Continued from Part X

On All Protections Night, a terrible entity known as The Vernow haunts the streets and pathways of the world, going from door to door, trying to gain entry. The Vernow manifests as an enormous deer skeleton, which walks upright. Quatrian legend says that The Vernow is the spirit of a deer who was cursed by Anthuor and died alone in the wild, trapped within a chasm from which it couldn’t escape. It roams the earth the night before All Sprites Day, looking for new skin to cover its bones.

Various tales provide differing reasons that Anthuor might have cursed a deer. Some suggest that the creature stumbled into the Cave of Unnaming without then proceeding to the Tree of Re-Naming, unbeknownst to Anthuor. Others insist that The Vernow is some remnant or fragment of the Betrayer, left behind after a dissolution of that entity, forced to take refuge in the body of an erstwhile cervid. In later Pantarctican chansons de geste like “The Lay of the Quatrian Knights,” The Vernow serves as a representative of the Mockridge, a kind of “Anti-Anthuor” worshipped by the Theriomorphic Monsters who periodically escape from the Hypogeum.

Regardless of its origin, according to tradition, the best way to protect your house from a visit by The Vernow is to hang an old coat outside of your front door before retiring, upon which has been traced The Vernow’s symbol. If The Vernow visits, it will take the coat to use as its skin. According to some accounts, The Vernow may opt to place cursed objects– a black stone, a rotten berry, or some other thing– in the pockets of the coat instead of taking it. If your coat still hangs from the door on All Sprites Morning, don’t bring it inside until you’ve checked the pockets… just in case.

Finding the skeleton of a deer, or even its bones, while in the wild, required ritual purification of those bones if one wished to take them home to use on a family altar. They needed to be washed in melted snow, collected either during the New Moon or during the passage of a comet. Those who neglected this ritual invited The Vernow into a corner of their home, and quarenteen years of ill-luck along with it.

The Symbol in Magical Practice

When traced with a Spell Stick, Quatrian watajan used The Vernow sigil to amplify the effects of curses or bindings*. No self-respecting Quatrian would ever use The Vernow sigil by itself; to do so would be the mark of an adherent of the Mockridge cult, of which none would speak except in hushed tones.

During divination, The Vernow represents unexpected trouble. Drawing the symbol automatically negates the meaning of any Magicians present in the reading. It also intensifies their most “challenging” currents of non-Magician/Monster symbol in a reading, so that, for example, “Silence + Vernow” likely indicates some kind of baneful secret being kept from the querent.

*An upcoming section will cover Quatrian curses and bindings in more detail.

THE VERNOW was originally published in Quatrian Folkways Institute on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.