I recently drew this character, Silver, for my players campaign! She’s an NCPD officer and solo who’s hired the players to look into the death of a friend of hers!
I really enjoyed drawing her so I hope you guys like her!
Quick illustration I made for a future NPC. Figured someone else could probably use this if they wanted to.
“My lord, why have you plighted us with this, this,” The knight's voice croaked and gargled as he stumbled and lost his balance. His once noble and refined accent of new-english wealth folded and bent over the many bulbous tumours that now pushed the first layer of his face away. Effectively skinning his own body.
His hands fumbled with the edges of his face as he tried to maintain some semblance of dignity while the boils rubbed together and conjured a fire in his throat.
The king didn’t turn back. His gaze fixed firmly onto the throngs of people at his castle gate. Masses that he had pledged his life to care for as if they were his own child. Now they bayed and cried for blood. Calling weakly as their finger nails split and fell and their skin sloughed off in blackened chunks.
The king clutched the bundle in his hands a little tighter as his wispy beard caught the wind and his nose scrunched at the smell of his knight.
“My lord. Give that, that thing here.” Holding his hands out the knight’s arms shook from the weight of carrying his armour. His fingers bending over and snapping with the bones liquefying within muscle.
The king turned slightly. Exposing the flash of porcelain and straw within his velvet bundle. His eyes regarding the knight with a distant coldness.
“Thee wishes to take your daughter.” A second voice whispered. The knight could make out the vague shape of a horned crown speaking from behind the king’s drapes. A mask of shadow that peered from within its hallowed corner. “Thou shouldn’t shirk the gift of rebirth. They daughter whomst I fashioned from the riverbed from whence she came to me.”
The knight’s face twisted in revulsion as he tried to step back and his femur folded back into his leg. The rot taking his ability to stand.
“My lord!” He gasped desperately as the cackle of the shadow grew louder as his king started to approach the knight. Regarding him with little more than a cool stare as his ring clad fingers gently soothed the child that made no sound. “Cast it out! Abandon it! Back to the creek! It is not from your loins! Not from your wife-”
At the mention of the queen the king delivered a firm kick to his knight’s jaw. A slug bursting fourth from his mouth and wagging on the floor as the knight dropped. His eyes widening as he saw his severed tongue lolling back and forth. Crawling and slithering back towards the shadow who plucked it from the ground and rested in the absence behind its teeth.
The king perked up as the shadow started to test its new olfactory organ.
“You can trust me, can’t you, my lord?” The knight’s eyes widened as he heard his wagging tongue flapping within the mouth of the beast. Coaxing the king to its side as the both waltzed from the bedroom. “You can always trust me. The one who saved your child. Who brought her bones back from beneath the sand. What did it cost thou but a clean conscience?”
The knight’s gauntlets scraped the floor as he tried in vain to pursue the both of them. His voice walked away from him alongside the one who had fallen to words that weren’t his own.
“Are you ready, my lord?” The knight whispered as he stood beside his majesty. The one who held his daughter in his arms so gently but with enough firm resistance so that she may never be snatched from him again.
The king glanced at his most loyal servant. His knight who had successfully saved his daughter from when her mother had tried to steal herself and her daughter away from him. A foolish woman with foolish troubles who had attempted to burden a baby with her own cruel problems.
“Thank you, sir knight.” He smiled as he watched his armoured friend. The sharp edges of his armour softened in haze as his tongue slithered over his dry lips. His hand squeezed the king's shoulder and his body reacted firmly. His fingers digging into the ribs of his baby girl in a burning haze as in a moment he felt the spirit of his wife. The spearhead of a cacophony of burning voices, among them his friend. All of them urged him to kill this thing he held.
All before it vanished and faded as the hand sunk deeper into his skin and his child cried out. His head snapped back and he soothed her bleating. Scolding himself for his wrongful thoughts.
His knight simpered at his lord. His mouth formed a cruel sliding smile.
“I ask you again, are thou ready?” The king’s gaze never strayed from his daughter.
“Ready for what? Sir knight?”
The knight paused before speaking. His tongue fighting itself in his throat as it bulged and fought to break his teeth before returning to its owner's hold.
“To cast off your birth right, the seat of your crown and its power over this land?” The king hesitated, something didn’t make sense about this offering. But before he could think the words of his friend bent themselves to make sense.
He needed to hold onto what was most important to him. Lest it slip away and break at the waters of the world.
“Of course.” He sighed. His mouth hanging open as the weight lifted from his shoulders and the bundle in his arms suddenly felt quieter, emptier and all the more hollow.
“I relinquish my lands to you.” The knight made no reaction as his king turned and marched away. His shadow grew as it burned its way across the borders of his kingdom. The plague and shadow bulged with newfound power.
All the while the king made no reaction to the rising screams emitting from the shadowland. His mind affixed firmly ahead of him as he tried to pretend that straw was skin.
This is gonna sound a little weird but humour me please.
I’m currently writing a story about a young man who has a fetish for ice cream that leads to him having relations with the food.
I wanted to use this as the crux of a story about taboo fetishes and how environments that remove our ability to talk about sex comfortably and safely can cause people to indulge in things they themselves don’t understand. Plus I thought the ice cream would add to a comedic surreal style.
My big problem so far is the exact way I want to write about this story. Whereas I’m confident enough to write about such a topic without making it gratuitous I was uncertain if I could even post such a story here.
Would slapping on a nsfw filter be enough if i was looking to post it here or should I just can this idea here and look elsewhere?
Any thoughts are appreciated
The Crab Idol
“Do not fear it.” My mother whispered softly as we walked two at a time down the gang walk towards the towering gates. Lazy mandibles that sat open as the warm air of deathly breath gushed out of the mountainous crustacean before us. The edges of its body stretched far along the coastline until it became nothing more than the blurry ridge of a mountain range.
I clutched the toy in between my small fingers as my mother’s hand encircled my wrist. Making sure that I would not move as we shambled onward towards that slovenly creature’s mouth.
“Have no fear, little one. We offer ourselves so that no others may not burden themselves with sin.” She smiled warmly and without worry as the winds whipped past us. The whistling howl of air catching a rising torrent of screams that couldn’t be mistaken for the waves beneath us.
My gaze lifted and I saw the teeth of the creature gnashing at a leisurely pace while the hoards of worshippers continued to march onward. Even as their bodies were crushed and bones were torn and minced. They continued ever forward with nothing but smiles on their faces. Twisted and open in howls of delight as they were welcomed inside the titanic covenant they worshipped.
Even as a girl I found it incomprehensible. The idolisation of something so alien, centuries old and stagnant. Something that had never moved and had all but lost any purpose was still so important to these people.
I tried to still my walking and my mother noticed. A slight jerk in her own posture before she looked at me with soft eyes.
“My dear, it’s ok.” She sighed as her knees creaked under her weight. “It’s ok to be afraid. It’s ok to be scared. But hear my words now. My mother told me these same words and they gave me comfort then as they will you now.”
The brush of cloth and skin around me as no one paid mind to our stillness pushed me closer to my mother’s arms. Warming me from the biting cold air and shielding me from the putrid hotness of breath behind her.
“Giving everything to what you believe is not a fool's quest. We know there’s something beyond this, something bigger than ourselves.” She stroked my hair with her hand as she whispered. “This is love sweetheart. Love is not a fickle thing and not something to forsake.”
She stood up from her crouched position and let herself get swept up in the crowds. I felt my face twist as the many millions of mandibles pierced the skin in her arms and legs.
I tugged on her blouse. A desperate yet vain attempt to pry the only person of any significance out of the jaws of this beast. Instead all I achieved was tearing off a chunk of indeterminable chunk of rapidly liquifying flesh that burned into my forearm.
I fell back as I watched my plush toy meld with the slime and graft itself into my skin. My mouth was still flapping open as tears stung my face.
My eyes switched up and now the only thing I could see was the profane spread of elastic veins and organs splayed out in a brilliant spectacle of translucent plastic. The golden light passed through her widening form as I could only watch as the mandibles swallowed up the pieces one by one. My mother was barely able to articulate a final croaking call that was swept up into the sound of grinding chitinous flesh.
“It is better to have died in the name-” Her garbled speech was silenced by the razor sharp crustacean leg that punctured her head with a vibrant pop of colour. The viscous and thick soup of her brain plastered its claw before she was swept away to be replaced by another. Then another, and another, and another, and another.
I wept then. Not for the death of my mother and the absence of her that my being now felt. I tried to bring my hands up to pat at my tears and felt the head of my toy batting at my face. A soft kiss to my forehead that splattered the acidic gel across my brow. Now having lost its potency.
I cannot remember which direction my legs carried me. The fear of a world without my mother spurring me on to a single minded course. A devotion that I did not stray from until the burning encircled me. Of golden radiant light that hugged my form and lifted me away from the maw of that cavernous demon.
Was I gone now? Was I free? My body felt light and flowed with the weight of unnatural rhythms that existed around me. Ribbons and ropes that pulled and tugged in vast separate directions amid that radiance and I could only move with them.
Their strength around me was tight but not restrictive as I moved alongside the current. All of us, the ropes, me and my toy that hugged my sternum, moved in a single all consuming harmony.
We were one, were many, were all that remained. A family that all twisted and sloshed around each other, working together for the beauty of holding our home together.
My face itched into a curve and my head spun as I looked for my mother. Knowing that she was here. Among the harmony that resonated within my soul I heard her. I twisted back and attempted to see where she was. Searching against the flow for even a chance at seeing her.
Only the second I stepped out of line I saw the truth of this divine place. The choir twisted and I was staring down a gullet of faces that were embedded into the moving warbling flesh of this beast. My mother called out to me again but I could not see as my face was ripped back to the dream. Leaving me with nothing as I screamed into song.
“How’s your poison?" The bartender queried as the priest pinched the ridge of bone in a vain attempt to stem the steady dripping of blood from his broken nose. Pooling in the glass beneath his bowed head and tainting the glistening gold with droplets of near black wine from his spout.
“Fine.” He muttered gruffly as he withdrew his fingers and felt the cartilage shift uncomfortably. Drawing the glass to his lips before the bartender had the chance to comment on his drinks discoloration.
“Poor service?” He asked softly. Trying to keep the conversation away from ears that were absent from the hovel they had crawled into beneath the dirt. “Too heavy on the communion wine?” He tried to humour the priest as he tapped his shoulder.
The priest didn’t bother with any rebuttal at the joke that tasted poorer than the quality of his liquor. Instead choosing to down the rest of his glass that stained his lips and rosied his cheeks.
“Another.” He demanded simply as the bell of the bar door chimed in response to his answer.
The barman’s shoulders visibly stiffened into a hard rod of iron as his gaze narrowed to pinpricks at the sight of the silhouette that washed across them both. His hand made a subtle shift beneath the counter and the clergyman recognised the click of iron.
“Leave him be.” He groaned as he waved for another drink. Already knowing who was standing behind him. The burning coals of his gaze seared into the priest’s back. Watching the alcohol continue its journey downwards into the furnace of his gut.
“They’re dead.” The figure groaned. His voice rattled the bar from the force of the train that rode deep into the mud overhead. The shaking of rotten timber and damp rock finally stilling as the second glass was placed upon the counter top.
The priest made no movement to even recognise the words that had sent the barman retreating back into the soil covered back room.
“Why should I care, Mestipholos?” He sighed as he stood out of his chair and hurled the drink back. Sucking in the liquid courage as he stepped around the counter and began searching for the place that held more of the wonderful elixir of life. Making a dull note of the rusted six inch shot gun that had been left in its owners sted.
The stranger bristled at the mention of his name. The stones shifting with his anger as the lightless hole of a silhouette refused to make any further step over the threshold.
“You were they’re shepard.” He spat angrily. His voice hissing with an exhale of warm breath. “Their keeper, their father. How could you not care that a flock has been culled back to barely a handful?” The priest lifted his hand again to massage the deep bags under his eyes. His fingers quickly catching the blood from such ugly welts and smearing it across his face in a striking blossom of war paint.
“A poisoned patch is worthy of no harvest.” He replied softly as he firmly brought both hands down to clutch his glass. The red marking seared into everything he touched while he tried to keep the handle of the death stick in his periphery.
“Did your mother raise you to live by such selfish idioms?” He spat again. His boots shifted half an inch closer to the priest as his toe crossed the space between the mud hole and wooden board. Not yet. The priest thought quietly as his lips flattened into a taught line.
“My mother didn’t raise me at all.” He quipped back. His unassuming tone strengthened thanks to the power of the drink in his hand. More fuel for the fire in his belly. “Matter of fact, I don’t think she raised you either.” He had thought that little jib would have been enough to send Mestipholos into enough of a rage to finally break the seal and bid himself entry to the shallow hole of his wayward despair.
Unfortunately no such luck was found as the silhouette’s fists ground into firm crushing pistons. The shimmer of his gleaming iron catching the light above him and sending a wincing shiver along the priest’s brow.
“Do you wish to so flagrantly shirk your duties?” He growled as his arms started to lift away from his mountainous body. The arms of a great tree that stood planted firmly in the passageway. “This isn’t a game fool-”
“Yes it is.” The priest hummed at the clink of his glass against the warping wood. “You treated the matter of men’s lives like a game. You’re only upset because I have started playing by my rules instead of yours for once.” The silhouette paused at the priest’s words. A mirage shimmering in the air behind him as his anger burned through the light. Ripping the moisture up from his heels in the same violent evaporation that thrust his revolver into hand.
The metal point of his barrel caught the light in a burning star as his scowl deepened.
“Maybe I am bitter.” He ground his teeth as he took one step further. “But at least I play-”
The sound of buckshot scattering into flesh cracked through the air as the body of Mephistopheles hit the floor with a heavy thud. The barrel of the shotgun smouldered with the remnants of a blazing pyre that had now been emptied of any treasure.
The priest stepped around the counter until he came to look down at the lifeless eyes of the man who had trodden on sacred ground so carelessly. His life being forfeit the second he had crossed that fine line in the mud.
“I wish I was sorry brother.” The priest murmured as he stepped over the doorway and into the mud. Treading away and out of that pit in the dirt. All the while the cadaver of his attacker lay silent as the railway tracks screamed overhead. Crying out at their unabsolved sins.
‘Children. It’s time to leave the library,’ Rebecca shuffled on her hands and knees from cubicle to cubicle as the high chirp sang out across the grey caulk of the dividers. Its voice was an uncanny imitation of over eagerness, as though streamed from a television set.
She winced at the rough carpet that chaffed against her palms, irritating the already inflamed gash that slunk around knuckles.
The carpet scratched her palms as she dashed into the next booth. She’d made it towards the centre of the office space and the other thing had still followed her from the library. Though she was nearly out. A rough guess estimated that she couldn’t be more than twenty meters from that upward slope.
Close, tantalisingly close to freedom from the other thing’s pursuit.
She cursed under her breath as she stuffed her bleeding hand into the front of her sweater. The wool was no less rough than the carpet but at least it severed any kind of trail for her attacker to follow.
Rebecca took a brief reprieve from the awkward crawl as her eyes caught the circular spiral of masking tape. The last of her tape, bandages, glue or needles had depleted so long ago that she had grown accustomed to shoving crumpled notes into makeshift bags.
She shuffled beneath the desk in a swift roll as her wrist bumped its edge. Her fingers knocked the ring into her palm before tearing away a stripe of translucent yellow material.
The sticky underside tightened over the weeping gash and tugged the cavernous cut shut. Smearing the blood into a contained pocket that pillowed under the touch of her soot covered fingers. It was a poor bandage but it would do for now, even as the rich smell of iron filled her nostrils.
However she had far greater problems than the sting in her hand. The librarian wasn’t anything new to her. Faster than most of the other things and one of the few capable of speech. Of course she usually resided in her library. Focused on her obsessive organisation of books and ledgers that chanted and pleaded with their nagging mother.
It was unfathomably odd that she would come this far into the office. But the why wasn’t Rebecca’s problem right now.
She threw herself onto her back and let her hand shoot down to the satchel bag by her side. Her fingers thumbed through the stitches of the old jacket, now repurposed to hold nails, screws, ropes, bulbs, cups, ceramics and markers. One of which her fingers encircled and thumbed the cap off in a practised flick.
Rolling out from beneath the desk into a low crouch, she circled where the tape had lain, before having pilfered its treasure. She scribbled symbols onto its bare face, her own reminder if she ever happened back to the office cubicles. Maybe she would be lucky enough and find another item like the screwdriver. Always returning to its place in the scene when she wasn’t watching.
But this was not the time to dwell. The slurp of rancid fat gliding through the lanes of cubicles sent her back onto her stomach. Ears strained as that jovial whistle sung over her head.
‘It’s time to leave the library, children,’ the other thing said as Rebecca shuffled onward, clambering for safety against the trenches of a battlefield she had no will to fight in, ‘Daddy will miss you dearly.’
The mention of a father sent a cascade of dread clawing along her spine. Was it another, other thing that the librarian answered to?
It didn’t matter as the end of the cubicle rows came into view. A two meter wide path that lacked obstruction. More than that however it lacked cover or safety. She’d made dashes like that before but never with danger so near.
Her fingers worked faster as she scrambled, now without care for the noise she made, towards the exit. Her eyes landed on the black void that slanted upwards at such an angle climbing would be impossible.
Rebecca paid no mind though as her hands heaved up the weighted cable that had been encircled with string lights. Ones that danced across her bronze skin as weak comforts to defend against the dark.
‘Come now children,’ the scream of cubicle dividers, chairs and desks smashing against each other launched her into action. Her fingers dug into the cord as a serrated claw sliced her ankle to ribbons. The barbed fingers left a thick string of mildew that stunk of spoiled fish intestines.
Rebecca kicked out hard against the claw of the other thing. Inadvertently driving the spikes deeper into the shredded meat of her ankle and raising a wet gasp from her lungs. Her eyes throbbed with fresh tears as she fought to keep hold, knowing her fate should she lose her grip. The ghoulish image of a body suspended in acidic webbing flashed through her mind's eye.
The threat of death was all she needed to force herself away from the librarian, who still clawed at her leg. Her flesh ripped under the strain as muscle fibres tore into viscous ribbons. Forming a fresh bloom of red that sprayed outward as Rebecca vanished into the dark.
Illuminated by little more than the dancing Christmas string lights.
*
‘Sugar,’ Rebecca said, biting her lip as the censored curse escaped her mouth. Her hands flexed around the sheets that she’d torn away from the endless rows of mattresses amid the vast skyless space.
Glancing up from the makeshift splint her eyes rested on the doorframe that sat a block away from her. Its silhouette rose up as a dark sentinel surrounded by waiting white tombs.
Rebecca shivered as her hands yanked the knot taught. Tensing as she hopped up to stand.
The pain was immediate as her weight shifted over and a groan shot out into the sky above.
A faint taste of salt bit into her tongue with every shaky inhale as she tried to centre herself. Drawing her gaze along the horizon of fog.
This was a bad place to stop. She didn’t often come to the mattress room, everything was too much, more so than any other room in this neverland that had swept her away in her sleep.
Her eyes kept drifting back to that doorway. Monitoring it, out of the not entirely unfounded fear that it would vanish if her gaze wandered for too long.
She started to plod back towards that doorway. Determined to vanish into the dark once more. She wasn’t further than a metre from the doorway when her entire body froze.
Every muscle seized up as she shivered to the tune of eight six inch claws. Great daggers that pierced the veil of the threshold. Digging deep into the wood as they urged the bulging mass of obnoxious syrupy sweetness onwards.
‘It’s time to go home,’ the other thing said in its low, slurred registry.
Rebecca’s one good leg didn’t need more reason to flee.
Her brain’s impulses barely pushed down the agony which tore through her. Tears streamed down her reddened cheeks as the salt mist whipped her face. The fog’s grasp parted around her before the long rolling clouds yanked her into its icy embrace.
Rebecca’s pace wavered as her vision was taken by the blanket of pearlescent white.
Her hands rested on the edge of the nearest mattress. The plush cotton was soaked under her fingers. The salt on the air was thicker now. Flush full of the rich mineral that made her throat run dry while her ears met the sound of… waves? That couldn’t be right.
The space, to Rebecca’s experience, had never manifested anything that drew upon the natural world. Were there really waves here? Her head spun on a swivel as she sought an answer. Any hope taken by the opaque cloud walls around her.
The wet bandage of her leg only added to the futility of her search. Its constant weight dragged her back towards the distant voice of the other thing.
Rebecca stumbled under the mounting stress and crumpled like a man made of hay.
Her frame sprawled out against the moist tiles and she, without a second thought, rolled beneath the nearest bed frame.
She lay still, unmoving as the sound of slurping fat on polished tiles slithered behind her.
The sweat dripped from her brow and sent one hand scuffling to hold herself steady while fingers dug into the ridges of her forehead. Her eyes shifted towards the sound of that sluggish form sucking its way over the floor.
She was met with the base of colossal, indescribably inhuman bulk. Oil slick folds rising over stumps of limbless slime that bubbled and broiled in a shifting tide of flesh. All of which slithered up beyond the edge of the mattress. Obscuring its torso from her gaze.
Rebecca was positively saturated by the oppressive heat that pulsed out of the other thing. But more than any of its excessive flab she found herself most revolted by its smell.
It was sweet. Delicate and left her mouth yearning with an ache. One that would only be quenched if she stole away a piece. Just a morsel of the other thing.
‘It’s time to go home,’ it said, its voice too high and too low simultaneously. It was as though multiple people were doing their best to imitate the voice of a singular creature. A choir for the whole.
That union of its throat forced back the tantalising thought of biting off a piece of rancid lard. Her face twisted in revulsion at her own putrid thoughts. She had been clueless to the vile craving set upon her by this other thing.
She’d always been ready before. Steeling her mind against the horrors of this place. But the way this thing twisted her through nothing but odour, the way it seemed to remold the canals of her grey matter, frightened her to an extent she’d never known.
‘Dear, you should come home,’ the droning waver of its voice carried far as Rebecca started to crawl. Keeping as silent as a falling hair.
‘Come home now, your mother misses you,’ the smooth ground had gradually given way to a jagged rockface which sliced at her sweater.
‘Why don’t you come home?’ the choir had become more refined, more familiar.
‘We all miss you,’
Still Rebecca crawled. One hand in front of the other, trying to mitigate the pain that would shoot through her palms as the skin was peppered with red blistered pockmarks.
Marks that erupted in fury as her arm plunged into a freezing broth of saltwater that sloshed up her sleeve to the elbow.
The unexpected shock of freezing water caught her so off guard that she was unable to stifle her squeamish cry.
Her teeth clamped together as her eyes squeezed shut. The silence was deafening in its weight as she lay still against the cold rocks. Waiting for something, anything to happen and break that agonising quiet.
Her wish was granted when the weight of that gargantuan thing slammed into her from behind. As though it had accelerated to full gallop in total silence.
Tender meat sunk onto her skin, tallow smeared along its folds and onto her face while flecks of saltwater lashed her back. The pair of them falling entangled into the swell of the sea.
Panic escaped her along with a torrent of bubbles that were replaced by the sting of saltwater. Accompanied by the sweet tang of the other thing’s slime.
Her vision exploded into an eclectic display of colours beyond definability. The flavours that lingered in the water attached to the other thing.
The numb sensation in her arms was starting to set in now. The absence of feeling that was gradual in its rise from her fingers to knuckles, to wrists, to elbows.
Rebecca’s tongue shifted amid the daze, tickling the underside of a fleshy tube within her gullet. A proboscis that was feeding a sensory cocktail that reshaped her vision itself. She could smell the colours, hear the flavours and taste the sounds.
It was unlike anything she’d ever known. Only for a sharp tug to catch her lip and flip her above the other thing that continued to plummet. Her mind started to kick back as her mouth shot open.
She still had a chance. Rebecca could only see the motion of her arms yanking the tube at her mouth. No sensation in touching it until it abruptly snapped out of her throat and raced out of her at a horrifying pace.
Now she was kicking. Pushing off the water and diving up towards the light as she took the chance that she needed. The other thing fading beneath her as she broke the surface and breathed in a hungry breath of oxygen.
Laying on her back. Adrift on the chill of cool, resting water.
She would sink soon. The other thing’s tube had lacerated her insides, not that she knew that yet. But for that moment, as she took continuously shallower breathes. She had survived and was now allowed to nurse hope in her heart.
