The Sun-Cult Witchfinders

In the days before the waning sun, the sun-cult was the most prominent religion among men. However now in the twilight years when the sun ails; frail, shivering and red with fever, the cult has similarly shrunk into a sickened husk of its former self; a degenerate remnant of fanatics descended into madness as their holy star forsakes them

The sun is anathema to magic, when it beat vigorously down upon the land its light banished all sorcery, so that creatures of magic skulked deep beneath the earth, and only dared venture forth at night, by hours of day the world was subjected to pitiless logic; the arts of witchery and the lore of demons and the terrible names of elder gods were forgotten as the world climbed from the grey murk of dawn into the fullness of day. But now it sinks again into that twilight of dreaming and old truths are remembered, the magic and fae creatures creep once more into the world, the feeble rays of dusk unable to banish it fully even by midsummer’s noon.

And so a great many of the sun’s remaining worshippers make abhorrence of such magicks their chief virtue. How they prosecute their holy reviling varies greatly by sects and by personal creed, though all brandish fire and iron, inimical to sorcery. Many are crusaders who go with joyous noise and jubilant feet, razing the shees of trickster faeries into smouldering ash, burning down the deep woods where lair the spawn of the demon goddess Shub, whore-mother of the woods, or tramp polewards to melt the frost of her bitter and baron sister Hagwynter. Others take ship on Galleons that bristle with iron spikes to hunt the malformed spawn of Dagon, gutting the leviathan beasts with cruelly barbed harpoons, or hauling his slimy scions up from the murky depths to face the judgement of the sun

But most feared of all are the dread witch-finders, the bane of all warlocks and terror of any who think to dabble in arcana. They prowl the cities and towns of men, nomadic hunters forever rooting out the suspect to face castigation. Their skin is ritually immolated, cruel iron masks in the visage of the snarling sun are riveted to their skulls so that they may have no face upon which to lay a curse, nor do they take names a witch might hex.

But perhaps the most distinctive mark of their trade is their mailed left arm- called often The Burning Hand, for its black iron is forged with such abhorrence for all sorcery, that magicks will smoulder at their touch- so that when the air is heavy with witchcraft the hand glows red hot, billowing smoke and embers. These dread hands allow them to physically claw spells from the air, ripping the invisible weave of them to smouldering ruin. And woe betide the magi or sorcerous spawnling who is grasped by such a hand, for their own magic will combust within them at its touch. A blackened burn is the least of the sorcerer’s worries, he will find himself bereft of power after such a touch, while creatures of magic die swiftly as a man drained of blood.

Similar such arts are smithed into the iron brands which many favour, by which they mark the accused for castigation. For as fearsome as these revilers are individually to those who would dabble in magicks, the true terror is in their power over mobs. To sun-cult adherents they are holy prophets of hate, their proclamations are divine revelation, they need utter only a single accusation and a mob of fanatics will be charging to see the guilty brought to justice. But even to more common folk they are feared and revered, many view them as a lesser evil, for while cruel and ruthless, they do indeed root out the cults of demon gods and the creatures of darkness, so that to oppose them is to invite suspicion from your neighbours. Furthermore all are skilled orators, voices ringing bronze-hard from beneath their masks to fill hearts with the fire of hate, so that any innocuous town’s sleepy populace may be whipped into a blood frenzy, baying to see the accused on a pyre.

But they are not butchers. They do not simply kill in the dark, they enact *justice*, and insist on a trial so that all may learn the rewards of witchery. That all such trials invariably end in a guilty verdict and a sentence of burning at the stake, matters little. They carry always implements of torment to extract confessions, and the scrolls of Malleus Maleficarum from which they read the due process laid out by the first of their order- nameless as is their custom. Such theatrics only further their influence, giving their vigilante justice a semblance of legitimacy and tightening their grip on the hearts of men. Indeed they will often leave a settlement with more followers than they arrive with, many converting to the cult after becoming enraptured by the flames of the pyre and the primal, jeering ecstasy of abhorrence

Such disciples are a motley crew, many carrying little beyond crude shields and improvised weapons, their faces covered by leather masks in imitation of their leader. But others are financed personally by the witch-finder, bearing huge crossbows to launch iron stakes, or handling packs of vicious, long-muzzled pursuit hounds by which they track and harry their quarry. As well as jailers, lectors, heralds, smiths and alchemists, for the sun-cult believes in the triumph of learning and civilisation over the strange and primal forces of magic, and husband many old secrets of the ancient days when mankind was mighty and did not huddle in fear of the dark. They hold dear the arts of the forge and alembic by which they smith their cruel implements and weapons

And as such they hold highest enmity for that greatest of all demon gods: Gurrubundah, the father of beasts, sovereign of the moon, who abhors all the works of sanity and civilisation and wishes men to howl and scream naked in the dark, eating the flesh of their fellow man. He is consort to all other demon gods, male and female; his mad lights swim in the skies of Hagwynter’s frozen realm, his virile seed spawned ten thousand strains of beast from the dank womb of Shub-Hakkar, and all her ghastly young see his turncoat Miszoanthropes, men he has turned to beasts, as dear cousins. Dagon heads his call and sends his black tides and the fell things that lurk within them surging. So it’s little wonder the witch-finders deem him the most vile of fiends

And on those dread nights, called by some the Witching Eve and by others the Fecund Moon; when the lunar kingdom of Gurrubundah waxes gibbous and dripping in the heavens. When the shadows tremble with the howls of beasts and men and the vile things betwixt; and with the beat of manskin drums, the bray of horns and of bone marimbas; when heinous things thrash in mad witch-dance by the light of strange fires. When the air is foul with magic and the sweat of blasphemous orgies, when black blood runs hot, grizzly hungers surge and dark lusts bloom from darkest corners of minds amidst a plague of delirium nightmares; then do the witch-finders go out on crusade to do battle with the things of darkness; congregating in convocations of fire, they strike out unattended by mobs, for only such mad fanatics as they dare walk abroad, and they hunt the beasts that were once men