The Ghibbolim

After the Silence

(Collected and Translated from the Ghibbolim's Mythology Cycle)

Tog was a god of the belly, a god of the hunt and the kill and the mouth. Tog was a god of other appetites as well, but hunger was always foremost. We he went to rut with beasts of the fields, he almost always ate the creature, sometimes starting before the act was complete. But once, as he was taking a sow in a thunderstorm, he was distracted by lightning and the beast escaped. It bore two dozen children, who consumed their mothers flesh as soon as the milk ran dry. These were the first of the Ghibbolim.

The Ghibbolim wandered from encampment to encampment through the Meknar Expanse, leaving wilderness stripped bare behind them each time. Their god taught them to hunt, and to fish, and soon they were more masters of those arts than Tog himself. Tog gave them but one Commandment, which was to never consume the flesh of any of the other speaking peoples, for Tog was forever afraid that his brood might anger some other god, and that god would take vengeance and strike Tog down.

During the God War there was a Ghibbolim priestess named Ashan who found Tog where he was hiding, out on the shore of a dirty lake. She seduced the god and then whispered into his ear, suggesting that as the gods did battle here in the world, he might lie in wait and see one to abandon his kill, and then consume the flesh of one of his brother or sister gods. So Tog went to hide where his brothers fought, but one was too clever and keen of eye, and that god spotted Tog and struck him down.

Tog's flesh began to decay and dissolve as soon as death took him, but Ashan managed to stuff four handfuls into her mouth before it all vanished. She was instantly gripped with a mighty fever, and lay nearly motionless for three days. Then she heaved up, vomiting up both the godflesh she had eaten and the god-seed in her belly, and from that spew arose all manner of monstrous beasts. She returned to the Ghibbolim and gave them the joyous news that Tog was dead and his Commandment bound them no longer. The Ghibbolim readied their cookpots and knives in delighted anticipation.