What strategies can a man employ when the only reliable foodstuff is the flesh of supernatural predators? Things whose breath may be fatal, whose bodies may be metal, whose eyes may control the mind?
In the face of this many men turn to cannibalism and other Faustian bargains.
Ramec must depart his home in the underworld sanctuary of Kalas Da, a place fed and comforted by a strand of the World Fungus.
He must forge his path to the surface in a world of absolute darkness and privation, where light is the beacon of death.
Ramec goes knowing only that there can be no categorization of the predators of the deep and that the humans of the underworld can be the most dangerous of all.
He will be transformed, because every moment in the chaos of the underworld commands death or adaptation.
Listen to Monster Eater at Fierce Firelight.
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| Xenostygian, by Dan Sullivan |
I've been inspired by fantastic depictions of civilizations and their privations in the deep underworld for a long time, probably beginning with descriptions of the confined-space planes in the old Manual of the Planes, deepening with the phenomenal Underdark, and culminating in the epoch-making Veins of the Earth.
So far, I've written about four chapters of Monster Eater.
Extremely excited to dig into this!!! the concept alone got my brain going at a million miles an hour (as your content consistently does)
ReplyDeleteI'm glad! One notion I have about this is that even though Ramec is a Xenostygian (an underworld-dweller with no contact with the surface), not everyone who is a Monster Eater is a Xenostygian; for example, the first Monster Eater I conceived was someone living far above the ground in a fallen stone arcology once maintained by archmages but now a vast ruinous complex of crushed-together towers where all kinds of horrific beasts (some having to do with the archmages, some not) still dwell. Part of this idea was his eventual movement amongst those who'd never been exposed to such a lifestyle and vice versa (and what happened as a result of their attempts to use him and his abilities in their world without really understanding the world that he came from and the worldview it instilled in him)
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