Eerievember Days 7-12

 Picking up where we last left off...

 

Day 7: Mandala Anomalies (Navarino Island)

The designs appeared gradually and innocuously enough that they were considered at first to be a sort guerrilla  art project, painted on walls and rock faces by punks in the night. That the symbology on display was not actually from Tibetan Buddhism was not remarked upon. This was until they were found carved into stone and concrete in their hundreds, emblazoned on individual leaves, gouged out of the flanks of animals. Then, out of people. 

Day 8: Repurposed Soul: Star

As as matter is the cast-off remnants of stars, so to are matters of the spirit. All souls are, while reduced, still star stuff, and still inextricably linked to the canonical spectral types.

Day 9: Calcium Hyperproficiency

The formation of small, bony scutes under the skin is the primary  symptom of the condition- these will typically be small enough to retain flexibility and range of movement, and dense enough to provide a  decent amount of protection from minor injuries.

Day 10: DNA Forge

Three functioning forges remain - one damaged (in the possession of the World Government), one swiftly deteriorating (controlled by the Demarchist Panoply), and one rampant (currently floating around the mid-south Pacific). Scraps of the five destroyed models resurface on occasion, though not enough has been recovered to successfully reverse-engineer the devices. With the death of their inventor and his team, and the destruction of all documentation during the War, it is unlikely that this state of affairs will change.

Day 11: Amniotic Tank Experiment (2001)

While the initial test run of the technology was a resounding success, the decanting of Dorothy Hill was swiftly overshadowed by World Trade Center attacks less than two weeks later. Subsequent legal challenges to exowomb technology delayed public rollout until 2014. While never officially banned after this point, it has remained a luxury for the ultrarich due to a combination of med-tech patent fuckery and access restrictions placed upon them by Congress in 2017.

 

Day 12: Radial Symmetry

The body of Homo radiata consists of a fleshy disc containing the internal organs, four limbs evenly spaced, a central mouth, and two large eyes. Due to the positioning of the eyes, they possess a wide range of vision but poor depth perception. The limbs are flexible and possess and expanded range of movement compared to those of bilaterals. Changes to jaw structure make cross-clade communication difficult.

Eerievember Days 1-6

 

As a bit of a warmup routine while I work on other posts, I'm going through @floofhips' Eerievember prompts in the style of my Lighthouse entries, since I vibe with this style of weird.

Day 1: Homunculus Museum

The National Homunculi Museum in Philadelphia holds the largest collection of artificial humans in the world (especially now, after the destruction of the Frankfurt Alchemical Academy in 1940). Over 1800 specimens representing over 300 different construction templates are on display, as well as extensive collections of alchemical tools and accoutrements and a reference library open to the public.

The museum has courted controversy in recent years by displaying the bodies of sapient homunculi acquired prior to the Liberation (and thus with no recorded consent-to-display). The 25 specimens in question were eventually turned over to the AUAP (American Union of Alchemical Peoples) and cannibalized according to custom, with the bones interred at the Tower of Azoth Imperishable war memorial.

Day 2: Bog Body at the Salt Dome Excavation

Four preserved bodies were recovered during excavation of the salt dome: two adult men, one adult woman, and a female child, all dated to about 5500 BCE / 4500 HC. Given the condition of the bodies and the external and internal injuries present across all four, it's believed that the surface they had been walking on collapsed, crushing them after they fell. Clothing and items well-preserved. Estimated ages 40, 30, 25, 8. Genetic testing indicates that the men were brothers, and the child the daughter of the woman and Man #2. Tiya, a movie adaptation, reviewed well at Sundance Film Festival earlier this year.

Day 3: Tombstone Teeth

The practice of seeding fresh graves with milk teeth (typically from a grandchild or godchild) has emerged as a means of warding off all manner of woes - typically to keep blightcrows away from the body and to safeguard new spirits from prowling anthropodaemons.

 

Day 4 / Alt 1: Metal Illness

Verdigrising encephalitis is a fatal paralogical prion disease where the subject's brain is swiftly transitioned into copper. The end results are, despite attempts by world governments to crack down on the trade, sought after by certain wealthy individuals for their supposed occult benefits.

Day 5 / Alt 2+7: Serendipitous Fault Line, Failed Ritual

The cult's efforts had been in vain from the beginning, as a major earthquake some 40 years prior (and smaller quakes in the decades since) had re-aligned the leylines that the ritual was dependent upon. The natural course of plate tectonics has sealed away dread Yhenraghul for the long term, it seems.

Day 6 / Alt 16: Bioclown the Ultimate Killer

A shlock-horror adventure game developed in 1994 but never released to the public. None of the original code remains, and bootleg copies (including the ROM freely available online that serves as the standard) are of poor quality. Rumors of hidden horrific or salacious content or conspiracies about the disbandment of the dev team circulated on Usenet for a year or two before the game was forgotten. Its modern resurgence is nearly entirely thanks to the Youtube essay channel JunkClosetGames, who featured it in their Halloween 2020 special.