The Stone Dripping Blood
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Overview
The Stone Dripping Blood (Commonspeak), also Soma (Elftongue \ˈsoʊmə\ for body), is an Eldritch God associated with the Strange Realm of The Horizon, specifically the region known as The Web of Agony, and is recognized as the patron and origin of the Skinweavers. Its Commonspeak name comes from a rough understanding of its surreal, physical form.
Integral scholarship classifies the Stone Dripping Blood as a godlike phenomenon rather than a true god. Its influence manifests primarily through corruption of tactile perception, the erosion of bodily boundaries, and progressive disorders of sensation. Most reliable information concerning Soma derives from post-incursion Elfspeak chronicles, medical records of unexplained dermal afflictions, and survivor testimony from regions exhibiting anomalous bleeding phenomena.
History
Shattered Age
The Stone Dripping Blood came into existence during the Shattered Age, contemporaneous with the collapse of the Orrery and the emergence of the other Eldritch Gods. As with its peers, Soma is believed to have originated as a Servitor of Destiny, though no record preserves its prior designation or function.
Dark Age
During the Dark Age, Soma’s influence breached the Integrum in the elven realm of Pelithos, resulting in widespread tactile corruption, spontaneous bleeding of structures, and mass psychological breakdown. The incursion was ultimately repelled by one of the Gods of Pelithos, though elven sources disagree as to whether Soma itself was driven back or merely lost coherence within the Integrum. No comparable incursion has been recorded since, though minor manifestations continue to be reported.
Description
The Stone Dripping Blood manifests in two primary forms.
Anthropomorphic Form
Its anthropomorphic form appears as a towering humanoid figure approximately three meters in height, composed of smooth, featureless, stone-like material streaked with slow-moving rivulets of blood with no apparent source. The surface appears inert, yet responds subtly to contact, warming, cooling, or pulsing beneath the hand. Facial features are minimal and expressionless, conveying no emotion or intent. This form is widely believed to be a perceptual accommodation rather than a true representation, adopted without comprehension of its symbolic impact.
Surreal Form
The surreal form of Soma is vast: a colossal crustacean-like entity larger than a castle, encased in a segmented shell. From these seams pours an unceasing deluge of blood, not under pressure, but as a constant, gravity-defying seepage. The creature possesses dozens of pincer claws around its circumference.
Personality
The Stone Dripping Blood embodies the Strange Epiphany of touch, specifically the awareness of physical sensation as the primary proof of existence. Integral scholars emphasize that this epiphany does not grant mastery over flesh in a purposeful sense. Rather, Soma appears to experience reality entirely through contact, pressure, texture, and pain, without any accompanying framework of meaning or restraint. Within this mode of being, boundaries between self and world lose coherence. Sensation does not signify presence; it replaces it. The corruptive influence attributed to Soma is therefore understood not as an act of cruelty, but as the inevitable consequence of unfiltered tactile awareness imposed upon minds evolved to rely on distance, numbness, and bodily separation for sanity.
Like all Eldritch Gods, the Stone Dripping Blood does not display recognizable psychology. Its behavior is inscrutable and inconsistent, offering no evidence of intention, desire, or awareness. Integral scholars increasingly caution against assuming consciousness at all, suggesting that Soma may function as a masked phenomenon rather than an agent, analogous to a Chinese Room executing a process without understanding.
Abilities
Environmental effects associated with Soma’s presence include bleeding objects, like walls, stones, or trees; the spontaneous appearance of sores or lacerations without pain or apparent cause; and the reopening of old wounds long since healed.
Soma’s psychic influence manifests as a progressive corruption of tactile perception, unfolding in three escalating stages.
Early Stage: Perceptual Awareness
Affected individuals experience tingling, itching, or crawling sensations across the skin without visible cause. These sensations resemble the onset of irritation or rash that never fully manifests. The experience is deniable and often dismissed.
Middle Stage: Perceptual Otherness
The afflicted develops the persistent sensation that something is present on or within the skin that does not belong there. This sensation is intrusive and distressing, though no physical anomaly may yet be visible. The body begins to feel foreign.
Terminal Stage: Somatic Delusional Disorder
In advanced cases, the condition escalates into a form of delusional parasitosis. The afflicted becomes convinced that their skin is infested, corrupted, or occupied by alien matter. Attempts to relieve this sensation frequently result in extreme self-injury, flaying, or ritualized mutilation. Death commonly follows, either through blood loss or infection.
Orisons
The majority of Orisons of the Stone Dripping Blood arise among the Skinweavers, who serve as both worshippers and vectors of tactile corruption. Skinweaver Orisons manipulate flesh directly, inducing numbness, hypersensitivity, or invasive sensations in others through contact. They are terrifyingly effective at torture.
Among mortals, Soma most often draws the attention of tactile hedonists: individuals whose identities are deeply bound to physical sensation and pleasure. Massage artists, ascetics obsessed with endurance, and thrill-seekers desensitized to ordinary experience are particularly vulnerable. Those who seek Soma intentionally do so in pursuit of sensation beyond pleasure, often motivated by profound jadedness or despair.
Cultic practices associated with the Stone Dripping Blood emphasize sensation through harm. Rituals commonly involve flagellation, cutting, flaying of victims, and prolonged exposure to pain intended to heighten awareness of the body. These acts are not framed as punishment, but as communion, forcing sensation into consciousness until the self fractures under it.
Notable Orisons of the Stone Dripping Blood include the following figures, whose accounts form much of Integral scholarship’s understanding of Soma’s influence:
- Eliathra the Quiet: Elf, Woman, Pelithos, Dark Age, Dead. An elven ascetic from Pelithos active during the Dark Age incursion. Contemporary records describe her as incapable of feeling pain despite extensive injury. She reportedly continued ritual observances while flaying her own arms, calmly noting changes in texture and temperature until her eventual death.
- Calmes of the Open Palm: Human, Man, Acrolon, Dawn Age, Dead. Recluse who believed enlightenment could be achieved through absolute physical awareness. After exposure to a Skinweaver relic, Calmes began preaching that skin was a prison. He died from blood loss after attempting to “liberate” himself during a public sermon.
- The Seam-Mother: Skinweaver, Horizon, Alive. An Orison referenced in fragmented accounts. This entity is believed to have overseen the expansion of the Living Lattice during Soma’s Dark Age incursion, fusing living bodies into architectural supports. Scholars disagree on whether it represents a single consciousness or a role repeatedly assumed by different Skinweavers.