Horror

A Horror is a label earned by Others created when practice goes wrong; the 'material' or 'victim' can vary as can the means.

Nature

A horror is a label for the various results of practice gone wrong. The diversity of the means and results translates into a lack of anything working for everything called a 'Horror'.<ref name="SH"/>

They usually have something of the Abyss in them. Their creation usually results in negative Karma.

Variants

A classical horror is generally formed through the misuse of practice. Mainly it going wrong, and specifically when Realms go wrong, the drawbridge coming down and smashing someone as the gate opens.<ref>Horrors

Horrors are most commonly wrought as a result of practice run amuck, or the folding in of spaces.  They may appear at the fringes of a town heavily affected by practice, or when a quarantined place gets put 'out of the way', sunken or elevated into another Realm, or made inaccessible by some warping of reality.  They were never human (or animal, or whatever the source was), but the lingering human-ness of a place can be compressed into jumbled, disturbing forms with their own consciousnesses.  Multiple arms, heads, or body parts are common.  They are most often associated with Prices and Realms practices.

Common Horrors are those horrors who may arise as a place or person is elevated, dropped, or moved to another realm.  Abyssal influences are common, even if the path isn't to the abyss; a distorted or accidental relocation to the spirit world may suffuse the horror with complex spiritstuff, while outer limbs are tainted or bent with the abyssal influence.  It may have ulcerous, startlingly red spirit-growths at its upper chest, framed with branches of cherry blossoms, and blackened, bent limbs at its twisted extremities.  They bring a little bit of 'crookedness' wherever they go, and may have an enhanced ability to access spaces, as well as warping the presence of whatever realm they were derived from (warping the spiritual, or the emotional, for example).  They often place survival as their first priority, and gravitate toward those places most connected to their origin, making them sometimes accidental watchdogs of gateways and access points, taking payment through their territory, which may just so happen to be the easiest local way to get to a given realm.

With the High Horror, enough power is expended to break them free or give them more of a 'beating heart'.  The human-like representation is drawn out across the bridge or gap, and the outside influences pour into them as vessels.  Stretched out, detached from reality, they are more likely to be finely decorated with motifs, to float, and to have some fair amounts of crude power at their disposal.  The edges, crown or motifs are often touched with the abyssal.  They may, in their own crude ways, try to open the holes bigger, so to speak, but if stable, may be intermediaries. - Wildbow on Discord</ref> My be related to the Abyss in some way, or even the Paths.

Horror Debauchee are tied more to specific rituals over realms practices, and hew to time specific elements constraints.<ref>Horror Debauchee

The Horror Debauchee is a variant of horror most commonly derived from a ritual (gone wrong), with at least two of: a time-specific aspect, a group participating in the ritual, and a broader observance of some associated events, times, holidays, or symbols.  They may be religious or associated with mass casualties in disaster or war, or may be linked to times like midwinter or midsummer.  They swell in strength and presence and roam more as the linked occasions draw near, and are often content to drink in the occasion, though they may defend it against those who would defame it or cause some chaos by the fleeting glimpses people get of them, or damage they do in sating the appetites that awake at the same time they do (potential missing pets or store break-ins).  Outside of the set occasions, they are very dormant, and at worst a child exploring the woods may look into a hole and see a contorted, greasy, half-asleep figure curled up inside (in such a case the Other may seek out the child when the occasion rolls around, as a link gets formed).

Where the Horror Debauchee is most problematic is when the event falters.  They live for and because of the event, the ritual, or the idea, and without it they diminish.  Should the event cease to be minded, they may target those diminishing it, or make crude and sometimes macabre attempts at reminding people. - Wildbow on Discord</ref>

Immaterial Others can be caught in these effects as well they are usually given the label "plicate" like a plicate ghost and similar.<ref name="SH">

Email Reply From: Verona (VHayward@tbaynorth.ca)

Yep.  Yepyepyepyepyep.  Elemental seems to map to this yes.

:thumbsup:

Looked up folded spirits and didn’t find much but did find about Plicate Spirits.  Fits Monty here.

Um.  So when you do big rituals, especialllly realms practices  like opening doors between our world and spirit or our world and abyss (loooking at you Ave) you can catch bystanders in the way as space folds and worlds bend to make room.  Especially if you rush it or do a bad diagram.  If that bystander is a human you can get a horror that’s all stretched out and bent and operates by slightly different rules.  Horrors.  The plicate spirit is this but for spirits (or plicate echo, or plicate elemental).  Folded up, stretched out, twisted up with something else, and operating by different logic.  Think implicate and ‘plicate: folded, crumpled, or corrugated, in biology.’

This book sums a lot of it up as ‘each one is different so no one thing works perfectly’, ‘apply lots of fire’, and ‘here’s how you should diagnose or deal with a plicate spirit overriding your diagram’ (which is basically cut off all power and run).  Not very useful stuff.

Email Reply From: Matthew Moss (Mossball@Mooseboop.ca)

Elemental makes sense. - New Other Correspondence #1</ref>

Fervid Horrors come from those people, generally innocents, that perform some whispered ritual for an esoteric benefit, they risk dying should someone innocent catch sight of them.<ref>The Fervid Horror will crop up here or there in pockets, primarily as an artifact of subculture and niche religion or cults. Individuals, often non-practitioners, may intentionally seek out the rituals that others would consider broken or disrupted, intentionally becoming horrors, folding space and distorting reality, while distorting themselves in mind and body at the same time. Oftentimes this may be an effort to reach out (so to speak) to their god by opening the way to that deity's realm, over a drawn out series of rituals, an effort to produce a desired physical transformation (such as weight loss or artificial beauty on the outside at the cost of becoming twisted inside), or both (drawing out angel wings by way of distorted or combining flesh).

Fervid Horrors are often very fragile and some may even die if exposed to the innocent who run against their faith or beauty, leading them to stick to shadows or hide the distorted parts of themselves, at least from those who aren't of like mind. Often have a spark of divine power and/or the ability to invoke awe. - Wildbow from Discord</ref>

Advanced versions are called high horrors.

Notable Examples

• Montague, spiritual horror
• Memorial Tender, Horror Debauche<ref>The Newtons sought to capitalize on an extremist attack in a downtown area, where people were beaten with a bat. Their form of capitalizing on it was to perform a ritual on a rooftop on the one year anniversary of the violence, as a vigil played out below, and leeching on the emotions of the crowd. There were a few Others in the crowd, however, and interactions with those Others caused the ritual to skew. Among the casualties of the skewing were a copycat incident, a panic in the crowd, and a reflection of the violence of the event onto the Newtons, as they took on the injures of those attacked, nearly dying.
  
  In the time since, a horror debauchee has wandered the downtown area. They are fourteen feet tall, with broken, multi-jointed limbs that only barely support them, and only do so because there are enough of them. They pay mind to those who leave flowers at the site of the violence across the year, returning the favor with candles that get placed lit at doorsteps, melted to the porch or front steps with red wax. This has led to one fire, but more often it's a mark that the person is protected, and the Other will drag off would-be muggers, burglars of the protected properties, and deter hostile Others and goblins. By the flip side of that same token, however, should someone steal a flower from the shrine, they may find themselves picked up off the ground, feet dangling six feet above pavement, and pulled into an alley. The Other will then push echo-memories and impressions into them, to make them relive the attacks as if they were victims. Toward the two year anniversary, the effect of this is so pronounced that these people become retroactive victims.
  
  As the event fades from the public consciousness, however, the horror gets increasingly desperate. To drink in enough, it draws closer to those left behind by the survivors, who get more and more glimpses of the Other, until a final confrontation. - Wildbow on Discord</ref>

Trivia

• Plicate is best known as being part of words like implicate. But it is also used in the sense of 'folded', as would be used to describe Prions.

References

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