2 thoughts on “I’m interested in hearing people’s thoughts on how you interpret the spells Cacophonous Doom and Crimson Steam”

  1. If Black Noise Bombs were real, there’s your first answer. The second sounds like some sort of a Andrew W.K. meets the “The Fourth Horseman” episode of Millennium

  2. Balasar Scorn’s Crimson Steam spell is the most renowned, but any spell that flash-boils the blood in its target’s body is going to attract attention.

    However, there’s a spell of the same name that’s a lesser-known summoning ritual, binding the paraiah offspring of the Regent of Flame and the Last of the Undines. The Crimson Steam itself is subtle, inquisitive, and prone to exaggeration, but will serve its conjuror loyally as long as it’s invoked with offerings of poppies.

    The Somnolent Librarian claims to have heard of another spell of the same name. It conjures the red mists that coil over the charred swamps of the Hell of Bronze. The mist can obscure and, if inhaled too deeply, causes distracting apparitions. Some of them are true glimpses of other times and places, so the conjugation is occasionally performed in closed rooms, or steam-lodges, where a properly-prepared magus can hope to divine secrets.

    The Graven Grimoire contains three separate spells called Cacophonous Doom. The first conjures the millennia-old echoes of the Cloven King’s march from the Hell of Bronze to the Gates of Heaven. The thundering tread shakes the earth, terrifies animals, and deafens those who do not stop their ears.

    The second creates a cracked bone war-horn which, when blown, strikes the targets with misfortune and palsy. The horn is said to be the one discovered on the corpse-piled battlefield at Kingsgrave, but if we had a shilling for every knick-knack the peddlars claim originated at Kingsgrave, we’d all be rich.

    The third transforms a hound – living or dead – into the Choir of Dogs, a dozen-headed hound whose clamour causes madness and whose teeth are steel. The hound can track anyone who’s blood it has tasted, even across the mist between worlds.

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