I dreamed of ranks of human beings, dreamed of their remote and ancient faces over which the faintest expressions of love and rage flickered like hints of light from a distant fire. None spoke. The figures were bent to their tasks, each shackled to a desk of fine hard wood on which parchments and stylus were arranged. We were in a scribing hall of prodigious size, the ceiling and walls lost in a hazy shadow that possessed a tidal presence, receding and advancing in time with my heart.
I sat amongst those people, naked save for the shackle on my left wrist, parchment blank before me. Between the rows of scribes a child walked, a shining infant with golden eyes, which in this dream-world I knew to be my master. I feared the radiant infant, deferred to it, wanted nothing more than to please it. I feared this infant’s aurate gaze falling upon my virigin paper, which I knew should be filled with words. Surrounded by the mute and passionless figures, I lowered my quill’s pale nib to meet sable ink and scribed the first line of my confession.
The memory of the Hesychian Church casts a grey shadow over the lands it once held as ecclesiastic fiefs. Yes, the Church entire was put to the sword, its cardinals and bishops burned and their ashes buried at crossroads in unmarked graves. Yes, the Hesychian temples and monasteries were pulled down to the last stone, their sacred texts fed to goats which were then devoured by the Autarch’s favoured crocodiles. Yes, the prisons of the Church were emptied, and all kept there in utter darkness were returned to the light. Yes, the teachings of the Hesychians were deemed a malignant heresy, the very mention of the order expunged from all histories and censuses. And yet.
The path of Hesychia, they say, led beyond the physical world itself, and the bodies and books burned during the suppression of the Church were merely imperfect reflections of something stranger and grander. The teachings of the being they named Hesychia were located in the silence within oneself, an oceanic calm that contained multitudes. As form follows thought, it stands to reason that the thoughts of the Hesychians can impinge on our world when they see fit, and this is why the lands the Church once ruled sleep so uneasily.
The beings known as Heyschian Confessors are either the remnants of the original congregation, worms that crawled from the corpse of the Church and buried themselves in the urth, or else the vanguard of some exploratory force, the fingers of a hand that reaches into our world from somewhere else. In either case they are an insidious psychic threat, capable of hollowing out entire villages before moving on to feed again.
What the Confessor Wants
The Hesychian Church, in broad terms, sought endarkenment, a kind of spiritual nullity which stemmed from total disconnection from the senses. The Confessor seeks to force endarkenment upon those around it, hollowing out these supplicants and drinking their inner silence like milk to nourish itself. What exactly the Confessor requires this nourishment for is up to you, but the creature’s resemblance to a grub or maggot suggests that it may be the larval stage of something worse.
How it Operates
The Confessor is a physically weak, psychically powerful creature. It hides in plain sight, arriving in a community attached to the underside of a wagon or perhaps burrowing up from the urth in response to unknown stimuli. It poses as an orphaned infant, a wounded animal, something that needs protection, broadcasting this delusion into the minds of everyone around it. Once it is ensconced in a community, the dreams begin.
The Confession Dreams
The dreams vary, but survivors report various commonalities. They are in grey, liminal spaces, reminiscent of a church or bureaucracy or whatever space of disclosure and vulnerability are culturaly appropriate for the dreamer. Faa nomads may dream of a storytelling competition upon grey and shadowed sands, Cacklemaw may dream of a curiously mirthless Great Gloating, and so on. Others of their species are there, engaged in confession. They share their stories with a golden infant, a cherubic apparition both stern and innocent. Everyone then turns to the dreamer.
The dreamer knows that a confession is required: they must tell a story of a time they luxuriated in their senses, when the physical world led them astray. When they are finished the crowd and the golden infant congratulate them, and they realise with a sense of relief that they never need worry about such distractions again.
When they awake they have lost one of their five senses. Some are blind, others deaf. The organs and nerves are still present, but the brain no longer processes their signals.
This continues for five nights. The dreams become a great source of terror, but the ability to resist grows lesser. After the sixth dream, bereft of sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste, the dreamer slips away into a comatose state of endarkenment. A PC becomes an NPC at this point. The Confessor begins to feed upon their unconscious mind.
Range of the Dreams
The Confessor can only psychically feed in a limited area, within three miles of its resting place. PCs should only experience confession dreams when they are near the settlement the Confessor infests. If they move away, the dreams will not recur.
The End Game
Eventually, every mind in the surrounding area has been consumed in this way. The Confessor must move on. If it has restrained itself, it may have left one community member alive, who still believes the Hesychian Confessor to be an infant or sickly animal. They will take the Confessor with them, setting out across the blue wastelands in search of help. A Confessor who has not shown such forethought may begin to project itself psychically, contacting other psychics many miles away and asking them to come to its aid.
Fighting the Confessor
The creature is physically weak but psychically potent. Either its physical body must be slain, or else its psychic dreamworld projection must be killed. Hunting down its physical body is a kind of deduction game, where the PCs should be given clues that point them towards a recently-found orphan child or other small, sickly animal. Battling the Confessor in the dreamworld may require some Referee and player creativity, but it is surely not impossible. Stats are given for both forms.
Killing the Confessor restores all five senses to the afflicted NPCs and PCs.
Stats
Hesychian Confessor (Real)
Biological / Psychic
Level 0 (1 hp), Armour Special*, Morale 0, Appearing 1
Attacks: Silent Scream (d6 PSY damage) / Telekinesis (d4-d10, dependant on object thrown)
An eyeless grey grub, halfway between a maggot and an embryo. Uses its considerable psychic powers to compel loyalty and conceal its true appearance. Slowly steals the senses and willpower from those around it.
Disguise: the Confessor appears to be an infant from whatever social group it infests, or else a wounded animal. PCs with PSY of +8 or higher can catch glimpses of its true form.
Armour: at the start of combat,attackers must make a PSY save. If they roll 20 or higher, they see the Confessor as it truly is, and its Armour Defense is 10. Characters who fail see the Confessor as an innocent, supremely vulnerable infant of their own species. In this form it has an Armour Defense of 20, as hesitation stays their hand.
Hesychian Confessor (Dream Image)
Psychic
Level 10, Armour 18, Morale Masterful, Never Flees, Appearing 1
Attacks: Ego Death (d6 EGO damage) / Face Your Confession (EGO save vs Confession)
In dreams the Confessor appears as a radiant, golden-eyed cherub. It speaks commandingly, beseeching the dreamer to face their confession. If this dream image dies, the ‘real’ Confessor perishes with it.
Confession: the dreamers make an opposed EGO save vs the Confessor. On failure, they must make a confession regarding the false pleasures their senses have entrapped them in. They awaken, having lost one more sense.
VAULTS OF VAARN 