Mistland Prattlers

>>! Christmas Special !<<

~ Once upon a sled ride ~

When the highest trees from the Grove of Old Titans were one half as big as today, a fat guy all dressed in red came from some distant lands riding his sled pulled by a reindeer. Like a flash, he scampered around frozen lakes, laughing like hell and throwing candies and coil at terrified Mistlanders. Who knows what else could have happened if the Immortal Warriors of the UltraEvil Overlord hadn’t launched a raid on a monastery nearby. On their way back to the Iron Mountains, they captured the guy and carried him away, along with his reindeer and other prisoners. The broken sled was found by Peter Gimmey, a beggar from Lucerian Fields, whose sister later sold it to Louis the Wainwright from Gloul’s Lows, who fixed it and subsequently sold the sled to Mora and Kiki’s great-grandmother Mia. That’s how the fastest sled in Mistland finally made its way from the hands of a crazy troublemaker to the witch sisters. It’s good to live in a world where everyone gets what they deserve.

More Stories

~ Down the Western Highway ~

If one day you happen to ride the Old Western Highway from North to South – and this is, by the way, how decent people usually travel from Muddlewood to Los Duendes – then upon looking westward right after the Old Graveyard, you won’t probably see much. But if the mist doesn’t grows too heavy, you have a chance to see twisted trees of Knitemire, spot the gleam of swamp toadstools, hear a charming song of woodland sirens, and smile at the phantoms of Mistland. They won’t probably smile back, being too busy suffering, lamenting and listening to the melodies of the ghost piper. But you’re still free to say goodbye, and maybe some dryad will whisper the same back at you, shyly watching you vanish into the distance...

More Stories

~ Gorran ~

The last dragon in Mistland wasn’t able to fly, couldn’t spit fire, didn’t say a word and simply walked on four legs around the forest grazing and mooing like a flock of cows. Gentle as a lamb, Gorran lived a long lonely life and froze to death in a blizzard in the Year of White Summer. Sylvans and trixies carved his bones into amulets, candle-holders, daggers and goblets, but no one dared to touch the skull and destroy the last piece of evidence that dragons once did exist in this world. Because no one wanted to live in a world without dragons, even if they are no more.

More Stories

~ Magic draughts ~

One rainy morning, Yonsi Fidget led his pigs to the Fayre and met an old lady who asked him to sell her his flock for twelve silver and twelve iron coins. Yonsi gladly accepted the offer and proudly returned home only to discover that his silver and iron coins turned into white and black rocks. Luckily for him, one strolling minstrel had seen an old lady herding a flock of pigs in the Eastern Wilds. Thanks to his help Yonsi and his friends started in pursuit, captured an unscrupulous witch and threw her in a cave full of hungry ghouls. Thus Yonsi Fidget got his pigs back. And even made some cash after selling twenty four black and white stones to Knite’s grandfather Kanto, who was happy to find new game pieces for his checkerboard.

More Stories

~ A patient listener ~

If you happen to be born a winter-strayed spirit, try never to mistake a something for a someone before claiming possession over it. As soon as you posses an inanimate object, it’s going to be quite hard to disengage until it’s undamaged. You’ll be locked in your cage for days, weeks, even months. And it’s going to be a lot harder if some drunk idiot mistakes you for a real person as well and makes you listen to his incessant babble day in and night out. That’s when you start begging for the end to come... Oh, even though you’re a winter spirit, you will be desperately begging for summer.

More Stories

>>! Halloween Special !<<

~ For a week of oblivion ~

No one has ever seen Old Garia, but everybody knows her stone. It’s called the Stall of Garia. If you walk down an old weedy path that leads from Whispering Meadow to Lake Big Brother, you won’t miss two huge rocks watchfully guarded by a silent black bat. There are always plenty of amazing goods on Garia’s Stall: underwater candles, ratcatcher’s flutes, rare spellbooks, screaming pumpkins and many other things you won’t find anywhere else. Feel free to take anything you want in exchange for seven days of your life. You will never know what happened to you those seven days. You will never know where you were or what you were doing. You will just stare deep into the bat’s eye and fall asleep to disappear and get back home on the seventh day holding the thing you’ve chosen. Safe and sound. Or not at all. One can never know for sure.

More Stories

~ Through madness to booze ~

You will most likely never meet anyone who tells that his favorite liquor is Cactula Del Diablo, except for those crazy psychagogues from the Southern Farlands that drink it to become even crazier. The infamous Cactula Del Diablo is made from rare gnarling cacti that grow in deserts in the south and, although it tastes like heaven, it turns your life into hell in a few minutes, making you see demons and ghosts unseen by the others, hear annoying music from the beyond and constantly feel the touch of someone’s cold sticky tentacles. No, sir, one will open a bottle of Cactula Del Diablo only if there’s nothing else left to drink. The good news is that, after a day or two of having this mind-twisting essence, you get used to seeing creepy things and being haunted by all kinds of spooks, and then you can finally set off to a place haunted by real ghosts and demons, like the Howling Distillery of Crowgarth, and steal all the bottles of normal booze that you find in its vaults.

More Stories

~ Otto the Sharpener ~

There are tons of ways to get rid of a dead body respectfully, but if the choice boils down to personal preference, Xavier would rate the tradition of the Middle Coast at the top of the list. In the South, they burn a goner or just leave them to dry in a desert. In the North, they drown them in a sea. But Lucerians came up with the best idea ever: they bury the dead and put a huge grindstone over a grave. Thank you “Blessed Otto Huber, May Eternal Damnation Be upon Meat-eaters, Godless Drunkards, and Foul Mouths” for letting sharpen these knives before going to hunt.

More Stories

~ Alone and happy ~

The best thing about being a living oak stump, if there is any, is that you don’t sleep in winter like other trees. Of course you constantly freeze and have to be always on the lookout for woodcutters and stupid peasants that can mistake you for an ordinary log and throw you into the fire without any ceremony. But it’s a pretty acceptable trade-off for a chance to drink and bathe in deliciously clear water from melted snow. A full month of pure bliss and pleasure... Until other trees wake up and put their gnarled roots into this heavenly nectar and spoil the taste, along with marmots, chipmunks and other stinky loafers. Alas, good things never last too long.

More Stories

~ Old man’s loot ~

Down the Dry River bed, not far from a small bay called The Nip, there lived an old man called Ferdinand. Oh, what a miser that Ferdinand was! He had a hiding place stuffed with gems and gold that he'd collected throughout his life but lived in a tiny hut and ate only breadcrumbs and salt. “There will be a day,” the old man used to say, “when I buy myself the biggest palace in Westgate! And when I do, I’m gonna throw a party that'll make everyone jealous.” But at the end of the Second Hoblin War, the hoblin army finally took over Westgate, burned the city to the ground, and killed everyone who would be jealous. Ferdinand, one of the richest lucerians on the coast, totally went off the bend, left his spoils, and just vanished into thin mist. Almost forty years afterwards, Xavier accidentally found his cache. It took him about two months to drink all Ferdinand’s money away, and those were probably two hardest months in his entire life. The old man would've been proud.

More Stories

~ Treasure hunting ~

It’s quite funny how much money some people will pay for a treasure map. Does anyone still remember that guy from Black Falls, Kawley or Awkley, that bought that old dirty rag with obscure symbols at the Fayre? That Kawley-Awkley guy paid almost seven rials just to find a clay pot with seven rials! Which is, however, not as bad as the infamous and utterly inglorious voyage of captain Perch, who bought a five-hundred-rial map that led him to a chest full of mildewed paper money. You can hardly find a couple dozens of lucky treasure hunters, but the number of losers seems to go into infinity. This alone is enough to prevent everyone from going gods-know-where to find gods-know-what. Especially when there is another, much better, way to become rich: cemeteries! Simply grab a couple of spades and start digging until you reach jewels and coins. Don’t forget to choose a proper grave, the older the better. Way back when, folks were sentimental and generous to the dead. As for newer graves, they're usually nothing more than soil and bones. How come people became so stingy?

More Stories

~ Let’s be friends ~

Some people get along; some don’t. The latter ones can be very annoying, especially when they are a big, strong and dumb half-ogre Barrie that loudly plays drums near your house all night long and calls you names every time you meet him in the forest. You can’t beat him, you can’t make him go away, so the only option will probably be to bury the hatchet and offer him a mushroom pie as a token of friendship. Everybody knows there is no better way to someone’s heart than through their stomach.

More Stories

~ Keep away from gardens ~

The first thing you get to learn in Mistland is to never go to Blackwoods. Dark beings dwell there. The ones that are way more dangerous than ghouls and more evil than the undead. Lost demons from the Eerie World, crippled golems left after the Great Hermetical War, malicious creatures banished from lowlands to the most dense and dark forest in Mistland, and dreadful monsters that hid there long before... But all of them are just harmless pets before the Gardener, a sinister faceless giant in an old leather cloak and a top hat. He resides in his enchanted garden surrounded by creepy sentinel trees and whimsical flowerbeds full of crying flowers. Rumor has it that they were once people caught by the Gardener and turned into plants. And if you dare to come close, they will turn their blind buds towards you and faintly whisper, “Run away!”

More Stories

~ Days of the echo ~

The best moments in life are usually those when you do the right thing at the right time. And there is no better time to read a book of tales than the short week between the last leaf and the first snowflake. You can sit around an old round table at the bottom of Ghoul’s Lows, embraced by thick dusky fog, take a sip of raspberry tea and start reading out loud, listening how your voice sullenly echoes in crystalline silence. “Once upon a time, there was a man who lived in a black windmill deep in the age-old forest of Blackwoods. His name was Vladan and he was the witcher, the strongest and the most skillful of his kind. There was no man richer or more powerful in or far beyond Luceria. Diamonds, rubies, emeralds, sapphires, silver, and gold... All the riches of Mistland belonged to Vladan, but no treasure could make him happy. For above all else, he longed for a thing he once saw in his dream: the Crown of a Hoblin King. “Crown of a Hoblin King...” the silence weakly exhaled.

More Stories

~ Never say pie ~

The funniest thing about Bye-Pie is that its every single ingredient can kill you in a minute, but if you mix them all together and serve with a jug of white mead, no one will probably notice the shadow of the Reaper. However, if they do, then someone has definitely messed up the recipe. In this case, the best thing to do is probably to hurry up and eat as much as you can while you still can.

More Stories

~ Spring of purity ~

A couple of decades ago, or maybe five, there was a guy by the name of Bennie Bugbear who once found an ancient spring well to the East of Knitemire and claimed it was the Fountain of Youth. Today it’s quite hard to say what he meant by that, as Bennie went to the World of Endless Youth in about three days after taking a couple of gulps from the spring, but one thing is for sure, the spring well that Bennie found has the very best water to wash bloodstains out of your clothes. Or maybe of a handkerchief of that 200-rial Shaggy Pat guy, wanted for murder and werewolfery dead or whatever. Some people would say it’s because the spring is cold as the heart of a troll, but Xavier always thought it was thanks to the rich soil of surrounding swamps spangled with beautiful death caps. And if old Bennie the Snake, the only resident of this wonderful desolate place, could talk, he would probably agree with that.

More Stories

~ The sleepless night ~

Nobody sleeps on the Sleepless Night. And that is, by the way, why it is called “sleepless”. Of course, there are still those who sleep like a log all winter long or get too drunk too early to reach the dawn, but most prattlers won’t miss the chance to light their lantern brightly and spend the longest night of the year wide awake. Staring at the sky, everybody waits for the Winter King to spot their light from above and steer his flying boat down to ask for warmth. And when it happens, the lucky ones can ask the king to grant them anything they want, be it a legendary Book of Twilight Laments or a barrel of legendary Scorpion Rum from a pirate ship that sank off the Luceria coast three hundred years ago.