by Bill Tiepelman
Warchanter of the Forgotten Plains
The Chanter's Curse The Forgotten Plains hadn’t always been called that. Once, long ago, they were the Heartlands—sacred hunting grounds where the sky bled orange over rivers thick with fish, and stories walked like beasts across the grass. Now? Nothing but wind and dust. Even the ghosts had better places to be. And yet, something walked there still. Something unholy and unfinished. A skeleton made of jade-green bone, draped in the lion-flesh of an ancient god. Its skull grinned wide, forever mid-scream, eyes hollow and alight with the dying embers of a thousand cursed campfires. He was called the Warchanter, though no one living remembered his real name. The only ones who did were dead—or worse—and they didn’t speak his name. They choked on it. Once, he had been Heka’tul, the Singer of the Ninth Fire. Born of women who chewed obsidian for strength and men who carved lullabies into bone flutes. A prodigy, raised in blood and rhythm, he sang not just songs but storms. He made war drums tremble with shame. He could call forth wolves, command men to die smiling, and bend sky to his throat. His voice wasn’t a gift. It was a weapon. And like every weapon left too long in hungry hands, it got used wrong. It started with the Lion Trial—an ancient rite reserved for the tribe’s chosen god-flesh. Heka’tul wasn’t chosen. He took it anyway. He smeared himself in crushed mushrooms and animal fear, marched naked under the eclipse, and chanted a song so raw it peeled skin from nearby trees. And when the lion came—massive, golden, divine—he didn’t worship it. He ripped its throat out with his teeth, howled through the blood spray, and crowned himself king with its skull. The elders begged the spirits for vengeance. The spirits laughed. “He wants power?” they said. “Then he’ll have it. Forever.” So they cursed him—not with death, but with unending purpose. The Warchanter wouldn’t rot. Wouldn’t sleep. Wouldn’t forget. He would walk, every night, through the wasteland he created, carrying the weight of every soul he silenced with song. His voice was stolen, replaced by the hum of cursed wind. His throat glows with emerald fire, an open wound in the fabric of time. His ribs pulse like drums beaten by unseen hands. And that lion’s head? It’s not a helmet. It’s alive, twitching, snarling, gnashing invisible prey. Sometimes it weeps. Sometimes it laughs. He wears a headdress made of feathers dipped in warrior blood, each one plucked from a soul he personally unmade. They don’t blow in the breeze. They twitch with breathless agony, trapped between silence and scream. The air around him stinks of old ash, blood dust, and the kind of fear that makes animals miscarry. Legends say he appears to those who break pacts—oathbreakers, cowards, false prophets. One minute you're just a fool, lying to a lover or spitting on tradition. Next? You hear the sound. Not a chant. Not a growl. Something in between. A throatless rhythm. A dirge hummed by the dirt. It starts in your spine and ends in your soul, and then… he’s there. Standing. Watching. Chanting without sound. He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t need to. Your bones hear him just fine. And then, oh yes, then—he sings. And your body unlearns how to stay whole. He leaves behind nothing but broken drums, shattered teeth, and footprints shaped like question marks. The lucky ones are found hollowed out, green-veined, eyes wide. The unlucky? They join him. Another bone. Another beat in the endless fucking song. Out here, on the plains that forgot themselves, time and memory don’t hold. But the Warchanter? He holds just fine. He holds everything. The Bone Chant Never Ends By the time you hear the drumbeat, it's already too late. It doesn’t come from behind you or from some distant ridge. It comes from inside you—from your marrow. You don’t know whether it’s panic or prophecy, but your knees buckle, your guts twist, and you shit yourself without shame. The Forgotten Plains do that. The Warchanter does that. Three warbands had come through this stretch over the last decade—mercs, scavengers, faith-fueled zealots. None of them made it past the dead river. Bones were found gnawed to dust. Their weapons melted into the soil like sugar. Not rusted. Melted. As if the earth itself wanted no memory of their hubris. But the real horror wasn’t what was left. It was what wasn’t. See, when the Warchanter takes you, you don’t just die. You’re recycled. He pulls the voice from your soul like peeling gum from the bottom of a shoe—slow, sticky, and humiliating. You scream, but it comes out as birdsong, or flute notes, or worse—one guy croaked out a child’s lullaby until his lungs turned to smoke. And then? Then the Warchanter opens his chest cavity like a fucking cabinet, and he stores that sound inside him. Your fear becomes a verse. Your pain becomes percussion. You are the chant now. There’s a place, halfway to the center of the Plains, where the soil is red and soft. Locals call it The Mouth. You’d be stupid to go there. But if you do—and if you dig—you’ll find the instruments. Hundreds of them. Flutes carved from shin bones, drums made of taut, stretched faces, rattles stuffed with teeth. And on each of them? A name. Burned in. Personal. Intimate. The Warchanter doesn’t kill you. He remembers you. And when he sings through one of those instruments, it’s not music. It’s confession. It’s every sin you ever buried, every moment you wished you’d kept your mouth shut. He plays you. In front of the gods. In front of the dead. And worse, in front of whoever you loved most. He doesn’t come every night. That would be mercy. No, he waits until you forget. When the campfire is warm, the food is good, and you’ve finally stopped checking over your shoulder. Then the wind stops. The air gets hot and wet. And the chant begins. No one’s ever escaped him. No one’s ever talked to him and lived. The ones who say they have? They’re just bones in waiting. Hollow people. Echoes with skin. The Warchanter doesn’t negotiate. He collects. He sings. He repeats. Some lunatics worship him now. They walk the Plains naked, carved up, painting his sigil in blood and shit. They say he’s the true god—the only one who listens. But he doesn’t listen. He doesn't care. He’s the punishment. He’s the noise after the silence. He’s the sound that breaks you. And when the world ends—not with fire, not with ice, but with an endless, throbbing rhythm—it’ll be him at the center of it. Chanting. Laughing. Bleeding music through a lion's skull under a dead sky. The Warchanter doesn’t stop. The song goes on. And on. And on. “Warchanter of the Forgotten Plains” is available for prints, downloads, and licensing through our Dark Art Image Archive. Bring the legend to your wall—if you dare.
