A Continent of Banalities

  So, this is the first day of the challenge!  Around the campfire sits a disheveled group of people. It's a sorry specimen, that fire. They ran out of wood pretty quickly and resorted to burn the strange debris so common around the foothill. The stuff is grey, light, and quite without use or beauty. When lit on fire it tends to melt, releasing a grey, chemical smoke. The man who is currently in tears from the wafting miasma is Elkvan. Elkvan Murr of the Mudnook Murrs, not that anyone outside that miserable hamlet would recognize the name.  Elkvan had three options when he came of age. Become a mud-farmer like his ma and pa, become an ascetic and take up residence in the large depression that's either a star-crater or a titan's footprint (depending on what kind of ascetic you are). Making off one night with the family's pet eagle Ditmar, Elkvan chose the third option, enlisting with one of the Failed Cities' brave militias. General Selk's Star-Blessed Legion gav

A creature that is perfect for a cozy Christmas scenario... Children of the Black Sky  “At first you saw only a mass of coarse, matted black hair; presently it was seen that this covered a body of fearful thinness, almost a skeleton, but with the muscles standing out like wires. The hands were of a dusky pallor, covered, like the body, with long, coarse hairs, and hideously taloned. The eyes, touched in with a burning yellow, had intensely black pupils, and were fixed upon the throned King with a look of beast-like hate. Imagine one of the awful bird-catching spiders of South America translated into human form, and endowed with intelligence just less than human, and you will have some faint conception of the terror inspired by the appalling effigy.”   M.R. James – Canon Alberic's Scrap-Book    In one obscure text these creatures are referred to as children of the black sky, and details how they arrive on earth in a ball of fire that lights up the night sky. How their eyes a