PDF link here: Heretics, Conquerors, and Cruel Beyond Measure .pdf - Google Drive
Here’s a sample from one story, Gourmand, to whet your appetite, so to speak.
Sample from one story, The Gourmand, below:
"After the meal, the hunger had started. It was just a niggle at first. A small urge. But no amount of eating would slake his desire. He had eaten, of course, and eaten and eaten and eaten. But his stomach was an endless abyss. As the weeks passed, Otto devoured all he could in a desperate quest to fill the all-consuming hole in his gullet. To his surprise, he found he was able to eat far more than he had in the past. And not just in quantity, in quality as well. Furniture, bedding, tableware, bones, decorations, small animals from around the neighborhood, even the stones of his familial townhouse. All disappeared into the yawning void of his mouth and yet Otto was not satisfied. Understandably, he sought the best doctors money could buy to cure him, and when they had offered no help, he pursued more proscribed practitioners for his needs. Alas, they too had sent him away still afflicted, unable to muster the magic or might to save him from the unrelenting need that now dominated his life. What choice did he have but to go north? Where else could he find the solutions he needed? Of course, the disappearance of that gristly local child had contributed to his decision, but he fancied the trip north would have come about regardless. Yes, of course it would have.
Sadly, in the north Otto found an expectedly cold reception. The local Norscan shunned him or beat him or tried to kill him when their livestock and family members disappeared. Did those foolish barbarians not understand he had to eat? He fled from town to town, shaman to shaman, seeking answers. Seeking salvation. A withered, wretched wreck of flabby skin and weary bones, driven near mad from hunger and desperation, he had found the Rotbloods curdling under the sickening lights of the Chaos Wastes. And there, he had discovered what he sought. The Rotbloods saw the truth of Otto’s condition. He was not accursed, he was not afflicted even. He was gifted. Indeed, Grandfather had given Otto of all people a gullet fit for a god. How could any view such a thing as a curse? Under the tender mercies of their shamans, Otto had realized the foolishness of his desire for a “cure” and instead had taken the first steps on his path to enlightenment. His hunger remained, obviously, but the mystics of his newfound home introduced him to the ancient techniques through which he could sup upon the very life forces of beings around him."