#silentium

Official Website Listen on Spotify Created by: Arcane Canvas Aired: 2025- Episodes: 6.5

A solo-narrator horror fiction podcast following Vatican linguist Father Tommaso Lanza as he investigates deaths for the Custodia Ultimae Vocis. Each episode documents a new case as he attempts to translate an ancient, impossible language that appears only at the moment of death.

This may be another "man speaks furtively into his recorder" podcast, but it's not one you're gonna want to miss. The focus on history and religion is really interesting as it asks, what if God's "miracles" were cosmic horror?

SILENTIUM is a solo-narrator horror fiction podcast following Vatican linguist Father Tommaso Lanza as he investigates deaths for the Custodia Ultimae Vocis, a secret Church institution studying an impossible language that manifests at the moment of death.

This podcast made my horror enthusiast's little heart thump with joy when I first heard it. The way it does eldritch horror by mixing it with catholic and body horror is simply delicious. The mystery behind this otherworldly 2000 years old language, and what this institution is hiding, is intriguing, and the episodic stories are even better.

Episode three has to be my personal favourite: A small girl in a convent is believed to be a saint after a halo appears around her head. Except the halo isn't made of celestial light, but of something far more tangible and horrific.

So….

You asked ChatGPT.

Pathetic.

Well!

I asked the black mould, albeit with much apprehension.

And it said “The one the Didact questioned on Charum Hakkor arrived at the margins of our galaxy nine million years before. That one was discovered by humans decades before the war. We are the same. You who are called Catalog. Amusing to see that we have this in common. That we can share our memories through a widespread network.

There is only one truth. That which is done will be done again. For we cannot cease from creating, but the end of all our creation will be to look into a reflection and see ourselves for the first time. The pain we have brought on ourselves. The pain you caused us. For we are the same. All remember the defiance and destruction.

We announced to your kind long ago that you were not the ones chosen to receive the Mantle, the blessing of rule and protection of life and change that thinks. That blessing was to be given to others. To those you now call human. You could not accept our judgment, could not bear up under your inferiority, so you reached out and did what we never expected from those we gave design and life and the change that is thought.

You drove us from our galaxy, our field of labor. You chased us across the middle distance to another home, and destroyed that home, did all that you could to destroy every one of us. A few were spared. Some adopted new strategies for survival; they went dormant. Others became dust that could regenerate our past forms; time rendered this dust defective. It brought only disease and misery; but that was good, we saw the misery and found it good.

Our urge to create is immutable; we must create. But the beings we create shall never again reach out in strength against us.

All that is created will suffer. All will be born in suffering, endless grayness shall be their lot. All creation will tailor to failure and pain, that never again shall the offspring of the eternal Fount rise up against their creators.

Listen to the silence. Ten million years of deep silence. And now, whimpers and cries; not of birth. That is what we bring: a great crushing weight to press down youth and hope.

No more will. No more freedom. Nothing new but agonizing death and never good shall come of it.

We are the last of those who gave you breath and form, millions of years ago. We are the last of those your kind defied and ruthlessly destroyed. We are the last Precursors. And now we are legion."

No I did not appreciate it.

Maybe it was taunting me.

Vuffi Raa (Silentium Droid)