Mister Chatterly's Circus of Noises.

I had chance to find some old writing I did back when I ran ttrpg games and found some of it to be kind of amusing to read over, some of it to be utterly confusing, and some of it to at least toss a slight sense of worldbuilding that I had forgotten about.

I've pretty much sworn off of doing ttrpg stuff ever again.  Some reasons are personal, others are attributed to the below post that kind of proves that I honestly just could not shut up when it came to exposition.  There's 'giving a sense of lore' and then there is 'I'm basically writing a novel and you get to sit and listen to a live reading of it'.  One is fun for games, the other is fun only if you are sitting in a pub with Tolkien and Lewis.

But it gave enough of a sense of world lore that I thought I could share it here.  Its a lot of words, but the TLDR is that it outlines an artifact known as the 'Ghost Bell' or "Haunted Chime' by some.  An artifact that allowed a lot of things to be granted, but would steal a piece of those who used it, until little was left of who they were, save a wraith, or husk endlessly acting out the last of it's days of life.

All explained by the ephemeral wisp of a Lorrnath named Aetherus who appeared in a blackened room, illuminated briefly by candles before fading each time.  I don't know what exactly I was going for when it was written for an encounter, but here, at least, it can explain one of the artefacts of a race of people who were slavers, driven by demons and devils, attempting to flee to the city of Stokenfire with their cargo and slave in the final days of the war of Mortals.

<---->

*From the heavy wooden rattle of the door behind you, the chambers beyond spare no illumination, leaving an oppressive and pressing darkness around you.  Until the distinct scrape of a flint sparks ten yards away from you, and a candle's flame draws your gaze.*

"You seek a fortune you do not understand."

"Pulled from the bowels of a ship's inner husk."

*In the candle's light is the face of a Lorrnath with bone paint around his eyes and face into that of a skull*

"I am little more than a fragment. A warning. If you speak, I will not hear you. If you query me, I will not answer."

"I was a slave on the dire ship that started the downfall of those who dwelled here."

"An opulent vessel filled with dark trade, brought to splintered ruin upon the rocks of these shores."

"I struggled from the tangle of flotsam, and hid from those who came to rescue or rummage through the bones of the vessel."

"I would not be a slave again."

*the candle flickers out, only to light in a different place, feet away from the first spot moments later. He continues*

I watched as they dug forth that which I had hoped slipped into the inky depths of the black waters. A single pearlescent bell sprung free from its wooden frame. This... Was a haunted object of a bedeviled people.

The bell called souls to it. A hellish bauble that ensured that even those who escaped their captors into death would be dragged low again to serve for eternity.

And now these unknowing islanders scrambled back to their abodes, bell in tow, to be enshrined inside of a squat tower at the town's center.

I knew what was to come.

And no warning would save them.

At least this is what I told myself.

*the candle once again flickers out, appearing again in a different place moments later, the Lorrnath seeming to stare out a phantom window*

The bell would whisper its secrets deep into the psyche of its chosen. It would display its gift to grant travel to any place one desired, from warmest paradise, to the deepest vault of the greediest king. All without trace. All without pain.

But with the steepest price.

The bell's dulcet song of resonance clings to you, like wisps of greasy black smoke from a foul candle. You grow colder with each sojourn, until nothing but the wraith of your very existence remains. The riches you plundered unable to be touched by your hand evermore.

....And so you serve.

*candle flickers out and there is a  pause before it lights a moment later, closer to the you.*

I listened to the first peal of that accursed bell. And knew it had picked its chosen. The following days brought further tintinnabulation to the townsfolk, soon driven howling and panicked by its ever present sermon.

But even their souls wouldn't escape.

They were bound to it's curse. And my tie to the blood-weave of this world only meant that I kept my wits as it pulled at me, as if something had hooked into my ribs and was reeling me in.

By Abjurative means I was able to enter the now haunted spire of the tower, and by magic alone was I able to pass into the resting place of the bell, finding writhing hollows where men and women once stood. But I was not here to bring them salvation.

I placed a hand on the cold weathered iron husk of that icon of sin, and when it's ethereal soul asked my desire, I had only one wish to relay to it.

I wanted to go home.

I thought of the rolling hills of flaxen yellows, and heathered fields amidst a rain of leaves yellow and red contrasted on a canvas of sapphire sky. I thought of my home before the Indorai claimed it, and the Ammantir wrest it from them to plunder its riches and people. I felt my body pulled between two places, strung by its smallest structures across the gap of the landmasses.

But my soul.. My soul was to remain, as part of the bargain.

*candle flickers out again, this time appearing much further away, with the Lorrnath sitting*

When I arrived, I wasn't greeted by the familiar winds of home, or gentle grace of grasses beneath my steps. Instead, a landscape of colourless char and demise, accented by the tenebrous heath seeping smoke and mourning. Everything within miles was swaddled in ashes, as if the ghost of a giant had given up, and laid down across trees and bones alike.

My once peaceful homeland was now a bituminous wreck.

And my heart joined it's heaving cry.

I was the last of my people, and the final memory of its record. Its last births and deaths, its last joys and sorrows lay with me now. And were bound to this foreign place for time immemorial.

The bell sleeps now, but I ask if you wake it, not to listen to its promises or give into the spiral of madness that may follow. If I had the strength or means, I would have destroyed it. It is the last I know of my captors, and their final assurance that I would indeed never see the sunrise as a free person ever again.

<--->

I don't know if it was interesting to read at all.  I might have just been posting it to keep it from falling into the endless digital bitrot that some of my folders have become.  But in any case, beware little bells in pearled steel.  They do spooky things, apparently.

-T.J.