Beasts Most Foul: A Report Concerning the Bru

It is currently unknown how this work from the library of Sir Ethilrist of the Black Horse Troop (to use his classical title) came to be in Mianmo's possession. The third page of the work is covered in intricate scrawls, and the conclusion that contemporary researchers have come to is that they once consisted of intricate sorcerous diagrams intended to retaliate against thieves, each one "defused" with precise, decisive movements of a brush; this may be our only clue.

This document was not written in Theyalan at all, but in an archaic Seshnegi dialect, distinct from the Safelstran dialect (itself a Theyalan-root language) that the famous A History of the Black Horse Troop was written in. The translator has here attempted to make the text distinct from traditional Theyalan translation in order to convey the character of the Seshnegi languages. (Purists may particularly take issue with the decision to leave Ethilrist's traditional Seshnegi title untranslated, but please be mindful of the fact that it is suggestive of how it was ultimately incorporated into Theyalan.)

"Truth!" is how the translator has chosen to translate the Truth Rune's incorporation into the text, rather than making a guess at the syllables used in the liturgical sense. It is unlikely that the Rokari literally chanted the Seshnegi word for the Rune whenever it appears in their prayers and services of worship; rather, it is a shorthand for assent and an assertion of divine Truth.

At the beginning of the Fourth Movement, someone-- and the evidence suggests Mianmo-- has intricately placed the three dots of Illusion beside the place where Amergain speaks of Truth.

 
If you’re reading this, you know who I am.

If you take this from me, you know what I will do to you.

If you had this pawned off on you, take it directly to Muse Roost and you will live.

-E

MAY THOSE WHO LOOK UPON THIS WORK WITH UNCLEAN EYES BE CHASTISED FOR THEIR ERROR

MAY THOSE WHO TOUCH THIS WORK WITH UNCLEAN HANDS BE SHRIVEN FOR THEIR ERROR

MAY THOSE WHO CLAIM THIS WORK AS THEIR OWN BE SUBJECT TO ULTIMATE DISSOLUTION

IN THE NAME OF MALKION THE ALMIGHTY
TRUTH!

FIRST MOVEMENT.

Be it known to you that I, Amergain of the Zzaburists, write this in my own hand at the behest of my lord, Ashwar Ethilrist, who descended into Hell, there fought with the Darkness and the Demons, and seized the Horses of the Sun’s Shadow, and returned beneath the light of Ehilm once more in glory. His mace descends from on high like the thunderbolt and where it falls life is extinguished.

Be it similarly known to you that I, dearest counselor of the Ashwar, while accompanying the Black Horse Troop on the Grazinglands Campaign, was instructed by the Ashwar to make common cause with the shaman Brak of the Red Five Host in coordination of our rituals, that despite our divergent methods we might still act to bring about the same result.

Be it also known to you that in making accord with the brutish spirit-worshipper, I discerned the scintillating wisdom of the Ashwar in instructing me in such a way, for in our discourses I grew to have greater understanding of the Bru than any Zzaburist before me has come to possess, and herein I record what I have come to understand so that those that read may come to share in my radiant insight into their nature, whether for common cause upon the battlefield or, as I devoutly pray to the Almighty may be the case, for their absolute dissolution.

May through me the Almighty speak only Truth, may through my words Right Understanding be reached, and may through me no wickedness be done. Truth!

SECOND MOVEMENT.

The Bru are a krjalki people descended from the unclean union of storm bastardgod Ragh Naghla and the earth expression Thaed. They believe themselves the descendants of this crime, and lament that Thaed cast their ancestor First Bru away to die after his birth. First Bru was then taken in by Ragh Naghla and raised to be a weapons-thegn. (This is the eastern equivalent to a Horal, rough and savage.) In the Ice Age, First Bru turned against his own father in an act of accursed patricide, and for this was cursed. (The Bru claim that their mother was the agent of their curse, but this cannot be so, for what mother would condemn her own child in such a way, and what crime could be worse than this? Yet they are pitiful in their cries to her in their worship, begging her for reprieve rather than confessing the weight of their iniquity to the Almighty. Her skin-draped stones are usually silent and still.)

The Bru are similar to the Hsunchen in that they are more beast than man, yet they have not any animal that will willingly abide their presence. (The Horses of the Sun's Shadow did not turn aside from them, but bit them as spitefully as any other unwelcome presence provokes them.) Though their primeval forefather must have been purely caprine, they have diluted this bloodline by unspeakable consorting with the beasts of the field, such that each is a conglomerate of many different beast natures. This instability of ancestry makes them vulnerable to mutation and misshaping, such that they think nothing of having one eye or three, or patches of scales among their thick hairs, or porcine tusks jutting from their drooling jaws. They have an unfortunate propensity for priapism, and for this reason often wear sheathes like a sword’s scabbard beneath their kiltes, to avoid undue irritation to the sensitive organ. I will not here describe the things I have seen them doing with the sheathes in idle moments, for I fear that even recording such things would be unworthy of my position.

The Bru are walking plague carriers, and it is deeply unwise to break bread with them. (Indeed, I was sure to ritually cleanse myself after each meeting with Brak.) Their devotions to their goddess Malya stave off the worst symptoms of these diseases, and they seem to invite and prize certain spirits of disease, most horribly leperosy, which leaves them increasingly insensate to pain. Bru weapons-thegns often undergo horrible scarring tests to prove how little pain they feel, with the first to cry out being the roundly-mocked loser. Their weapons are already bloody in the battle, and their blood carries these spirits with it; to be wounded in battle with them is to die a slow and torturous death days later.

The elemental balance of the Bru is deeply out of balance; their connection to the Earth is disordered, and they cannot call upon its functions. The tempestuous Air nature instead gluts in them to excess, and I note a secondary affiliation with the Darkness in some among them. They are aligned with the temperaments of Disorder, Death and Movement, and their Beast nature is strong. I have never seen one glide on their own breath, as some of the Worlathic barbarians are capable of doing, but their rituals have called up storms for us, made walls melt into wet and yielding mud, tripped up horses, befouled streams, and worked themselves into a black battlerage in which they ripped, tore and devoured anything in their path.

The Bru are possessed of a low cunning, and they mimic many of the customs of the eastern barbarians. It is common knowledge that they cavort in their own dung like the beasts of the field, but I came to understand through my discourse with Brak that by such means they may make a magical defense against their enemies, much like the war-paint of the Worlathics, and she demonstrated on her own skin the similar patterns that they use; their dung they also use for fuel after it has been dried in Ehlim’s light (which falls equally upon the beautiful and the horrific). Similarly, they demand payment for their services in sheep and cattle, though unlike the Worlathics (one prays) they only care about these as breeding stock, abusing them until they are fit only for the butcher’s knife. Amusingly, they also wear kiltes in the same way that the Worlathics do, though made only from leather or wool, never linen (and these inevitably end up so stained that they do not bother with dyes or patterns). Like the Worlathics, they are skilled skirmishers and ambushers, so long as their awful scent does not betray them, and they served admirably on either flank of our charge on the battlefield.

Much like the Worlathics, they are also a fractious people, and when various herds meet, they are as likely to fight to claim prizes from each other, or simply to warn off rivals for scarce resources, as they are to make common cause in the name of their ancestress. They do not use clan names as the Worlathics do, however; they use “Us Herd,” “Them Herd,” and “Not Bru,” occasionally distinguishing between Not Bru. (We were the Fight With Us Black Not Bru to them, by way of example.)

The Bru also are known to “sing,” though their manner would make the most tuneless Dronaring blanch. They make great use of undulations, stamping their feet, beating drums of skin, and chanting. Sometimes one of their weapons-thegns leads the song, and at other times, the role of vocalist goes from one to another seemingly without reason. They weave in fragments of speech they have heard (or so it seems to me), or nonsense phrases, and references to murder and poison and treachery, which make them laugh and bray. Through discourse with Brak, I have come to understand that this is one of the ways that they establish and reinforce the social order of the Herd, though the method still eludes me. They do this often when the herd travels from place to place all together. The Red Five Host in particular sent a chill up my spine whenever they launched into a braying rendition of the morbid Red Moon marching song “Pretty Laeshine,” growing more raucous and manic with each round of poisoning and murder found therein, until I was half certain that their voices were echoing off the slopes of distant Ceroffin.

The Bru are skilled in the arts of butchery and leatherworking; when they dissemble one of the beasts who birthed them, they do so with an odd reverence, and leave no part unused. Each skin, each bone, each hunk of meat, all has its place in the life of the Bru. This is needful, for the curse that lies upon them makes all shelters they attempt to construct out of the earth fail them; they live in tents of skin with poles of bones, and use sinew as their rope, make their clothes from wool and skin, and make even their rude weapons out of such things. (For this reason, they crave weapons made by civilized men, and will do much in the hopes of obtaining one, and fight viciously over the arms and armor they manage to claim upon the battlefield.) Each one has its own skinning knife of sharpened bone or hard-won bronze, and they treat these as being as dear as their own life.

Horrifically, this same attitude of reverent butchery and full use is maintained when ordinary men fall into their grasp. They are indeed cannibals, man-eaters, seeing no difference between a suckling pig and a captive foe. However, from time to time they will seize someone who they think is especially lovely, and these they will strangle to make a coat of one piece from their skin, which they drape upon their Thaedstones as offering to their flayed ancestress. The remains of such unfortunates they burn in their dungfires, and the more pious among them will kill any of their number who attempts to eat the remains, which are offered in obsequious sacrifice to Thaed.

Though previous accounts in the wordhouses of Ralios have claimed that the Bru are rapacious and eager to take unclean pleasures with their captives, from what I was able to observe, this is largely a misunderstanding based on how they cavort with each other and with beasts. Indeed, the Bru think nothing of engaging in unwholesome acts with each other in the gaze of upstanding people, and no objection from onlookers seems to deter them. However, Brak conceded that unclean acts are sometimes inflicted on helpless captives when the Bru must demand the powers of Ragh Naghla, of whom I shall speak further below. I leave it up to the reader to decide whether the solely ceremonial use of such actions is better or worse, but for my part, I felt quite unclean after discovering this, having almost convinced myself by that time that Brak was something approaching a proper ritualist. Even the Daughters of the Red Moon do not do such things in their corn rituals.

Whichever among them is strongest, most brutal, most desensitized to pain, and most acclaimed by their fellows is their herdking. They will not accept direct leadership from their shamans, but expect (in an almost civilized way) that the herdking will act as the shaman directs. Each among them otherwise is both Horal and Dronaring in the Worlantic style, insofar as they can have Dronarings without farms or fine crafts; each one is his own hunter, tailor and guardian. While at first I believed them all male, a careful eye revealed to me that some are, like the hyena of myth, women possessed of an engorgement, and I will not speak here of the debauched role that they and their milk play in Bru rites. (These still mount the beasts of the herd, I am afraid to say.) When I asked Brak about them, she grimaced and told me: “To Thaed, all children his.”

Astonishingly, I have begun to wonder whether these degenerate beings can actually form bonds of love with each other, having seen more than once the death of a comrade drive a weapon-thegn to a tearful, howling rage, and having seen what might have been careful embraces in the shadows as Brak escorted me

THIRD MOVEMENT.

The Bru are, as aforementioned, naught but slaves to their gods, save for their class of spirit-commanding shamans. They worship three deities, who are considered unclean and blasphemous by all other peoples, and as I came to understand the story that Brak told me, I came to agree, for they were the mother, father, and midwife of the Demon of the Fourth Descent, Wakh Baoth.

Thaed is the Mother of the Bru and the Mother of Wakh Baoth, an unclean elemental expression in the feminine mode who turned to witchcraft and seduction to sire a demon capable of destroying her enemy, Ragh Naghla. Though possessed of many powers over men and spirits, she was defeated in contest by the krjalki ancestress Kigh Gjer Lye Tor, who claimed her skin as a victory prize. For this reason, the Bru offer her their most prized skins, and beg her for mercy and for gifts. While Brak intimated to me that these gifts are rare prizes indeed, the shaman also claimed that the spirits she commanded were “stolen from her hem,” and that she would threaten to return particularly recalcitrant spirits to Thaed's embrace. I have seen her shadow once, and I shudder at the very memory of those awful hands. May the Almighty grant I never see her again.

Ragh Naghla is the Father of the Bru and the Father of Wakh Baoth, an unclean bastardgod in the masculine mode who rampaged across the east during the Ice Age, followed by a host of Bru and wind demons, until he was betrayed and overthrown by his own children at the urging of Wakh Baoth. Now he is naught but an unrestful shade who haunts the nightmares of the weak and the unworthy. The Bru call upon him and demand his service when they go to war, because they bested him and took the right to his power. Their most debauched ritual is named “You Taught This,” which they use in such manner, demonstrating the base arts that their father gave them instruction in as they engage in increasingly-maddened boasting songs. They prefer captive Worlathic weapons-thegns to take the role of Ragh Naghla in the ceremony, an honor which is inevitably fatal.

Malya is the Midwife of the Bru and the Midwife of Wakh Baoth, an unclean elemental descendant in the feminine mode who has great powers over malady, filth and poisons. Her spirits the Bru accept into themselves as if gifts from a horribly generous and doting aunt, and it is her influence that keeps them active while under the influence of diseases that would leave any ordinary man a feverish wreck in his bed. If not for this protection, it is likely that the Bru would die out from the filth that they daily live in. I believe that when warring against Bru, this is a weakness that a wise Zzaburist should exploit. Sickeningly, when the Bru display emotions that a fool might consider love, they invoke the name of Malya, who they believe to be both wantonly promiscuous and openly adoring, a parody of the Emanation of Love that the Worlathics call UL-Era.

To all other gods, even the Red Moon, they spit and grin and say: “Not ours.”

FOURTH MOVEMENT

To any reader who may still feel some unwarranted sympathy for these benighted creatures, I offer the following account to banish all such folly from your thoughts. All I say here is Truth.

The Ashwar brought the Grazelandings to battle at the Stone Ford, both their mounted Horal and their Dronarings on foot, and broke them with the power of his charge. The Red Five Host began to fall upon the fallen and the injured once the battle ceased, seizing their armaments and binding the captives with sinew, heedless of their pitiful cries. One of the Bru, burdened with a thick and lolling tongue, fell to squabbling with another of its comrades over the allotment of a breastplate of hammered bronze, the prized metal inlaid with gold. They fell in a tangle of flailing limbs, the long-tongued one making pathetic bleats like a child or an imbecile. I blanched and averted my face, and may have made some disparaging comment on the matter— whatever it was eludes my memory.

“We did not choose,” Brak said at my elbow. I was for a moment surprised, not having been aware of the shaman’s presence. Perhaps that stench had become almost familiar over the weeks spent in conference. I did not like what was in her voice— the habitual rasp had sharpened like the edge of a bone knife. “You judge us. All you do. Horse Not Bru. Storm Not Bru. Fight With Us Black Not Bru. Think us wrong.”

I here attempted to explain to the poor creature that there is a distinction between Wrong Being and Wrong Action, but she cut me off. Her bangles were made of stained teeth and the bones of fingers.

“Our. Mother wrong.” Her fingers worked, as if imagining my neck under them. “Hate us. Break us. Hole inside us of three shape.” Her hand drifted to her chest, her fingers still twitching like the legs of a dying spider. “Hole… not hurting. All time. Only part. World hurts. Understand, man of is?”

While in retrospect I have begun to discern meaning in her words, in that moment I was left dumbfounded. In hopes of placating her hysteria, I began to offer her a blessing of stability and wisdom, from which she recoiled as if burnt.

Here she threw back her veil of bones to confront me with the full horror of her face. One of her cheeks was as dead as a corpse’s hand, and it had twisted her lip upwards as it contracted. From one side of her brow sprang a spiraling ram’s horn, but the other had an aspect as if the horn’s twin had been shattered by a hammer while young, causing its shards to grow in riotous profusion. Her nose was flat and of canine aspect, and streaked with yellowing mucus. Her eyes were wideset, of discordant color, and one had sunken deep into her elongated skull— and yet both were horribly almost like those of a man to look upon. Almost. Let Malkion the Guide salve my memory.

“You think. Wakh Baoth. Death of world?” The light of Ehlim’s death burned in her mismatched eyes. Her teeth were bared like a rabid dog. There was nothing of my circumstantial colleague in that face. “I. Death of world.”

I was too slow to prepare my wards of defiance and abjuration, struck senseless in the face of the mad zeal of this worshiper of demons. Surely I would have been struck down by the plague-spirits that she commanded, each one vying to be the one that released me to Solace. Only, may all the saints who interceded for me be blessed, a sight arrested her, and she stood for a moment transfixed, time enough for me to force out formulas through my trembling lips. Seeing me as an invincible pillar of spiritual iron, the misbegotten creature spat at my feet and turned aside, as if her moment of unholy wrath had fled from her as a spirit departing its host. She brayed in the direction of the Red Five Host, and the call was taken up in their way; she shuffled away as the enemy’s screams were cut short all across the bloodslicked field, an act of senselessness that was later reported to the Imperial liaison.

As she left me I turned, wondering what possible reprieve had saved my very life. There, silhouetted in Ehlim's failing rays, was the Ashwar. For a moment, my eyes deceived me, as they doubtless must have led her astray: for in that moment, I thought him a hole cut into the world.

Let anyone who believes they can trust the Bru, even as allies on the battlefield, heed my words. They can turn on you in a moment, unprovoked and without just cause, and they take pride in their identity as the very family of demons. That the Almighty might wipe them from the weave of the creation I devoutly pray and nightly beseech. Truth!