vermium

[vermium]

“The warrior of Rome who once turned the rivers red with the clotting of his enemies’ blood has thrown down his spear and chosen life, after having dispensed with his own. The fairy that returned him and sewed his soul back into his freshly-bathed corpse has given him an opportunity for peace: to build Paradise regained, in the form of a slug garden.”

#liber vermis #slugs

[vermium]

“The red dragon’s head appears larger than it is, so close to its victim’s shuddering gaze, and so do its paper-maché teeth. Its humble operator, the size of a pet, manages a pole wrapped in silk-cloth that simulates a beast’s animal movements. There are many such things—those that frighten more than they do harm. If you look past its sharp teeth, you may find a soft if mischievous friend.”

#liber vermis #creatures #masks #puppets

[vermium]

"Woven with the same threads and by the fingers of the same hands, the family resemblance between the beasts is in their golden colour and their taste for living flesh. When the other colours fade, and a new animal is stitched to the new king’s livery, the tapestries will be taken down to storage and forgotten until the shapes abandon their posts to wet the edges of their teeth."

#liber vermis #creatures

[vermium]

medieval zines are now available as print copies and downloads! downloads are free and you can print them yourself; if you'd like print copies mailed to you, you can get random sets of 4 or the full set of 11, all for $1 + postage. they’ll remain in the shop through november 2024.

get zines | view the gallery

thank you creators for being part of this event! and thanks to everyone else who shares, reads, and enjoys the zines <3

info/resources | twitter | discord

previously: polar | horror | maritime

coming up next: cowboys! 🤠 april-ish 2024

#zines #we made one! #there are some amazing things too that others have made #please check them out!

[vermium]

How to Fold a Mini Zine

“A Time of Change” — Vermium’s very own zine, this time for the @zinebash Medieval event.

The theme is the passage of time in the Middle Ages, in its cyclical rhythm—the repetition of the agricultural calendar, which is also liturgical; the successions of kings—in which things appear to remain largely the same. Only to realise, after some time, that a great many things have changed.

The printable zine will be under the cut.

#zines #zinebash04

[vermium]

“A Time of Change” — Vermium’s very own zine, this time for the @zinebash Medieval event.

The theme is the passage of time in the Middle Ages, in its cyclical rhythm—the repetition of the agricultural calendar, which is also liturgical; the successions of kings—in which things appear to remain largely the same. Only to realise, after some time, that a great many things have changed.

The printable zine will be under the cut.

#zinebash04 #zines

[vermium]

For @glorioustidalwavedefendor

“He keeps an eye on his sharp-fanged apprentice lest it swallow them whole—one of the smaller lunar larvae, the type if thinks he won’t notice missing from the bunch, the pebbles and the dregs of half-shaped clay.

Armed with a mathematical mind that makes accounts as surely as the human hand compares different weights by how they touch upon their palm, there’s no chance that such a change could go unnoticed. Not that this stops it from trying.”

#liber vermis

[vermium]

Drawing for @listentothesoundsofthenight. This is their original character.

He looks sad because I had a headache while drawing him and it leaked into it.

[vermium]

The next Arthurian knight that refutes the misconception that every character in the Arthurian mythos had to be British or otherwise exclusively Western European.

Morien was a Knight of the Round Table whose life was narrated in the 13th century Arthurian poem “Moriaen,” written in the Middle Dutch. His father was the knight Aglovale, and his mother—a princess from a “Moorish” land. Just like the common imagery of Arthur’s court doesn’t have a strictly defined era or cultural affiliation (you’ll see hundreds of paintings of 6th century British knights wearing 17th century French armour), this image represents Morien as more of a legendary figure, combining regionally accurate elements in a bit of an anachronistic fashion. One of the first cultures to be referred to as Moors by the European Christians were the Maghrebine Berber people, giving some context to which region Morien's mother could be from. Amazigh-style weapons served as a basis for his weapons, while Tuareg dyeing techniques the design of his clothing. The description of his “Moorish” clothes and his armour as black as a raven reminds me of the beautiful indigo fabrics of the Tuareg people, which can appear to shine like raven feathers. His sword is barely visible, but it is based on the flyssa, an Amazigh traditional sword. He also holds an adarga, the Amazigh leather shield, which was actually so good at—well, being a shield—that it was adopted by many cultures of Europe because of its efficacy.

#sorry guys we made a spelling mistake with the shield's name #but we've corrected it now

[vermium]

The next Arthurian knight that refutes the misconception that every character in the Arthurian mythos had to be British or otherwise exclusively Western European.

Morien was a Knight of the Round Table whose life was narrated in the 13th century Arthurian poem “Moriaen,” written in the Middle Dutch. His father was the knight Aglovale, and his mother—a princess from a “Moorish” land. Just like the common imagery of Arthur’s court doesn’t have a strictly defined era or cultural affiliation (you’ll see hundreds of paintings of 6th century British knights wearing 17th century French armour), this image represents Morien as more of a legendary figure, combining regionally accurate elements in a bit of an anachronistic fashion. One of the first cultures to be referred to as Moors by the European Christians were the Maghrebine Berber people, giving some context to which region Morien's mother could be from. Amazigh-style weapons served as a basis for his weapons, while Tuareg dyeing techniques the design of his clothing. The description of his “Moorish” clothes and his armour as black as a raven reminds me of the beautiful indigo fabrics of the Tuareg people, which can appear to shine like raven feathers. His sword is barely visible, but it is based on the flyssa, an Amazigh traditional sword. He also holds an adarga, the Amazigh leather shield, which was actually so good at—well, being a shield—that it was adopted by many cultures of Europe because of its efficacy.

#morien #arthuriana #knights

[vermium]

“You hear the crunch before you feel it.

What for one is a brunch, the other construes as an annoyance—if only they could sit down and discuss how heavy is the burden of sweetness. Then they will decide to carry it a second longer or chew on the fruits of each other’s labours, spit out the seeds in the patches of light where nothing has yet grown.

The joys of the flesh come in different forms.”

#liber vermis #creatures

[vermium]

The dying king’s memorious daughter had heard that there was a miracle-maker, hidden in the fathomless depths of the wood, where none did tread who cared whether they came home still possessing of their souls. Risking it all, she sought find him and prove her love, give all her riches in return for the six ancient hearts and a skin older than the king's bloodline.

Pale and dim as tallow wax, he stretched out his hand and invited her to dance. His voice was the kindling of the bonfire in the season of the slaughter—the crack of the dead branch, in the middle of the night, trampled with the soft body of a caterpillar in it:

“I am the green rust from the axe of the knight in the chapel, the copper blue of the mermaid’s left eye. I am the red iron dust upon the skin of sleeping Saturn. I have no need for your apples of gold, little princess, and have no need for words of promises that you must never keep.”

The world beyond the bounds of human nature goes by a different arrangement than man’s laws of exchange. The gift that is given when it is asked for needs no repayment. But when a wish is made against the order of things, it leads to things becoming out of order.

#liber vermis #unreality

[vermium]

“Autumn falls upon the plain, and three heads have sprouted from yesteryear’s seeds, the bones of a sour golden mandarin that have come to harvest. When the fruit dries upon the stem and becomes lighter than air, that is when it’s ready to be plucked for the costumes of the Carnival days. Once a year, on this special occasion, all creatures brave and small can join humans and make merry. The sisters of the mulch, the meadow and the sea disguise themselves as puppets, and the masks—their puppeteers.”

#liber vermis

[vermium]

“This was the closest that it came to be for a life generated out of nothing—born of its master’s own drop of blood. Against nature, it was nurtured by the loneliest child of the sea. But after the miracle came the questions. Would it need feeding? If so, what to give it? Would it get lost in a bucket of chum? Is it an old soul newly embodied, with its own name to be coaxed out of it, or is it the soul of a newborn that possessing none should be bestowed one? How to speak with it—this one that would be mangled by razor-blade teeth when speaking the language of the shark? The patience of learning gives birth to tongues unknown.”

#liber vermis

[vermium]

“What one does, repeatedly, is what they become. It watches and listens, performs experiments. It learns—and becomes different to what it was before. The right hand is burnt through for the eye to see, and the sinister is for the taming of serpents. As for the heart? It beats not irregular but to vernacular rhythms, the footsteps of insects tapping on the bark of the grandfather tree to alert for the presence of predators. The whole web shakes, in unison to its vibrations. It’s hard for it to pay attention to the transformations in itself when the world outside is transported so rapidly to new and unheard of states.”

#liber vermis #body horror

[vermium]

“It wasn’t a matter of eschatology, nor a warning for a crack in the seal, but a mere case of parasitism. The peasant used to carrying the weight of the kingdom upon his crooked spine could hardly notice an extra pound. Nature’s philosophers have studied a leech, a toad and the thirst of a flea, but not the serpentine demon learnt in unnatural law. In the land of wrake and wonder, in the age that was wild and fierce, hardly anyone’s bothered by a sight of the abysmal spell-teller riding on the shoulder of the Earth-bred man.”

#liber vermis

[vermium]

“We all have ideas of where we came from and where we go, kings and butchers and alchemists making their names into history as a medicine against the rot, but in the end, all life and all death comes from something small and fortuitous. As much a product of chance as the artichoke brought to life by a strike of a lightning, who contemplates too the very same question.”

#liber vermis #artichoke