Análisis de Ricketts

“You,” the old woman hissed as she pointed at him, cradling the head of her granddaughter in her lap. The young woman looked peaceful and beautiful despite the odd and ugly angle at which her neck was bent.

Billy Brady looked away sheepishly, the sudden movement causing his head to spin. His skin felt flush but not from the old woman’s accusation. He eyed the clay jug that lay broken on the ground, the last of its contents being soaked up by the dirt. The sight made his heart heavy. It had been the best hooch he’d ever had, brewed special by that strange little man he’d happened upon on his journey to town.

Their chance meeting had been quite lucky, since Billy had finished off the watery swill in his flask with just a few miles to go.

At first Billy hadn’t been sure if he could trust the little man when he had offered him a swig to wet his whistle. After all, Billy was no fool, and he’d never seen a still like the one the man had.

It was a crazy contraption that sat upon the man’s head and reached to the sky with all manner of twisting and turning pipes and stacks, blowing white steam this way and that. Despite Billy’s reservations, however, the brown elixir the man offered had smelt like nothing Billy had ever experienced. In the end, his thirst erod-ed his trepidation, and he accepterod-ed the tiny glass from the man.

It had been the most delicious, amazing booze Billy had ever tasted. It was so good, Billy’s legs began dancing a joyous jig, and he had whooped and hollered with glee as the liquid made its way down his throat. In moments, however, the feeling was gone, and Billy’s heart sank as the man asked if he’d like to purchase a jug for his journey.

The little man just smiled when Billy told him he had no money. He handed Billy the jug and said with a mischievous glint in his eye, “Oh, there’s no coin in the world can pay the price for this brew o’ mine. The only payment I desire comes from the bottom of the empty jug.”

Now that silly, careless girl had ruined it. Billy mourned; she’d spilled the stranger’s spirit, a taste that Billy was sure he’d never know again. How he’d give anything to have that jar back in his hand once more, that magical liquid dancing past his lips, across his tongue, and down his throat.

After all, what reason did this girl have for playing in middle of the . . .

Billy looked around at his surroundings and slowly realized he was standing in a grassy meadow, the soft green grasses trampled down behind him where his cart had come through before he’d collided with the girl.

Strange, he mused, where had the road gone?

The old woman followed his gaze to the broken jar, and she howled in anguish . . .

Excerpt from the Rynnish folktale “The Jughead”

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FACES OF THE WICKED HARVEST

Man often views Menoth’s gift of the Sheaf as a way to ward off famine and starvation. With it, man no longer needed to rely on his own skill and luck as a hunter or a gatherer. Instead, with his own hands, he was able to enforce his desire upon nature to grow sustenance in a methodical and controlled way. In many ways, the gift of the Sheaf perfectly reflects the character of Menoth: a need to control and dominate, to wrest what is desired through pure force of will rather than accept the natural state of things.

The truth of the Sheaf, however, is not that it saved man from hunger and starvation. In reality, before the Sheaf, man rarely wanted for a full belly. In his small tribes, only in rare times of extreme conditions was man unable to find what he needed to subsist. No, the reason man so happily wrapped the chains of the Sheaf upon his wrists and ankles was that through it came the irresistible flow of alcohol. It was this discovery, more than any other, that resulted in the proliferation of cities and the widespread adoption of Menoth’s gifts by mankind. Man flocked to the unnatural stone cities, which were fountains of this new drink.

Soon, this easy access to alcohol started rotting the soul. Worse still, the damaging effects of Menoth’s other “gifts” only accelerated this rot. As man found his soul atrophying from the confinement of city walls, he turned to the warmth of drink to ease his anxiety. When his self-worth was shattered by another deemed more worthy by birthright, he could wash away his bitterness with drink. When man came in from the field with his very bones aching from endless toil, spirits could numb his pain.

At every turn, alcohol eroded man’s will and freedom, washing away the truth of his inner divinity and leaving him in a sort of numb stupor, while the manacles of Menoth’s Gifts were finally locked for all eternity about his soul.

It is no surprise that some of the earliest grymkin came from the souls of those corrupted by alcohol. Their reliance on drink in life meant their souls were never tested or allowed to flourish, remaining weak and guttering. Their pathetic spirits, confused and sluggish, became easy prey for the Defiers in Urcaen.

Cask imps are among these lesser souls rotted through indulging on alcohol. Standing misshapen and four feet high, the sight of a cask imp is far from terrifying. Like many of the lesser grymkin, their oversized features and clumsy demeanor leads them to appear quite comical on first encounter. Given their intense love of spirits, cask imps are among the few grymkin common to urban areas. Their preferred habitat is the alcohol-filled cellars and storehouses of taverns and inns.

Cask imps are formed from the souls of those who waste their lives away, forfeiting any potential for good works or relationships for one more swig of liquor or one more pint of frothy ale. While their actions are not malicious, their obsession with drink still leads to significant hurt to both themselves and those closest to them.

Before the arrival of the Wicked Harvest, the worst evils these grymkin visited upon people was to cause a proprietor’s alcohol stores to “mysteriously” vanish, as the cask imp moved from one barrel to the next, draining each from within. Sometimes, when particularly full of spirits, the presence of a cask imp could lead to increasingly crude and rambunctious behavior among a tavern’s patrons, as the cask imp’s supernatural aura amplified the corruption of alcohol upon the mind and body.

Though also born in a similar fashion as the cask imps, the mad caps are far more malicious and dangerous. The souls that become mad caps are drunkards whose vice led directly to physical suffering and the death of innocents around them.

The person whose drunken carelessness leads to the death of his fellow workers in an avoidable accident, who terrorizes his family with cheap whiskey on his breath, who spends his last coin on a bottle of drink instead of medicine for his sick child, is likely to become a mad cap. For these wretched and wicked souls, their afterlife as a grymkin becomes focused on fueling the destructive actions of others. The mad caps delight in taking in a wayward soul and watering the budding rot within them with their own potent brews.

28 FACES OF THE WICKED HARVEST

To taste the mad caps’ fermentations is to taste damnation itself. The distilled spirits that pour forth from the mad caps’

demented stills burn their way down the drinker’s throat with a fire and potency unmatched by any mortal brew. With only a single slug, the world begins to spin, and the imbiber feels his guts roil and churn. No matter the subject’s protestations, mad caps continue to proffer drink after drink, forcing a victim to imbibe if need be. Soon, the victim’s body transforms, as his mortal form sloughs away to reveal the twisted thing his soul has become. If the drunk who sips the mad cap’s brew is just a sluggish oaf and drunkard, it becomes a simple imp. If, though, the drinker is of the other sort, a violent or careless drunk who caused others to suffer and die, then the transformation brings yet another mad cap into the ranks of the grymkin.

The ability to create cask imps and fellow brewers is only one part of the mad caps’ true purpose. For when a cask imp imbibes the mad caps’ brew, a violent and volatile reaction occurs within it. Their vision blurred and balance precarious, the cask imps race forward with reckless abandon in their drunken stupor, until they trip over rough ground or collide with some other object. When they do, the sudden impact causes the roiling brew within them to explode with violent and destructive force, engulfing everything nearby in an alcohol-fueled fireball. Mad caps take delight in seeing the pitiable imps explode in such a fashion and cheer with every flaming death they cause.

With the arrival of the Defiers, the mad caps have been given free rein to unleash their wicked brews like never before. Set up at trade posts and way stations, on caravan routes and dockside alleys, anywhere thirsty travelers might want a drink or two, they have heard their masters’ call. These grymkin brew masters have had no lack of cask imps eager to sample their wares.

Despite the unpredictability—and outright volatility—of this pair, the Defiers prize the mad caps and the cask imps for the sheer chaos their destructive nature sows. And with the seed of drunkenness sown in so much of mankind, the ranks of these two types of grymkin continue to swell with each passing day as the Defiers reap their Wicked Harvest.

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FACES OF THE WICKED HARVEST

By Will Hungerford

Engines of Destruction is a new game that allows you to play with your Battle Engines from WARMACHINE or HORDES in a derby-style racing game filled with catastrophic carnage. Engines of Destuction does not use any of the normal rules for WARMACHINE and HORDES.

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