The Attendant's Priesthood

The Attendant’s Priesthood

Well, my time spent amongst those dreaded, dreadful mono-eyed freaks called the Scribes of Kaw-T’ashad has been straining at best. But wasted? No, far from wasted. How much I have learned in the presence of even one of these modern-day Cyclops! I could have taken a common journey to the pharaoh’s tombs or some antediluvian monolith and learned nothing, and been several hundred pounds out of pocket as well. But for the price of an aeroplane ticket to one of the cult’s tendrils (located fittingly close to Greece in modern day Cyprus), and several .303 rifle slugs I was forced to part ways with in order to secure my escape, I have gained a surfeit of knowledge about these demented men and women. And the sleeping god they pray to.

I have written much, certainly far too much, about Kaw-T’ashad, Attendant to the Unwritten Scroll. One mystery among many yet eludes me, namely why anyone would want to worship this being. I suppose it is a twofold fact; the love of the unknown which I understand full well, and an ultimately futile belief that if one serves Kaw-T’ashad they will be rewarded as though he were a benevolent Judeo-Christian concept, and not a mocking creature who would just as quickly turn his most favoured servant into a gibbering madman as he would support them with arcane mystery.

First off is the elephant in the room, namely that from now until the day I die, likely in some unnameable horror’s tomb, I will suspect every single adult and child I meet who is blind in one eye of being a member of Kaw-T’ashad’s clergy. This is unfortunate, but after being through my particular experiences I think it is quite an understandable phobia to have developed. The  most notable of the rites one must undergo to experience the joys of full membership in this lunatic social club is having one’s right eye put out, in vain imitation of their wounded master. Children born into the Scribes of Kaw-T’ashad have their right eye plucked out at birth, and it is these “purebred” children that are held in the highest of esteem as compared to converts.

I believe there is more significance to this act than meets the eye…I’m sorry, that pun was terrible. Ahem, anyhow, I believe it reflects that Kaw-T’ashad is himself a wounded being, and that his solitary eye which bleeds a vile ichor is not his natural state any more than a human with one eye pulled from its socket is totally healthy. How Kaw-T’ashad was so affronted and damaged I cannot guess, but the fact that he remains while there is no mention of his assailant in any text I can locate supports my notion that the scrap left the Attendant as the sole surviving party. And as they say, history is written by the victors, particularly when they can dictate fable and legend into reality!

Another thing of note is the cult insignia, the Arabic word for “proscribed”. This has interesting ramifications, as it means the Scribes may have originally arisen in the Arab lands and spread to the rest of the green Earth. I have also wondered at length if this is connected to that most influential author of the Necronomicon, the Mad Arab Abdul Alhazred, but have concluded this is likely coincidence.

Also, I’m terribly sorry, reading over these notes I realize I have been rambling on at some length on mere conjecture and third-party knowledge. Onto the most practical topic, namely the cult’s numbers. There is no central leadership for the Scribes of Kaw-T’ashad, so their exact numbers are impossible to guess at, but assuming there are five to seventeen cells in each country, with numbers per cell ranging from several dozen to several thousand, and there are a little over a billion people in the world, carry the two…wait, that’s not right…, erm, anyhow, their exact numbers are impossible to guess at.

As for the organization within the cult, there seems to be four official levels of membership. The lowest level is the Recorders, which comprises both noviciates and can be extended to include mercenaries or criminals (or in many cases common psychopaths) employed by the cult who had acted on an interest in becoming full-fledged members. The next level up is the Quills, usually occupied by those who were distinguished in the Recorders, or those children who were born directly into the Scribes of Kaw-T’ashad. Higher up in the chain are the Book-keepers, who fulfill a role roughly analogous to the ministers and public-oriented holy men of more conventional religions. Book-keepers are demagogues through and through, fanatically devoted to Kaw-T’ashad. And as I found out time and time again, they are well-versed in combat both with firearms and many forms of hand-to-hand melee both Western and Eastern. The only rank higher than the Book-keeper is occupied by the one individual designated as the Aspect of Kaw-T’ashad. It is a leadership role for the given cell, but can come from any level of the cult, even the Recorders. This is because the Aspect is directly possessed by Kaw-T’ashad, seemingly at random, and lasts until the individual is dead. Evidently, even if he is not always benevolent, the Attendant takes a very personal interest in the affairs of his worshippers.

The ravages that a human body undergoes when taken control of by an Elder God are great, so most of those “privileged” enough to be chosen as the Aspect indeed die from nervous exhaustion well within the week. When possessed with the Aspect, the cultist will actually appear remarkably normal, disappointingly so in fact. When I first bore witness to an Aspect of Kaw-T’ashad I had been looking forward to seeing eyes blazing with forbidden energies or a tongue ranting in languages the victim had never heard of, but instead I was greeted with what appeared to be a normal human…well, normal as far as insane cultists go. The only thing which might be seen as out of the ordinary is that the body’s remaining eye will seep with a substance which I can best describe as bloody ink, no doubt Kaw-T’ashad’s blunt manner of reminding others whose body this really belongs to.

Moving onto the signature attire and items of this delightful club, they are fairly typical in nature when anyone would think of an underground cultist and indeed seem almost disappointingly droll to one with as jaded perceptions as my own. Maroon cloaks set with precious stones, necklaces and wrist-bangles made from semi-human fingerbones, a multitude of insignia rings with the cult seal, and “ceremonial” thin-bladed scimitars which I (almost disastrously) discovered are quite readily pressed into service as weapons by the more zealous of the cultists. The one exception to this boring state of attire is the masks which are supposedly worn to conceal the wearer’s identities. In practice the masks are just as distinguishing as any facial feature, since no two of these masks are the same! These facial coverings are ornately crafted, albeit out of simple materials, dyes, and paints. Obviously only one eye-hole is present on these masks, making them instantaneously recognizable even were it not for their signature artistic style. I should mention at this point that despite what one might otherwise conclude for someone blinded in one eye, a Scribe’s eyesight does not seem to be impaired in the slightest by their condition. How they are able to see so lucidly in this state is beyond me. An even more confounding mystery is how those who wear masks with no eye-holes present manage to see at all!

On the subject of weaponry, the Scribes of Kaw-T’ashad are far from toothless. Many melee weapons from concealed punching-daggers to woodcutting axes are used for the gory fare that is a cultist's work. The majority of their firearms are imported from Italy and Germany, as is the habit of many higher-end criminal and terrorist organizations. I recognized many such weapons through my readings in international semi-automatic, automatic, and manually operated small arms. A very common longarm, especially among the more well-off members, were Kar98K bolt-action rifles (and the design's carbine variant, the G40K) in 7.92x57mm, 7x57mm, and 6.5x55mm chambering (with and without optical telescopic sight). "Obsolete” but still sufficiently lethal MP-18 submachine guns, as well as more contemporary models such as the Beretta Model 38, Danuvia 43M, EMP, MP35, PPD-40, Suomi KP/-31, Thompson, Tokarev Model 1927, are also valued for their use in urban or close-in fighting. Berreta is the favoured manufacturer of shotguns (the wealthier members favour Ithaca 37 or even Browning Auto-5 semiautomatics), and unlike many criminal elements the Scribes do not usually convert double or single-barrel models into “sawed-off” variants. Indeed, the favoured template of shotgun is an over-under model with one rifled and one smoothbore barrel. Too many revolvers and autoloading models of semiautomatic handguns to number are utilized (although the Mauser “Broomhandle” was a perennial favourite, it seemed). Far from placing all their faith in the mystical and arcane, the Scribes seem to understand the pragmatic appeal of more conventional weaponry quite fully.

One item which continued manifesting no matter how far-out my investigations took me was The Rubric, which could be described accurately enough as the central holy text for the Scribes of Kaw-T’ashad. The images contained within are both unsettling and incredibly confusing, and seem to subtly shift every time I lay new eyes upon them. As for the text itself, it has proven remarkably excruciating to translate, and the only partially complete segment which makes any sense when wrought in plain English is the prayer contained below. When a word or phrase came out as gibberish I have substituted “(???)”. One word in particular eludes translation, and after glancing over this prayer I think that is both no accident and very much for the best:



(???), she who carried and birthed all words spoken and spoken, heard and unheard
She, the most fallen of all fallen  
(???), mother to dreams and fancy
From the wounds of her corpse bleed sin-stained ink, from her dead mouth emits an endless note of rage
The Thousand Year Keeper, tallying the steps of (???) in preparation for the Feast of Io, to be held at the deaths of all the Old Ones
Bleeding with the ichor of penman’s ink for all ages, not dying, but dead for all times and eternities
(This part of the prayer seems to have been left deliberately blank and might signify a pause or rest)
The folly of Ahn’Razai, who sought to cast down both Kaw-T’ashad and (???), and instead gave Kaw-T’ashad eternal sight! The sight to see the words within words!
The sight to see a world with the god’s own!
Praise Ahn’Razai the Leper-God with scornful, raucous voice for putting out the eyes of those two privileged enough to see!
Ahn’Razai will stare back at Kaw-T’ashad, and ruin his own eye in shame
Nightmares of an endless maw, all kingdoms of hairless ape and god both ruined,
when (???), the mother of Kaw-T’ashad stirs again,
when the unnameable is at last named!

…I think I should stop writing now. And pour myself a stiff drink.

From the Logbook of Alexi Seraph