It’s funny how we can go through life in so much pain until it seems like a second skin that has grown into our cells.
We can try to shed the pain, yet to do so means scraping off that which has made us who we are. In time we realize that no matter how much skin we slough off, more skin will arise interlaced with pain until it seems like a natural barrier.
I, Pangor, will tell you my story. The story of how I started life as a human then grew into a flesh monster. A golem controlled by my desire for renewal, to replace those substances which sustain yet destroy me - flesh, and hope.
At a certain place in my life I realized that pain is a mantle ingrained in my psyche, permeating my aura with green haze, embedded with sharp spikes and doused with a sickly orange and violet tipped fury.
I am a monster to the people I love, and those who see my true form witness me glowing like flourescent coral in a dead sea, either calling them as a siren who kens their inner demon, or scaring them away.
No matter how many people I tell that I mean them no harm, they see my sadness and stench of foreboding and run. No matter how many I mean no harm to, I hurt them all the same. It is my nature.
The gods have plagued me with a karmic retribution for questioning their laws. You see, I was the one meant to be loved - yet cursed by the price humans pay for arrogantly believing that they can control fate, or anything really. Though we are benevolent and kind, fear is the fishhook of our existence.
Each soul is born with potential, but that which is born on a bloodless night under the hunter moon to an albino witch with the mark of Zeus must suffer for the sins of Prometheus.
Yea, he who stole fire for humanity, the very same being that the great eagle hath visited unto eternity, so that his liver might be torn asunder to atone for the crime of wanting to help mankind..
At what time did Pandora, my troubled μητέρα, come to join with my father, the Titan Prometheus, it is yet unknown. But from that union rose the souls of my brethren, placed in a chalice of lost souls until the time of human form approaches, pulsing with the knowledge that hope has been forever locked inside my mother’s box.
I search for the key. The key that will free me from this curse.
My original flesh was birthed to a human couple steeped in the Art of Hidden Magic. Childless, they longed for that which was denied them, and went out on a twelth night to take the flesh from another form. This they sewed together with bamboo shoots and the giant fennel stalk Prometheus had hidden fire within.
They bargained with my father, known for creating mankind from clay, to form a child of flesh and magick, then place inside it a newborn soul. Having none at hand, Prometheus took one from the chalice of lost souls and sealed my fate with fire and eternity, for I cannot die… yet I can never truly live.
With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected
the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark
of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was
already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against
the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the
glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow
eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive
motion agitated its limbs.
~ Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley ~
My flesh is that of a dead human, and so withers with time, my skin pocked with imperfections from disease. I am immune to fire, yea in that it burns my flesh and renews it once again, but not without the cost of great pain.
Pain upon pain I have lived through, in night a thousand hundred times I have walked through fire to cleanse my skin. I cannot bear the act any longer, so I hunt for the flesh of the living, those who scorn my ideals and ridicule me in their ignorance and disregard. I hunt to replenish the skin torn off by the Great Eagle God, who comes for me still.
My human parents are long dead, leaving my will unhinged. At my parents behest, I stockpiled a treasury of books, spells and enchantments, all of which I have no use for. Magick has a strange affect on me if touches me at all, for it sees me as kin with what spells the master fixed upon me to make me more animate.
I have left the castle of my birth and roam freely at night, for it is then when I might hide the scars of my flesh on a cold winter’s night. The earth is my home, and I protect it when I can, for it feeds me and nourishes my soul.
I am of human form, enduring this pain, and no matter what hell scours my skin, I survive. You believe you will defeat me. Think again.
Then run, as all cowards do.
Though it has been said I am a brainless being, I will let my words and actions speak for themselves.
all images CCO Pixabay
This story is an attempt at a creation myth for the Steem Monsters card series, fantasy lore launched by Aggroed. I give steemmonsters permission to use my content for the purpose of creating content for the deck.
This particular story line was written specifically for the flesh golem, a common monster earth card in the steem monster card pack. . I did not try to delineate the skills and defenses specifically as I was not sure about the parameters, though I would be happy to include some upon request.
The storyline is my own, however I borrowed some conceptions and facts from online sources such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheus and https://www.dndbeyond.com/characters/races/3013-awakened-flesh-golem.