The Fawic Podcast Episode 1: Pilot

It’s another quiet evening in the dark halls of the Fawic library, currently located at the corner of the crossroads in the beautiful city of Riviere d'Erbane. We’re glad to have you tuning in.

I’ll share a piece of one of Fawic’s tantalizing tales that the more conventional learning institutions rejected. Here at Fawic, we encourage a somewhat healthy pursuit of authenticity, truth & knowledge above all things. There are so many secrets among us and so few truths. Our Library is here to level the playing field. We’re going to share a few secrets from our collection with you… Maybe you’ll share your secrets with us? Until then…. Thank you for tuning into the Fawic Collection

[ Music, Intro]

[ Sound of Recorder Clicking]

The Fawic Collection is as physically massive as its collective knowledge is extensive. And what we do not know, we soon will. This brings us to our first Tome of the evening. It was found in 1515 alongside 8 shattered jars and a mallet. The manuscript was found with our subject’s belongings, including a journal documenting his encounter with the Tome.

Le cycle de la lumière was documented as being aged when Jonas found his curiosity for the book. He took studious notes on the bits he could translate from the French he did know. Jonas noted that he feared what would befall him if the tome fell into hands other than his own. There was one section that he had successfully translated. To which he later wished he had not.

The Le cycle de la lumière was a collection of recipes and guidelines. Jonas equated it to a manual of success and political planning through means of the Arcane. He frequently references one measure in his journals up to his death: the guide on rivalry, political and otherwise. The Le cycle de la lumière offered a solution. Pot de cheveux d'araignée, the Jar of Spider’s Hair.

For the protection of our beloved listeners, we will not be reading all solutions noted herein.

Before your competitor’s brush is cleaned and mishandled for the birds. Gather the hair, with or without their knowledge, and keep it close for three days.

On the 6th day, before noon hits and the mist fades, beyond the edges of the churchyard is a tree that will bear a spider of black and yellow.

Capture the spider alive and place it in a jar. Feed it nothing. It will be ravenous and will deploy fantastical promises to get you to release or feed. It will use the voice of the long-dead to coax you. Do not heed those promises; they are empty and fatal. It will ask to be fed, but do not listen to its suggestions. Wait two full days after capturing the creature to feed it. Act quickly and slip the hair of your rival.

Take note of the voice; it will change over the next five days. The Spider’s voice will mimic that of your rival. At the end of the fifth day, the Spider will become frantic as it realizes its predicament and try to conceal its identity to regain its once-human form.

Be warned: you should duly question the spider about its identity until your satisfaction is met. It is rare but not unheard of for the Churchyard Spider, being ever so cunning, to only ingest enough hair to mock the voice of the intended subject in order to gain freedom. Do not allow it to regain its freedom, no matter what it states. No matter how convincing it is. It is not to be trusted. The spider is but a shade of the Grander Father of all forgotten tales and lies forever spun on winter nights, only to bloom into a festering sweet iris of ire and malice. Like its begetter, the spider is voracious and will offer a web of baleful predictions if its wishes are not met. Predictions that otherwise will not come to fruition if all measures have been met.

The human, mortal screams will come from the spider. The transition is complete. Now the choice could be made. To let your rival live as your prisoner in their new hell? Or save them by ending their existence? Cruelty lives in both choices.

Jonas’s journey revealed that he did indeed attempt this …. Undertaking on a rival German artist.

It was no more than an hour, and the spider started to communicate with him. At first, there was a series of taps on the glass jar. Jonas writes that he tried for another hour to ignore the creature, but it was upon the 3rd hour on the 1st day. It started to speak to him.

He noted that the voice was neither feminine nor masculine. The Spider spoke in whispers, but his entire being shook with each phrase spoken. The tone was gentle, and the request was cordial. Jonas spent many hours watching and listening to the spider. According to the journal, the creature seemed iridescent and made entertaining webs in its jar. Jonas wrote small poems and sketched the spider in a likeness that a normal spider’s anatomy would betray.

Instead of the 8 legs, it now bore 10. After speaking, it not only had one head attached to its abdomen but 3 with an old number of eyes. An extra 1 on its center. This 3rd eye on each spider. He assumed that it communicated through that odd eye on each head. Jonas depicted the spiders as also having golden fur that thickly coated their bodies causing the candlelight to bounce reflectively around his study, where he initially kept the creature’s jar. He goes on to mention the intricate pattern that appeared to be shaved into the fur of the spider’s abdomen. He questioned the spider as it continued to entertain Jonas, not yet asking for its freedom.

It simply replied. “ It Is Dis. A Map.”

After this, Jonas frantically began attempting to sketch the map from the spider, but the spider was often too busy making its own art and evading his gaze. Wilhelm Jonas, over the span of 6 hours, went mad, sketching the map of Dis. The endless pathways and stairs that should have been visible were clear as day to him. But there were too many entrances and couldn’t tell which was the true entrance into Dis. In this, he found more worth than just ending his rival. If he had dominion over the fabled city of Hell, his richest would live beyond his name and his name would live beyond human and mortal tongue as Jonas, The Mortal GateKeeper of Dis. The Journal even showed his own sketches of himself, wearing robes bearing the strange sigils over the door entrances. Notably in every sketch where he stood, the spider hung not far away.

The spider was more than willing to tell him where the door, the true door, was the Dis, and even give him detailed instructions on how to construct his entryway. Its only demand was that it be fed. Immediately.

He scribbled that he regretted translating the section. That he regretted his jealousy of his competitor, that he even regretted the sorrowful way he lived his life. Jonas describes the thunderous storm that struck up upon feeding the spider. The golden fur fell to the bottom of the jar like ash revealing a 8 legged, black spider with a strange red marking on its abdomen. The two heads extra-withered into husks and fell away.

Then it screamed. The voice of the spider was masicline and cursed his name. The human-voiced spider called Jonas by name and swore that plagues would follow all his days. The spider then started screaming its name Albrecht…, Jonas then noted that his sense came back to him and he took a mallet to the glass jar until there was nothing but ire and glass. The spider’s broken body lay splayed on the desk just beneath the artist's window.

To which he looked out to see the very face of the man he had just crushed. What he thought was his rival was no longer. The thing outside is the spider, and its 3 faces. The face of the man he sought to kill, and the left ahead of a 7-horned goat, and the right the head of a crowned lion. Albetchet’s smile was far too long for human dimensions and tore at there seams of his jaw as a pair of gold-laden manibles shone forth from his host’s flesh. Beneath the insidious creatures were 12 long, amber, and gold-colored arachnid legs sprawled forth from beneath his robes. Jonas remarks that for a time he could not break his gaze from the being's attire. It wasn’t clear, but he described it as an endless field of sunflowers and red skies that swam on a sea of black waves. He wanted to touch the robe and swim into the eternity that was painted therein.

There was laughter that came on the wind, that rang out like trumpets from among the high. Wilhelm Jonas’s gaze finally and truly met with the Spider’s husk. It spoke. It simply stood outside in the rain gazing at Jonas, as if he were prey. A Fox to the hen. The mandibles moved in some sort of rhythm, but did not match the speech of the ethereal being.

“As promised, you will be gatekeeper Wihlem Jonas…. I will spend my brethren and you shall transform them as you did us and we shall move man, once more.”

This was the end of the journal. According to the original Riviere d'Erbane death records, from the last date of entry to when he and tome were found was seven months.

For security measures, we at Fawic determined that it would be best not to have the Le cycle de la lumière in circulation. However, from time to time the Tribunal will allow us to read a passage or two. Jonas was not the book’s last owner… who’s to say that the Fawic library isn’t on the ever-growing list of encounters?

That will do it for the library tonight, studious listeners. The scholars hope you enjoyed our first entry.

The Candles and dying and the static is clearing… which means the Library’s doors are closing. Find the Fawic Library located at… well… we’ll find you for the moment listens…

Until next time, Tenebrae No Ligare If… there are any Knights.. Listening… Happy Hunting.