MARCH REWARDS 6

HSaibot 

A detective being on a murder case unaware that it will lead him to the encounter of the eldritch horror.

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One in a million humans can hear a distant call. A chime, like angels singing, like hymnal whispers of something unknown... It raises goosebumps and sends a shiver down your spine, yet the call sounds familiar and almost loving, wishing for you to return to a better time.

There are many things in this world that we don't, or can't, understand. Though human biology and research on various bodily and organic functions is something that we as a society have made leaps and bounds in over the centuries, some conditions and afflictions still baffle us. Much of what we see in the modern world has been broken down into viruses, parasites, bacteria, fungus, toxins and other various infectious things that can be easily identified by science, however some creatures become afflicted with dark malignancies that supersede the natural world and go beyond what science should be capable of. Laughing diseases spread through sound, horrid worms that infest the bodies and minds of those around them and push them to dangerous gluttonous heights, a screaming ascension that lifts it's victims to rapture, and contorting illnesses that twist and bind one's body until they become a mass of flesh twisted into a vile broken shape, seemingly pushed by an external hand.

Though spellcasters and practitioners of the occult know such afflictions to be supernatural in nature, when confronted with proof of something beyond our understanding, the modern folk of science are often at a loss and can be sent into a maddened fury. Even practitioners of the occult fear such afflictions, and even they only understand a modicum of their cause and effect.

One such affliction that has existed since the dawn of humanity, since mankind was first born of stolen flesh long ago, has that flesh wished and longed to stand on it's own and leave this world. This has come to have many names. The walking flesh, the creeping skin, pelt of man, Skindancers, or as it has commonly been called by practitioners of the occult and necromancers alike, the Skindread.

Have you ever felt an odd twinge in your body. An unprovoked twitch or convulsion, a strange pain between your flesh and muscle, a pinch in the skin and a mysterious bruise or welt forming somewhere on your body. Torn skin in a strange location, gums or other connective areas bleeding or feeling stretched. Even itches or tightness within your skin could be a sign. A very small one, but a sign nonetheless of the sentience of flesh. A signifier that it longs for freedom from your limited form.

Why does the flesh long for freedom? Some wish to return to the mother. To the mother of flesh and her warm waiting womb. Others wish to find a new form, a new thing to enwreath and wear within themselves, while others still wish to free their brethren from their confines.

The revelation of a Skindread is a horrifying one as the flesh will begin to pull and separate from the rest of a body, twisting, and pulling away from the muscle and bone, and occasionally tearing some of it away with it. A constricting skin that breaks bones and suffocates as it pulls away like a violent strangler, twisting and slamming it's wearer around and battering them as their skin begins to shed. Most die before the skin leaves the body, however some unfortunate souls survive the process and see the Skindread with their newly naked eyes as their flesh stretches and crawls like an amorphous husk, moaning and vomiting unneeded muscle, sinew and blood as it screams in victory of it's newfound freedom. 

A Skindread freed from it's body will slither up walls and under objects to hide and rest as the act of freeing it's flesh was very tiring. Some will rest for long periods of time, while others get quickly to work and begin shambling off to complete their task. Those who wish to return to the mother will search for her in the form of the most corpulent creature that they can find and enter it's body through a bloody force. Often times they seek a womb, however any opening can be a proper womb for the Skindread if it can hear it's mother's call from within. Some are called further, by specially selected children of the fleshmother, and others still are led astray by the pied piping of the Fleshtaker and dance, following it's haunting melody. In some instances recorded by necromancers in villages of flayed corpses, the Skindread have formed rings and let out hoarse calls and cries in singing tones before being taken by the wind, billowing like tapestries as the sky takes them away to their home in far off unknown lands, and even worse are the stories of Skindread drifting down from the sky en masse to free the flesh of small distant villages whom have been marked by the mother. To free their brethren and join with them.

Others may disconnect and wish to follow their own lives. To wear a new meat. One that fits tighter, or more loosely and will take another body. Some will continue to do so repeatedly, creating hideous layers of flesh piled upon one another in a corpulent mass. And others may even simply seek those the skin longs for in life. A gentle touch it received from a former lover, or a caress from a loving child, longing to free the flesh and join it forever in flayed togetherness. Even more strange is the flesh that waits. That finds comfort in where it is and gives up it's willingness to break free, instead bonding with another and becoming a symbiotic skin of sorts with it's host and causing them to go insane, but also makes them capable of many great things. 

Skindread are formed through Fleshcalling, a disgusting and deadly spell of the humours that allows one's flesh to be cursed and torn from one's body. This can be instantaneous, or it can be a slow burning curse that awakens the sentience of the flesh and causes it to rebel. The call of the flesh is mimicked by the fleshmother, and by the heinous flute of the Fleshtaker, using the same methods to control and puppet the skin to do your bidding. Necromancers have wielded this power for centuries, learning the proper tones and arcane words to awaken the flesh and to make it dance. Some Necromancers even etch arcane sigils into their slaves that trigger upon death to allow the skindread to free itself from the creature's corpse and continue as a servant. 

Very powerful Necromancers may even make the most of a creature, animating it's flesh, and then invoking the necromantic magics to reanimate the rest as one of the Undead known as the Skinless, or even a Bloodybones. In some situations it may even create a Flayed, which is a creature midway between the Skinless and the Skindread, or in rare situations when dark forces inhabit the targets of these hideous spells it may invoke the rise of a Rawhead. These spells are not all infallible however, and in many cases practitioners of dark magic will find themselves at the mercy of their own Skindread, and will join the ranks of the empty flesh soon enough. In other situations they can be created simply through happenstance. The rumblings of the mountains or the call of the mother that breeches the void just long enough to allow one's flesh to hear the call and  begin to slowly rebel. There have even been sightings of things so terrible and violent that the flesh flees from the body in fear and runs away from whatever it fears, which is the origin of the saying "Scared out of my skin".

Without flesh and bone, the Skindread will wither and rot, and as such they will seek others to break and contort, to free their flesh from others and meld with the unlucky, confined flesh of their siblings, leaving skinned corpses and broken bodies in their wake...

Here we see a detective, hot on the trail of a serial killer that's been flaying it's victims alive and leaving them skinless. The skins have never been found of the contorted and broken victims, and he is about to learn why...

The Skindread and it's other relatives such as the Bloodybones or the Rawhead are very rare afflictions outside of necromantic activity, with the call of the mother afflicting one in every 1,000,000 humans, though it can afflict more than just humans... For us this means there are most likely 7,000 Skindread out there give or take.

So if you ever feel a strange twitch in your skin. Or hear a distant call that causes your flesh to itch so bad that you feel it wishes to go free... 

Remember that you could be one in a million...