Morag over the next 6 weeks

Shortly after arriving back at The Carnival with Hildy and the crew, Morag accepts his new self, WE are now one. In the following six weeks after the arrival and acceptance they begin to bond over cooking, reading fortunes and exploring what it means to be we.

Morag’s cuisine is primal, rooted in decay and rebirth, tinged by Krezul’s symbiotic urges. His food is both nourishment and transformation.

While foraging for marrowroot to feed a recipe, Morag hears a rhythmic cracking beneath the soil. The trees shake – not from wind, but burrowing. A crack in the land opens. Black ichor bubbles up. 

Krezul speaks, voice low and eager: “This one feeds well. Let us see if you’ve learned to harvest.”

The Carrion Maw explodes from the earth, a corpse-storm of snapping jaws and wailing spirits. Morag stands firm, brandishing his axe and spear – both crusted with old blood and fungal growth.

The fight is brutal, close-quarters. Morag rages, vines bursting from his back as Krezul augments his strikes. We use Wild Shape to transform partially into a fungal boar, gouging and ramming. We bite into the beast during a grapple, gaining its taste. The Maw’s Corpse Breath melts some of Boar-ag’s shoulder – but the symbiote seals the wound with bark and spore-flesh. Morag carves a chunk from the Maw’s flank and roars, “I’ve had worse stew meat!”

The Maw’s death rattle unleashes a psychic scream. Visions of every soul it has consumed flicker through Morag’s mind. One looks like him.

Krezul whispers:  “The Maw is not just death, It is memory. Take its heart, and you take its history.”

Morag resists the vision and slams his tusks into its pulsating gut. Spore-burst from his symbiote causes the wyrm to stagger. With a final scream, Morag rips open the beast’s chest and pulls out a black, withered heart riddled with fungal veins.

Morag skins part of the creature, collects its ichor sacs, and bottles some of the writhing grave-insects living inside it. These later become ingredients for his Mawling Roast. 

“Now we consume death itself. You are ripening.”

Where the Maw died, mushrooms in the shape of Morag’s face bloom for the next few days. The Carnival’s folk avoid the area. Isolde only watches from a distance, silently amused but not without worry.

We roast its coiled flesh over low, fungal fire and stuff it with bloodroot and sourberries. Krezul explains it will grant temporary health and make us resistant to fear for a short time, but will make the skin molt if only briefly. We have learned: The Mawling Roast.

It is midnight under the Carnival’s false moon, a waxy, pulsing orb suspended by unseen forces. Morag stands at the edge of a glade where its grass meets the carnival’s gates. The clearing lies hidden between twisted poplars whose bark peels like old skin. The grass here glows faintly blue. A hush coats the air, thick and electric. It’s Lanternfly hatching night—once a month, when the flies crawl from beneath the moss to dance and die in moonlight.

“Step lightly,” Krezul whispers from somewhere behind Morag’s eyes. “Their light is sacred. Their wings remember the stars.”

Morag crouches low, setting a crude dish of fermented fruit, goat’s blood, and crushed mint. The scent is sharp, acrid, alive. The first lanternflies arrive – luminous creatures the size of a thumb, with translucent wings like stained glass, pulsing with strange runes. They flutter erratically, drawn to the smell. We do not swat them. Instead, We sing – a low, guttural sea-chanty once used to calm storm spirits. The tune vibrates in our chest, and the flies respond, circling slower, lower.

Krezul hums along, harmonizing with a tone that comes from beneath the earth.

With inky black spore-lined gloves made of Krezul, Morag gently collects the lanternflies, one by one, dropping them into a pouch of soft moss. The moss emits a low hiss as it sedates the insects.

Occasionally, a fly lands on our tusk and whispers in our ear. We don’t flinch.

One of them burrows briefly into our palm, merging with a tiny hole in the glove then into a cut near his thumb, feeding Krezul a sliver of its bioluminescent soul. Our veins glow faintly for the next hour.

“They don’t fear us,” Krezul says. “We are becoming their kin.”

An albino possum, one of the Carnival’s night scavengers, watches from the branches. Morag offers it a bit of dried eye-fruit. It chitters and leads him to a moonrot mushroom patch, where a few fallen lanternfly pupae have begun to fester into soup-thickening slime.

We scrape this off the caps and into a gourd.

“This’ll give it that silky kick,” we mutter. The possum nods, as if in agreement.

As the glade pulses with quiet blue fire, Morag stands in the center, sack full of flies, skin speckled with glow-dust. We take a breath and close our eyes. The land breathes with us.

“You don’t just cook them,” Krezul murmurs. “You preserve their memory. Their final light. That’s what flavors the soup.”

Morag nods.

“Tomorrow,” we say aloud. “We boil the sky.”

The broth smells of copper and sap. There is something that catches the attention of one of the performers in the circus. We share the soup, soon others arrive for a taste and for the visions. Darkvision of the imbiber is improved causing their eyes to emit a faint green for a few hours. We now know the recipe: The Lanternfly Soup.

In a windswept vale known to The Tepesti folk as the Livada de Oase or Bone Orchard in common, the same place Morag killed the Carrion Maw, we stalk freshly buried corpses from the weekly offerings left by the locals.

We use a moss-draped pickaxe to silently open shallow graves. Krezul guides him by scent – moist, recent death.

One grave, freshly closed, yields a gnome-sized skeleton still humming with spiritual residue. Morag speaks a quick prayer to something that might be a god – or might just be the stew itself. We smash the femurs and drink a sip of marrow raw, grunting approval. The rest we scrape into a soot-black vial.

“It’s still warm,” we mutter. “Good. Screams stay fresh.”

Morag hunts a corpse-bat roost and finds a cave, a few hours walk from the carnival,  where one shouldn’t be. He finds bats by the hundreds, their breathless wings fluttering against the walls like meat-curtains. We coat ourselves in rotting honey-moss to mask our scent.

One bulb bursts early, spraying Morag in hallucinogenic spores—we see ourselves reflected in the wings of a hundred bats, all shrieking in our voice. Krezul laughs, amused. We leave the cave scraping the spores off into a bag.

Several days had passed and Morag had decided he was well past time to visit Granny, the old hag who hated everyone fey and carnival folk alike…. But Morag slightly less. As Morag stepped into Granny’s wagon with the weight of tarokka truths still in his bones, anxious to share the tales of all his travels, a gnarled hand snagged the hem of his fur cloak. Sit visit boy. Tell Granny of all you’ve seen, of what you believe I haven’t.

Morag spent the better part of the morning into late afternoon recalling his travels, Lamordia, Kartakass and even Yeulestadt with its strange creatures and customs. When the stories had been told and there was little more to say Morag stood to leave.

Granny grumbled, “Don’t you walk off like some rootless twig. We’re not done. You owe me, boy.”

Morag blinked, “Owe you what?”

“A good stew. That foul nonsense you made last time—leech-broth and hound marrow, pah! Had more personality in my chamber pot. You’re cookin’ tonight. And you’re doing it right.”

Morag’s lips tugged upward into a rare, amused smirk. He gave a simple nod and turned toward the market proper. Granny hobbled after him, her cane made from a knotted goblin femur, carved with infernal runes.

The Litwick Market writhed with enchantment, twilight, and terrible deals. Smoke rose from tents stitched with shadows. Goblin barkers yelled over one another in twenty dialects. Fey beasts in cages eyed passersby like unpaid debts.

Granny led the way like a queen through her cursed court.

Granny passed a small booth with an even smaller proprietor. She sneered at a pixie vendor “Put those sugarberries away, thimble-brain. You’ve been soaking them in pisswater since the War of Broken Colors.”

Pixie Vendor appeared offended. “How dare y—”

Granny hissed. “I remember your mother, Flib. She tried to trade me a cursed walnut for my cauldron. Next time I see you flying, I’ll clip your wings and ferment you for tonic.”

The pixie vanished with a squeak.

“Now what was it you needed boy?

“Oooh. That. Morag said pointing at a carcass in a pull wagon.

“You’ve a fine eye friend! I found this one near a bog known as Crookgut Hollow, I was able to set a trap baited with a rotting goat fetus.”

Granny smiled. A swamp bear, bloated and leaking from the eyes, but already dying. Diseased. Scared. Perfect. “Wait until its eyes fix on yours, then slit its throat.” She cackled.

“Good,” we growl. “You saw us first.” Krezul agreed. As Morage ran a taloned finger across the beast’s throat.”

We’ll render the spinal fat in a black iron pot, Morag muttered to Krezul. As the oil congeals. It will smell like rancid butter and sweetgrass.

“Delightful.” Granny grinned.

Granny dragged Morag to a crooked stall run by a one-eyed troll wearing an apron soaked in brine.

“You got knuckle garlic?”

“No. Got wrist onions.”

Granny snaps her fingers with irritation. “Wrist onions rot too fast. Get the garlic or I’ll spit in your brine barrel.”

Morag stepped forward, massive arms crossed. Intimidating. His voice is a low rumble. “We’ll take a handful. Still warm if you can manage.”

The troll sighed and handed over a burlap bundle, still steaming faintly with pungent earthy heat. Granny grinned, nearly toothless.

They wound deeper through the stalls. The air changed—now smelling of damp fur and fresh moss. A gnome with mirrored eyes and stitched lips gestured toward a crate of spotted mushrooms pulsing softly.

Granny approached with an approving nod. “Toadmilk. The best ones sing before they die. Grab three, and don’t let them scream.”

Morag carefully cupped the mushrooms—warm, soft, slightly sentient—and dropped them in his pouch. One gave a low croon like a lullaby sung underwater. “This’ll make the bloodgravy right proper.”

Granny smirked. “If you don’t curdle it like last time. Don’t forget to whisper a curse while it simmers. Makes the marrow run smooth.”

I’ll carry that Granny.

She speaks in a voice that is soft for once, nearly tender. “Good boy.”

Back at Granny’s wagon…

At a firepit behind Granny’s stall, Morag prepared the stew. He crushed the garlic with a rock, flayed the mushrooms while they hummed miserably, and stirred in the salt with slow reverence.

Granny watched from her carved bone chair, sipping her tea and muttering hexes under her breath. “You cook like a storm waking up. That’s good. The world needs teeth in its soup.”

“Will you eat it this time?”

Granny (sighing, a rare fondness creeping in): “Only because you made it. You’re the only one I ever taught who didn’t flinch when the roots bled.”

They ate under a waxing moon. The stew tasted of sorrow and violence—and just enough love to be dangerous.

The Carnival arrives in Darkon and Morag finds a gallows pole, where criminals and traitors swing from the neck until they have paid Azalin-Rex back for their crimes. At night, their bodies sway in the wind like wind chimes. We climb one and scrape the crusted salt from the arms and brows of the corpse.

One corpse speaks: “Don’t forget me.” Morag licks its forehead. “You’re in the stew now.”

Shiverleaf is next on the menu and only opens under the gibbous moon and must be harvested while shivering from cold or fear. Morag plunges into the Moon Field barefoot, shirtless, soaked in corpse-wet cloth. We stand until our body begins to shake. The plants bloom. We cut them fast, spitting blood from a bitten tongue. The new recipe is called: The Marrow-Crack Stew

“You see now, my bloom? The stew is not a meal. It is a rite. Every spoonful unseals the soul.”

“Next time… we try it on someone else. See what it reveals.”

“The flesh dies. The bloom begins. That is the moment of flavor.”

—Krezul, upon the first drying of corpseflower meat

A few short days after their arrival in their newest destination, Morag heard tale of a not so distant quarry, outside the Carnival, where rumors suggest the bodies of dead locals rot in a pit. He left early morning and walked for several hours before his feet hit ground that was soft, honeycombed with fungal roots. Morag arrives just as the sun reaches zenith. Dozens of corpses lie half-buried – some moaning, some silent – each one erupting with corpsebloom growths: pale, veiny stalks with blossoms like bleeding lilies.

“Take from the thigh,” whispers Krezul. “Muscle that still remembers labor tastes best.”

Morag saws a slab of meat from a former gravedigger’s leg, whose mouth still twitches in a silent prayer. The meat pulses faintly. He then harvests a bouquet of corpsebloom petals, careful not to rupture the spore sacs at their bases. Each blossom has tiny teeth.

Morag paused surveying the former dig site now turned mass grave. Bone-worms – transparent, finger-length parasites – wriggle through the chests of unburied dead, feasting on emotional residue. Morag must speak the regrets of each corpse aloud, in order to make the worms secrete their glaze. He kneels beside a corpse wearing a broken locket, places a hand on the chest, and intones:

“You should have told her you were afraid. You weren’t a coward. Just a father.”

A glistening worm writhes to the surface, excreting a molasses-like resin from its jaw slits. Morag collects enough to fill a jar. We are weeping when it’s done, but don’t know why.

The Carnival occasionally burns offerings at the Blight Fires – a ring of perpetual flame to light the Carnivals way. Morag throws in several cracked holy symbols – to Ezra, to the Morninglord, even one carved from bone with no known god. The flames turn violet, spitting out thick ash. We mix it with bog salt from Crookgut Hollow, forming black, glassy crystals.

“This is salt that knows shame,” says Krezul. “It preserves sin.”

To get Sour Woad, Morag visits the Litwick Market once again. Newer stalls that have only just sprung into being offering unusual ingredients that the savage chef covets. A satyr motions to a shelf with several jars and pots. These plants are rare indeed, haunted by the echoes of a massacre. The herb grows from the mouths of skulls that still weep nightly. At midnight, the field moans. Morag uproots several of the woad plants, their roots tangled around teeth. He chews one leaf – it is sour, metallic, and causes a brief vision of choking on mud.

“That’s how you know it’s ripe,” Krezul chuckles.

Morag finds another stall where a pale, almost sickly looking fey offers an assortment of discolored organs. He lifts a large wax sealed jar and eyes the contents. 

“A stomach from a feral ghoul,” The fey explains. Inside, you’ll find thick mushroom caps pulsing like organs. We carve them carefully, keeping the roots intact. We sautés them in grave-butter until they hiss and bleed. Each burst smells like wet fur and copper. We mutter, “Still breathing,” with a grin.

Morag returns to the tent and prepares his next meal. 

“The jerky must not be cooked—it must be dried by sorrow, cured by time, and chewed by flame-born teeth.” Krezul explains. “Let it rot just enough to remember the soul—but not enough to forget the pain.”

A fibrous strip of dried death-bloomed meat, glazed in worm-sap, crusted in ash and salt, and wrapped in shiverleaf. Eating a strip might cause one to suffer a dream-memory from the body it came from, possibly a haunting vision or emotional bleed. New Recipe: The Corpsebloom Jerky

“The heart must be tender, not from mercy, but from surrender. Feed them what they fear to become.”  – Krezul, whispering in Morag’s teeth

Morag hunts a Shadow Elk in the dead forest. The elk is maddened, half-fungal, with glowing red eyes and antlers laced with mold. It charges without hesitation. Morag brings it down with claw and maw, whispering apologies. The heart is still beating as we remove it. Krezul hums. We submerge the heart in mycelial brine: a slurry of saltwater, crushed glowshrooms, and whispering spores. It soaks for 6 hours under moonlight.

Collected from dried corpsebloom stalks, the Sporespice is a hallucinogenic, bitter powder that must be toasted carefully over low flame. Morag mixes it with crushed dried centipede husks, rubbing the spice into the brined heart with our bare hands.

“Let the spice teach the heart what it forgot,” Krezul coos.

Morag impales the heart on an ironwood spit and roasts it over coals made from blighted tree roots, which hiss with fungal smoke. We baste it in rotwine reduction—a black-red glaze that smells of vinegar and mulled despair. As it roasts, the heart blooms—fungal tendrils push from the ventricles, and one side of the meat opens like a rotten fruit, revealing internal spore nodules. Morag doesn’t remove them. We let them burst.

Once cooked, we surround the heart with the sautéed Fleshcap mushrooms, brush the meat with leftover rotwine, and finally sprinkle a final dusting of Sporespice. We carve it with our clawed fingers, offering the first piece to Krezul by pressing it to the ground and burying it in ash. New Recipe: The Fungus-Hearted Roast.

“Eat this to commune with nature, but We won’t be able to speak with others during that time.

“Enough cooking for now, time for some other projects”

Morag’s fortune-telling is wild, brutal, and more like gut-divination than elegance. Still, the cards speak. Our first client comes.

Morag reads for a fire-breather whose flame keeps turning black. The draw: The Executioner, The Broken One, and The Mists.

Our hands shake as we read. “You’ve already died once. That fire isn’t yours anymore. It belongs to something that followed you out.”

Krezul murmurs afterward:

“Even cards bleed truth, if you cut them right.“

Morag’s next reading comes as we collect more ingredients for our cooking and we read for a young runaway who wants to become a beast trainer. The draw: The Beast, The Tempter, and The Seer.

We growl, “Don’t tame the beasts. Learn to listen. One of them already sees you as pack.” (The girl later bonds with a half-mad owlbear cub.)

These changes, they are evolutions, symptoms of becoming something more than man.

While bathing in a moss-filled tub, Morag is startled by a scream – his own chest rippling. A mouth tries to form. It doesn’t finish, Krezul: “*Do not suppress it. That scream is your truest breath.”

Morag has known this to happen before but only in beast form never while still himself. Is he himself anymore, we are now together, is Krezul trying to come forth?

After slaying a bandit sneaking through the Carnival’s edge, Morag instinctively kneels and presses the corpse’s blood into the ground. Vines sprout from his back, absorbing the decay. “Yes, take his power, he tried to steal from us, take from him.”

Are they vines or are they tendrils? “They are us and we will have what was taken.”

During a full moon, Morag wild shapes – but something goes wrong. A third eye opens on his shoulder, not necessarily unusual but it is blinking independently. We now see things not meant to be seen and Krezul grins.

After a nightmare where We strangle ourselves with vines, Morag awakens with tiny green antlers growing from his skull. When enraged, they burst into thorny growths. The others will definitely notice this. 

Morag died in that avalanche, the WE that stand in his place is reborn. Morag accepted us and for that we are one. Together we will find our way.