"I cannot really say that I'm sorry for doing this. It's my duty as a caring father to make sure you can't harm anybody. You're insane, you see. Blame it on your mother, if you like. It's all her fault. She never told me about your mad grandmother until we were married, and you know how blood always runs true. Well anyway, you're all secure now. Can't have you wandering about upsetting people, can we? Call if you want anything, oh, and happy birthday!"
- —Being a faithful account from the "Old Tales of the Icy North," as taken from Hugo Lazarre's Grim Stories and Cautionary Tales, as translated by the redoubtable Hans Gunther.[1a]
A horrific sketch of the Magister's son Tomash mutating into a horrific insectoid monster, found within the Liber Chaotica.
Love from the Son is a Measure of the Father is an old tale told in the icy north of Kislev, written and studied by the insane Hugo Lazarre and his "Grim Stories and Cautionary Tale". The tale tells the story of a powerful Magister of Praag during the time of the Great War Against Chaos, who in an act of desperation, locked up his only son, Tomash, within a labyrinth of tunnels beneath his family's estate garden on his 20th birthday.[1a]
Tomash was afflicted with madness, which gave the young man a disturbing thirst for the dark arts and foul magic, believed to have been given to him unknowingly by the insanity rampant in his late mother's family.[1a]
In a twisted act of love, the father locked away his son for ten years so that he could not hurt others. The young man was fed with insects harvested from his estate garden. Needless to say, this act born out of love only led to the Magister's own death by his son's hands. Tomash, now a mutant, escaped and was never seen again.[1a]
The Tale[]
In the better part of Praag, before the hordes of Chaos laid the city to waste, there lay a private garden, protected from casual observers by a high stone wall topped by spikes and birdlime. Despite the lengthy shadows that habitually shrouded it, the garden was a marvel of horticulture, a veritable delight of flowers, shrubs and trees.[1a]
In the exact centre of the garden lay an ornamental well, surrounded by a topiary maze, an immaculate labyrinth of hedges and shrubs clipped into fantastic forms. Some of the shapes were readily identifiable as fauna from across the Empire, but others defied description. There were things with too many heads or limbs, and men with heads of beasts, or beasts with the heads of men.[1a]
An old man by the name of Ned looked after the garden's unusual topiary, trimming hedges, deadheading roses and raking gravel paths. He had served the man who owned that garden and the great house it surrounded for forty years and more. Despite his master's infrequent jests that "the garden might be getting too much" for the old man, and how neither of them were growing any younger, Ned carried on much as he had ever done.[1a]
It was clear to Ned that his master was mad. He had to be. All Magisters were. What could they know about age and death, they with their precious magic? Twenty years previously his master had sown the seeds of his own destruction, and Ned had the distinct feeling that in a further ten years those seeds would bear their sour fruit.[1a]
For the day that this tale touches upon the lives of the gardener and his master was the twentieth birthday of the Magister's only son. On that day, according to the traditions of his people, the boy assumed the mantle of manhood and the Magister's parental authority over him expired. To celebrate his coming of age, Tomash, as the young man was called, had for the first time in his life supped wine (an unusual vintage to be sure, but one his father suggested might grow on him). So the young man could do as he pleased, free to go out into the world, plunge into life, and make up for the last twenty years of study and obedience.[1a]
Tomash seemed more than a little distracted as he sat there, sipping from his silver goblet. Perhaps, the Magister mused, it was the first effects of the wine. Or maybe Tomash was deciding which forbidden pleasure to indulge in first. It was such a pity. The Magister's wife had betrayed him; of that much the old enchanter was certain. No blood in his history could account for his son's debility. He hadn't found out about his late wife's mother until it was...well...too late for all of them.[1a]
Still, the Magister had promised that the gift he would give Tomash on this most auspicious occasion would be knowledge. Tomash had asked often about the forbidden arts and the hidden mysteries of his father's magics. And so on that day, in that very hour, the Magister promised to teach Tomash the secret of the labyrinth that lay beneath the garden, and reveal to the young man the mystery that waited at its heart.[1a]
He believed that Dark Magic was the only thing Tomash wanted now. His son had been shut away from normal life for so long that he had no conception of the pleasures and preoccupations of normal men. The magister believed that his son would of course view this secret as his escape -- an easy path to glory and power. Puling fool.[1a]
Father and erstwhile son took torches from the wall, and the old Magister led a way along dark corridors and down winding stone steps, until they came to an ebony door. There the wizard taught his son the words of opening, and they passed through the portal into the stone passages beyond. No one, other than the Magister himself, knew the secret of the labyrinth, and Tomash was anxious to learn it. The Magister told his son that the walls of the labyrinth were suffused with tainted magic and were deceptive because of it. Logic and reason would avail them nothing here. A mnemonic code revealed the only way through.[1a]
Tomash absorbed this new information eagerly, and the old Magister noted the febrile gleam in his son's eyes, the way his hands trembled, making the torchlight dance crazily over the walls. After half an hour's travel, they reached the centre of the labyrinth, a circular room from which radiated eight straight passages.[1a]
It was lit by a weak beam of light that filtered down from a hole far above their heads. Almost immediately Tomash admitted to feeling faint. His father smiled to himself, knowing that it was probably the effects of the drugged wine he had given the boy. Or indeed it might have been all the warpstone dust that glittered from the chamber's floor and walls. Or perhaps both.[1a]
He led Tomash to the center of the chamber and helped him into a sitting position, fastening the young man's limp wrists into the heavy manacles that rose from the glistening flagstones directly beneath the hole in the chamber's distant ceiling.[1a]
"I cannot really say that I'm sorry for doing this," said the Magister. It's my duty as a caring father to make sure you can't harm anybody. You're insane, you see. Blame it on your mother, if you like. It's all her fault. She never told me about your mad grandmother until we were married, and you know how blood always runs true. Well anyway, you're all secure now. Can't have you wandering about upsetting people, can we? Call if you want anything, oh, and happy birthday!"[1a]
Exactly four years later, Ned, the old gardener, had been tidying the rose beds and his basket overflowed with a bewildering variety of slugs, caterpillars and snails. It was nice to think they were going to a good cause. Happy birthday, he muttered, as he tipped them down the well. Down in the labyrinth, the hail of mollusks and insects woke Tomash from his fitful slumber. Stretching out his long fingers, he scooped handfuls of them from the floor between his legs and stuffed them greedily into his mouth. He hoped there were some green ones, as he had grown to like them the best.[1a]
Although the years had not been kind to Tomash, he had endured. He could see quite well in the dark now, and his sticky tongue certainly helped with the ants. Despite his arms and legs changing, he still had not managed to break free from the heavy iron manacles that still bound his wrists. But he knew that one day someone would find him and set him loose, and on that day his father would die, and it would be a very, very unpleasant death.[1a]
Six more years passed. Great storm clouds converged round the beleaguered city of Praag, and the nightmare hordes of Chaos roiled round the city walls like a dark flood. The armies of the Dark Gods stretched back into the distance for as far as the eye could see. Strange creatures flapped through the mauve sky, or else crawled across the ground. Waves of mutated things flung themselves at the city's walls, again and again, like the stormy sea battering at a cliff.[1a]
Far outside the city walls, a small band of these fell creatures of Chaos broke into an abandoned farmhouse, where, in the cellar, they discovered a padlocked iron trapdoor. Smashing it open, the mutants found a cobwebbed passageway heading in the direction of Praag. Realising they had found a secret entrance into the Human city, these servants of Chaos climbed down the rotten wooden steps and tramped off into the darkness. Eventually the passage emerged into a circular chamber, from which led eight identical passages. Chained to the floor at the centre of the chamber was a curious creature, a pathetic mixture of man and insect.[1a]
"Free! Free! Set me free!" it pleaded. Curious, the Minotaur leader of the Chaos warband smashed the creature's bonds. The man-insect lurched unsteadily to its feet, straightened its spidery legs, and then darted down one of the tunnels.[1a]
"Father!" it cried. "Father! I'm coming for you!" Too wily to miss the spectacle this bizarre turn of events seemed to promise, the Chaos warband rushed after it.[1a]
The next day, after the militia had driven the mutant invaders beyond the city walls once more, old Ned studied the dark clouds that broiled across the now-crimson sky. He stuck a gnarled finger into the air and frowned. There was another storm brewing. He hoped the young master wouldn't catch a chill, he wasn't used to getting wet.[1a]
Ned had been right about his master. Ten years to the day, and there he was. Still, Ned mused, he'd do the rhubarb a power of good. Heaping the Magister's remains into the wheelbarrow, Ned pushed on down the gravelly path towards the vegetable patch.[1a]
Trivia[]
Hugo Lazarre and his "Grim Stories and Cautionary Tale" appears to be directly inspired by the works of German academics Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, also known as the Brother's Grim. Together, the brothers collected and published folklore taken from local German folklore.
The brothers are among the best-known storytellers of folktales, popularising stories such as "Cinderella" ("Aschenputtel"), "The Frog Prince" ("Der Froschkönig"), "Hansel and Gretel" ("Hänsel und Gretel"), "Town Musicians of Bremen" ("Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten"), "Little Red Riding Hood" ("Rotkäppchen"), "Rapunzel", "Rumpelstiltskin" ("Rumpelstilzchen"), "Sleeping Beauty" ("Dornröschen"), and "Snow White" ("Schneewittchen"). Their first collection of folktales, Children's and Household Tales (Kinder und Hausmärchen), began publication in 1812.