The Brooksilk Periphery

"The bloated Toad God has no church other than the periphery of ponds where the foulness catches in the reeds and no congregation other than the gnats and dragonflies.” 

—Daniel Sell, Troika!, p. 6
 

In the edgelands of Troika city, Brooksilk Park grows ever wild. When the last hereditary groundskeeper-magus expired, and the Brooksilk Family Trust collapsed, these old-money pleasure gardens were usurped by beasts and weeds. The overgrowth became a popular dumping ground for miscast wizard familiars or last season's unfashionable chimeras. Fecund pond unicorns soon vied for dominance with bellowing saurian herons, though all knew the undisputed Lady of the Park was the great woolly rhinoceros Xanthippe. In the fullness of time came Foetor, a disillusioned necromancer not expecting to find a God within Brooksilk's stagnant ponds. Merely seeking a place for a quick depression nap, he stumbled upon the mossy bones of the old groundskeeper and raised them up for a lark: such joie de vivre Foetor had never seen. The Park seemed newly vibrant and limitless through the Groundskeeper's resighted eye sockets, and they sang its praises, clicked their bone heels, and set about tending to this verdancy, in ways unclear to all but them. Foetor's gaze turned long and then, in the oily sheen of pondwater, fell into accidental meditation. It was the sudden popping of scum bubbles—two in rapid succession—followed by an old frog’s death rattle that awoke the necromancer with clear realization: he had heard the name of P!P!Ssshirp, the Bloated Toad God, and been ordained. Whether by divinity or marsh gas, Foetor was changed, and so he set about his great work: to build a House for the Bloated Word in this place of fetid beauty. He was gifted an ornate fish-tailed flowerpot from the Groundskeeper's treasure shed. This would be “Elder” Foetor's miter as he preached to the pond-dwellers and built a sanctuary in the Brooksilks' old Fête Hall on the Park’s south-eastern edge. Thus, a place where spendthrift nobles once went wild--feasting on endangered cakes and raising funds for ill-fated schemes--had now become the First Church of P!P!Ssshirp, where all those lost and untethered may caught, held, and nurtured, like so much sweet foulness in the reeds.

Created for the Tiny World TTRPG Jam.

The Brooksilk Periphery is an independent production by Sam Worthington and is not affiliated with Melsonian Arts Council. 

Title/heading font is Forest Friend by Christel LeBlanc (Forest Friend Creative Projects).