#i was originally going to put eldritch being but i thought that cosmic sounded more general

[phantasia69]

Other fandoms: "hear me out"

*shows a picture of a conventionally attractive character*

Soulsborne fandom: "hear me out"

*shows a picture of a cosmic being beyond mortal comprehension*

[dailyadventureprompts]

Hey Dapper! As an avid follower of- and equally avid inspiration-taker from your work, first of all, thank you for the work you've put into all this. It is a treasure-trove of knowledge and inspiration that has certainly made me very happy. Can I ask for your thoughts on Tharizdun? I've been trying to form a concept of it for in my own world, but I've had little success.

Monsters Reimagined: Tharizdun, the Whisperer in Darkness

Being the default "god of madness" Tharizdun brings together two of my enduring gripes with d&d: gods that no one would actually worship and the enduring legacy of depicting people with mental illness as dangerous lunatics devoid of empathy and reason.

As he currently exists in the DM's toolbox, the whole point of including Tharizdun in your campaign is to act as the powersource behind whichever final fantasy style endboss wants to start the apocalypse before unleashing a mass of offband lovecraftian tentacles. Derivative, trite, his singular desire to inspire others to end the world is MCU levels of failing to give villains proper motivations.

We can do better

TLDR: Far In the wildest depths of the astral sea the ur-god Tharizdun is formless and thoughtless, yet dreaming. Resembling nothing so much as a cosmic nebula of oily clouds, a vast and shapeless expanse of churning primordial chaos that pulses with synapses of psychic lighting containing a consciousness older than time itself. Like a sleeper beset with sleep paralysis the chained oblivion thrashes against a reality it can only barely perceive, sending shockwaves of destruction across the cosmos.

While scholars of all worlds debate the true origins and nature of Tharizdun they can agree on two things:

It is more powerful than all the pantheons of creation, and it is terrified.

Inspiration: I wasn't originally going to do a whole monsters reimagined on Tharizdun, instead simply gesturing on what Matt Mercer has done with the deity (using the roiling chaos as a throughline for much of his Exandrian worldbuilding) and leaving it at that.

Around the same time I got this ask though I was considering doing my own take on Azathoth, the so called "blind idiot god" of the lovecraft mythos, inspiration struck and I decided to alloy the two concepts into what I think is a stronger whole. There's a lot of overlap in the two formless horrors, partly due to Tharizdun being a d&d's attempt to dip its toe into eldritch horror, without quite understanding the thematic framework involved.

Like many other things ( Minorities, the sea, decay, air conditioning) Lovecraft was terrified of objective reality. This might sound like a joke, but fundamental to his mythos is the fear that earth and the white men that lived upon it were not the centre of the universe created by a loving god. Lovecraft lived in increasingly scientific times and the science supported the idea of a universe in which humanity's existence was the meaningless product of random chance. Azathoth was this anxiety embodied in its most extreme scale: the capital G god of the universe which sat in the middle of all creation that was not only uncaring towards humanity (as many of Lovecraft's creations were) but the embodiment of ultimate unthinking chaos.

Trying to port Azathoth (and most of the other lovecrafitan pantheon) doesn't work because the conceits of the genre fundamentally clash. D&D DOES propose a moral universe, and goes out of its way to simplify morality down to such a cartoonish level that it has objective answers. In Lovecraft the horror comes from the fact that the cultists and their fucked up alien gods exist, where as the moral christian god doesn't... in d&d there's no reason for the cultists to worship the fucked up alien gods because the regular gods are both existent and quite nice.

The default d&d cosmology has multiple infinite voids of chaos including limbo, the abyss, and the far realm. I've already given my take on one of these, but I wanted an alternative for the origins of the weird that wasn't specifically focused on entropic decay.

There's a fascinating (and very depressing) history over the term hysteria and the connotations of mental crisis with feminine fragility. The word itself comes from the greek word for womb and there's something about the idea of "primal birthing chaos" that's worth playing with insofar as it makes weird rightoids Jordan Peterson deeply afraid.

Taking these thoughts as well as my earlier gripes in mind, its going to take a bit of an overhaul to make Tharizdun/Azathoth as a credible antagonistic force for a campaign. Also, this might be my own bias as an author showing through here but I don't go in for the lovecrafitan "truths too terrible to be understood". I think the universe is a fundamentally knowable place and if things exist outside our means of perceiving them then we'll just bullrush through and work out a temporary explanation on our way.

Here's my Fix/Pitch: Both Tharizdun and Azathoth are supposed to represent primordial chaos and formless madness. D&D's less than stellar history with mental health issues aside, we know that "madness" isn't evil and it isn't the antithetical opposite of order: It's flawed reason, it's an inability to comprehend, and it's deeply scary for those going through it.

THAT ended up reminding me of a famous quote from lovecraft himself; "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown".

What if we make THAT FEAR into the god? Imagine the panicked sensation of being woken from the deepest slumber by a sudden noise, the door opening or a loud bang going off somewhere on your street..... the phantom horror of something touching you, crawling over you in the middle of the night before you have any of your senses or reason or memory to tell you that it's just your partner or your pet or your own bed sheets. That's the stuff sleep paralysis is made of and it's been haunting us humans since the dawn of time. It's also the same horror of being born, of being a non-thing and then coming into existence in fits and starts without any understanding of the world that you're now

Now imagine there's something out there in the astral sea, the plane of dreams and thoughts... powerful beyond all imagining but created without the ability to ever fully wake up. It is stuck in that first moment of existence because it may well have been the first thing to ever exist and it's been trapped in the shapeless nightmare of an infant since the dawn of time

THAT is how you make a god about the horror of the unknown. A god that is antagonistic to us because it is sacred of us, and it is scared because it has no way of knowing us, knowing the reality it inhabits beyond its own fear.

Adventure Hooks:

The greatest threat Tharizdun presents to most beings in the universe is having a nightmare about them. Through the inexplicable paths of sleep an individual's mind may find themselves connected to the entity's own... receiving terrible visions as the thinking clouds of Tharizdun's body churn in a variable brainstorm. Some aspect of this communion will be twisted into something terrible, birthed into the cosmos with the same shrieking fear and confusion that inspired its creation. Some desperate few seek out this communion, thinking in their hubris that they can give shape to Tharizdun's creation, that the terror beyond time suffers collaborators or requests. (Yes, I'm yoinking the dream-spawning ability of beholders. They were already weird enough before they started getting involved with dream stuff)

Despite being a living entity, Tharizdun is also a place, a plane unto itself streaking through the multiverse like a collossal ameoba through the primordial soup. There are landscapes within the god, whole continents that form and erode through seasons of surreality as the paroxyc titan dreams them into being. One can create portals into these landscapes, even fly a jammership across them, but the act of doing so invites an even more chaotic backlash than visiting the chained oblivion in dreams, letting its terror leak out into the waking worlds.

The name "chained oblivion" dates back to an eon when forces of celestial order attempted to keep Tharizdun contained in the hopes of preventing the escape of its creations or its contact with other minds. This period of the multiverse oft refereed to as the "Time of Quiet" sadly came to an end when the entity's bindings were shattered by a collective of villains and horrors today refereed to as the "Court of Fools" or "Troupe of the Final Void". The Troupe are a motley bunch, unable to agree on a theology but all wanting to pick at the slumbering titan like it was a scab on the skin of heaven. Some serenade Tharzidun with cacophonous music, others hurl saints and sacrifices into its body, some worship or hunt the god's offspring while others stab it with cosmic pokers, just to get a reaction. They want to wake the chained oblivion and don't care how much of the multiverse they have to burn to do it.

Like a mollusc producing pearls as a means of containing an irritating bit of grit, Tharizdun's roiling cosmic body will occasionally spit out an entire world or strange demiplanes as a means of dislodging something it could not pallet. While this has been the genesis of many realms both beautiful and terrible throughout the astral timeline, of late all these worlds worth taking have been colonized by the Troupe. Woe and pity to any mortal who calls such a world home, ruled over by tyrants who care only for destruction, unaware of a cosmos not coloured by Tharizdun's wake.

Titles: The chained oblivion, the spiraling titan, sire of stars, the Paroxsmal god, Lord of all Hysterics.

Signs: Stormclouds that look oily and churn with otherworldly light, formless nightmares and pervasive sleep paralysis, mass delusion, darkness that echoes with the god's muttering and the sound of distant flutes.

Worshippers: Ad hoc worship of Tharizdun tends to congregate around those who have received unwanted visions of the chained oblivion, as the harrowing experiance often bestows those that suffer it with an otherworldy weight to their words, to say nothing of occasional psychic powers. Many abberations likewise pay heed to the chained oblivion, either for directly giving them life or for its great and insuppressable power. Among these include Grell who refer to Tharizdun as "storm mother", The nightmarish Quori follow in the wake of the god's psychic emanations and make up a large faction of the court of fools, and the Kaorti, terrifying mage-things remade by exposure to the spiralling titan's heart who claim to be heralds for the entity.

Art

[cosmica-galaxy]

How would the trio (Hank, Sanford, Deimos) react to the player playing co-op mode with their friends.

If this was the Salty AU, I think it would be similar to how Salty described it.

The other vessels would be jealous of the one that has the Player all to themselves, especially since they would most likely be Player 1, which can't change vessels in the game.

If the Player has three friends minimum to play the game with, all of them would be taken up and Player wouldn't be able to switch at all either. Which would probably frustrate the other vessels, since they are being puppeteered around by "false players" instead of their one "true player".

If we ignore some of the rules from Salty's AU, I think it would come as a major surprise to the self-aware crew that there's MORE THAN ONE PLAYER.

They were simply under the impression that the Player was a singular being with higher powers until the other strings appeared and took hold on the free vessels. It's a strange sensation for all of them to have a Player assigned to them. Each one being told what to do and moving in a much more efficient manner because of it. They're shooting more accurately, getting hurt less, and are actually organized in their assaults.

It makes them wonder what the Player actually IS. They can't see them, but they can feel them. Are they one soul or many in a singular being? Where did these other Players come from? Are they extensions of yourself or other beings entirely?

It gives them eldritch horror levels of thought as they try to picture what the Players look like. Can they put a face to it? Do they even HAVE a face? How can ALL of them possess bodies? How many more exist out there and what powers can they all wield in unison?

If this was in the time before they knew the Player's voice or what they looked like, this would be TERRIFYING. One is not so bad, seeing that their allies all still had their free will. But now that they're ALL being puppeted, it's like putting your fate into a stranger's hands. The movements are too choreographed, like the Players are somehow communicating with one another despite not speaking.

Not only that, but seeing the strings that they aren't familiar with branch out from nothing and latch onto a viable host must be terrifying. Especially since it's not the same strings they're familiar with. But each of them carry that same warmth that their original Player has. Like a warm firm hand is wrapped around them and guiding them through the world. It carries the same resounding light and comforting warmth that their Player does, which is probably why they believe they are an extension of the Player.

This also doesn't end the surprises. Because imagine that Deimos and Sanford go on a mission together and there's three Players. Color them surprised when VICTOR of all people shows up on their mission. When asked why he was there, Victor probably just says something ominous like "I felt like I was...called here."

The same goes with any variations of Hank Wimbleton. Wank and Pank literally show up out of nowhere to assist Hank...and Hank...doesn't attack them. For some reason, he tolerates the other Hanks, despite the innate urge to kill them. He knows that it's because of the strings and their otherworldly properties. The two Players needed vessels...and they called for some...and his copies answered their calls.

In short, in the Salty AU, vessels are disgruntled if they can't have their chosen Player to be with. Their "True" Player. The others are merely unwanted puppeteers that the vessels have to tolerate or put up with while the chosen vessel gets their 'true player' all to themself.

But if one takes liberties with it and in the Self-Aware aspects of the AU, multiple Players would be a terrifying concept. Especially if it's during the time where they don't know what the Player looks like or sounds like. It just goes full on cosmic-level horror for them as they are all puppeted around by these invisible but powerful beings with unforeseen motives.

If the three return to Doc, and with the information that there's MORE than one Player out there, the Doctor himself may grow surprised at the news.

How can there be more...and how many do they NOT know about are still lurking around just out of their sight?

A chill would linger in the air and Doc would be afraid of the answer to that question, no doubt.

[forjustice]

Brendan's Fear of Volo

I've mentioned before, I think starting at the Floccesy Fluff Fest, that Brendan is terrified of Volo. Most people would be, considering how fucking overpowered he is and the ways in which he's used that power throughout history, but Brendan? Oh, there sure is a history.

It all began when he was a child, with something not entirely related to Volo at all. After he learned about the language loss of the Indigenous Hoennese people for the first time as a child, he felt incredibly depressed about this immense loss that his people had experienced--wishing his Hoennese mother's family had kept the language so that he could speak it. His mother Nkechi wanted to show him that there was still hope for Hoennese languages and other endangered languages of the world, so she showed him a collection of animated media--Hoennese and non-Hoennese, Indigenous and non-Indigenous--that had been made in endangered languages. She wanted to prove to him that the fight to preserve culture through language was far from over, and in fact in many cases, it was a war that was being won. One of those animated media was a Griseous language movie about the doomed friendship between Volo and protagonist Noriko, titled Shattering the Covenant.

We all remember a scary movie scene from our childhoods that traumatized us. For Brendan, it was the scene at the end of Shattering the Covenant where Volo transformed into Giratina to battle Noriko. As if seeing Origin Forme Giratina's horrifying visage for the first time weren't bad enough, the content of the battle scene was even scarier. Volo's bloody ruthlessness, the sound of his eldritch screeching, the creepy whispering that played under the music and got louder as shadows threatened to overwhelm the protagonist--it was one of those things that would make all of us adults go "I can't believe this is a kid's show." That night, he had a nightmare where the cartoon Volo-Giratina loomed over him, and told him, "You can't escape."

Apart from quicksand and the in-universe equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle, Volo from then on became one of Brendan's biggest childhood fears. For many weeks he thought the nightmare was a supernatural omen which meant that Volo would be coming to get him, though all the adults in his life assured him that Volo despite his many flaws would not target a child he'd never met and it was just a regular nightmare that his brain cooked up. But even when the period of panic went away, Brendan still looked back at that time with a shudder down his spine. He decided to avoid Giratina in his spiritual practice so as to avoid coming in contact with their Archchosen.

His aversion toward Volo got worse as he got older. He learned of all the stories about Volo where he used deception, caused chaos and taught life lessons in the harshest possible ways. He had also read the stories where Volo used his trickery and his terrifying powers for good. But even these stories freaked him out, because he knew these more heroic displays of power and cunning could also be turned against anyone who drew Volo's ire. While Brendan like other Yumeans could not deny the good that Volo had done for them throughout history, he was also in agreement with many of them that Volo was a figure to keep one's distance from.

Until Brendan became an Archchosen--which necessarily thrust him within Volo's reach.

See, in the Yumean tradition, Archchosens are all prophets, and they're also all cosmic equals. Among Yumeans, the Archchosens of all the Legendaries were expected to know each other and have at least some kind of amicable interaction, whether out of genuine friendship or whether they would put aside their differences to work together when necessary. This meant that now Brendan has no choice but to work with Volo at least some of the time as part of his religion—and to say this freaks him out is an understatement.

Volo, for his part, has no intentions of hurting Brendan. He does, however, love messing with people, and he hasn’t failed to notice that Brendan gets so nervous around him every time he seems particularly chipper because he does not trust that smiling face for an INSTANT. So when he’s around Brendan, he always turns up the cheerfulness—the sweet voice, the exuberant grin, the characteristic finger wagging, the platitude that Brendan like Noriko before him was his “favorite”—just to watch the guy freak out like OH NO WHAT DOES THIS DUDE WANT FROM ME. Volo will have a heart to heart talk with Brendan eventually about Brendan’s issues with him. He just loves toying with him first.

[space-lynn]

Hey I just wanted to say I love the unintentional gods au! Will you be posting more by any chance?

Yup! Here's Sasha's POV! But if you mean more after this... probably. The original character Dawn Kaen belongs to a friend of mine, while Nash Viseriox belongs to me. Enjoy reading!

~~~~~

Being a god wasn’t easy. It wouldn’t be if you still had a few things from your mortal life to fix. And even if Sasha no longer had any of those, being a god still wasn’t easy. Sure, she’s free from school, free from political jobs (she might as well do something nice for her girlfriends for juggling mortal and cosmic duties), but she wasn’t free from her godly duties. Never will be, she supposed, but there were small instances that she enjoyed. Such as laying on a random rock in the middle of space, watching the ever changing multiverse around her.

A little much needed break from her cosmic duties. Peaceful, relaxing, and quiet--

“Hey, Sasha~”

“Waybright! There you are!”

--if it weren’t for her companions.

A soft groan escaped her lips and she cracked one eye open, tiredly glaring at the owners of those voices.

“Nash. Dawn,” she greeted.

If anyone thought that the Calamity Trio were the only deities around, they were wrong. There were others like them, modern gods born from unfortunate mortals who fully tapped into their prophesied power and became celestial beings. The two standing over her were examples of those mortals.

“Awwww. Don’t sound like that,” Dawn Kaen said, a bipedal fox, from a planet that worshipped her, and a goddess of death. Sasha had met her during an unsavory trip to another planet.

“Something on your mind, Waybright?” Nash Viseriox asked, sharp teeth bared into a grin she’s come to know as worried. She didn’t know what species he was or where he’s from, just that he reminded her of a dragonborn Marcy excitedly explained in a DnD session when they were ten. He was a space god much like her and they’d met when two kingdoms fought one another to prove which space god was best: him or her.

A dumb thing to fight over if you asked her.

“Was just trying to relax,” she muttered, stretching. She looked over at Dawn and asked, “What are you doing here, Dawn? Haven’t you got work to do?”

“Too many deaths,” the fox grumbled, then shrugged. “It’s gotten… meh.”

“Seriously?” Nash asked.

“Hey!” Dawn snarled, whirling to glare at him. “You try your hand at being a god of death!”

“Sure thing! I’ll be better at it than you.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean? If I were a god of the cosmos, I’d be doing a better job than--”

A deep rumbling noise echoed from somewhere to her left, interrupting her. Dawn’s ears stood up at that, her tail going in between her legs.

“Well,” she squeaked, “nevermind about that. I’ll go do my job and I’ll let you guys do your work! See you soon!”

She disappeared not a second after, leaving her and Nash alone.

The sound echoed once more and the two space gods turned towards it.

Devourers, shapeless creatures of the void who reincarnated after countless deaths and who loved to eat everything. It was the fucking reason why Sasha was gone for week or months, the reason why she couldn’t come home to her girlfriends everyday because she had to fight months-long battles against these things. Devourers weren’t the only celestial problems in the multiverse, and it was a space god’s calling to deal with those problems.

A loud whooshing sound came from beside her, and she glanced over to see Nash compress a hand-made black hole into a battle axe.

He smirked, “You ready?”

She stood up slowly and lazily smiled, star-forged swords appearing in her hands. “Always.”

-----

She came home late at night a week after that, the eldritch beast a foe she’d already met in battle. A foe she’d already know the weakness of. She slipped through the front door, locked it and padded into her and her girlfriends’ bedroom. Marcy and Anne were already asleep, so she carefully tiptoed around to snatch a few things for a quick shower, to ease her aching muscles, and a comfy change of clothes.

She silently made her way to their bed, slowly settled herself behind Marcy but the soft creak of the bed woke her partners’ up.

“Sash?”

“Sasha?”

Two groggy voices asked.

Fuck-

Two pairs of brown eyes slid to her.

“Hi,” she smiled softly. “Go back to sleep, I’m just… tucking myself in.”

“Hrmmm,” Anne grumbled, breathing almost even. “Welcrm hrm.”

“Thanks.”

Marcy rolled over, one hand out to grab at Sasha’s shirt. She tugged and the resulting pained hiss that escaped Sasha snapped the two in bed awake.

Damn her traitorous mouth!

Anne sat up immediately, brows furrowed. “Are you hurt?”

“No, I’m fine,” Sasha lied, trying her best to hide the pained expression on her face.

Marcy narrowed her eyes, the hand still touching Sasha’s shirt skimming across the fabric until it softly pressed into Sasha’s side. The blonde flinched, hand flying to her side.

She heard Anne curse under her breath, and Sasha felt the area around her flicker. She found herself on the bed soon after, in between Anne and Marcy. Anne had an arm wrapped around her, her free hand underneath Sasha’s shirt putting pressure on one of the very deep wounds as her powers helped it heal.

Sasha whimpered, eyes shutting tight and pushing herself deeper into Anne embrace.

“Sorry,” the brunette kissed her head.

“I didn’t know Devourers could do this,” Marcy frowned, arms coming around the blonde to comfort her.

“Bane,” Sasha gasped and Marcy winced.

“Makes sense.”

Anne and Marcy held onto Sasha as she bucked, whined or yelped, whispering sweet nothings into her ear to ease her. The blonde slumped afterwards, barely able to keep herself awake, energy drained from Anne using it to heal her grievous wounds.

“You okay?” the brunette asked.

“Yeah,” she muttered, “thanks.”

“No prob, Sashimi.”

Marcy held her hand and squeezed, “You should sleep.”

“You, too,” a mumble.

Anne and Marcy shared a smile, then took turns to press a kiss to Sasha’s lips. The blonde smiled sleepily.

“We will,” Marcy assured her.

“Good night, Sash,” the gods of life and knowledge said.

“G’night.”

~~~~~

Will I make more for this AU? Probably... If I'm uninspired to write other snippets or continue my fics (I really need to focus on those XD). Always giving my thanks to @fermented-writers-block for this wonderful idea. I'll be taking a break from this AU to answer other requests and work on my fics.

I hope y'all enjoyed reading this! Have a nice morning, afternoon or evening! Until the next snippet!

[hauntinghilarity]

(FICTION) The Cosmic Lord, Joelene

First off, I didn't realize I misspelled the name until I looked up what outfits Dolly wore while singing this song. Given I kept referencing lyrics in order to write the parody song... i don't know how that happened either.

Anyway, I had often had the urge to make a song that implied Jolene from Dolly Parton's song was an Eldritch horror ever since I saw a post somewhere on the internet (likely on Reddit in the tumblr subreddit, leading to my confusing uncertainty) that suggested doing just that. It had been in my mind ever since.

So, upon finally doing that... I just felt it wasn't enough to just have the lyrics. Especially as I just rewrote lyrics that already existed. No, no a PARTICULAR damn muse decided that this was not enough. This particular muse had to be brought into the party!

So here is Doc and the woman I made up to sing the song sealing some Cosmic Lord that Doc decided to name Jolene because its horrible, mouth splitting name couldn't otherwise be turned into a song that he could force a human haunted by the said creature to sing. Possibly purely for his own amusement.

Enjoy, I'll add the lyrics alone at the end for those interested.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

A hut deep in the middle of the swamps was certainly not where the average problem was solved, this was far from the average problem. Iris had, apparently, found herself in a cosmic love triangle. Not that it could be called that, her husband very clearly was just not that into her. This cosmic entity did not, apparently, take well to rejection.

A unique and maddening plight, Iris had never been one to back down so easily. She wouldn’t have gotten anywhere with that behavior, and her grandparents had taught her act in a far more civilized manner in such trying times. It was the only way to get anything done in these types of situations, especially the situations that one believed to be unique.

Lucky for her, while a strange case, it was not as unique as she believe. Similar instances seemed to be sprinkled through history. Easy to miss or shrug off as the superstition and legends of their more imaginative ancestors. Given the distressing nature of her comatose-yet-deliriously-screaming husband, she was forced to do her best to connect some dots.

To her delight, there seemed to be plenty of more in-depth entries on this and a number of other creatures sprinkled throughout different books she decided to look into. What one might find suspicious, should they not feel the time-ticking on the safety of their loved one, is that a number seemed to have been inserted. A modern book full of laminated pages did not often have a piece of parchment, with the script clearly having been handwritten, fused to the spine as if it had been manufactured in such a manner.

A desperate mind seeking desperate knowledge did not often have the perception to notice these details when time was an issue. Stress had a matter of forcing tunnel vision of even the most powerful of minds. Especially when, regardless of its origin, the details these entries gave her made far more sense compared to the superstition-laden legends she had previously been finding.

She did become rather disturbed when a note was clearly left for her. Just like the rest, it was implanted in the book in such a way that tearing it out would be noticeable, both visually and audibly.

‘Iris, yes YOU Iris,

‘This is getting rather tiresome, and you are reading plenty of notes that have been written for different eyes. This would be far less of an annoyance if you bothered to put the books back where they had been placed. Do you know how long it took for me to understand a dewey decimal system?

‘You meat-bodies have ENOUGh languages that are troublesome enough to learn. Maddening book math is not what I was signing up for. If I had signed up for anything.

‘The book YOU are, or were, supposed to read on your problem you just.. Kept avoiding. Now it is checked out, and I have to write ANOTHER one of these because my attempts to do this subtly and properly got thrown out of whack trying to understand the aforementioned book-math.

‘So, to save us on time and to get something out of this headache that highly benefits the both of us, reading to this point will have given you a sudden feeling.

‘Please do not fret over this. Merely some ink-based shenanigans. Nothing that’ll harm you, it merely saves me placing a map. It will lead you directly to me.

‘That is, if you want to get a particular cosmic parasite yanked from your husband’s dreams.’

Signed, much like the other letters, Doc Boots.

Iris wasn’t entirely certain what part of this bothered her more. The fact it was clearly, and pointedly, directed to her. The fact she was called a meat-body, or that fact that she DID have a very strong desire to take a walk down a particular path found on a particular street that would have her in a particular neck of the woods taking her into a peculiar neck of a swamp that had her find a particular hut.

Many would probably find coming to such a hut in the first place foolhardy, let alone irrational. Irrational problems required irrational solutions. This was far better than the option she was beginning to feel was the best, which involved finding books on Necromancy, deciding if Necromancy worked or not, and using this knowledge to bring a particular horror writer back from the dead to answer a series of pointed questions. This somehow seemed the better deal. If anything, the letter writer could deal with all this morally-gray-supernatural-foolishness.

Regardless, nothing could quite prepare her for what awaited her within the hut that the same odd feeling that lead her here told her was her destination.

The entirety of the inside seemed to be dedicated to the alignment of a single ritual sigil. A dizzying series of circular and fractal designs that weaved throughout the central floor of the hut. Various areas of the floor were raised or lowered with delicate precision to conform to the different areas of the sigil.

Dizzying as it might be, Iris could come to understand that there was a circular, flat area in the center of the entire design where every edge, curve, and rune converged on. The design was covered in runes and symbols that conformed to the shape like an artist obsessed with point-shading. A number of platforms, that took on a shape that vaguely made her note a solar system before all the strange details continued to keep her mind reeling, were raised and held a number of bundled objects. Given the darkened liquids of varying colors, though equally metallic smelling, she was certain she was comfortable being left in the dark.

Strangest of all, the structure was encircled by a number of... Vegetables. While the same size and shape of the numerous vegetables each individual entity made up, stubby stems sprouted from them in order to form the vague shape of limbs. Sunken pits in the shape of spiraling stems formed where they stared out into the world, and sharp cuts where their mouths opened.

The creatures swayed and bounced to a harmony they kept. Strange noises based on the vegetable they were grown from making up a unique melody. One she found oddly familiar. The gourds, such as the pumpkins and squashes, made up a range of deeper breathy tones while the smaller, stalk-like vegetables made increasingly higher pitches.

She was so taken aback by every eldritch detail she had to accept within the hut that it took her a moment to realize that she wasn’t alone, besides the strange sentient vegetables. An androgynous creature that, at first glance, was easily mistaken for a humanoid. The more she focused on him and more her mind allowed her to process, the more she began to second guess her decision. Especially thanks to the petals encircling one of the creature’s equally strange looking eyes.

Not so much out of fear, with her history Iris had become rather hard to spook. She was beginning to feel, at this point, that the supernatural shenanigans she had so rigidly attempted to avoid belief in, less out of a stubborn grip on pure material-sciences and more due to a brief understanding on the power belief held in such beings, were now becoming so… Silly in their abrupt in-your-face hijinks that it had long since plummeted past the point of ridiculousness and was spinning annoyingly around the pit that would send it going down to rock bottom.

Then the notable eye slid from the creature’s orbital cavity, connected by a series of spindly stems that spiraled into a rope that connected from the end of what turned out to be an actual flower and disappeared into the orbital cavity of the creature’s vine-infested skull. The eye that took the space that would normally hold the flowers pistil was intently focused on her, the vine connecting it to the creature’s eye extending outward. ‘Zooming’ in on her features while the other eye seemed to be keeping stock of what seemed to be his odd minions.

“Good. ‘ere I thought I’d been keepin’ de veggie cult practicing for an eternity. Ya meat-bodied creatures just neva’ seem capable on keepin’ a reasonable schedule dese millenia. Makes de plots I bake ta keep de balance HIGHLY difficult. I ‘ope ya know de ‘eadaches I take on ta keep ya bumbling evolved-baboons from killin’ yaselfs. Equally so de fumblin’ evolved-fools that make up what I think are my kind…” The strange creature piped up suddenly.

Iris had a bit of trouble following the creature’s words for a number of reasons. For one, the movement in the creature’s throat was highly distracting. Not only did it alert her to the slithering that seemed to happen under the creature’s skin with every movement, she was becoming increasingly aware that the vines seemed less like a strange quirk and more like an invader. One that was intent on talking to her.

She really hated fire-with-fire situations.

The second problem was that the creature’s voice was mildly off-putting. It snapped between sounding feminine and higher, to a raspy deep tone somewhere between a dying male smoker and a newborn banshee. The latter snapping briefly like the static of a rapidly tuning radio as the slithering vines beneath the creature’s skin worked to play and tune the creature’s larynx, vocal chords, and neck muscles in a complex dance it clearly only somewhat understood. It did not help it seemed to insist on trying its best to put on its best attempt at a Cajun Accent. She had to admit, it helped make the creature’s tone sound more melodic rather than like nails on a chalkboard run through autotune.

The final problem was the creature spoke at an annoyingly excited speed, which made it very hard to tell if the creature was complaining like he was being underpaid for a difficult service or impatient in his excitement to perform whatever service seemed to be on offer.

She finally had to hold up her hands in the hopes it would calm him a moment to interject. To her surprise and delight, he quieted immediately and seemed to be forcing himself to patiently wait for her to speak. She had a small suspicion as to what sort of creature she was dealing with. Her grandparents always told her that, in the case she was suspicious of, it was best to be polite. One catches more pixies with honey than vinegar, or whatever ‘nanaism’ it was.

“Not to disrespect the time and effort you clearly put into getting in touch with me…” Iris relaxed somewhat. The creature seemed to perk up when she spoke to him politely, it seemed it wasn’t the first impression he normally got. Strange as the situation seemed, it seem the perfect amount of lunacy to help her with the dream-whore currently lurking in her comatose husband’s mind. “What is it I may or may not be on time for?”

The flower extending from the creature’s eyesocket perked up a bit, as if it had been startled into remembering what it had been doing, before swiveling to look at the strange ritual that seemed to be waiting for her in the center of the hut.

“Right, right, dis. Well, long story short, I became aware of ya plight. Well, ta be honest, I became aware of de PREVIOUS couple’s plight. A hint too late, sadly. Life’s not to focus on our failures though, merely learn from dem. Dis gave me a startin’ point. It ‘as been a lil bit, but ya seem ta be de latest one bein’ bothered by dis particular problem. De stars merely aligned so dat I can assist. Merely assist thought. I can put all de pieces inta place. It is up ta you ta do de rest.” The previously annoyed sounding tone had been replaced with a far more excited, and somehow quicker, one.

The creature held out a rolled up piece of parchment, giggling to himself as he did. “As ya meat-bodied types seem ta ‘ave trouble wit’ de name dat rings ta mind for m’self, probably would ‘ave issues if anyone understanding dat type’a magic anyway, I been introducin’ myself as Doc Boots. A scholar, but goin’ by ya kind’s stories, I guess ya could call me a witch doctor? What some’a de ones I’d consider colleagues bein’ called. Dat’s besides de point. Dat.”

Doc pointed towards the parchment he had forced into Iris’ hand.

“Dat explains your part. As ya see, I been preparin’ for ya showin’ up. Just got de Veggie cult tuned.” He gestured to the group of sentient, singing, swaying vegetables.

As Iris eyed the scroll she was given, she had a sinking feeling. She recognized what tune the cult was singing. Something the freaky flower seemed to have noticed.

“Oh, good, ya familiar wit’ de song. It required some rewrites, but given de last one who got taken by dis problem it seemed de most fitting. Gotta honor a failed patient afta’ all.” Doc said with a simple, sweet smile. Even as Iris glared daggers at him.

“No, you are clearly messing with me. There is NO way this will work.” Iris protested. She didn’t consider herself much a karaoke singer. Nor a fan of parody, yet apparently, here she was. This could not be real, this had vto be an elaborate prank her husband had set in motion. He always talked about starting up a couple-prank youtube. Denial was hopeful in believing maybe, just maybe, Doc was just and elaborate costume.

Sadly, the creature followed her protested with a good point. “What about dis situation leads ya ta doubt me? Look at me. Would ya truly believe my concept’a a joke involves ya simply singin’ a song ta seal away a cosmic deity I may or may not have drawn de attention of?”

Iris narrowed her eyes. “Not until ya gave too many details.”

Before she could protest further, she found herself standing in the middle of the sigil. The creature returned to the outside of the sigil opposite of her. His hand being placed on a rune carved skull in front of him, placed on the outer ring of the sigil leaving Doc standing just outside of it. “Regardless of who did what, de point’a de matter is what do ya got ta lose from singin’ a song, when de certainty of not singin’ it is some cosmic boogun is gonna use ‘is soul ta decorate ‘er growing pocket dimension?”

Iris stared a moment, then looked at the paper. “Is that why this lyric here is..”

The freaky flower stomped the bundle of vegetable that had long since replaced his host’s foot. “Ya not ‘ere because I needed critique on my song lyrics! I personally think I did q-REGARDLESS of the origins of lyrics, ya must sing it wit’ conviction. Sing it wit’ anger and a need ta fight.”

Opening her mouth once more, Doc seemed to know immediately it wasn’t to sing. His hand snapped up, and with a snap of his fingers, a purplish green glow shot through the runes on the ground, lighting up any that the ‘pulse’ that radiated from the creature ran into on its way to the woman in the center.

Before she could react, the pulse interacted with her. She didn’t even have to look down. She knew in her gut and the immediate clear smart-ass nature of the creature she had to deal with what fate had been forced on her.

She found herself in a familiar white suit befitting a well-known country singer, with an elegant design created from what she assumed to be diamonds. It was magically created, it had to be diamonds. It had not been elegantly enchanted onto her. Instead of replacing her outfit, going by the bunched fabric of the outfit she had been wearing poofing from the open chest of the jacket. The creature had just shoved her into her and called it a day. As she lifted her head to protested, she was quieted by the fact the outfit included a well-secured wig. Going by how it shifted, she was certain she probably now looked like the singer of the song the ritual was clearly based off of.

Giving a deep sigh, her shoulders dropping, she figured she might as well. If anything, this entire damn experience had distracted her from her problems at hand. The vine riddled being would at least be useful to fling at a cosmic beast should all else fail.

“Should match de beat fairly well. De one writin’ it was mildly under duress. As I popped outta nowhere and demanded it. I always forget I need ta lead wit’ de money ‘n riches first. Otha’wise, for whateva’ reason, ya meat bodies just think Imma rob ya. If I am what I think I am, de place dat I draw power from wouldn’ take too kindly ta me stiffin’ someone on a deal. Especially not an artist. Now! De outfit should ‘elp inspire ya. Didn’ shove ya in it purely for shits ‘n giggles. As de beat starts, just get goin’ and ya should be fine.” The flower did its best to console her.

“De veggie cult is doin’ de work’a dancin’ ta keep de fabric’a reality around ya secure enough. Just keep singin’, me ‘n de sigil I built will do de work’a keepin’ ya protected. Oh, and before ya ask, no. De thing’s name ain’ exactly Joelene. Ain’ even spelled like de song, but I was able to put some loopholes inta de belief and understandin’ of de writer. None of us could pronounce it, and it’d make a rather poor song anyway. Luckily, de previous couple was rather obsessed wit’ de song ‘n de boogun decided ta roll wit’ dat. Dey really must learn ta stop leavin’ lil loop’oles. My kind’s king’a dem!” Doc giggled wildly and gestured to the singing vegetables.

The ‘cult’ of vegetables surrounding her stopped for a moment, before restarting the beat they had been practicing. Iris gave a heavy sigh and, otherwise without options, began to sing.

“Joelene, Joelene, Joelene, Joelene,

Invoke thy name because you took my man.

Joelene, Joelene, Joelene, Joelene,

You won’t take him just because you can. “

To her surprise, as she began to sing the walls of the hut, illuminated by strategically placed candles, cast shadows that made it appear as if a group were dancing around them, based on how everything had been lined up. The flicker of the candle and sway of the cult must have been the cause.

From the back of her mind she felt an odd tug. The world at the end of her perception flickered and swayed like the illusion cast by heated air. She did her best to cast her concern and sing with conviction, with strength. Her dearest depended on it, and she would be damned if her husband would be taken by something Lovecraft should have vomited out.

“A form humans can’t come to bare,

With captured souls turned into hair,

Eldritch Skin,

And eyes countless,

it seems…”

She could have sworn she felt something behind her. At that very moment, Doc slammed his vegetation laden foot onto the beginning to the sigil’s runic circle. A more concentrated and steady glow, like before, began to spread throughout the sigil. As it made contact with each pedestal, the runes scribbled over the cloth covering the bundle would glow bright enough to cover the object in its blinding light, before bursting into a sea of glowing balls.

These wisps of light buzzed around the circle, and they seemed to be collecting behind her. Iris held back a flinch, as she swore she could sense something screaming. She did not know how to describe it, as the only noise she heard was crafted for the ritual. The screaming, however, felt like it was radiating from her very subconscious. Like it was somehow coming from somewhere far, far away and only its faintest echoes could be felt behind her.

Somehow, this replaced her uncertainty with hope. She began to sing with more confidence. The concern replaced by the fire of her rage, which she pumped into the words. It seemed to have an effect, as the glowing runes at her feet added an orange hue to the show of color which rippled out to the remaining runes.

“Your smile cracks across their dreams,

Your Presence warps reality,

And yet here I stand against you,

Joelene.”

Bit by bit the offerings were consumed. Her vision warped in lines around the sigil. Something her mind refused to admit was surrounding her was moving in rapid, frantic trails. The screaming, she felt in her gut, was originating from this strange anomaly in her vision. This must be the beast that was tormenting her husband. This had to be her prey.

“You’ve come to take him in his sleep,

But there’s nothing I can do to keep,

From trying, as he screams your name,

Jolene.

From what I’ve come to understand,

You’ve stolen the souls of countless men,

To shape your own destiny,

Joelene.“

As the anomaly continued to frantically flail through her vision, she felt there was power in the anger she had begun to harbor for this creature. The despair and trauma her relationship had undergone due to this horror, she felt, could be pumped into her words in order to give them more power.

As all the runes that covered the sigil found their glow and all the offerings had begun to consume, the area directly beneath the rapidly moving anomaly gained a brighter glow, tracking and following it as the light pulsed towards the skull Doc held, his mouth moving rapidly in a quiet chant.

“You forced my little talk with you,

This song I sing will capture you,

Not matter what you try to do,

Joelene.

Joelene, Joelene, Joelene, Joelene,

The cosmic lord that tried to take my man,

Joelene, Joelene, Joelene, Joelene,

Sealed away, she won’t try that again."

Doc joined her, backing up the repetition of the name they had forced upon the entity. The blurring anomaly in her vision was forced into the glow beneath it. The sigil, glow, and runes slid rapidly beneath her, encircling the glowing bundle she assumed was the newly captured ‘Joelene’.

"Joelene, Joelene."

The final runes that lead to the skull seemed to be sucked into the upper jaw of the skull. The entire strange scene finally got sucked into the skull, which kept an ethereal glow in its sockets and runes, but otherwise, held no clues towards what the entity with in was. It seemed to have even sucked up the outfit and wig that had been forced on her.

Doc picked up the skull, beaming in delight. “Well, should I be correct on our timin’, ya husband shouldn’ ‘ave been so deep in ‘er clutches dat dat would’a caused ‘im de slightest bit’a ‘arm. Should be makin’ ‘is way back ta ‘is body through de dreamlands as we speak! Might not be awake when ya get dere, but will be soon enough.”

Now clearly preoccupied with the skull in his hand, the strange creature gestured to the door. Clearly indicating it was time for her to make her leave. “De contents of dis skull is all de payment I need. No need ta concern ya’self otha’wise. De danger dat could ‘ave befallen you or your husband and my choice ta withhold dat knowledge from ya until now will be considered enough payment.”

Iris was rather overwhelmed. She wasn’t even certain she was even living out this experience and not dreaming of it in a fury of sleep deprivation. She couldn’t quite feel any relief. In fact, she felt rather numb. She was rather certain, thanks to the lunacy of this entire event, she would find herself waking with a start huddled in her husband’s hospital room.

The vegetables began to force a line and hop, one by one, into the mouth of a pumpkin whose mouth had opened wide enough to accommodate them. She could swear that, instead of the inside of a pumpkin, she saw a strange and horrifying orange world filled with the strange, sentient vegetables. Maybe she would prefer it be a dream after all.

Shaking this belief and concern off, Iris quickly took the opening given to her and immediately fled from the hut and the swamp it was in, content to be back with her beloved and as far from this lunacy as possible.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Joelene, Joelene, Joelene, Joelene,

Invoke thy name because you took my man.

Joelene, Joelene, Joelene, Joelene,

You won’t take him just because you can.

A form humans can’t come to bare,

With captured souls turned into hair,

Eldritch Skin,

And eyes countless,

it seems…

Your smile cracks across their dreams,

Your Presence warps reality,

And yet here I stand against you,

Joelene.

You’ve come to take him in his sleep,

But there’s nothing I can do to keep,

From trying, as he screams your name,

Jolene.

From what I’ve come to understand,

You’ve stolen the souls of countless men,

To shape your own destiny,

Joelene.

Joelene, Joelene, Joelene, Joelene,

You made a poor choice trying to take my man,

Joelene, Joelene, Joelene, Joelene,

You won’t take him just because you can.

You could have had your choice of man,

But then you came into my den,

You can not keep him from me,

Joelene.

You forced my little talk with you,

This song I sing will capture you,

Not matter what you try to do,

Joelene.

Joelene, Joelene, Joelene, Joelene,

The cosmic lord that tried to take my man,

Joelene, Joelene, Joelene, Joelene,

Sealed away, she won’t try that again.

Joelene. Joelene.