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@edvane.bsky.social Oct 10, 2026, 10:35 AM

#vss365 The old crofter began to #quake when the Fachan stepped from the mist.

His son whispered, “You’ve seen one before?”

“Aye.”

The creature stopped, then lowered its monstrous head to him.

“Father,” it boomed. #Edvane #DarkFantasy #Folklore

An elderly Scottish crofter and his adult son recoil beside a drystone wall in a misty Highland glen as a huge, grotesque Fachan emerges before them. The ancient creature has one central eye, one arm and one powerful leg, and stares at the old man with an unsettling sense of recognition.

@edvane.bsky.social Oct 9, 2026, 3:18 PM

Fantasy has no shortage of monsters. The problem is that most exist only to be fought and defeated. I look at how some of mine work, and why dark fantasy benefits from monsters that refuse to behave like villains. LINK IN COMMENTS #Edvane #TheDarkHearth

@edvane.bsky.social Oct 9, 2026, 2:55 PM

#vss365 The professor’s new #siren was a beautiful construction of brass, gears and perforated discs. As his assistant worked the bellows, its note climbed until the laboratory windows trembled.

At precisely 23,000 revolutions, something began screaming inside the wall... #Edvane #DarkFantasy

A Victorian professor calmly takes notes beside a large brass acoustic siren while his alarmed assistant works its bellows. Behind them, patterned wallpaper bulges outward into the shape of a huge screaming bestial face, as though something monstrous is trapped inside the wall.

@edvane.bsky.social Oct 8, 2026, 4:31 PM

#vss365 At night, the townsfolk heard the Hellwain grinding along the lane, its iron wheels blazing, chained unfortunates dragging it behind them beneath the demon’s whip. They said only those burdened by #sin need fear it...
#Edvane #DarkFantasy

A dark folkloric illustration of the Hellwain, a huge furnace-hot iron carriage with blazing wheels, stopped outside a wealthy landlord’s stone house at night. Exhausted living men are chained to the carriage and strain to drag it along the lane. A horned demonic driver sits high above them, raising a spark-trailing whip and staring towards the terrified Old Man Gosford in his doorway. A parchment panel at left contains the accompanying story.

@edvane.bsky.social Oct 7, 2026, 9:57 AM

#vss365 Marguerite survived the #island for two years, fighting beasts, hunger and the shrieking demons.

When a ship finally found her, the captain asked how she had kept the dark devils away.

She stared back at him through wild eyes. “Kept them away?” #Edvane #DarkFantasy

Dark historical fantasy illustration of Marguerite de la Roque on the bleak, rocky Isle of Demons. Despite two years marooned there, she remains strikingly beautiful, with torn sixteenth-century clothing and tangled hair. Three small, eerie imps nestle affectionately in her hair, against her shoulder and beside her skirts, suggesting they are companions rather than enemies. A rescue boat approaches cautiously through rough grey water, with a sailing ship beyond. A crude shelter, fire, seabirds and misty rocks fill the desolate shore. A parchment panel contains the story ending, “Kept them away?”

@edvane.bsky.social Oct 6, 2026, 4:35 PM

King Arthur, Merlin, the Round Table are inventions. Fine. In Merlin and the Unburied King, I used what scholars broadly agree on: Arfderydd, Gwenddolau, and Myrddin, the bard who fled.

That was the scaffolding for my version of the story

#Edvane #Merlin #KingArthur

LINK IN COMMENTS

@edvane.bsky.social Oct 6, 2026, 11:37 AM

#vss365 The ship crossed the harbour without oars, crew or raised #sail. When fishermen boarded her, they found every sailor drowned, though the vessel had never sunk.

One corpse opened its eyes.

“Please,” it whispered. “Don’t let her reach the sea.” #Edvane #DarkFantasy

A richly illuminated medieval manuscript-style image. Fishermen with lanterns explore the flooded hold of an apparently abandoned sailing ship, where drowned sailors lie among barrels and dark timbers. In the foreground, one drowned man opens his eyes and desperately grips a fisherman’s arm, warning him not to let the ship reach the sea. The left parchment panel contains the story, with #Edvane #vss365 #sail beneath it.

@edvane.bsky.social Oct 5, 2026, 2:37 PM

#vss365 A #hurricane tore roofs from houses and uprooted ancient trees, yet the old chapel stood untouched. Survivors crowded inside to give thanks.

The priest locked the doors. Outside, the storm stopped instantly.

He smiled. “There. It’s brought me a fresh congregation.” #Edvane #DarkFantasy

Dark medieval fantasy illustration. Inside an intact stone chapel, relieved hurricane survivors kneel, pray and embrace beneath candlelight. A gaunt priest secretly locks the heavy wooden door with an iron key, smiling sinisterly. Behind him, his own shadow stretches across the wall with unmistakable demonic horns. Through narrow windows, the devastated but eerily still village can be seen.

@edvane.bsky.social Oct 4, 2026, 5:22 PM

#vss365 For three nights, the dead followed a ship through the fog, their drowned faces rising beside the hull whenever the crew slowed. When they finally reached the #harbour, the sodden corpses stopped and would come no further...

#Edvane #DarkFantasy

A dark medieval ship enters a fogbound harbour at night. In the foreground, its impossibly old captain turns beside the rail, grinning through blackened, rotten teeth. Behind the ship, drowned figures rise from the cold sea but stop at the harbour entrance, staring after him in fear. Weak lanterns illuminate stone quays and crooked waterfront buildings through the mist.

@edvane.bsky.social Oct 3, 2026, 2:10 PM

#vss365 The will-o’-the-wisp danced across the bog each night, bright enough to #lure travellers from the road. Villagers blamed the marsh for the vanished.

One night, a man tracked the light and saw it pause above a patch of black mud. Then the mud opened its mouth. #Edvane #DarkFantasy

A lonely medieval traveller wades through a moonlit bog towards a delicate blue white will o’ the wisp. Beneath the hovering light, the black mud opens into an enormous hidden mouth lined with pale teeth, revealing that the wisp has lured him to a buried creature’s feeding place.

@edvane.bsky.social Oct 2, 2026, 9:20 AM

#vss365 A librarian found an old map showing a way through the #mountain where no road existed. After closing, he followed the map until he found the path at the place it promised. Eventually, the path disappeared into a cave... #Edvane #DarkFantasy

A dusty librarian holding an old map emerges from a black cave into a warmly lit medieval inn hidden inside a mountain. Every guest has turned towards him with calm, knowing smiles, while the innkeeper watches from behind the bar. A parchment panel on the left contains the story, bordered in an antiquarian style.

@edvane.bsky.social Oct 1, 2026, 5:07 PM

#vss365 Each month, a black #cloud rolled down and settled over the houses. The next day, another house stood empty. The priest said the mist carried souls to God.

When it reached his door, he finally saw what moved inside it.

Thousands of tiny hands. Reaching for him. #Edvane #DarkFantasy

A dark medieval mountain village at night is engulfed by a thick black cloud. Dozens of small, pale hands reach from the mist towards a frightened priest standing in his lantern-lit doorway. Snowy mountains and a moon rise behind the village. A parchment panel on the left contains the #vss365 story about the cloud and the vanished villagers.

@edvane.bsky.social Sep 30, 2026, 1:59 PM

With The Smothing of Dunsop Bridge, I wanted to write a piece of folklore that never existed, but might have. Something rooted closely enough in a real place, and old rural warnings that, for a moment at least, you might wonder whether I had made any of it up. LINK IN COMMENTS #Edvane #Folklore

@edvane.bsky.social Sep 30, 2026, 1:36 PM

#vss365 The wizard left his apprentice a single #bequest. Most pages of the book were blank, but each year a new spell appeared. He learned them all.

In the twentieth year, a final spell appeared. Beneath it, his master had written, “Now you are ready. You may bring me back.” #Edvane #DarkFantasy

Dark medieval fantasy illustration. An apprentice studies an ancient spellbook by candlelight, unaware that his dead wizard master is forming from cold grey smoke behind him and reaching towards his shoulder. A parchment panel tells how twenty years of magical lessons culminate in one final instruction, “Now you are ready. You may bring me back.”

@edvane.bsky.social Sep 29, 2026, 3:50 PM

#vss365 The headsman lowered his axe. “A royal #reprieve,” he announced. The prisoner sagged with relief as the crowd groaned. Then the castle gates opened. An impossibly tall, antlered creature stepped into the square.

“His Majesty has sent a different executioner.” #Edvane #DarkFantasy

Dark medieval fantasy illustration. A condemned prisoner stands beside a bloodstained execution block as a hooded headsman unties him. The prisoner looks in horror toward open castle gates, where an impossibly tall, corpse-grey creature with huge branching antlers and elongated limbs enters the muddy square. The surrounding crowd recoils in fear. A parchment panel on the left contains the #vss365 story about a royal reprieve and the arrival of a different executioner.

@edvane.bsky.social Sep 28, 2026, 3:44 PM

#vss365 She carried the smoking bundle through every room, whispering the words as bitter herbs filled the house. “Smoke will #purify what lives here,” the old woman had promised

In the bedroom, the smoke curled around her sleeping husband and turned black. She stared at him... #Edvane #DarkFantasy

A dark folkloric illustration beside a parchment story panel. In a candlelit old bedroom, a tense woman holds a smouldering bundle of herbs over her newly awakened husband. Pale grey smoke twists through the room but becomes thick, oily black around the man in bed, with ambiguous tendrils curling through the shadows. The scene is framed by a thin antiquarian border.

@edvane.bsky.social Sep 27, 2026, 2:11 PM

#vss365 The witchfinder raised the torch. “#Renounce the Devil, and God may yet forgive you.” She smiled through broken teeth. “I did, a decade ago.”

Behind him, the church burst into flames, its bell crashing to the ground. His own men seized him.

“Now I work alone,” she said #Edvane #DarkFantasy

Dark folkloric fantasy scene beside a burning medieval church. A furious witchfinder is seized by two of his own men, whose eyes are completely black under supernatural control. A pale, black-haired witch in dark Gothic clothing stands calmly before them, bruised but composed, as the church burns and its bell falls from the collapsing tower. A parchment panel at left contains the #vss365 story.

@edvane.bsky.social Sep 26, 2026, 2:02 PM

#vss365 Mother Green took in every orphan girl the village abandoned. “Even the unwanted will flourish with enough #nurture,” she said.

Years later, they carried their wands and weapons to the castle gates.

Mother Green had never wanted daughters.

She wanted an army. #Edvane #DarkFantasy

Dark folkloric fantasy illustration. Mother Green, an elderly woman in a dark green cloak, stands behind a group of grim young women armed with swords, bows, axes, spears and faintly glowing wands. They face the closed gates of a vast medieval castle at dusk, dressed in worn cloaks and mismatched armour with subtle green tokens linking them together. A parchment panel reveals that Mother Green raised abandoned orphan girls not as daughters, but as an army.

@edvane.bsky.social Sep 25, 2026, 6:25 PM

What if the folklore we think of as ancient was simply invented by somebody who made it stick?

King Arthur became a chough. Children’s rhymes acquired meanings. Writers filled the gaps.

In this post, I say Folklore is up for grabs. It always has been. LINK IN COMMENTS #Edvane #Folklore

@edvane.bsky.social Sep 25, 2026, 6:09 PM

#vss365 “I #reckon it fled to the caves,” Fredor said. “A beast that size leaves tracks.” Tanner snorted. “No dice, it’s above us.” The mossy boulder beside them exhaled a hot, sulphuric breath, and two yellow eyes opened. #Edvane #DarkFantasy

Dark fantasy illustration of two medieval hunters arguing in a damp, mossy forest. One studies a map while the other points towards the ridge, neither noticing that the huge moss-covered boulder beside them is alive. Two wet yellow reptilian eyes stare from its stony surface as warm breath curls into the cold air. A parchment panel on the left contains the #vss365 story text.