Directory: The Forgotten City of Ghouls

As we approached the ruins, there were places where the rocky ground was cracked open in large fissures exposing the subterranean veins of a green, oozing slime. At night, we could see our faces by the strange substance’s pulsing glow. Otherwise, the earth is blackened and charred leading to the city. There is also a strange gas which at times erupts from these exposed veins. The smell, unpleasant, is mild. The course of this slime also, strangely, is driven, seemingly moving up and not down the hill, that is, moving upward toward the city. I understand that the substance is utilized in a few occult rituals in the area. Some of the men I traveled with reported that local Barugas, a sort of witch, are initiated by a dark baptism in which they spend a day dead, that is, underground within a fissure, naked in the slime. They worship the gods of death in that dour country, and the local Baruga functions as a sort of priestess, performing necromantic divinations among other duties.

The guides would not let me enter the city. For one, it is a sacred place to them, but it is also infested by madmen who reportedly, I do not know if I should credit these stories, eat trespassers. I blush even to write it down, but my report is just that, a report. I don’t have to believe everything I’m told, just remember it. Every year, people from all the surrounding tribes congregate outside the ruins, and the Barugas choose someone to go mad. During the festival, this chosen man will be both tormented and rewarded, moving back and forth between public floggings where the crowds are encouraged to join in on the abuse, and ceaseless orgies in the tents with the younger Barugas. He is stripped of his clothes, scared and burned, but then taken away to be comforted by the occultists afterward; he is mocked in the day and caressed in the evening. These cycles go on for about a week. By the end of all this, he is mad. It is said he is immortal, too, though an eternal life as a half crazed cannibal running about naked in the ruins of a once great city seems a rather undesirable end. I could not distinguish from my associates whether they considered this an honor, a sacrifice, a necessary evil, or what they thought of it. They seemed to think it strange that I paid it any mind whatsoever, as though this practice were as common an affair as putting on clothes or getting up in the morning. I think one of my guides said something like, “All men must die,” and that was the most I got from anybody by way of an explanation. From a distance, I saw one of these reported madmen. His hair was grown wild in dreadlocks. He was standing upon a portion of the city wall watching us. My party stopped when they saw him, and we would not move until he went back into the city.

The ruins must have been a great city, though the stones are now black with fire. A few towers still stand, and a breach in the wall allowed me some idea of the world inside. There were some uncultivated weeds­—the only growth I had seen on the hill—and broken statuary of diverse figures I took to be the ancient heroes of that place. It was such a small glimpse. It seemed obvious that someone had laid siege and destroyed the city, but why its walls had not been rebuilt or its lands conquered I know not. Destroyed, the remnant of its people living a simple agrarian life in the lowlands, the old ruins which glow green in the night are a strange remainder of something long forgotten.