AoS Realm of Beasts- "Mythology of Ghur"

[Warden]

From the recent Short Story Contest (July-August 2019), story #9


The Mythology of Ghur


“… and the Celestial God, Ometotl the Bright, and Gukumatz, the Feathered Serpent, discovered the Realm of Ghur floating in the aether.

“Upon the realm they found the Great Devourer-Beast Cipatcli, the Living Avalanche; and trapped inside its amber flesh, Hwatzili-Patzli the Green.

“The Celestial God and the Serpent did battle with Cipatcli, and unleashed the Warring God from his bonds.

“Together they fashioned the still-living body of the Living Avalanche, for the Beast was of the Empyrian and could not be banished.

“The Beast’s back became a great land: its spikes becoming high mountains, its scales rolling steppes, its joints deep valleys.

“It still breathed, still hungered, only the debt of blood could keep the One who Hungers in slumber.”


Ghyrria Stela 3, Verses 2-6 (Ghyrria 3:2-6)



Professor Jourdain of the Collegiate Arcanum looked up from his parchement to the torch-lit classroom and his assembled students, gesturing to a few stone fragments strewn across his podium.

“At first glance most of this comes across as gibberish. This is written in Old Ghyrrian, in one of the lost tongues that few in this day-and-age can speak, and even fewer read.”

“As my translation clearly demonstrates, this fragment details the pagan creation story of the Realm, in its earliest state long before the establishment of the Four Kingdoms. In fact, I would argue that this evidence could be traced to the Age of Myth, long before the Angovals, the Traxons, or any other human tribes established civilization within the Realm.”

Travelling across the stage now, the professor pointed too many of the granite busts along the edge of the classroom. He first pointed to the sculpture of the bearded man wearing a crown of stars.

“ First we have the god known as Ometotl, the Celestial God. He seems to be the primary pagan deity, lord of the heavens. Clearly this is none other than Sigmar himself, who rules from on high.”

Moving next to a giant dragon-headed bust.

“Second we have a great ‘serpent,’ Gukumatz. Described as a being of great power that can travel the cosmos, lots of imagery pertaining to stars. This must be Dracothion.”

Next he pointed to the bust of a two-headed Orruk.

“Then we have Hwatzli-Patzli the Green. My translation leads me to believe this was also a two-headed god, and a War God. This must have been the lord of the Orruks, Gorkamorka himself. Who was trapped...”

The professor then pointed to an ancient painting along the back of the room, covered with an chaotic mass of heads, teeth, horns, and claws.

“…within the Amber Mass, the ‘Living Avalanche” as the stela so suggests. This is undoutbly Drakatoa, a being all of you are also familiar with. Here then is the legend itself in its earliest form, and even suggest why the Voors and the other original inhabitants of Ghyrria have been shown to conduct ritual bloodletting and human sacrifice.”

His nose wrinkled in disgust at the thought.

“…fortunately this barbaric practice has been stamped out, save for the shamanistic holdouts in the far hills, and the orruks of course.”

Back at the podium, he closed his hands in conclusion.

“Therefore my students, I propose that this evidence shows us where much of the beliefs we hold true came from. When our human ancestors conquered these realms, they adapted the beliefs of the locals into their own pantheon. They adopted the creation stories and the myths of the locals, and added these stories and adapted them into our own pantheon.

“Clearly much of this is a just ancient myth, a fantastic and superstitious way to explain where the land of Ghyrria came from, to explain the great mountains, the deep valleys, even the jagged rocks as the ‘teeth’ or ‘scales’ of this ancient beast. Fortunately, nowadays we are less superstitious than our ancient forebears.”

The professor finished his speech and began to answer questions from the audience. As he did so, one of the students at the back of the room stood up an exited the chamber.

The student moved some way down the vaunted corridor and came to a halt. Checking first to see if there was anyone hiding behind the stone columns or the sculpture in the corner, the student took a small metal cube out of his pocket. Pressing the cube, it began to glow, and soon a disembodied and reptilian voice projected from within it.

“Report chameleon, what have you found.”

“It is as you foresssaw lord priest, the warmbloodss found another one of the lost plaques-sss.”

The disguised students’ lizard-tongue flitting in and out as he rolled his “s’s”. The voice responded.

“Were they able to translate this one.”

“Yesss. The transsslator is very good. However he came to wrong conclusionsss. They describe Ss-Sotek as an aelf dragon-kin, and believe that the Cipactli is a myth.”

The disembodied voice let out a croak of mirth.

“Fools. Very well. Continue to monitor the situation, and arrange for both the stela and this adept but foolish translator to go ‘missing.’ The Hungry One will appreciate the sacrifice.”

 

[Warden]

Comments, critiques, and quotations from the contest. Good stuff, and thank you for the reviews!

@Warden, is that you?

you are my main guess for the author of this very nice piece.

First, it recalls me "The Extermination of the Fimir", but the structure here is much more solid, we still have a lost piece of mythological tale, but we don't know what's behind it.

during the reading, all pieces fall in their place in this unusual setting, and suddenly we understand that we are dealing with a Plaque of the Old Ones, and that the good but fool translator is doomed to die. This sometime happens when people applies a mundane approach to magical things!

I appreciated a lot the effort put into the research of Aztec myth and how the author put them into the story: Ometotl, Cipactli… (another hint that leads me toward Warden) ...all of them entwined with Lizardmen gods, and also with the religion of WHFB / AoS (Dracothion, Drakatoa, Gorkamorka...).

There are some thing that are unclear (especially when Sotek would have been described as an aelf dragon-kin… i missed that part and i hope it will be clarified by the author), but all in all it's brilliant, really.

I usually don't say which pieces take my vote, but this one is among them.

How did you know!!!

Yeah I guess it may have been a bit obvious it was me after all. I had a lot of fun coming up with a mythology; I wanted to explore both the stuff I had just learned about Aztec mythology, and transplant that into AOS (which is all about nebulous gods doing things a long time ago). Seemed to fit pretty well with minor work.

The “aelf-dragon-kin” part was a reference to Dracothion, the “milky-way-dragon” that Sigmar is supposed to have found when he regained consciousness floating around in space. I read somewhere that this was an elvish/aelvish (or elfish/aelfish) name for him somewhere. And I had always liked to think that this giant magic dragon à SNAKE creature was actually an old one from Lizardmen lore (hence, Sotek).

“The Mythology of Ghur.”

The sinister, cold-blooded ending was fantastic! I liked how the professor was very confident in his teachings, making them sound almost true word to word. It gave the surprising end lots of gravitas.

Nothing doesn't really happen in the story besides the ending, so I would’ve liked some form of conflict. Perhaps in the form of the chameleon skink arguing with the professor whilst in disguise or the professor harboring some form of internal doubt about what he was teaching.

Thanks! And agreed, other than me having fun writing some mythology and lore, not much really happens in the plot of the story. Just backstory.

Scalenex's Unimpeachable Wisdom Via Literary Critiques

A lot of our short story contests stand out for shared tendencies between stories. We’ve had a lot of comedic or heart-warming stories in the past but I’m fairly sure, as a whole, this is the most light and cheery contest we ever had. Not every piece was warm and fuzzy, but none of them were grimdark which is unusual.

I would say Story Six and may Story Nine are the only ones that are not particularly light hearted, and even then those pieces are hardly dripping with death and nihlism. In my opinion the only contest that was close to this light hearted was the July-August 2018 Contest where the theme was "Food and Drink" which is fairly hard to make dark without involving cannibalism. And at least one story did involve cannibalism.

Despite the fact that most of the pieces came in at the last minute, all the pieces were pretty well polished. And out of nine pieces, all of them adhered to the theme very well. Usually there is at least one outlier that barely clips the theme but not here. Not that deviating from the theme is a major sin, but it’s still nice that no one did that.

Story Nine, “The Mythology of Ghur”: This is piece has great characterization. I really like the outsider’s view of Lizardmen (Seraphon? Not sure which one this is) and the outsider’s view of humanity from the perspective of a Skink spy. I like the concept of Lizardmen/Seraphon spying in such a sophisticated manner.

This piece didn’t have as much of a solid structure as I’d hope for in a short story with an introduction, conflict, and resolution of some sort. It was lots of characterization, but not a lot of action.

I need to do a better job of not mixing up lizardmen/seraphon in these stories.

I still stand by the idea that both of these names are what they are called by outsiders/other races, haven’t settled a preferred name for them yet.

Story 9: Our last story starts off with its own piece of lore written in Biblical style but telling of the deities, with unusually Mesoamerican-sounding names, and the creation myth of the Mortal Realm of Ghur. The story proper then reveals the exploits of a professor of the Collegiate Arcanum (which I'm very familiar with having just escaped from my three years' sentence at University) discussing the origins of this creation myth and the so-called Ghyrria Stela, attempting to uncover links between the myths and what he believes to be the established truth by likening the varied figures from the myth with the known gods in the Age of Sigmar, so as to derive the conclusion that the present inhabitants of Ghur righteously conquered the land and installed deities from the locals into their own pantheon to prevent revolts, like the Romans did when they invaded Celtic Britain. However, the Professor is oblivious to the presence of a Chameleon Skink in disguise as one of his human students, who then proceeds to leave the lecture and arrange the professor's death with the Slann he has been communicating with.

This one is interesting because it gives the Seraphon technology not yet explored by GW that more accurately reflect their Protoss-like advancements by the time of AoS, while also portraying them as almost gangster-like in that they plan to eliminate those who insult the Old Ones with their ignorance. I like this grimdark edge to Seraphon lore a lot, and would like to see more of this, both from our Short Story writers and GW themselves, as this could take the Lizardmen into a direction that turns them into a more neutral force that works separately from the Sigmarines. The time taken by the author to devise some Ghyrrian mythology and lace the story with parodies of our own world's views on ancient civilisations are also impressive feats.

I am working on some of the lore of Ghyrria (within realm of beasts) to help flesh out this backstory a bit more, I will add that shortly.

Story 9: Mythology of Ghur

- Mesoamerican names in some Biblical-style intro, definitely up my alley. No clue what @Killer Angel is talking about, but obviously the writer of this story is really smart

- Story starts with some good mythology which the magical professor in AOS Hogwarts decides to interpret. Not sure how he is able to translate all the stuff he has come across given the (medieval) technology he has at his disposal. Also touches upon a bunch of older civilizations like Story #6 that I would love to see fleshed out more (Angovals, Traxons).

- Not much happens in the middle of the story (when the professor is talking) other than describing what he has found out, where he describes the myths related in the writings in terms of his own establish mythology. Also talks about ancient practices of human sacrifices, apparently all the vogue long ago, that no longer happen anymore. Per the previous texts the story seemed to imply that the sacrifices of blood were made in order to keep the not-quite-dead Beast sleeping and not awaken? Maybe the ancients were on to something, because the professor discounts the sacrifices and basically the whole tale as a completely mythological creation story that has no relevance to the real, modern world…

- …which is turned on its head slightly when the chameleon skink hidden in the crowd validates much of the nutty professor’s translations. Would liked to have seen what actually happens next, some actual conflict (like the professor translating the works, proving that they are just myths, then finding out they were actually true) or something like that. Didn’t quite get his comeuppance yet.

Setting:

Definitely AOS due to the mention of Realm of Ghur in the first sentence, specifically a place called Ghyrria

Characters:

The Gods:

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• Ometotl the Bright- Celestial God; apparently supposed to be Sigmar
• Gukumatz- the Feathered Serpent, corresponds to Dracothion. And possibly Sotek?
• Cipatcli- the Great Devourer Beast, the Living Avalanche- evil moster-beastie named Draktoa that Sigmar beats up
• Hwatzili-Patzli the Green- the Warring God; Gorkamorka trapped in the Avalanche

The Characters:​

• Professor Jourdain of the Collegiate Arcanum- teaches a class in Old Ghyrrian mythology
• Chameleon in Disguise- hidden as one of the students. Obviously an assassin
• Lord Priest- skink priest, the big boss the Chameleon reports too

Yup, it is always hard to rate your own story without completely revealing your secret identity , but this essentially shows what I started going for. To include list of characters/gods and their various names.


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