In a recent volume of
our journal, the scholar Duncan catalogued – with accuracy – the
many known
oozes associated
with Sutoyar the Mad, the slithering legacy of that lunatic some six millennia gone. But Duncan’s work, while impeccable in many
respects, commits a childish sin: repeating the indefensible theory
(first proposed by Greevers) that Sutoyar never existed, but is some
convenient
composite
upon which to heap historical blame, in the mold of Smithee the
Forger or any of a dozen criminal folk-heroes, or of Magus Greevers
himself, revealed eventually as a pen-name shared by a dozen Hathira
Cult witches in the midlands. Duncan frames this slander as if it
were sage consensus, instead of particular to the rantings of an
ignorant few. Most “modern scholars and savants” know all too
well the
reality of
Sutoyar … or at least, they know parts of it. Here, I hope to shed
my candle’s light on just a little more.
The Maniple of Regret
I should begin by noting
that the term
vestments is
used commonly, but inexactly, when referring to Sutoyar’s
ensorcelled garments. In truth, only three of the known items are
certain to be priestly
garb. At scholarly gatherings, I am often asked: was Sutoyar a priest
at all? Indeed he was, many times over, serving as clergy to the
cults of dark demigods, devils, vile elemental lords, and eventually,
in his later years, to
himself,
once he declared his own divinity. To this day, there are Sutoyar
cults, and in those (each the “true” one), Sutoyar remains both
deity
and the Grand
Pontiff (for ‘twas his title) since his death has never been
acknowledged by the faithful.
The
Maniple of Regret is among the more
sumptuous
of Sutoyar’s vestments, fashioned from black damask silk, with
bone-white tassels of a shimmering material none have identified.
Worn loosely over the left arm (in the manner of a waiter’s
napkin), the Maniple is ill-suited for action (a stiff breeze,
jogging, or doing
anything
useful with that arm might dislodge it) but the compromise is worth
considering, as the Maniple is a
shield
of great strength, effortlessly drawing physical blows toward itself.
Arrows, quarrels and the like are
dissolved
in a fetid but nourishing steam that Sutoyar found both delicious and
arousing (Belton, p.109,112). Hand-weapons are held fast, used as
conduits to pump nightmare-magic to their wielder, sinking them into
waking dreams of the vilest sort, until the attacker crumples in
terror, and the weapon cracks to ashes (Scavius,
Little
Songs, book IV).
The last known owner of
the Maniple was no priest, but a collector, Rinson the Eager. Rumor
has it, Rinson had it stolen for his collection from one of the
Sutoyar cults, and that any charitable donation to those twisted
faiths (they can be found begging alms in many a village) might serve
to pay for Rinson’s assasination. Rinson, it is said,
seeks the
six remaining vestments, and if
he succeeds, he’d be the first to own all seven since Sutoyar
himself.
The Blooded Bliaut
Opposite the chased-silk finery of the Maniple lay
this humble bliaut, a common woolen garment ubiquitous in Sutoyar’s
time. One aspect of the bliaut’s magic is apparent immediately to
those who know its age: the many bloodstains spattering the garment,
though millennia old, gleam with freshness, and even bear the meaty,
metallic stink of blood spilt fresh.
Sutoyar wore the
bliaut as part of a disguise, in which he imagined he could “pass
as an ordinary man” and hear the conspiratorial whispers of those
dwelling near his estates (Hunterman, p.8,11,14-16). In his madness,
however, he had no subtlety of disguise, and simply stuffed his more
ornate garb under the bliaut, stuck a piece of straw in his mouth
(Belsic, p.32), and wandered the grounds speaking in a thick
imitation of the local accent. No one
believed
the disguise, but none dared to admit it.
The Blooded Bliaut, once enchanted, is now
haunted, though it’s a fine
distinction in this case. In order to have “a commoner’s
insight,” Sutoyar had slaughtered a chapman and his wife, and bound
their souls (or at least their memories, given voice) to the garment,
and they would speak to him as he role-played an ordinary man,
whispering to him the right way to speak, the right things to know,
and not to know. At some point during the Ninth Spectre War this
enchantment broke, and the garment – once washed clean of the blood
of the ritual murder – acquired the blood afresh. The spirits, no
longer meek consultants on matters mundane, became more driven, more
purposeful, and more
violent in their desires. At first, Sutoyar embraced this change with
delight, until (Yivvers, vol. 8-9 inclusive) he came to realize that
the mad ghosts were madder even than he. Soaked with yet more blood,
and forced to endure screams too foul to enjoy, Sutoyar removed the
garment and never wore it again, except to bed.
The present location of
the Bliaut is a matter of some debate, but a clutch of monastic
necromancers in the port of Virtog specialize in “ever-fresh blood”
magics, so they would be strongly motivated to possess the Bliaut for
that, and comparably obvious, reasons.
The Scaled Orarion
Sutoyar is remembered for many things: his
menagerie of oozes, his deadly puzzles, his automata, his vast and
deadly manse, his casual approach to mass murder, his devotion to
children’s charities.
Visually,
though, he is most clearly remembered for (and depicted wearing) his
“scaled scarf,” technically an Orar (Orarian) from the Cult of
Black Thalex, believed (Vulnetti, p.60) to be the cult in which
Sutoyar learned his earliest spells. Indeed, the Scaled Orarian might
be Sutoyar’s first work of enchantment.
But for all its
fame, the Scaled Orarion is misunderstood, overshadowed by its own
legend. There are many accounts of it being a kind of “turns into
an enormous snake” sort of garment, of the sort still popular today
(Ninra, p.40, 47). I have witnessed the scarf’s magic firsthand,
and I can attest that it does
not
become a serpent, though it’s easy to imagine – with it’s
glistening satin snake-scale design – how such legends might be
born. Rather, the Scaled Orarion is more akin to magic rope. It can
slither and constrict, bind a target in knots, bear considerable
weight for climbing, and in all other ways perform as a supple limb
under the wearer’s mental command. We may consider these its
primary power, but not its only one ...
The more
surprising property of the Scaled Orarion is its ability to defy the
shape of local space, wrapping around its wearer, apparently
consuming him, and
folding itself into a small, neat object easily mistaken for a purse
or cloth-bound journal. When thus contained, the wearer is safe in an
adjacent universe, impervious to harm and unreachable by most magics.
Only the skillful unfolding of the Orarian will reveal the wearer …
and release him. For, dangerously, allowing one’s self to be
consumed by the Orarian is one-way trip to placid unconsciousness
(complete with dreams of snowy meadows, lit with sunset gold, where
the dreamer may wander and
browse echoes of Sutoyar’s own
emotions). If no outsider then
solves the Orarian’s enigma of unearthly folds, the wearer will be
trapped, unharmed but helpless, forever. Why did Sutoyar want such an
option? Unknowable, for he was mad, but my personal experience has
confirmed that some of the owners
since
have made unscrupulous use of the garment, tricking the innocent into
it, and leaving them there until they could be discreetly removed and
dealt with.
I write with
authority on this garment for I have owned it now for years, insuring
that it does no harm. I myself was its prisoner, placed there by
Humalis the Savage and left for generations, un-aging, resting with
the ancient feelings of Sutoyar, while my children and grandchildren
grew old and died, and while my libraries were plundered by my
students. No matter, for I emerged sane and lucid, as the reader will
certainly attest (see also Nugris,
Book of Sane Scholars,
volume 5). I have allowed many a fellow sage to study the garment
while it remains in my care but, Rinson, if you are reading this, my
refusal stands. It is mine; there is no price at which you might buy
it.
The Carrion Clownshoes of Sang
Unique among Sutoyar’s fabled vestments are the
Carrion Clownshoes, for, of the seven, these are the only Sutoyar
himself did not craft. Rather, he
won them in sorcerous battle from Lung Sang, Master of Dragon
Corpses, on the occasion of Sang’s violent death, and the beginning
of his servitude to Sutoyar. Indeed, some fringe scholars regard the
Mustache of Lung Sang to be a kind of
eighth
vestment, but this depends on a misunderstanding of traditional
folksongs (Burghiss,
Merrye Rhimes For Alle,
p.82-90) and the manner in which the mustache was “worn.”
Sang’s shoes –
exaggerated footwear that spoke of his early days as a fire-juggling
dancer in the traditions of his homeland – were not
made
of carrion, or flesh of any kind (see the Chasuble, below). Rather,
they were
attuned to
it (Runebotthom,
Journal of Complementary Enchants,
Vol XIX, Scroll 3), to “guide the feet to flesh, flesh that’s
rotting, flesh that’s restless, eager to rage.” Sang had built
armies with the clownshoes, before he fell, himself, to a kind of
soldiery.
The shoes are fashioned
from plain, reddish silk, with chasings of gold, and “leering
pom-poms of midnight wool,” affixed smartly to the toes (Urlich,
p.722). Legend disagrees on whether Sutoyar wore the shoes
habitually, himself, or whether he left them on the servile corpse of
Sang until which time he required their power. It seems likely
Sutoyar wore them during his war against the Lost City of Harronport,
destroyed by armies of deceased house-pets from within the city’s
own walls.
Today, the Clownshoes are the property of a
mountain warlord, Ritharion II. Ritharion has despatched criers
throughout the lowlands, proclaiming that he awaits a maiden whom
they might perfectly fit.
The Tear-Stained Mask
A mask built for two? One large and one small?
If a mask can fit two, can a mask fit us all?
Any child knows the nursery rhyme this item
inspired (Gurtham,
Things Children Must Know, p.1), and the
words are true: the Tear-Stained Mask of Sutoyar was built for two to
wear at the same time, Sutoyar and a Dwarf named Hansible, in the
early years of Sutoyar’s now-infamous manse.
Sutoyar faced many social difficulties, and was
often described as aloof (Aristel, Duncan, Wudderman, et al) but in
fact made several game attempts at socializing beyond simply raising
corpses and formulating tractable slimes. Hansible is, some would
say, the closest the mad wizard had to a “friend,” to the extent
that Sutoyar never murdered him, and seemed to respect his value as a
summoner of infernal beings, a craft they explored in concert. The
mask served them by forming a powerful link between them, one of pure
emotion, which they could exploit in rituals of demon-binding. It
allowed them to enslave powers beyond what they might otherwise have
been capable of, but it rendered them emotionally unstable and
weeping, hence the name – and hence my presumption of good faith between
Sutoyar and Hansible (Wudderman,
What Price Blood?,
p.300).
One lingering mystery is how Hansible (a
heath-dwarf shorter than Sutoyar’s dogs) stood eye-to-eye with a
mad wizard known to be six feet tall. Most presume some form of
levitation magic, but a few (notably Yinnikers, p. 890 and Holiday,
p. 76) have maintained that Hansible wore great wooden stilts,
themselves held to be relics by those enamored of Sutoyar or his era.
The scholar Baylean suggests (
Riddles of History,
page 111) that if one were to collect all the splinters and fragments
of the “true stilts of Hansible” held in reliquaries across the
realms, they might provide enough wood to rebuild the burned city of
Hashmiran (not that anyone – even Sutoyar – would be mad enough
to want to).
Stilts aside, the
present owner of the Tear-Stained Mask is the Priory of St. Humilius
just west of Rettlesport, where it is used in “educational
demonstrations warning against the dark arts,” according to
correspondence with Reverend Mother Scoline. Given that the mask’s
only real power is to create an intimate emotional bond, it is
unclear exactly how the Priory might use it in these lessons.
The Chasuble of Skin
Garments made of human
(dwarvish, etc) skin are nothing new in the realm of mad wizardry,
and weren’t new in Sutoyar’s day, either (refer to Thulcara’s
Catalogue of Skin Garments
for a treatment both thorough and readable, and upon which this entry
depends). Sutoyar’s Chasuble of Skin is unique among recorded
examples, however, for being made of Sutoyar’s
own
skin, during his
own
lifetime.
The
tanned skin, augmented with sections of simple linen and leather
fittings, is little more than a wide oval with a hole in the center
(for the wearer’s head to poke through) draped over the shoulders
like a poncho. The garment’s enchantment is one of slow, gliding
flight (the wearer can’t gain altitude, but can
maintain
it impressively, descending as little as three feet per mile, as
desired). The décor is mostly elaborate religious symbolism, all
embroidered by Sutoyar’s own hand, and arranged to render the
garment symmetrical in design by covering for the elaborate patchwork
necessary to achieve the necessary shape.
But
under what circumstance was Sutoyar able to skin himself, and
survive, to create such a thing? The occasion was that Sutoyar had
already
replaced his
own skin with a superior substitute: transparent, glossy, flexible
and strong, boiled down from the brains and nerves of a dozen psychic
animals into a plastic sludge, and then painted on his bare
musculature until it bonded. In this new skin, Sutoyar was said to be
less vulnerable to some forms of attack, and more sensitive to
all
forms of touch, so that he could sense lurkers by the weakest ripples
in the evening breeze (Waterman, p.60,64). This left him in
possession his
old
skin without function, and since he already had a mad wizard’s fair
share of skin-bound grimoires, skin-made bookmarks and skin-crafted
belt pouches (
ibid.),
he decided that he would once again
wear
his skin – a bit less intimately than before – and that it would
serve as wings on which he would “drift from his manse in
starlight, absorbing the songs of the world” (Elux, vol. 2, p. 19).
The last recorded owner
of the Chasuble of Skin was a Sutoyar-unaffiliated church in the
eastern islands, where it was kept as a relic and worn by the High
Priestess on occasions celebrating the summer hurricanes, on which
she would soar in reverence. The Chasuble was lost, along with its
wearer, in a storm too vicious to ride. Its present location is
unknown.
Sutoyar’s Pliant Ring
Also related to Sutoyar’s skin-replacement
wizardry is the
Pliant Ring,
a garment made from the same reduction of nervous tissue, but as a
separate item, rather than bonded to his flesh.
The item’s
magic is subtle, easy to overlook: the flow of blood in the area
where the ring is worn is enhanced (Bidworth, chapt. 2-6), and the
area will redden visibly after a while, and become warmer to the
touch (Bidworth, chapt. 8). That seems to be
all
it does, though some spells cast upon the ring have suggested that
there are other, hidden enchantments.
The ring’s
size
adds to the confusion, because it’s too large to be comfortably
worn on a finger (even a thumb), but too constrictive to be worn
comfortably on the arm or leg (even worn at the wrist, it’s
distressingly tight on all but the thinnest wearer).
A gift of some kind for a small-framed companion
(an elvish lover, perhaps? Even in the age of Sutoyar’s
transparent, inhuman skin?) or perhaps a tourniquet of some kind (but
what’s the use of a tourniquet that
increases
the flow of blood?)
While the function of Sutoyar’s Pliant Ring is a
puzzle, its source is not, since none but Sutoyar knew the magic to
create that transparent, pliant substance from rendered nerve and
brain … and the softest vibrations in its enchantment are attuned,
without question, to his own frequencies (Hollstein,
The Second
Oscillarium, p.1274-1277).
The
last recorded owner of the Pliant Ring was a barbarian, Harnok, who
won it from a hoard in the Dryblood Hills. Harnok is aged, now, but
has not fallen, and is rumored to own the Ring still, and to wear it
secretly, “so none might see.” It is apparently an object the
barbarian prizes above all, for he’s butchered men for offering to
purchase it. Those seeking a
demonstration of whatever useful magic he may glean from such a thing
must seek out the man himself – and be ready.
This is the first Web appearance of this article, which I wrote in 2014 for
Secret Santicore, a kind of annual mega-'zine community project which ran from 2011 to 2015 (with a 2017 one-off revival). Participating in
Santicore was
one of a handful attempts on my part to better understand
the OSR. I
never
have quite understood the OSR, but I had a lot of fun writing this
piece anyway, and the article got sufficiently warm feedback to let me
know that, even if I OSR wrong, I landed near
enough to the ballpark that some of the
Santicore folk
dug it. Among those expressing support was
Ray Otus, the original
creator of his backwards-namesake, Sutoyar, and the author of the prompt
which had been assigned to me:
The 7 Lost Vestments of Sutoyar the Mad. (Wearable artifacts presumed to
have once been created/enchanted by this legendary figure, the
whereabouts of which have been lost in the intervening years.)
P.S. last year I made a request related to Sutoyar the Mad and Jeremy Duncan added this text to his lore (see SSv3,p62):
"We have no reliable evidence for the physical existence of Sutoyar the
Mad, much less the salient facts of his life and by now considerable
legend. Most modern scholars and savants consider him a composite figure
of several (many far better attested) eccentrics and magicians of the
late XXXIIIrd Aeon, given name and form solely to provide a convenient
scapegoat for the teeming horde of prodigies and monstrosities that
continue to infest the towns, villages, and countryside in the vicinity
of the ruins of his reputed manse." |
The article's reference to "scholar Duncan" is a shout-out to Jeremy.
The prompt, and Sutoyar himself, is Ray's fault, but for the rest of
this nonsense, the blame falls on
me. If you want to chat about it (or
anything else gamerly and groovy),
my inbox is open. 'Til next time.
|
A Chasuble Not Made of Skin |