Abisku

“Mother always warned us to stay off the roads at night or the little man would get you. It always seemed like a ridiculous warning. The roads are lit. People travel them all the time, day and night. If anything, the woods and fields on the side of the roads are filled with dire wolves, blade-toothed cats, and worse.”

“Why should we be afraid of this little man she probably made up?”

“My brothers and I all thought her crazy. It was just another useless, paranoid fear. Just like the charms she made us wear as children. Or the ritual of turning three times clockwise to shed spirits before entering a home. The symptoms of a sick mind foisted breaking under the weight of caring for three boys on her own at the edge of town.”

“Of course it was normal to us as little children. We didn’t rebel until we became teenagers and began to go into town on our own more. We saw how strange and different we were to everyone else and hated it. We began to rebel in little ways until one night we broke her most important rule on our way back from the tavern.”

“I don’t remember which one of us took the first step on the road, basking in the comfort the lamp light gave. I do remember sucking in air through my teeth quietly for some time. Minutes. Maybe an hour of silence before we broke it with laughter.”

“We stood, half in shadow and half in lamp light, laughing at our absurd fears for a good minute before a high pitched giggle pierced the air right beside us. I jumped in fright and nearly toppled over, my heart pounding in my chest.”

“Before us was a small, white-haired man, not much taller than a child of ten years old. He was clothed in a well tailored suit, fashionable and well-fitted to his frame. His unwrinkled skin was so pale I could see hints of the blue veins beneath, but his eyes shown red, like embers.”

“Those eyes twinkled as he continued to giggle and his hands splayed out like two pale fans. From them leaked what I can only describe as darkness. It flitted about us like it had weight, blotting out the light until all we could see was the two red pin points of his eyes. Then nothing.”

“When I next remember seeing again, at first it seemed we were where we stood, on the road bathed in lamp light. The little giggling man nowhere to be seen, though I swore I could hear his giggle on the wind. Then the wrongness became apparent to me.”

“Everything around us was drained of its color. The warmth of the light was now pale. My shirt a drab gray rather than blue. Even our skin and hair had become shades of gray. Each of us began to shake and we gripped each other tight, staring about us at a world that was no longer familiar.”

“It would be some time before we realized that the monstrous little man had deposited us in the Gloom. Now, my brothers are dead and I sit in this facsimile of my mother’s home, hands awash in gray blood from my not-mother’s body, writing this journal as I wait for Them to come. It won’t be long now. I hear them not far off. If only we had listened to mother.”

~ From Taubha’s Lesser Book of Names

It is thought that before the Madness took him, Abisku was a brilliant scientist whose work delved deeply into ways of translocating matter from one place to another. He appears to take little interest in the politics of the House of Ghabegh, but is rather obsessed with his ongoing experiments. Unfortunately for mortals, they are his test subjects.

Unlike many Horrors, he appears to be able to move freely between at least two layers of Yggdrasil without the need of passing through the Gates. He holds a special connection with the Gloom, the weird reflection of the Nine Realms that is washed from color and home to the Wildlings and the restless undead. It is his compulsion to translocate travelers from the road in the Nine Realms to the Gloom and observe how they fair, no matter how many days, months, or even years they survive.

Abisku can easily be used in play to transport your adventurers to this layer of Yggdrasil and change the direction of the game. He then can become an interesting adversary who will both help and hinder the party based on the whims of his experiment. In that way, he becomes something akin to the island in the TV show Lost, opening interesting doors for your game to explore.