knytmare!

You see even now as I write with shaking hand that my mind is infected - I am leaning toward gothic fancy! I hope this will give you an inkling then into my apprehension, for although I remain a skeptical-leaning agnostic with regard to the otherworldly, the ominous setting and eerie descriptions in the letter had transported me to an irrational world.

Already I was noting my own apprehension, every step measured, holding my breath unless absolutely necessary. The wintry grass crunched beneath my boots and I stood hypnotised almost, craning to see the lip of the battlements on the outer wall. A fortress fit for a martial family. Arrows, oil and boulders would have rained down from on high decimating the invaders attempting to mount their ladders. Flaming arrows igniting the siege towers forcing men to jump from a great height into the throng of spears and pikes below, often dashed on the points. A mighty gust suddenly swept past me violently, lifting my jacket tails and it carried a faint sound of distant battle, a prolonged scream, a snippet of intense roaring fire and the thwack of archers in tandem. I shivered and begged the spirits leave me and confine their unrest to the isolated places of the world.

Grim faeries nestled in the thickets of wildflowers, I imagined their spritely ceilidh neath the spotted mushroom caps, leaping from one swaying grass stalk to another, their intricate but infinitesimally small fiddles nestled in the crook of their necks. Foul puka in the form of red-eyed goats mocked me from behind boundary fences. My own breath steaming from my lips in plumes despite the warmth, as the dark fog that escaped the nostrils of Jörmungandr, his scaled belly pregnant with angry fire.

The last light faded as I approached the enormous wrought iron gates of the grounds, the rails jagged black spears rising from the capstones, decorated in the middle with a black bas relief.

I pushed open the gate and it dragged on its hinges, howling while it swung. The dread chorus was so shrill and how long it lasted - I almost had to place my fingers into my ears for relief! This fright rather knocked my senses. I stirred for a moment to gather myself. Every loose stone, dancing leaf and singing spring breeze now whispered portents. I shook my head and ignored whatever gnostic Delphian beckoned. If the third eye existed, and scientific fiction magazines wrote that it could be opened by stimulating the pineal gland with a kind of resonant electric current, mine was opened naturally then. I accepted the languid way the gate swung as a sign of reluctance to permit my entry. These old places did not lightly relinquish their secrets and it was well possible that some unseen malevolent force did not want me there that night. What happened next only exacerbated my fears.

I immediately made a sharp right turn upon entering the compound, moving from the long and winding gravel drive lined with golden cedars at every turn and down a snaking path trodden through the grass and mud, towards a glow some distance away that I assumed was the site. I scrambled through the darkness with my forearm raised to shield my eyes from sharp branches. I feared what I might see lurking in the shadows. My assumption was correct and I emerged from the copse at the servants graveyard.

The site had been cordoned off with rope and torches placed in the ground illuminating the site for my investigation. A small crowd gathered, huddled together for warmth near one of the beacons. A man turned, evidently the one who penned the letter and waved for me. There were fifteen or more grave markers in the small fenced square. Grass grew grey and sickly there. Scions of jagged rock tore through the topsoil giving the impression of a golem just beneath the firmament. This field must have been the only spot of that land that didn't get a healthy blossom, small surprise it was designated such a dark purpose. The owner had little use for land that didn't yield coin.

A terrible scream rang out. The banshee’s wail, the chorus of seven trumpets that toll for the opening of the seventh seal, the Howling of the Djinn! Hark! The dread screech of a terrible wyrm, phasing through realities in permanent agony.

A bright spark glowed brightly in the sky above the open grave and my eyes unaccustomed to the light shut tightly. I winced and turned then a strange thing occurred; I found myself back in the thicket where the branches like fingers had caressed me only a moment before, the light of the site up ahead in the distance. What vile trickery was this? I stared at my hands, barely able to discern their shape in the darkness. I raised them and cupped my face into my palms, needing to massage my crown and feel the bone and blood underneath, something tangible now that I was untethered from the real. I needed to be positive this was not a dream but it was so cold, so bitterly cold. A shivering frozen knife tracing down my spine. Was it possible to feel cold while not conscious? I did not think so, but then tis not possible to teleport or time travel or jump enormous distances like Spring Heeled Jack. I began to feel nauseous and keeled over holding my stomach, dry retching onto the damp grass.

The beacons in the distance began igniting and extinguishing in sequence, strobing and contorting casting long shadows and I fell to my knees with my head tucked to my chest, as a hedgehog in peril. The beacons all doused simultaneously and the wet grass underneath my head changed to something harder and slick, with many sharp points digging into my cheek. I dared a peek lifting one eyelid a fraction and found myself again outside the gates of the grounds. The dark contours of the bas relief were ominous now, the bulbous shapes of the carved images made my skin crawl. Small hairs on the back of my neck stood to attention causing itchiness around my collar. I pushed to my feet and brushed the rocks embedded in my palms off on the thighs of my trousers.

Yes, the beings that had at first seemed Grecian effigies of perfect men hunting now altered in the pale moonlight, one idle moonbeam shining directly on the relief as if a spotlight was held fast by an unseen cherub, perched on a cloud occasionally stirring from peaceful sleep to illuminate some slither of mystery. These hulking icons, although lacking perspective, seemed an altogether forbidden sight. I recoiled in horror but dared myself to investigate further.

Practically holding my eyes open I stooped closer, focusing on one particular figure. Let me first describe the image as a whole; a pitiful scene. By compare I can only cite passages from Revelations, and even they do not convey the full horror I beheld. Lacking the vocabulary to describe the ‘otherness’ of its shape Revelations must serve as an imaginative stimulus; the beings on the relief were contorted demons. Most had bodies and genitals like men but coated every inch with coarse black hair, spiny and spidery. Their eyes enormous round things like that of a fish, but where a fish emits vacancy and the black of their eyes reflects rather than radiates, these implied great wisdom. Enormous eyes omnipresent to witness all events in all of time, as Mathesula. I shudder to think. Where their mouths should have been was instead an enormous pair of jaws like that of the snapping crocodiles encountered in Egypt, a menace I am reluctantly familiar with, having seen men dragged underneath the murky water while bathing or labouring near the shore erupting in fountains of blood, never to surface.

The figure I was hypnotically drawn to inspecting had an enormous stinging tail protruding from the end of his tailbone, hanging low off the ground before looping up into the sky, the stinger slick with dripping venom poised at the shoulder to strike. He was the only one among his number armed with such a ferocious pestilent whip, which was clad in hard black plate no sword would dent, distinguishing him as a leader of sorts; if any rank exists  within an anarchy of grotesques. Even as a fantasy this folly is something gratuitous altogether. The metal seemed slick, oozing oil even though no rain fell there that night and no hint of varnish in the air. Perhaps twas merely the combination of moonlight trickery and the all night reading sessions of yesteryear where I filled my mind with all manner of sidhes, dobhar chus and mushrooms out of space. The relief was a ballroom fancy and no more, a remnant of the freakshow era leftover, like how some houses still have their cabinets of curios. I was merely painting character to it instinctively, already having intimate knowledge of folklore and the structure of ancient myths. I must admit there have been times when I have been disposed towards the extraordinary and like to imagine a whole world of strangeness lies behind the fabric of our preconceptions but this is a private indulgence and I have not, to my own knowledge, allowed it to interfere with my work.

I pushed open the gate as a matter of promptness and again it swung slowly and screeched, reeeeeeeeeeeeeeee - like a vixens wail. Events were playing out exactly as they had only moments ago except now when I entered the dig site was on my left side, and much closer than before. I was  sure I had turned right last time. Did the last time really happen? A trick of my own mind or by something darker. Some benevolent being drawn to mischief by boredom interfering with the lives of mortals. Perhaps twas some fancy I took outside, a moon dream. Lord knows I had heard enough tales of inebriated farmers trapped roaming around small paddocks for days unable to find an exit, while the faeries peered through the barbs of the hawthorn in hysterics. While we are in the realm of loons perhaps it was an angel giving me a vision of what is coming. Warding me away from the toothed darkness in the damp hole.

To steady my nerves I decided to voice the inner skeptic aloud. I spoke into night about how the gases and wisps in marshes were spirits to feudal farmers before wise men came and dispelled their ignorance with the torch of logic. Perhaps all I was experiencing now was merely some as of yet unexplained phenomena. An unseen chemical in the air released by the digging causing hallucinations, or a fever perhaps? I had been travelling recently. Any excuse that steered my mind from the abject terror I was exercising in the face of the unknown I was eager to embrace.

I proceeded to the site but there was no sliding mud to prevent my passage now; the thicket of thorns where I had stooped and seen the braziers in the distance nowhere to be found. If only I heeded my wife's warnings, ponderous fool.

There was still time to turn and head for home. The trains would not run again until morning so I might safely walk the tracks and upon reaching the station, fetch my bike and cycle the remainder of the journey. If I depart and keep a keen pace I would be abed before three. A course of Teddy Roosevelt’s ‘strenuous life’ to get the lungs singing and forget this whole mad venture. Whether the men disturbed the rest of a hellhound or just the bones of a dead doe, expanded over generations by the freezing and thawing of the soil, could just be left as exactly that, a question to ponder on Samhain, to tell over a crackling flame and scare the boy scouts.

How unprecedented that a man as stubborn as I would talk myself out of a venture that promised much mystery. Not to blow one's own trumpet but I am also not a man of soft disposition. I have no fear of death, I saw my share of it in the conflicts. When a man lives in the shadow of the reaper for so long a strange kinship is formed, and I enjoyed that shade as one would enjoy the shadow of an apple tree in the midday sun. I inhabited the abyss before, if only for a time. I knew fear that night. Some primordial doubt froze me where I stood, sending shockwaves through my body rousing every nerve and impulse I had screaming retreat, retreat! I willed my legs forward, take another few steps and you'll feel better, but I could not budge one inch. I must have looked a forlorn statue. A fitting garden ornament for such a strange place, amongst the cherubs and marble harpies.

I stood, taking stock of my surroundings. A very faint dust was visible in the air, a golden haze like spores or sparks from a foundry taken flight. This mist shifted in the air constantly reforming, though I felt no breeze. Whether the miasma was a result of  occult activity or a sign from a benign celestial to warm me of impending spiritual disaster I do not know. I did know to follow my gut instincts. Whenever my gut rumbled and my rhythm changed unknowingly danger was never far. In the war I had honed this instinct. A sixth sense for spotting hidden mines and unexploded Mill’s bombs led my lads through cracked lunar landscapes shelled chalk white.

Turning, I sped out the gate, avoiding its siren song having left it ajar when I entered. I kept a blistering pace and soon the lane melted away behind me, my feet scarcely scraping the ground. Gravel gave way to wet grass and then the tracks opened up before me. An enormous corridor of steel teeth slicing the meadow in two. Due to the negligence of the maintenance crew the wild grasses growing trackside grew enormous. They lined the entire route casting ominous shadows and obscuring any assailants that might attack from the side. I slowed briefly ensuring my stride matched the distance between planks so as not to trip.

After a time I heard behind me the definite sound of paws plodding rhythmically. Four distinct footfalls increasing pace to match my own. I suddenly sprinted forward with such intensity that I near lost my balance but I pushed my arms out sideways and flapped like a terrorised bird and steadied. Paws clacked on the timbers of the track and something emitted a low and deep growl. I ran then, as fast as my legs would take me. Beads of sweat rolled down my forehead, past my eyes which I had shut most tightly and onto my lip. Tissues, coins and scraps of paper fell from my pockets but I continued propelled by some primal strength. It is natural for the hunters brain to seize control when the invisible eyes on the back of one's neck feel the predator's stare. The gnashing darkness felt an oppressive presence. In that moment I was sure no fevre dream had taken hold. What gave chase was a tangible evil, slipped through the curtains into our reality, or perhaps pulled. Mayhaps some naive servant read the words aloud from one of the many Egyptian execration texts dotted around the house in glass cabinets and dredged a being from another world. Even at that distance the fetid smell of rotten meat on its breath caused my nose to wrinkle.

I could feel intense heat too along my shoulder blades and beneath my collar. At first I thought twas the humid panting typical of a sprinting canine but it got warmer and warmer as the footfalls increased their pace until it was near unbearable. I reached my hand to my collar, placing the backside of my fingers, now substantially cooled from running in the wind, flat to my neck. This heat was surely the licking tongues of infernal Hades. I did not turn and I did not delay, keeping my pace well beyond my natural exhaustion threshold. The swiftness of the stag when the wolf is near. The swiftness of the salmon in the shadow of the bear.

I imagined behind me an enormous fissure in the rows of planks. Spindled fingers tipped with curled nails grabbing at my tails, skin red like a flayed man. Eyes of every size with no other human form attached. Green pupils slit like cats. Enormous black ones like an ink filled bubble swirled apocalyptic chaos beneath the gelatinous covering. If this rift rent the land as I imagined then this hound must be Cerberus - oh three headed guardian of Hades, who bid you give chase, I am not yet bound for your kingdom!

The beast thundered along behind me, faster now, growling and snapping its enormous rows of teeth, sharp as daggers and serrated for tearing strips of flesh from bone. Was I to be Dante?

At times the thing was so close I could feel drops of reeking saliva raining down where the beasts tongue had whipped at the empty space I occupied not a moment earlier. In truth I cannot recollect much further than this, I was gripped by an adrenal berserk and time held no meaning, new memories ceased forming, all non-critical faculties switched off. After an eternity I emerged into the light of the train station and dared to slow for the first time. It seemed the chase had not been so rabid these last moments. The spell which coated those bones in living flesh expired now that morning sun threatened her light.

The horizon was now red as iron ore. I turned gasping but no snapping cerberus or terrible extinct mastiff, like those the Romans had employed in Carthage, waited there. Just a dizzying corridor of shifting darkness stretching to infinity. No idle moon beam pierced the veil of night. In my relief I spared a laugh, noting aloud that this was likely a record time for this particular journey, surpassing even the no-stop trains that carried resources to the Hebrides and further overnight.

In spite of all that had happened I had to question then and there if a creature had ferociously pursued me at all or whether some friendly dog had trotted alongside me for a time, or whether my own footfalls speeding up subconsciously sent me into a panic. I was unsure. Should I be terrified, relieved, embarrassed or a combination of the three?

Next came the darkest revelation of all. I sat  and dangling my legs over the lip of the train platform lit a cigarette. I inhaled deeply and held the breath, allowing the smoke to absorb my woes before exhaling. A draft on my back sent me shivering. No, more than a breeze, a sharp pain now. I dropped my cigarette onto the tracks and reached back, gingerly pawing with my index finger, if the phrasing can be pardoned. I recoiled in agony, even now my back throbs and smells fetid when the bandage is not changed and let steam under a basin of boiled water. Three enormous slashes, rifts of gnarled flesh raked across my skin. Dark pus oozes from the wound and I have worn a corset of gauze this last week. A paroxysm of pain sent me to spasming and I could take no more, fainting into a heap there on the platform.

I suppose it was near enough to morning then and some commuter or station man took notice and fetched a doctor, but in truth I have no memory of this. The doctors have informed me that it will be some time before my wound heals and it should require much observation to prevent tetanus. Yes, you read that right. Tetanus. The lacerations were proved to have been made by a dog using the latest scientific tests. The doctors, veterinarians and trappers consulted have so far been completely baffled by the breadth and width of the scrapes, reckoning a creature capable of such assaults to a man grown should require enormous size and strength, and belonged to no creature native to this country.

With this nightmare put to page I hope the oily tendrils of it are scraped from my mind. I must retire to chambers and steam the wound again, left overnight the sickly sweet smell of the warped and bubbled flesh becomes unbearable. The doctors and I hope I will be free to return to work by June. In the meantime I will stay active with my research and dispel any thoughts too fantastical. My spirit is largely shaken and I have not felt an anxiety like it since the weeks at the front. I cannot complain, having most of my wealth and still a sliver of health but Damn! Curse! Blast how I loathe sleeping on my front! How anyone finds solace in this pose is beyond me, I feel like a lizard basking on hot stones.

I leave you now to ponder what I saw that night, and I will do the same. Perhaps another time it will be revealed to me, in a dream or a whisper of the babbling brook, what is the given name of the darkness I encountered. Or suppose you think maybe the stories of jungle cats loose on the moors hold more than a nugget of truth; a jaguar or cheetah gave chase, stirring from its home in the neglected grasses along the tracks? Perhaps. I do not like to speculate. I leave you then and as stated at the beginning of my recant, I hope you will not judge my case too harshly, noting that I am not a man of ill repute or third-rate education. I am a simple antiquarian bottling the dust of the lost things. The truth is an amnesiacs labyrinth.

April 20th, M Bryn-Kolkiln

Michael Dempsey, April 2018

[lockbodies-blog]

Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones

Little Ones by Joyce C. Lock(suggested midi - Oh, Be Careful, Little Hands What You Do)There be four things which are little upon the earth, but they are exceeding wise:1. The ants are a people not strong, yet they prepare their meat in the summer;2. The conies are but a feeble folk, yet make they their houses in the rocks;3. The locusts have no king, yet go they forth all of them by bands;4. The spider taketh hold with her hands, and is in kings' palaces.A little one shall become a thousand, and a small one a strong nation:I the Lord will hasten it in his time Plastic TSA Padlocks Manufacturers. Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as a little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me. Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you, That in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven. And whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea. Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein TSA small brass luggage padlock with brass key lock. I write unto you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you for his name's sake. I write unto you, fathers, because ye have known him that is from the beginning. I write unto you, young men, because ye have overcome the wicked one. I write unto you, little children, because ye have known the Father. Little children, let no man deceive you: he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous. My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth. Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world. Little children, keep yourselves from idols.