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The setting for All Of Them VVitches is just full of cults. We've seen the masked and horned cult of the PIPER IN THE WOODS and the slimy-tentacled cult of the HUNGER IN THE GULF. There are regular Margaret Murray style witches and plague doctor sects. One of the rarer cults is that of HIS MAJESTY THE WORM. It's not really a social sort of cult. And the transformations visited upon its votaries are...abject. The lucky ones find themselves hosts for a writhing mass of HIS MAJESTY's subjects (03023, Worm Corpse, posted long ago but retouched here). Of these Ibn Schacabao has written plenty and no more need be said. But there is another manifestation of HIS MAJESTY's favor, and this is not wholesome to look upon. Too bad! You're about to look upon it! Ligotti wrote of transmogrifications like this. Perhaps the transformed cultists meet and communicate together, but if so, it is deep under the earth, and silently. Notice the strategic placement of tombstones: while it would be an insult to medicine and humanity to call this model 'anatomically complete,' it certainly will not pass decency standards uncensored. As above, so below. as it were. This horrible model is also from CP Miniatures, again their Night Terrors line. This one is listed as a Night Horror and certainly that checks out. I think I've alluded to the indie RPG "Deep Morphean Transmissions" before. The Night Horror above would be a perfect model for the Burrowing Vorm, a transdimensional gestalt entity of leech-faced creeps. I need to find some more like this, but perhaps with pants.

The Old Ways linger in rural parts. The harvest is, after all, too important to leave up to chance. The land will bring forth in plenty, but the fields must have blood. This is the ancient compact. The ground must be propitiated. Satiated. It is well known. The community is bound tighter together by the ritual, even if they don't care to talk about it. More angles of the vessel for HE WHO WALKS BEHIND THE ROWS: ] *** A great sculpt from Crooked Dice. Brigit the May Queen with the sickle and Mister Mangel the scarecrow are also from there. Reaper's Headless Footman (04031) is acting as the Master of Ceremonies. While we think of this type of agricultural folk horror as being from the Old World, as in Christopher Lee's "The Wicker Man" and Ramsey Campbell's "Ancient Images," it fits in pretty well with the American Cornlands, too. This intersection of trackless fields, nourishment, and old-time religion is one of Stephen King's obsessions (see Children of the Corn, In The Tall Grass, Secret Window, et al.). I could easily transplant this big guy to the borders of the Weird West and have it fit in just fine.

What I really love about this model is its modularity--inside and out, top and bottom, there's detail for a splendid backdrop almost everywhere. I've used the base as a stone floor in other vignettes, but finally got around to punching up the ritual circle and the interior detail. Fun with gradients! First, the circle itself! So versatile! Seen here with some Nolzur's scenery and Reaper cultists. Next, the outside: But what lies inside? (I love the spooky interior, by the way--reminds me of the sculpted paneling in the 1999 movie The Haunting.) Could it be used for licit magic? Brother Louis and Brother Roberto are certainly willing to give it the old invisible-college try!

A return to the cult of the PIPER IN THE WOODS! The cult has developed organically from a simple witch-cult as I add minis to it, and now we have a whole theme of masks, horns, purple, and miasmas. As such, the Deathclaw from Nolzur's seemed to fit in, in the same way the froghemoth fits in with the cultists of THE HUNGER IN THE GULF. First, though, let's meet the cult leader! Definitely similar to the other female cultist from Crooked Dice, but this one has a fancy staff! Procession through the dark woods: And awful supplications before this lesser servant of the Horned Lord, the Masked Master! He of the scything claws and empurpled hands! He, the famished, rampant beneath the moon! He of the green ichor! And yet this terror is but a lesser servitor of the Power he adumbrates. Note: I modified the Deathclaw with a demon skull from GW's box of skulls, because the original sculpt, while horned and bone-masked, wasn't quite horned and bone-masked ENOUGH for my tastes.

The worshippers at Saint Toad's Mere (Midlam's Kraken Cultists) have come up before. They meet at dawn on the beach to worship and call on their patron. Here they are, same as every day. But--this is NOT a day like every day. Today, their prayers are being Answered. Behold, the pale emissary of THE HUNGER IN THE GULF! "And the Beast stood on the shores of the sea." Click for full, awful turnaround. This avatar is hard to look at, from its rubbery, unwholesomely livid hide to the cracked fissures to the infinitely nested ventral mouths. You BETTER bet those can do some extradimensional shenanigans. I tried for a marble effect on the hammer but think I overshaded it. Onward, Squishian Soldiers! To new ways to shout and revel and kill! *** The Tomb-Tapper is apparently a faceless underground magic-hunter in D&D. But as soon as I saw the baggy, flaccid tentacles I knew this thing had to be related to the squid cult. The horrible mouths and cracked flesh just underscored it. I think the HUNGER IN THE GULF is a competing and opposed power to the PIPER IN THE WOODS. Neither of them are exactly "good," or even neutral. But they do give boons to those desperate enough to become their worshippers. It's always good for your setting to have multiple awful cults you can pit against each other. Either way, the HUNGER IN THE GULF is not from here originally, nor is this avatar more than a fragment of Its size and power.

Before television and the radio, and in an era of poorly-distributed literacy when the theatre was sometimes illegal (and always disreputable) you had to make your own fun. Unless you were very very wealthy; then you could pay other people to make your fun for you! A reading party might be one such thing, getting a new author to read their latest work of verse. It's causing quite a stir--some critics say it contains veiled criticisms of the King, while others say that no, it contains a satire on the Church, as cunningly hidden as it is blasphemous. The dissolute Lord Barstead is always willing to fund such outrageous artists. But what good is a shocking subversion of society's values without some Society to be scandalized? The gouty Squire and the parson are, naturally, invited. And that means vast quantities of rum punch and sherry. Also a nurse for the Squire's latest brat, as his lady wife is taking a rest cure. And of course, an extra special guest, a scintillating conversationalist, duelist, and ex-privateer laden down with the wealth of the Carolinas. Here's Lord Flashheart! (Pirate Lord, 03635a.) (There is, of course, a bitter rivalry between the Lords, and certainly both of them will be intriguing against the other.) Oh, and of course the domestic staff is on hand. Who let that pig in, anyway? In addition to several kegs of the controversial "tobacco" (the fame of which is sweeping the nation), Lord Flashheart has also brought a scientific curiosity, an exotic bird from Foreign Lands taken from a Dutch merchant vessel. He loudly and drunkenly proclaims it to be the ugliest [blasphemous oath] chicken he's ever seen. All in all, an occasion that will be gossiped about for months to come. The corpulent Squire, the Nurse, the Hog Maid, and the Man of Letters, as well as the tables and chairs and china, are from Eureka's Captive Audience. It's value for money. We've seen the Parson and the Socialites, along with Lord Barstead, before. They are from NorthStar 1672. Keen eyes will notice a certain Entrance, 77640, features prominently in the Barstead estate.

The ritual has done its work. From a distance, an eerie light shines through the trees. The ground quakes under the tread of colossal hooves. There is a rushing wind, the sound of snapping branches. An indescribable tune, notes in a strange scale and meter, music from beyond the stars, builds to a skirling crescendo. HE is come. The PIPER IN THE WOODS is here. Burning with potassium flame, attended by HIS servants. Behold! The Horned Lord approaches! Deception and concealment among HIS sacraments! The Masked Messenger, the False-Faced! IA! IA! The power of a God, called to earth! HIS votaries rejoice, even as they cower! WHAT. HAVE. WE. BROUGHT. FORTH (This is a Nolzur's Nightwalker, given a little bit mote pizazz than the all-black example. I knew immediately that with the bone-mask face and the horns, it was the perfect avatar for the cultists. GW contrasts and good setting sunlight on the translucent flames; a GW demon skull from their Skullz set manifested in the upraised hand.) Featuring Dulkathar, Gromtar, Dark Creeper, a couple of Crooked Dice cultists, and Dark Young from RAFM and Reaper. (Reaper's 77516 is the big one in green).