An Unseasonal Treat - The Shitting Log of Catalonia as Elder Horror.

Vance at Leicester's Ramble got my Secret Santicorn 2024 prompt: "The Real Monster of which the Shitting Log of Catalonia is the sanity-protecting bowdlerization". 

The Tio de Nadal (Christmas Log - which you feed and then beat so it shits out some sweet treats for the kids) looks something like this:

Jumping off point was the blind paladins of Vance's iteration. Serendipity ensues.

Usual statement that this is mechanically based on old-fashioned D&D-ish but meant to be broadly agnostic, and asterisk means especially optional.

SRAIM, The Shitting Log of Catalonia.

A drifting star-spawn, designated 'Sraim', (crash)lands on Earth and is worshipped as a god by pre-historic humans/humanoids (details to taste).

The sorcerers can tap it for mana, but once the priesthood and the people oust the sorcerers, it becomes clear that this is a useless god - all it does is eat sacrifices and not answer prayers.

The people turn to other gods (either safely remote or more immediately transactional), and Sraim is all but forgotten save for a cult remnant of fanatics. Eventually humiliated (details to taste), the cult remnant turns on Sraim and takes out their frustrations on its body.

Sraim cannot be killed, because even a useless god is still a god. And because it is a god, the bits that come off or out of it have their own power - if you host that bit of the god, you take on that power.

Centuries of secret experiments refine the rituals of the exo-flagellant cult, and they learn to wound Sraim in ways to produce predictable results. Whether the cult believes their actions honour or enslave the god is up to you.

Whispers of the cult - the things it does, the Thing it centres on - disperse across Europe, bump up against and merge with other folk beliefs until they become the Tio de Nadal. Even then, the darker truth of the cult is superficially indistinguishable from common European folklore concerning witchcraft, familiar spirits and devil-worship.

It looks something like this:

John Blanche illo. from White Dwarf 48.
How fortuitous!

The head-part resembles the most recently consumed sacrifice (animal or otherwise), then breaks down between feedings.

Roll d3 to see what it would fit in/on:

1. An altar, a basket, a bucket, a plastic bag, a basin, a sink, a fireplace (1 HD).
2. A bed, a flat-topped standing stone, a coffin, a body-bag, the boot (trunk) of a car (3 HD).
3. A crude shrine, a barn, a cellar, a well, a cave, the back of a truck (6 to 8 HD).

Sraim's size depends on how well fed it is.

It can bite and chew for one die of damage per round, or it can drain Ability Scores at d3 points per round (CON, DEX and STR is sucking blood; CHA, INT and WIS is soul sucking).

It must be presented with victims as it cannot hunt by itself.

Special Abilities:

Can't Be Killed: Sraim is equivalent to a helpless Unarmoured target, but all damage is non-lethal.

Regenerates: at a rate of 1 hp per 10 minute turn normally, and at 3 hp per combat round, starting 3 rounds after it has been injured.

Spell Immunity: it is unaffected by all spells that do not cause points of damage.

*except appropriate binding and dismissal rituals.

Dream Communication: anyone with a Gift parasite can be visited in their dreams (including induced Altered States). Sraim does not have anything to communicate other than pain, madness and what it can see/sense - there is no intelligence or personality (as we would understand it) directing these visions.

The Gifts.

Whether they are part of Sraim or incidental inhabitants, the Gifts of Sraim are parasites, born of the brutality carried out on the god's corpus, and bestow boons and/or banes on those they infest. Hosting is usually internal, but they can also attach like a leech.

The chance of ritual wounding producing a parasite is base 1% per point of damage (or as narrative dictates). The method and detail of the ritual wounding influences the properties of the Gift. This has been recorded, refined and ritualised by the cult over centuries; in fact, it makes up the bulk of their cultic literature.

Parasites need blood to survive, with or without a host. They do not share Sraim's special abilities. 

Mechanically, treat these fragments as anything small and invasive (eg. Rot Grub, Scum Creeper, though the Sea Spawn, Minion is probably uppermost in my mind). Interpret a Reaction Roll or Morale Check or whatever to see if it tries to escape, rejoin the main body, or attempts to find a host.

1. Charisma/Ill-favour: for one year, you make all Charisma (and related rolls) at advantage/disadvantage, or adjusted +/-2. This includes Reaction Rolls. A sample of your natural secretions exhibits weird properties.
2. Cleric: you're now a Cleric of Sraim; you can speak (and read, if literate) the secret cult language; you affect undead and cast spells like a reverse-Cleric. You need to host an additional parasite every time you gain a level. Lose your parasite(s), lose your granted abilities until you can host more.
3. Toughness/Weakness: for one year, you make all Constitution (and related) rolls at advantage/disadvantage, or adjusted +/-2. This includes rolls for hit points. A sample of your flesh and/or bone exhibits weird properties.
4. Death: if it's straight save or die, Sraim will eat you up shortly. Otherwise, you have to survive a year without benefit of natural or magical healing - tread lightly.
5. Locate Object: for one year, unlimited by space and time, you know where something is and how to get there, no matter if it is impractical.
6. Good Luck/Cursed: for one year, you can choose to reroll any failure (and if 20s/crits count for nothing at your table, then they do now!) but must abide by the new result (though 1s/crit fails count for nothing, if they did before). Cursed is worse than just the opposite of Good Luck - it's also (either) equal to a year-long curse or all rolls are at disadvantage/penalty.
7. Madness: pulp/horror madness of various types; you understand the secret cult language (but not automatically speak or read it) - any hallucinatory voices will be speaking it. The madness will be interpreted as freedom from moral/mortal constraint, revelation of Sraim, forbidden understanding of cosmic secrets etc.; otherwise, as a monstrous change in personality. You recover in one year.
8. Psionics: roll to see if you develop psionics or become a wild talent; otherwise, you get one use of one power per day for a year, and it's really the parasite doing it on your behalf. If your powers were awakened by a parasite (rather than embodied in it), you do not need to host another one - although you have no reason to know/believe this.
9. Spell: for one year, you can use a specific arcane spell once per day. This includes transcribing and teaching it. The spell is associated with the part of the body where the parasite resides.
10. Strength/Weakness: for one year, you are under a strength/weakness spell-effect, or you make all Strength (and related) rolls at advantage/disadvantage, or adjusted +/-2. This includes rolls for damage. a sample of your blood exhibits weird properties.
11. Thrall: you understand the secret cult language and easily learn to read and speak it; you always know in which direction Sraim lies; you sense other Thralls nearby but do not automatically know them. You must save to resist obeying spoken commands of Clerics of Sraim. You will always come when Sraim is under threat. Thralls do not automatically attack those harming/threatening Sraim, and Sraim does not automatically command them to do so. Thralldom lasts one year, but you will attempt to return to Sraim and take a new parasite.
12. Undeath: whether instantly or after death by other means (or within the one year , you will rise as a Zombie or Mummy with half your mortal INT; you cannot speak, but you understand the secret cult language. You always know in which direction Sraim lies. The parasite does not survive the process, nor are you a viable host thereafter.

Parasites purged and/or destroyed by your preferred method(s).

THE BLIND DEAD, Guardians of Sraim?

El ataque de los meurtos sin ojos (1973).

Undead Knights Templar, either pledged to keep down the cult they once purged, or they were the cult and Sraim was their Baphomet. Whatever their relationship to Sraim, they rise from their tombs to make sure no-one can get to it.

Basic stats as any Undead (up to Mummy) with abilities as 4th level Fighters, 3rd level Paladins (1e or 2e AD&D) or Cavaliers, or 3rd level Cavalier-Paladins (1e UA-style). 

Ignore or modify any incompatibilities arising from a strict interpretation of the written rules. 

They are blind, with all that mechanically entails, but can hear your breath and your heartbeat even when you're hiding.

They sometimes ride horses, which seem to be mundane animals rather than monsters - make of that detail what you will.

Ten together (or fewer if this seems underpowered) can cast a sleep spell. 

If they bite you, save vs. disease or you come back as a Zombie/Ghoul after death. You go after the people you knew in life rather than join up with the Templars.

Mostly wield swords, but also use axes, spears, whips and flaming torches.

*All are equipped as a character of their class, level and background, but any magical equipment is there to be used against them rather than by them. While this is especially true of magic weapons, they will benefit from the passive effects of rings, amulets etc.

*They're on a seven year cycle, rising up to terrorise the neighbourhood and do whatever they need to do to Sraim (feed it, or make sure it's not fed, or to extract Gifts to maintain their existence etc). 

*A blood sacrifice made to Sraim will call them up prematurely, or keep them from walking abroad (as appropriate).

The Cult Today.

1. The cult does not exist - it is dead and forgotten. Sraim lies dormant and hungry. The Blind Dead have not walked abroad in centuries. Cult writings and objects for ritual wounding lie forgotten in abandoned places, or uncatalogued and unrecognised in historical collections. Notorious local historical figures or a particular family have a tradition of secretive behaviour, unexplained wealth/power and gruesome ends, but there is no organised cult.
2. The cult is a modern esoteric secret society that styles itself after the Knights Templar (or at least the legend of them) and are at several removes from the reality of Sraim. They will have access to original artefacts and writings, but their ambitions are worldly, their faith is superficial and untested.
3. The cult is a stereotypically Goya-esque coven of witches and warlocks. Sraim and its parasites are the main source of their power, but that doesn't mean they can't be Druids and Magic Users in their own right. These are the witches and warlocks that give the others a bad reputation and feed the fantasies of the witch-hunters - Sraim is symbolically the sacrament they spit upon, the cross they trample, and they definitely feed it stolen little babies.
4. The cult is made up of individual seekers after forbidden secret powers, who have all followed the same research routes to Sraim. Periodic Thralldom and Cleric-hood make them aware of each other and intimate with Sraim, and they agree to cooperate or at least not interfere in each others' plans. While their cult association will not be known, even in occult circles, their effectiveness will.
5. A network of misguided pagans and researchers (academic and amateur) digging down into the roots of folk traditions. Those closest to the centre form the active cult (or cults/factions within), but the ripples spread into wider society/sub-culture. The Blind Dead will storm a music festival, initially being mistaken for cosplayers or a metal band.
6. A local conspiracy, folk horror-style, and compatible with the other options above. They are all about cover-up and discouraging curious outsiders. Apart from their unique but otherwise mundane variation on the Tio de Nadal tradition (details to taste), which will hint if they see things in a positive or negative light, cultic behaviour is likely to focus on the Blind Dead, as the tangible manifestation of circumstances.

Commentary.

Vance's blind paladins meant that the Blind Dead were going in there, keeping up the Iberian flavour.

The farmer unearthing something awful put me in mind of Clive Barker's Rawhead Rex (especially the Les Edwards graphic version). And the (written) reality of an ancient penis-monster (wanking and pissing as well as ravening and devouring) is at least as terrible/ridiculous as an eldritch turd-worm.

Cleaving close to the Blind Dead mythos puts Sraim-central in an abandoned medieval town on the Spain/Portugal border. This is the opposite side of the country to Catalonia, but it's strongly implied above that Sraim is portable.

If the Templars are antagonist towards Sraim, they might be Dagon or Tsathoggua cultists - judging by their idol in La noche de las gaviotas (1975).

Sraim is named for the illustration, depicting one of Dave Morris's demons from his articles in White Dwarf. Stats for RQ/CoC/BRP in issue 45; converted for AD&D by Liz Fletcher in issue 48. I love how it turns out to be even closer to the popular image of the Tio de Nadal than I remembered.

The Tio de Nadal is supposed to have ancient pagan origins, but I feel that's often just code for 'we don't know'.