Maggot's Profile

The gathered crowd watches with a highly palpable combination of of nervousness and awe, as the Quarsooth steps into the great stone cavern.

They had been summoned here by the dictate of their new overlords to heed their sermon, the vision that the newly arrived saviours of mankind had brough with them from their lengthy, astral passage from the great heavens that formed the very roof of the Heavens. But in their hearts, the people are afraid. The Quarsooth for all the benovalence they have displayed, are still creatures too dangerously akin to the demons or angels of their ancient myths or stories. And all dealings with being of supernatural provenance are fraught with peril, as the old tales warn.

But even as they continue to stare at the Quarsooth, their minds in turmoil, the radiant being reaches into the folds of his robes and withdraws a strange metal rod. Putting this to his lips, he begins to play a tune.

Soon, all fear and suspicion and fear is erased from the minds of the gathered folk, as the haunting and poignant song regals them with tales of the lost glories of Zor-Tanis, all the while reminding them how by particpating in the attempts of the Quarsooth to resuract it on this world, they can bring an end to their own endemic sufering and enjoy absolute power over great stores of knowledge that will enable them to ascend to a position of riches and enlightenment that is rivalled only by Zor-Tanis.

And thus is the conquest of humanity being achieved...

As the officer strides into the thick and oppresive pitch-black gloom of the jungle, he silently signals to his men to fan out in a classic Quarsooth battle-formation with a nervous hand-gesture. He is very tense, almost afraid. The soothing, omnipresent presence in his mind tells him that he has no reason to worry, assuring him that victory will belong to those noble warriors that carry the standard of the invincible race of Zor-Tanis.

But there is something else cutting through the easy promises offered by that pleasant, gently commanding entity in his mind, as if determined to seize all his attention and use it to torment his imagination until it begins to scream for mercy. This something he cannot define and put words to, but it makes his skin crawl nevertheless. Despite the heat of the jungle, his blazing gold body-armor had suddenly become a chill prison that raises uncomfortable goosebumps along his chest.

Woried muttering from the rear tell him that his men like him, are unsettled. Turning aound in irritation, he begins to hiss at them to remain silent, afraid of alerting the very band of murdering monstrosities they have finally tracked into this eerie wilderness. It would be a rather embarassing matter for their commander if the very quarry they had been relentlessly pursuing for the past week or so, were to suddenly turn around and massacre all of them.

Too late he feels a something slithering around his neck. Fearful that it might be a pyhton, he reackes for his massive ''fire-bow'', determined to incinerate the scaled menace before it can crush his larynx. But before his fingers even have a chance to close around the handle of the weapon hanging from his belt, another coil slithers out of the darkness and out of the darkness and pinions his arm, holding it in a painful crushing crip. As agony swamps him, he can vaguely hear a grim sound of cracking bones through the pain-filled haze that now holds him. His arm is being crushed. And then so quickly that his stunned mind has no time to register this new fact, there is no time left for more thought. The coil looped around his throat begins to squeeze, suffocating him. As the officer's head begins to swim in the final moments of his life, he finally gains an excellent look at the thing that is stealing his life.

It is not a snake, but a vine. As if in response to this discovery, a now terrifyingly familiar roar of bestial fury rings through the gloom of the jungle..

''In a world dominated by savagery and barbarism, we alone represent civilization. Is it any wonder then that we are forced to keep the horrors of the outside world at bay?''

-an anonymous Usholal