Dark Regression

This land is so blighted that even the parasites that abound so prolifically here are afflicted. Even the parasites here have things living within them that fill their lives with horror and misery. The mark of the Curse is indelibly imprinted upon this landscape just as it is on the creatures that scurry here, and the lesser creature that shift and stir within them. Nothing is free from blight here – nothing grows or lives as it should do.

 

When the moon rises to shine upon the land it is a tortured moon – living things do not look upon its face if they can help it. The sense of pain and desolation conveyed by that moon goes beyond the capacity of mere humans to endure. The moon is not the only menace here: blighted and misshapen creatures of all types make their home here. Most are malign in nature and even the ones that aren’t actively malign are not particularly pleasant to encounter. It is best not to go out at night, or if you have to then it is best keep your head down and carry on with your business and get to wherever it is that you are going quickly. To tarry is to invite attention and all attention here is unwanted attention…

 

This is not a place anyone would willingly visit – if you find yourself here it is because you have no choice in the matter. No one passes by choice through the Blighted Land. None who live here do so by choice either – they live here because all other options have become closed to them. They live here because they have taken the drastic step of becoming adapted to the Tortured Realm and as a consequence are no longer able to live anywhere else. If you stay here in this dark world then you have to adapt if you are to survive. You have to ‘cut a deal’ – you have to let the darkness inside you in some limited way so that it can protect you, and for that you must pay a price.

 

There are other ways. Some of us wear Thought Enhancers as we make the grim journey through the Tortured Realms. This is one method available to those of us who travel – not by choice, as I have said – through these barren and blighted hinterlands of mankind’s afflicted and tormented soul. The Thought Enhancers protect us from the psychic deterioration that would inevitably set in otherwise. The deterioration is endemic – nothing unprotected can escape its ravages. The unprotected will slowly but surely fall into a dark and confused netherworld from which they will never emerge. Or at least never emerge intact. Before long you will find yourself growing confused as whole chunks of your consciousness get eaten away by the psychic parasites that are forever prowling around on the perimeters of your mind, probing relentlessly for weaknesses, looking for a back-door, looking for a way in…

 

The Thought Enhancers protect you from getting confused. When the entropic fields intensify and you forget what you were thinking, the enhancers will supply you with the missing thought – they will keep you on track. They fill in the blanks for you and sometimes there are a lot of blanks. Sometimes it’s all blank. The Thought Enhancers will prompt you with strategies for survival at such times. The Thought Enhancers tell you what you’re thinking when you forget. They will remind you of where you are going and why. They will tell you who you are. They will tell you what is real and what isn’t. Otherwise you wouldn’t know.

 

Dark shadowy things flicker in and out of existence in the periphery of your vision. They skip and they scamper. They appear and they disappear. If you let them they can get inside you. They will talk to you then – they will fill your head with their lies, they will cajole you and frighten you. They will bribe you and threaten you. They can eat your consciousness away in seconds, like a starving man eating an apple. Then your mind will be overcome with meaningless fantasies and you will be left to wander blindly in the nether-realms. You will no longer know what you’re doing then. Anything that wants to can live inside you then.

 

This dark and tortured world bears eloquent witness to a catastrophe we can only guess at. It hints bleakly at something huge, something incomprehensible that has happened. Some unthinkable catastrophe that has taken place back in the Real World…

 

Even the psychic parasites are parasitized here by other, even more offensively malign ‘parasites of the mind’. Even the Mind Eaters are being eaten. Even the Haunters are being haunted. There is no end to this Dark Regression – even the Possessors here are possessed, possessed by nameless horrors we cannot even begin to understand…

 

 

 

 

 

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