Chapter I
Red Door
I was born hungry. My mother was over-taken by a pack Ghouls while working the fields in a nameless village just outside of Deeproot.
There were more rocks than crops and more misery than rocks.
It is unclear to me how I was born a Ghoul. We don't know much about our own bodies except for the Hunger.
I knew the Hunger before I ever knew anything else and I chewed my way from the womb. As long as I kept the hunger in check, kept meat down my throat, I could think, reason, even laugh on occasion. When the Hunger had me, though, I was worse than a rabid dog.
So I kept food in me, hid caches of meat from the pack leader so that I had time to take hard looks at the world around me.
The worst thing about the pack leader of my youth was that when he was in the euphoria of a good meal, he'd tell us all about his Ghoulish Empire his polished bone throne to the lowliest fat human slave.
All pack leaders have delusions of grandeur, grotesque fantasies about taking over the world and having all of the meat you can gorge yourself on. Vampire Lords, Liche Court Sorcerors, Spectral Judges and Ghost librarians. Our own pack, the Evil Dogs, was lead by a fool who called himself Cannibal Alpha.
He died at the hands of a Cleric of Ulula but the rest of us overwhelmed her and ate her, feet first.
This gave me an evening with her while she slowly died. She stared up into the stars as I chewed on her ankles. She was bleeding to death and in all kinds of shock. I was amazed at her lucidity, given the situation.
She and I stared at the night sky together. I only know the big one is the Sun and the other one is the Moon. There are hundreds and they all have names, apparently. I have heard rumors that some of these stars form pictures that only humans can see. When I looked up and tried to make pictures I only saw food.
There is this red one that winks as if it were far away pool of blood in the sky. She pointed it out to me.
"The rest of us go to the Moon or the Sun when we die but not you. Your kind go to the Red Door and live out your forevers tortured by the evil you inflicted on others," and she shuddered a quiet, and given the circumstances, dignified death. I'd like to think she went to the Sun. She tasted like a Sun-type.
When my own hunger subsided I wasn't cursed with grandiose visions, like Cannibal Alpha. I got quiet and introspective. The world began to divide itself into hungers, eaters and the devoured. There was nothing in all of the world that I couldn't find a place for in one of those three categories.
The Hungry One chose me. It chose me to lead the Ghouls and it wanted me to make them into a great nation. I wouldn't lead them to stupidity like C.A. It whispered to me and I worshipped it, worshipped the Hungry One because it is all I have ever known.
I have a small altar, a twisted tree stump stained brown with blood.
We found a town on a forgotten highway in the Jade Forest. There were some shape shifting barbarians who saw to the local's protection. After gorging on a farming family and their livestock I thought of a plan. While the pigs squealed it occurred to me that we needed to prove to ourselves that a Ghoul economy could work on a small scale.
We would take this town from their shapeshifting oppressors and take them under our wing. With my own divine inspiration guiding our Hunger, we would humbly begin a nation.
And we did too.
Once a month the villagers gave us one of their own, chosen by lottery to sate our taste for human flesh. The rest of the time we got by on hunting.
To insure the town's peaceful cooperation we took honored guests and kept them in the tombs with us.
We took refuge in the marble tombs a few miles away from the town.
I can remember the howls of victory when we drove an owlbear from a farmer's land. We were protecting our flock and it was working.
We knew that eventually heroes would come.
They did.
It was humiliating really.
Three Halflings and a Half-Orc and a Priestess.
The Hungry One warned me that trouble would come. I had seen to preparations.
I brought runaway Sunturion Legionnaires into Ghouldom and Goblin Wolfriders to your ravenous ways. I threatened the local silversmith into making silver caps for out teeth, making our bites harmful to those damned lycanthropes.
My shining addition was an ogre. We tortured that bastard for weeks before he finally gave in an ate flesh. After he had his first bite he belonged to the Hungry One, heart and soul. He was my bodyguard, always by my side. I clad him in chainmail and put silver spikes through his club. He was a monster in the truest sense of the word.
I was playing chess when I heard the lock on the pens click. Damned Halfling was picking the lock right in front of us and no one saw or smelled him. He waltzed into the camp like he was going to the maypole on fairday.
I placed my Bishop in line to check mate my little honored guest and unleashed my magicks.
The Ogre felled a priestess, of Tiamat I think with a deft shot to the head. One of my packmates finished her off.
The little men, these damned Hobbits fought furiously. Everytime I was confident they were done they would pull some kind of trick, a tumble or just pure determination and outlast my packs.
The Half-Orc fought like a cornered Manticore and in time I fell to her blade. She cut me down while I prayed to the Hungry One to end her.
I saw the battlefield as I went on to my fate.
I could see my own body lying there next to the meat pit, buzzing with flies.
My ogre (you know, I never named the bastard) felled the Half-Orc but fell to one of the Halflings of all things.
The best dressed Halfling, the dandy with their rapier, will have a scar on the front of his throat from a Ghoul bite. I hope when he looks on it he thinks on us and shudders.
Their priestess of Tiamat, partially devoured by a Ghoul, died. I suppose some would say it was a heroic death but it seemed rather pointless to me. But I am rather biased.
Their Half-Orc warrior will have a small hole in her cheek where a silver spike from my nameless Ogre's club hit her face but she'll live.
Their sneak came away with few wounds because he was paralyzed by my dark magicks for most of the battle. My guards were rounding up the run aways before they ate him. I so wish I could have eaten him, Halflings are so lovely in the autumn, they are just beginning to put on their winter fat.
One of the Halflings was some kind of a warrior and was badly scarred along his face by fire already. He was littered with small stabs and bites but I fear that none of my packs gave him anything to really remember us by.
I imagine they destroyed us out of some sense of heroism or justice. It doesn't matter. In the end I was just another pack leader as bad as Cannibal Alpha or even worse. At least he had dared to dream big.
My hopes and dreams of a Ghoul city or even a small Ghoul town are gone and soon the sun will rise. Only one scarlet star is left in the blue remnants of the night sky.
Now excuse me, I have a Red Door to enter.
Red Door
I was born hungry. My mother was over-taken by a pack Ghouls while working the fields in a nameless village just outside of Deeproot.
There were more rocks than crops and more misery than rocks.
It is unclear to me how I was born a Ghoul. We don't know much about our own bodies except for the Hunger.
I knew the Hunger before I ever knew anything else and I chewed my way from the womb. As long as I kept the hunger in check, kept meat down my throat, I could think, reason, even laugh on occasion. When the Hunger had me, though, I was worse than a rabid dog.
So I kept food in me, hid caches of meat from the pack leader so that I had time to take hard looks at the world around me.
The worst thing about the pack leader of my youth was that when he was in the euphoria of a good meal, he'd tell us all about his Ghoulish Empire his polished bone throne to the lowliest fat human slave.
All pack leaders have delusions of grandeur, grotesque fantasies about taking over the world and having all of the meat you can gorge yourself on. Vampire Lords, Liche Court Sorcerors, Spectral Judges and Ghost librarians. Our own pack, the Evil Dogs, was lead by a fool who called himself Cannibal Alpha.
He died at the hands of a Cleric of Ulula but the rest of us overwhelmed her and ate her, feet first.
This gave me an evening with her while she slowly died. She stared up into the stars as I chewed on her ankles. She was bleeding to death and in all kinds of shock. I was amazed at her lucidity, given the situation.
She and I stared at the night sky together. I only know the big one is the Sun and the other one is the Moon. There are hundreds and they all have names, apparently. I have heard rumors that some of these stars form pictures that only humans can see. When I looked up and tried to make pictures I only saw food.
There is this red one that winks as if it were far away pool of blood in the sky. She pointed it out to me.
"The rest of us go to the Moon or the Sun when we die but not you. Your kind go to the Red Door and live out your forevers tortured by the evil you inflicted on others," and she shuddered a quiet, and given the circumstances, dignified death. I'd like to think she went to the Sun. She tasted like a Sun-type.
When my own hunger subsided I wasn't cursed with grandiose visions, like Cannibal Alpha. I got quiet and introspective. The world began to divide itself into hungers, eaters and the devoured. There was nothing in all of the world that I couldn't find a place for in one of those three categories.
The Hungry One chose me. It chose me to lead the Ghouls and it wanted me to make them into a great nation. I wouldn't lead them to stupidity like C.A. It whispered to me and I worshipped it, worshipped the Hungry One because it is all I have ever known.
I have a small altar, a twisted tree stump stained brown with blood.
We found a town on a forgotten highway in the Jade Forest. There were some shape shifting barbarians who saw to the local's protection. After gorging on a farming family and their livestock I thought of a plan. While the pigs squealed it occurred to me that we needed to prove to ourselves that a Ghoul economy could work on a small scale.
We would take this town from their shapeshifting oppressors and take them under our wing. With my own divine inspiration guiding our Hunger, we would humbly begin a nation.
And we did too.
Once a month the villagers gave us one of their own, chosen by lottery to sate our taste for human flesh. The rest of the time we got by on hunting.
To insure the town's peaceful cooperation we took honored guests and kept them in the tombs with us.
We took refuge in the marble tombs a few miles away from the town.
I can remember the howls of victory when we drove an owlbear from a farmer's land. We were protecting our flock and it was working.
We knew that eventually heroes would come.
They did.
It was humiliating really.
Three Halflings and a Half-Orc and a Priestess.
The Hungry One warned me that trouble would come. I had seen to preparations.
I brought runaway Sunturion Legionnaires into Ghouldom and Goblin Wolfriders to your ravenous ways. I threatened the local silversmith into making silver caps for out teeth, making our bites harmful to those damned lycanthropes.
My shining addition was an ogre. We tortured that bastard for weeks before he finally gave in an ate flesh. After he had his first bite he belonged to the Hungry One, heart and soul. He was my bodyguard, always by my side. I clad him in chainmail and put silver spikes through his club. He was a monster in the truest sense of the word.
I was playing chess when I heard the lock on the pens click. Damned Halfling was picking the lock right in front of us and no one saw or smelled him. He waltzed into the camp like he was going to the maypole on fairday.
I placed my Bishop in line to check mate my little honored guest and unleashed my magicks.
The Ogre felled a priestess, of Tiamat I think with a deft shot to the head. One of my packmates finished her off.
The little men, these damned Hobbits fought furiously. Everytime I was confident they were done they would pull some kind of trick, a tumble or just pure determination and outlast my packs.
The Half-Orc fought like a cornered Manticore and in time I fell to her blade. She cut me down while I prayed to the Hungry One to end her.
I saw the battlefield as I went on to my fate.
I could see my own body lying there next to the meat pit, buzzing with flies.
My ogre (you know, I never named the bastard) felled the Half-Orc but fell to one of the Halflings of all things.
The best dressed Halfling, the dandy with their rapier, will have a scar on the front of his throat from a Ghoul bite. I hope when he looks on it he thinks on us and shudders.
Their priestess of Tiamat, partially devoured by a Ghoul, died. I suppose some would say it was a heroic death but it seemed rather pointless to me. But I am rather biased.
Their Half-Orc warrior will have a small hole in her cheek where a silver spike from my nameless Ogre's club hit her face but she'll live.
Their sneak came away with few wounds because he was paralyzed by my dark magicks for most of the battle. My guards were rounding up the run aways before they ate him. I so wish I could have eaten him, Halflings are so lovely in the autumn, they are just beginning to put on their winter fat.
One of the Halflings was some kind of a warrior and was badly scarred along his face by fire already. He was littered with small stabs and bites but I fear that none of my packs gave him anything to really remember us by.
I imagine they destroyed us out of some sense of heroism or justice. It doesn't matter. In the end I was just another pack leader as bad as Cannibal Alpha or even worse. At least he had dared to dream big.
My hopes and dreams of a Ghoul city or even a small Ghoul town are gone and soon the sun will rise. Only one scarlet star is left in the blue remnants of the night sky.
Now excuse me, I have a Red Door to enter.