A-to-Z Blogging Challenge Day 1: Atanuwe's Feast Day

DISCLAIMER/OVERVIEW: So, I'm kind of cheating for this year's A-to-Z blogging challenge, and I'm having others write it for me (minus a couple of days which I'll write myself). I'm having various writers from Expanded Petty Gods write feasts/holidays that celebrate/honor/involve a god penned by that person. Well, except today, because I goofed and asked Matthew Schmeer to write one for Atanuwe, which was penned by Greg Gorgonmilk (please forgive me guys; not sure how I did that, though I think it's because Matthew wrote so much Jale God stuff, including the atacorns, that I just blanked on the fact that Greg penned Atanuwe).

My goal at the end of the month is to collect these feast days into a free PDF that will supplement Expanded Petty Gods. If it's long enough, and if I can get some illustrations for them, I'll also consider putting out an "at cost" print edition as well.

Today's post is for the feast of Atanuwe,
the nine-legged unicorn petty god of unicorns and death magic.

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Feast of the Nine-legged Naglion
BY MATTHEW W. SCHMEER
God Honored: Atanuwe

In celebration of the Jale God's Unicorning victory, once every three years, the 17 atacorns and their ancient witch-mothers gather in a fell forest to proclaim the greatness of Atanuwe through an unspeakable incestuous orgy of unbridled foul and grotesque display. Unspeakable rituals and sacrifices are performed, including some whispered to be practiced beyond the sphere of men on the plains of dread Carcosa.

What is known of the true rites and rituals is only rumor. Yet there exists a small parchment from the library of the mage Ur-mu Ab'rkada that hints at the vile celebrations. He writes that many goats and lambs are rent asunder and their carcases made foul in orgiastic display; many a kestrel is slaughtered and its liver examined and prophesies made; many a slave is tortured for the pleasantness of his keening; many a freeman is pressed into services most debasing; and many a virgin is vivisectioned, their organs seasoned and baked into loaves of malted oat bread devoured at the nightly feasts.

For three days and three nights, he writes, cruelty reigns the forest floor. Sibling lay with each other and their witch-mothers as slaves salve their wounds. Horrified freeman are forced into deadly embraces and yet the celebrations do not cease, their corpses maligned by malignant coition until all are spent. All this is done in hope that Atanuwe may deign to arrive and cavort with his offspring once again.

When dawn rises on the fourth day, the slaves are blinded and their tongues cut from their mouths, the first knuckle of each finger, thumb, and toe removed with a silvered blade. These are then roasted over an open flame, and devoured by the witch-mothers in silence before they retreat back into their forest abodes and the atacorns once again take up their trades on the outskirts and underbellies of the cities of man.

Ab'rkada says that there are few mortal survivors of the festival, for only the offspring of Atanuwe and the atacorns may attend and their numbers are small and growing smaller, as the seed of the atacorns has not spread for several generations.