Codex - Childhood Miscellany

#1

We are crowdsourcing the miscellany for Codex - Childhood! This one is called “Three Dozen Horrors in the Land of Candy.” Imagine if the people who made the Kingdom Death board game got their hands on the Candyland license—that’s what this one is all about. A couple of notes: 1) avoid sexist imagery and 2) avoid using licensed Candyland characters (but please make up new characters!)

Submissions should be no more than 2-3 short sentences. By submitting here, you’re agreeing to let us use it (you’ll get a credit on the issue). We’re looking for evocative things; the purpose of the miscellany is to inspire the reader.

Note: if you’d like your name to be listed differently on the Codex credit, send me a DM here (but please keep your submissions in the thread).

Here are some examples:

“The Toffee Duke’s favorite method of executing political prisoners is to dip them in molten sugar, sprinkle them with nuts, and then crack them into pieces which are then sent to the four corners of the Toffee Duchy—a warning to those who would raise a frosted hand against him.”

“If you brush away the crystal sugar from one of the rotund, gelatinous mounds that line the Gumdrop Pass, you’ll see there is a tiny fairy trapped inside—as a mosquito in amber—their face twisted in agony.”

“La Dama Catrina serves delicious sugar skull sweets to visitors of her elegant hacienda. Each skull is decorated with colored sugar and bright, candy jewels, and if you hold one up to your ear, it will whisper things to you: tales of La Catrina’s wickedness, gossip about her neighbors, or secrets within her home.”

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3 Likes
#2

The Licorice Beastie skulks the salt flats, lonely and abandoned. It will offer any passersby broken-off pieces of its horn to taste, seemingly hoping to make friends. The licorice horn is astringent and salmiak-flavored, but if you show any distaste while trying it the Beastie flies into a frothing rage.

4 Likes
#3

The Candy Corm Maze covers several hundred square acres, and only the locals who harvest the dense, sugary crop can fully comprehend its twisting, non-Euclidian passages. It’s safe enough during the day, but at night the feral Children who live sequestered away in the densest clusters of stalks roam the passages, giddy with the rush of gorging themselves on the unripe Kernels, seeking any sort of liquid to wash it down.

5 Likes
#4

Given the effect that life in the Candy Kingdom has on the dentition of the Royal Court, it has become the fashion to employ increasingly baroque and elaborate Wax Lips to hide the ravages of plaque and gingivitis. The fact that they begin to wilt and run after only a few hours, less on hotter days, ensures a brisk trade for the Guild of Parafineers and their supplier the Queen Bee.

6 Likes
#5

Upon witnessing the effects of the first successful Atomic Fireball test, its lead developer, confecftionist J Opie Rebertheimer, was said to have muttered “And now I am become cinnamon, destroyer of worlds.”

9 Likes
#6

The Honorable Order of Gumball Knights enforce the will of the Chewing Queen with merry laughter and brutal efficiency. Their mechanized lower bodies resemble the glass orbs of gumball machines, but allow them to roll over all terrains with surprising speed. The gumballs within can be deployed through slots on their chests as projectile weapons that burst into colorful and extremely sticky gunk, trapping or smothering their prey.

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#7

Before sunrise on the last day of the war – ground strewn with licorice intestines – the fizzy folks’ skin erupted in all directions as a fresh wind of Mentos rained in from the west.

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#8

The Sea of Melted Dreams where enormous Jelly Beans broach like whales to feed on the libetated, but helpless, Bloated Raisins carried by currents of Raspberry rippling through the ice-cream waste. All the while the Beans are hunted by Choc-ships crewed by the All-sorts indentured for life to the Candy-King …

4 Likes
#9

The Peppermint Stick Forest was sparkly and beautiful from a distance. It was only up close that travelers’ realized with revolt and terror that the crimson section of the sticks came from giant ampoules of blood stored inside the thick glass piping. Dr. Kerry Minter howled with frustration each time the travelers fled, knowing that the people of this land would never understand the importance of his life’s work.

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#10

Despite the impact on affected families and communities, the Council of Architectural Confectionals will publicly express remorse at any loss of life when graham cracker structures collapse, but there’s too much money in construction and as such no political will to change zoning & safety laws around candy home construction.

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#11

The newest blight to crop in this cursed land – scintillating yum-gem trees, introduced by a mysterious traveler to the lands beyond the forest. Mesmerizing & delicious, but nobody talks about the bloated sugar flies who’s pods grow bigger in the high reaches of the trees every night, or the blood they feed on.

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#14

Yikes!! Too real to be funny!

1 Like
#15

The pure caramel found inside a sugarpig is too pure to be handled without protection. Should you get any of it on your skin it will burn like boiling water and leave a dark green welt. The harvesters wear thick plastics from head to toe, even though the slaughter pens are dank with a most ripe humidity.

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#16

Do not stay here. You might think that this vista of trees and rolling hills would make a pleasant place to picnic and eat your salty sandwiches. At first you will notice a twitching of the long grass as if something small were moving through it at ground level. If you do not heed this warning your blankets will soon be festooned in sticky trails as thousands of gelatin annelids converge to feast all that they find, be that bread or brain.

3 Likes
#17

Little girls that get lost in the icecream lands are transformed into new flavours for everybody to taste, but everybody who tastes one loses every memory of their childhood, with every further tasting consuming further and further memory time, till they finally forget the first tasting and float away into nothingness. Little boys lost there aren’t as fortunate.

3 Likes
#18

Those who dare to sail the Milky Sea shoud stay close to shore and keep a sharp eye on the horizon. The dread pirate C’mander Crisp hunts those waters, firing fusillades of Crisberries from his ship’s cannons.

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#19

Unwary travelers who taste the luscious Candy Apples growing from the trees along the road through Treacle Valley will undergo a dread transformation: Their hearts crystalize to rock candy, their blood thickens into molasses, and their flesh becomes gingerbread.

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#20

Although they look and taste nearly identical to Marzipan Mushrooms, avoid accidentally eating Meringue Mushrooms at all costs: They are the eggs of parasitic intestinal Gummy Worms.

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#21

The Slurpie of the Lemonade Springs is a warning to all who seek to slake their thirst, for those who are careless or too greedy when drinking from the yellow waters will find their tongues stolen by the beast, who seeks the rarest of flavors to quench it’s curiosity for taste.

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#22

You know what they say about Duchess Hard-Candy’s Peppermint Hounds: their peppermint bark is worse than their peppermint bite! It’s a lie, though. Nothing’s worse than the bite of a Peppermint Hound.

5 Likes