There is an old piece of Horsingdon lore concerning 'Witchnails': ritual artefacts supposedly crafted from the fingerbones of hanged witches, and once used by members of the Horsingdon Coven to 'steal the shadow' of those who had offended them either in word or deed. The Witchbones would typically be employed aetherically to 'pin' the unsuspecting victim's shadow to that terrible, praeternatural otherwold which is the habitation of Those Who Wait - following which the miscreant's dreams would forevermore be haunted by monstrous portents and malign visions, eventually driving them to madness and death.
It is also said that the guardians of the Black Bowers wilfully undergo this ordeal as an iniatory rite of passage, with only those possessing force of will to assimilate the nightly visions of horror without allowing their sanity to crumble entirely being formally inducted into that strange and recondite order. Needless to say, knowledgeable as they are in the use of Witchbones, few are willing to anger or antagonise the guardians of the Black Bowers.
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