The Bloody '69

• Bloody 69
• The Soul-Eater; Rebound in Birmingham
• The Harvester; Cultivator of the Slain
• The Breathstealer; Slithergadee from the Sea
• The Soul-Eater; Devourer of the Self

The Three

Idigam, Exile. These great creatures were driven beyond the borders of the Border Marches by Father Wolf before time existed, powerful things forever banished from existence and forbidden the world of flesh by the Gauntlet. These things of myth proved themselves to be something more as first one then many came to earth throughout the decade of free love – for many the 1960’s was a time of bloody war, not of peace. In 1969 three of these great spirits came to the UK and brought pain and terror with them – these Idigam brought such chaos and mayhem that to the survivors it was no longer 1969, it was the Bloody ‘69. This is their story.

There were three of these creatures, each named by those who fought it, or who told the tales of those who did. The creature that plagued the border region of Scotland met its end near the festival of the Last Harvest, and will be forever known as the Spirit of the Last Harvest, or more simply as the Harvester. The Slithergadee came from the sea, somewhere in Devon or Cornwall, and slithered across much of southern England, whereas the Soul-Eater terrorised northern England and into Wales.

Each of these foul beasts was different, though the means by which they met their ends were harrowingly similar – in each case it involved blood, death and sacrifice. These were giants of the spirit world, dinosaurs of the deep Hisil, as powerful as a force of nature and as difficult to combat.

The Harvester took the form of a horrific insect-like creature who was first spotted at Netherwood, but which seemed to have no real direction to its rampages. Wherever it went the Tribes of the Moon would rise to oppose it, sometimes with their allies of the Hisil, sometimes they came without being called and with no agreement made. On more than one occasion those of the Pure Tribes were said to have come from their places to fight it – this was a threat which no one pack could hope to successfully oppose. What was most horrific to many though was that the more who turned up to oppose it, the more who lost their lives fighting the Harvester the greater its army of flesh grew – it could raise those who fell fighting it to continue their battle, but now on the side of their enemy.

After weeks of constant fighting the pack “None Given, None Taken” called a council of alphas, a war council, at Dykeshead. A violent storm raged for days as debate as to what action could be taken swung one way then another. Finally on the third night their alpha, Stands-First a Rahu of the Blood Talons, led his pack away silently under cover of the heavy rain and lightning for what was called the Battle of Last Harvest. When morning came the storm broke and the heavily wounded remains of None Given, None Taken limped to where the assembled Tribes of the Moon were gathered to report that their alpha had sacrificed himself to end the Harvester; it was no more.

No tale of the Soul-Eater agrees on its form, perhaps its foulness was too much for any mortal mind to behold, perhaps it was a shapeshifter, perhaps it was a master of illusion. The truth is that none knows the truth, but perhaps that is to the good. What can be said for sure is that the Soul-Eater drove some of its victims mad, and that others when they were found were empty, a living shell with nothing within. Others were slain, ripped to pieces, or tied together into shapes, things.

We know that the Soul-Eater first appeared somewhere in Wales, and that it wandered, aimless perhaps, throughout northern England before a scratch force of Uratha and spirits drove it back to Wales where it seemed to make some sort of nest. Whilst many warriors fought and died facing the Soul-Eater there was one who instead looked deep within the Hisil, and within a mighty library, seeking the key to victory. The Greyshadow, an Ithaeur of the Storm Lords, called for volunteers to sacrifice themselves to end the threat of the Soul-Eater. There were many who stood forward but the pack which was formed, the Thin Red Line, consisted of ten experienced Uratha, two of each auspice. Each of them gave up their tribe and gave up their family ties, dedicating themselves to the idigam threat.

Then the force which had been keeping the Soul-Eater at bay turned and drove it north and east seemingly towards Birmingham. The Thin Red Line met the Soul-Eater in the Shadow where a great road junction of the M6 was being built. Half of the pack faced it and fought it to a standstill – taking great wounds to their flesh and spirit and mind in doing so – whilst the other half completed the rite that had been started the night before. When it was complete there was no more sign of the Soul-Eater, nor of the ritualists. All were gone, sacrificed to stop the unholy exile. The remainder of the Thin Red Line took the sight of the Battle as their territory, and are said to hold it still.

Finally the Breathstealer, called the Slithergadee by some. This creature has an appearance, though not one which is easy to look upon – it was a fog, a mist, but one which could be thin as a sheet of paper, or as thick as ink. Often appearing almost in Twilight, no matter which side of the Hisil it haunted, the Breathstealer seemed to be ignorant of the physical – many tales exist of those who saw it and attacked in an effort to drive it away from loved ones only to be ignored as it would steal the breath from their lungs. That’s not to say that it was constant; some assaults would result in it taking the shape of a dark, almost purple, cloud which would leave its victims as desiccated corpses seemingly decades old, or leave nothing behind other than dried blood on the ground.

This creature came to the land somewhere in Cornwall, or perhaps Devon, and caused pain and misery for many for an entire year before the greatest Ithaeur of the South, led by the Fisher King from London, gathered to try to banish it. With many of the greatest warriors, the most experienced veterans of the Tribes of the Moon dead at its gaseous claws it was decided that what cannot be slain must merely be defeated.

With a heroic effort the Breathstealer was harried into the sea, weapons of rowanwood being used to sting it towards some of those who shared blood with the ritualists, bait for the foul creature, bait which knew it might not escape. The water off the Isle of Sheppey, where the Thames Estuary flows into the North Sea was frozen over in the Hisil by the efforts of Ice and Wind spirits, including one known as the Great North Wind and it was there that the bait waited, along with a casket of stone.

As the force assembled against it strived to prevent their kin from suffocating the Bone Shadow there sent the humans through to the physical world, where the sea was rough under a heavy storm, the passing of the Great North Wind. As the Fisher King and his fellows reached the pinnacle of their rite, somehow trapping the Slithergadee into the stone casket as it was drawn forth to the physical realm and dropped into the sea. At this climax the Sword of the Winter Kings, a potent fetish and symbol of the ruler of London, was plunged into the land near to Sheerness, sealing the binding. To add power to this binding it was sealed in blood; the Fisher King ended his own life and the Great North Wind took his body deep into the Shadow. The third, and perhaps most powerful, of the idigam was bound beneath the waves.

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