Legend of the Black Dumplings

Among the bleakest folktales whispered in the half-shadow of Ylnareth’s dying hearths is that of the Black Dumplings: small, dense, obsidian-colored morsels believed to be fashioned by the Dirgewings, harbingers of Sovereign Death. These ghostly carrion-beasts, neither bird nor spirit, are said to descend in the aftermath of death-storms, flocks circling above razed villages, battlefields, or plague-ridden towns. Their arrival marks not the passing of the dead, but the confirmation of unburial, the denial of rest.   When the Dirgewings descend in full, they are said to perform a ritual of silent grief, during which they gather remnants of the slain (ashes from pyres, marrow from shattered bones, sinews tangled in gravewind) and fashion from them a food for the dead: Black Dumplings, sealed with unspoken dyrnes and steamed over smoldering bone. These dyrnes, or death-sigils, are not written with ink or etched in stone but are imparted psychically through the lament of the Dirgewings' silent chorus.   No mortal has ever seen the making of these dumplings. They are discovered only after the Dirgewings vanish, left on stone altars, blood-slick battle standards, or nestled within funeral barrows... as if death itself had offered a meal.   There are tales, of course, told in whispers by old crones and half-mad mendicants, of what happens to those who dare partake of these sinister delicacies. Some say they grant visions of the beyond, glimpses of ancestors long buried or lives unlived. Others speak of tormented wails echoing in the soul of the eater, of shadows clinging to their breath, of the smell of burnt teeth clinging to their skin. In certain circles, especially among the Wailbinders of the Ebon Weald, it is believed that to eat a Black Dumpling is to invite Sovereign Death to your table, to become known to it, and in being known, to lose the right to die.   In some remote cantons of the Ossuary Coast, families place effigies of dumplings upon the tombs of their kin during the season of the Waning Veil. It is said the spirits of the beloved dead will visit and consume the symbolic offering, drawing strength from memory. But these rituals are careful imitations, made from grain-ash and bone-paste, never from the true dumplings left behind by Dirgewings. Those are left untouched, cordoned off with salt and sacred thread, and in some communities, entire buildings are burned down when one is found within.   In Nollmoor, a tale persists of a knight who survived a thousand battles by consuming the dumplings left at every battlefield he crossed. He was dubbed the Gravefed, and though his wounds always healed and his bones never broke, his eyes eventually turned to coal, and his voice became that of wind through bone-chimes. The legend ends with him wandering into the Sea of Quiet, never to be seen again.   Among the ragged Bereft who roam the lowlands in search of forgotten strength, there exists a black book, passed from palm to palm, never owned nor written, called The Mourner's Tongue. Within its brittle pages are rites of consumption, diagrams of spiritual anchors, and testimonies of those who have eaten of the dumplings and returned. These returnees are never whole. Some lose their voices, others their reflections. Some begin to rot while still alive, speaking in the tongues of ancestors whose names no longer exist in any archive.   The Black Dumplings are not uniform in appearance. Some are compact, folded tightly with many ridges like funerary shells. Others are smooth, like river-stones. The outer skin is always cold, sometimes damp, and tough as old leather. Within, the filling varies: dry powder, thick jelly, congealed fat that shimmers with silver streaks. In rare cases, the dumpling is hollow, and biting into it releases a dry breath that extinguishes nearby candles.   Scholars who have dared to investigate, mostly outcasts from Onycine sanctuaries or practitioners of Duskborne theology, have differing theories. One such heretic, a woman named Belvara Linth, once claimed the dumplings were not food, but messages. Encoded in the folds and fillings, she argued, were death-runes left by Sovereign Death herself—a divine lamentation in edible cipher. She was burned alive on a lattice of thorns before her research could be compiled.   The dumplings appear most often after large-scale death. This has led some to believe that they are a mechanism of the world’s balance, a way to absorb excess grief or guide the souls of the unwilling. Yet there are troubling exceptions. Dumplings have appeared in places where no known death has occurred—in the cradle of a newborn child, on the threshold of a church untouched by plague, inside sealed crypts of unblemished tombs. These anomalies have bred new superstitions: that the dumplings may be a warning, or worse, a summons.   The Dirgewings themselves are subjects of deep dread and fascination. Often mistaken for carrion crows or vultures, they are taller than men when upright, their wings vast as curtains. Their heads are skull-like, and where eyes might be, only pits of spiraling ink. They utter no cry, but when they gather, the air hums with the weight of mourning. It is said they fly on winds that do not touch trees and shed feathers made of grave-dust and forgotten lullabies. When they descend, the sky grows dull, as if shadow and silence have conspired to erase the sun.   The presence of Dirgewings marks not only death but unanchored death; a breach in the cycle, a wrongness uncorrected. In the old language of the Veldmetran rites, such deaths are called isundresk, meaning "soul adrift." The dumplings, then, are both token and tether: a last attempt to bind soul to body, or perhaps to offer the remains to the soil in a manner befitting ancient law.   In dreams, some say, Sovereign Death herself can be glimpsed sitting in a garden of bone-trees, feeding dumplings to a procession of veiled children with hollow eyes. These dreams come only to those marked by the Dirgewings' passing, and they are said to herald the eater's transformation: into what, none agree.   It is perhaps for this reason that the Black Dumplings continue to exist more as myth than item. They are not sold, nor traded, nor preserved. To possess one is considered a crime in many regions of the Lost Meridian, punishable by branding or soul-severance. Even speaking of them aloud, in some temples, is taboo.   And yet they persist.   Each year, more stories emerge. Of dying queens who beg for one final taste. Of wandering priests who claim to have baked their own. Of children born with blackened tongues, weaned on nothing but milk and shadows. Whether these tales are true or merely fear-spawned, the myth remains.   In a world where Sovereign Death is both force and figure, where undeath looms as blight and sacrament, the Black Dumplings serve as both warning and wonder: a reminder that even death may hunger.