Hommlet, A Light In The Darkness

Chapter 1 – With A Faint Spark

Prologue

This is the beginning of a series of articles chronicling my first Kingdom Death Monster campaign, a solo endeavor into one of the most mind-bending thematic games to exist. Kingdom Death is a cooperative game featuring three phases of play – The Hunt, The Showdown, and The Settlement.

On The Hunt, players track a quarry, a nightmare beast inhabiting this dark alien realm. You encounter strange happenings and risk your life to pursue your target.

During The Showdown the prey is encountered in all of its glory. The creature, cornered, fights with extreme fury and will give its all to claim your soul. The stakes are high and death is commonplace, like a drink of water or breath of air.

The Settlement is the only moment of respite on this insufferable odyssey. Returning to town, the survivors drag their fortune back to town in the form of severed limbs and pulsing organs. Items are crafted and nerves are steeled in preparation to repeat the cycle. All roads leading to the eventual appearance of the Watcher and a reckoning as magnificent as the bleak enveloping black.

This is Kingdom Death. This is the story of Hommlet.

The Beginning

Abel awoke not only to the throbbing wall of pain inhabiting his skull but to a cold prick of pressure on his shoulder. Snapping his eyes open, his clouded vision focused on the guarded woman standing before him, a beleaguered creature with a hint of beauty beyond her tangled hair and bruised face. The area around her eyes was covered in a chalky black ink and gave a sinister impression, but her soul pierced through the veil and could not be hidden.

Beth reached down to Abel, not to offer a hand but to give him a cracked piece of rock Elijah had torn from the ground. The surface of this foreign nightmare was littered with stone faces, staring up towards the void as if they await a greater fate.

Elijah stood at the edge of their lanterns, a stone wall peering into the sea of gloom and fixating on…something. His visage was almost statuesque, mimicking the rough cobble of expressions beneath their callused feet. He clutched a sharp fragment in his hand, blood trickling from the gashes on his fingers and forming a slow drip like crimson rain on a marbled crowd below.

Sara was trembling in the middle of the group. She was grasping her lantern like it was a newborn babe in one hand and wielding her own makeshift blade in the other, swiping about as if to ward off an approaching enemy.

And then Abel saw it. Two red points of light in the shadow, directly beyond Elijah floated like a crouched specter about to loose its fury. When the white beast tore into the light it nearly took the man’s head in its first pass. Abel froze gaining full view of the lion’s outline and taking in its enormous presence. It terrified him, not because he was afraid to die, but because in that moment he couldn’t fathom what lay beyond death if some horrendous entity had created this new world he had entered.

Thinking back on it now, a series of very distinct memories punctuates an otherwise horrendous blur. It’s as if Abel could remember the vilest of moments in a macabre nightmare. When the white lion tore into the group, he could distinctly remember how unorganized and weak they all seemed. Like stuffed toys for it to pounce and rend as if it had nothing better to occupy its time with. Perhaps it took them too lightly. Indeed, underestimating the ferocity and survivability of man.

Early in the bloodshed it certainly made their pale race look feeble. He certainly remembered its roar, tearing into their consciousness and rending their thoughts like a man’s open skull beneath a boot. The monster’s gluttonous voice still spoke to him when his eyes closed, a partner in the darkness and a hunter in his sleep. The rest of his life would be spent evading the beast and there was no where he could hide.

It became enraged when Sara hurled her founding stone, tearing a large gash in its side. Its primal nature lead to a series of blows that saw Abel’s left quadriceps shredded and would leave him with a limp to cement the encounter deeper into his flesh. When Sara saw the blood flowing and the lion’s guttural celebration something snapped in the soft part of her existence and her soul bent. She collapsed like a pile of tossed garments and let out a horrendous shriek.

Elijah had remained the group’s staunchest beacon of hope. He confronted the terror head on like a battering ram against the most unrelenting gate. Eventually the tide would turn as a nasty slice to the lion’s abdomen would coat the faces below in crimson and leave the animal with its guts trailing underneath its body like a fifth limb.

I took this moment of shock as the beast froze in anguish to sever its massive tail with my jagged rock. It took three slices and all of the strength that remained for me to loose the massive protrusion from its core. The lifeblood that flowed from mangled lingament coated me in a warm bath of ichor that threatened to choke what little life I had left from my body.

Yet it wasn’t over.

It leapt from the center of the pack and took a swipe across Beth’s skull in parting. When the opening occurred it stormed towards Sara in the distance, determined to take one of us off into the night. With her mind shattered and weapon gone, the bleak scene looked like a fellowship at rock bottom.

That’s when, through the crimson and shit in my eyes, I saw Sara disappear beneath the behemoth. Her arms flailing, grasping for fur, anything. They found the lion’s throat as she unleashed a reserve of strength far beyond her own existence. Its windpipe was nearly crushed as she dug her fingers into its soft flesh beneath the mottled exterior. It was attempting to close its jaw on her head but was in a fight for survival as it gasped for air and nearly collapsed. Then we struck.

The three of us fell upon the white devil, digging into its spine with claw, tooth, and rock. Unleashing geysers of blood. Long after the animal slept we stopped striking. Our fingers worn to the bone and palms shredded beneath our own savagery. It was dead and we had survived.

Hommlet, A Bonfire In The Sea

We found Hommlet not far from where we gutted the lion beast. Hauling pieces of its flesh and handfuls of bone we stumbled upon the pile of lanterns and the small collection of lost souls. It was the closest thing to shelter we had and we wouldn’t let it slip through our fingers. This wasn’t quite home but it would be the closest analogue in our new prison.

It was Elijah who stepped forward amongst the group and formed the first words in his mouth. He led us, with resolve and courage, lifted us above our hammered vessels and caressed our spirits. In the aftermath of violence we found language. In the wake of language we found solidarity. And from solidarity we found structure.

The Organ Grinder, Skinnery, and Bone Smith sprang from our accomplishments and the place was a bustle with activity. We forged daggers from the lion’s bone, chest plates of its torn fur. We prepared ourselves for survival and welcomed the coming war with what little resolve remained.

My relationship with Beth happened unexpectedly. I try to recall the details but they do not come, enshrouded by a roaring lion with ivory fur. Impenetrable and hard like the ground we sleep upon. When…he was born we were filled with joy. That first stretch of eternity was peaceful, the camp was prosperous and danger managed to fade into the nether. Yet, peace was punctured by the loss. Beth along with our child would perish in agony during that moment, as beauty would turn to horror on the edge of a razor. Celebration and elation was snuffed out like a torch thrust into a black lake of grime and muck. My being permanently twisted and thrown aside.

[Large decision here that could have really set the tone for this campaign. The camp could have devolved into cannibalism, repurposing Beth’s broken body, or put it below the hard ground to find eternal peace.]

The burial was the saddest moment in a world of them. Somehow, the rest of them found understanding and wisdom in it. It strengthened their nerves farther and gave them purpose. Not me. It broke me. Crushed my soul and wore me to a nub. I would not return to the valley of darkness as I couldn’t bear it. I retreated into my own inner hell, locked into an existential battle against a god full of hate. Hommlet and this extended cancer of existence is all I’ll know.

Kingdom Death: Monster - Hommlet: Chapter 1

Charlie Theel

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