A Hearty Meal (Bookhounds)

Where do you get your ideas?

Life, mostly. Anything and everything can be turned into grist for the mill. I've taken inspiration from a church fete, from Greek myth and a dozen other things besides. It's all there for the taking. Which is why, in my collection, I've books about train wrecks, ghost towns in British Columbia, about New York, London, Paris, the Lusitania, flying aces, domesticating drink, flim flam, stage magic - the list goes on and on, but the point is you need to absorb as much as possible, even if all you take on at first reading is the skim version. You need to have a decent grasp of what's out there before you can start work.

Today's post comes courtesy of The Hellebore Guide to Occult Britain and Northern Ireland, 2021. Page 140: St. Margaret's Churchyard, Ratlinghope, which houses the grave of Richard Munslow, the last sin-eater in England.

Sin eating is an old funerary practice. The eater takes on the sins of the dead, symbolized by eating a ritual meal handed to them over the coffin of the deceased. Munslow got into the practice when his children died and carried on as a service to the community. Given that Munslow died in 1906 it's reasonable that the practice is still well known in the 1930s, prime Bookhounds territory.

If adding a bit of mythos to the ritual, charnel god Mordiggian is the best fit. The progenitor of the ghouls, that ancient symbol of decay. The main book gives several versions but I'm going to use this one:

Mordiggian, the Charnel God, appears as an enormous, worm-like mass of death, darkness, and corruption. Its idols resemble limbless, eyeless, rotting corpses. Its exact form shifts like time-lapse photography of putrescing flesh and is hard to determine, not least because the Great Old One absorbs all heat and light in a room.

With that I give you:

A Hearty Meal

du Bourg's has suffered a financial reversal and a tragedy: the eldest of the family, Edouard, has passed away at the grand old age of 42. Nobody's entirely sure about the cause of death; only the family know for certain and they're not saying.

However, there's no storm without a silver lining and this time the silver is a sale: du Bourg's is clearing out some of its older material at bargain prices, in a keep-the-lights-on blowout. The auction is to be held at do Bourg's, after hours. 

To get in, prospective buyers have to pass one simple test: they must eat a portion of Edouard's sins, passed to them in pie form over Edouard's open casket. Nobody knows for certain what's in that pie. Except that's it's packed full of meat. 

As the Bookhounds approach du Bourg's on the appointed day they see one of their rivals stumble out of du Bourg's, retching. The rival flees down the street rather than answer any questions. 

Now it's their turn at the pie.

Option 1: Charnel Meat. This, the investigators will realize (potential Mythos spend), is a ritual to Mordiggian. It's not clear why Edouard's brothers and sisters chose this ceremony to honor their departed brother. What is clear is that the meat is Edouard's. A nibble is enough to get entry to the auction; a hearty bite earns them a special scene with Mordiggian itself, as the room gets colder and darker by the moment. Of course, they could fake it; Filch may help them pretend to have a bite. Faking it may fool Edouard's brothers and sisters but Mythos old ones aren't so easily betrayed, and Mordiggian will mark the defaulter down in its own special charge book.

Option 2: Rashomon. Eating the pie puts the eater in a temporary dream state in which they relive Edouard's last day on earth. They discover that Edouard was murdered; the question is, by who? Was it his sister Eloise, who wanted advancement in the family business but was never going to get it while her brother was alive? His second-in-command, Marcus Shelby, who was afraid that Edouard had finally realized that Shelby was fiddling the books? Was it his brother Daniel, who was afraid that Edouard's worship of Mordiggian had taken him down a cannabalistic path that could only end with a death in the family?

Option 3: Adulterated Meat. The pie has been unknowingly dosed with some of the Elixir of Kathulos, prized by the Hsieh-Tzu Fan. Edouard's sister Eloise did the dosing; she found the stuff amongst Edouard's possessions and mistook it for an exotic spice. Edouard wasn't an enemy of the Hsieh-Tzu Fan but he was hardly a friend; he'd been hired by one of his more eccentric clients to acquire the stuff and acquire it he did, but the Hsieh-Tzu Fan found out and killed Edouard. The cult wants its Elixir back and there's still a good portion of it left; anyone who ate some of the pie can find the rest. Of course, eating strange elixirs found in funeral meat has its own complications ...

That's it for this week. Enjoy!