Know the Cranhgul

Know the Cranhgul by their withered frames!  The lampreys that adorn their spines and clavicles drain sustenance from them while giving them the ability to see beyond the natural spectrum!  Their gums recede, their cheeks become hollows, they assume the classic skeletal visage of the mad wizard!  As the man shrivels the parasites grow fat and bulbous, but are kept hidden by the black cloaks that shroud this secretive race!  These robes cannot cover the stench of the Cranhgul, whose metabolisms are forever distorted by their sickening burden!  Their pores seep a clear fluid which reeks of the privy!

The lampreys grant long life to these disciples of forbidden arcana, allowing them to pursue strange courses of study for centuries on end!  They move past mastery of a subject into realms of knowledge of which normal mortals cannot conceive!  This has fed a long tradition of tales and songs that celebrate the Cranhgul's greatness!  It was a Cranhgul who teased forth the rules of reanimating dead flesh!  It was a Cranhgul who unraveled time from matter, allowing the one to pass through the other unchanged!  It was a Cranhgul who first bound Will into iron, arming nations of warriors with weapons of terrible power!

Some say that the parasites are the descendents of a great alien race!  If so their history is lost, as the parasites are no more than leeches when prised from the struggling forms of those Cranhgul that have been captured through treachery and luck!  Those slime-ensconced foulthings spew ichor when crushed underfoot!

Know the Cranhgul by their withered frames!



--Steve Kilian

Waitstaff

The Most Brutal Route