Nyctalops by Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith is one of my favorite authors, but it is difficult to use his material for roleplaying games. The intellectual property for many of his works, in TTRPG settings, is held by Wizards of the Coast. TSR based the module X2, Castle Amber, on his Averoigne stories. It’s a sort of proto-Ravenloft story that eventually they recycled into the Principalities of Glantri gazetteer. It’s a lovely bit of work and it means I can’t use the Colossus of Ylourgne, for example, for another nine years. Some of his poetry is exempt, though, because it entered the public domain. I’d like to present this one as something the player characters might find in world.

It seems to me to be an evocation of a lucifugus. These creatures were surprisingly central to spirit master practice in earlier editions of the game, perhaps for lack of other statistically-described spirits. They are either formless or always coated in shadow, avoid bright light, and guard secrets. Spirit masters wish to deal with them because secrets are valuable, but the lucifugii often resent this, even if they enter agreements freely.

In the following story poem I suggest that the lucifugii are deliberately putting a bias into the information they provide. They may be doing this because of infernal connections, a worry often expressed by the church for those calling up supposedly natural spirits. It may also be that they know that enough tainted information makes humans self destructive.

So much shadow material seems to be coming together for me at the moment, but I can’t press it into shape as I’m recovering from COVID. There’s the lovely article in Mythic Europe Magazine #1 about a villainous group that use shadow magic. There’s The Charwoman’s Shadow by Lord Dunsany, which I keep trying to cut down into useful parts for this blog. There’s this. I hope you find a way to use them together.

Nyctalops by Clark Ashton Smith

Ye that see in darkness
When the moon is drowned
In the coiling fen-mist
Far along the ground—
Ye that see in darkness,
Say, what have ye found?

—We have seen strange atoms
Trysting on the air—
The dust of vanished lovers
Long parted in despair,
And dust of flowers that withered
In worlds of otherwhere.

We have seen the nightmares
Winging down the sky,
Bat-like and silent,
To where the sleepers lie;
We have seen the bosoms
Of the succubi.

We have seen the crystal
Of dead Medusa’s tears.
We have watched the undines
That wane in stagnant weirs,
And mandrakes madly dancing
By black, blood-swollen meres.

We have seen the satyrs
Their ancient loves renew
With moon-white nymphs of cypress,
Pale dryads of the yew,
In the tall grass of graveyards
Weighed down with evening’s dew.

We have seen the darkness
Where charnel things decay,
Where atom moves with atom
In shining swift array,
Like ordered constellations
On some sidereal way.

We have seen fair colors
That dwell not in the light—
Intenser gold and iris
Occult and recondite;
We have seen the black suns
Pouring forth the night.

Lucifuges (breed of demons)

Order: Aerial Powers
The lucifuges are a breed of demon that naturally dwell deep in the earth and prefer to have no dealings with mankind. However, some sorcerers draw them forth for their ability to reveal secret thoughts. Lucifuges require absolute darkness (they are also known as “fly-the-lights”), and it is unknown what their true form is, if indeed they have one. Most assume they take the form of shadows or patches of darkness.

Infernal Might: 20 (Ignem)
Weakness: Vulnerability (Light)
Powers:
Elemental Control of Fire, variable points, Init +1, Ignem: As the Power common to all Aerial Powers. However, Lucifuges can only affect light, not fire or heat, with this Power, and even then they cannot create light at all. They prefer effects such as Gloom of Evening and Vision of Heat’s Light.
Steal Blood, 1 point, Init +2, Corpus: The touch of a lucifuge causes blood to be drawn from the victim’s body through the skin. If a Stamina roll against an Ease Factor of 3 succeeds, the target loses a Fatigue level, otherwise she takes a Light Wound. The wound appears as a bruise covered in blood.
Steal Thoughts, 4 points, Init 0, Mentem: This demon may choose to take a single fact, memory, or desire from a person’s mind. This Power will only ever work once for the lucifuge on a given target. The stolen thought is gone forever, although a desire may naturally return, and facts may be re-learned.
Source: Realms of Power: Infernal, p.71