ENTRY 17: ANCIENT CELLARSPAWN
We mentioned that most "horrors" in Duskmourn are known in-universe as Cellarspawn, but only one card actually includes the term in its name! Ancient Cellarspawn, as the title implies, must be one of the older cases still living, and while it's only a 3/3 for 3 mana, its presence reduces the cost of horrors, nightmares and demons by 1. Further, any time you cast anything with a reduced mana cost - whether it's thanks to this card or otherwise - an opponent loses life equal to the difference. Neat!
The design is really cool, too, a big gnarly humanoid with a few too many joints, bloodstained claw hands and a tangled collection of antlers that scrape the ceiling. I like its little face, too, not the expected elongated animal skull head but a flattened, beady-eyed, sharp-toothed face that's almost cute, more like a mutated reptilian baby head if you squint. But what ARE Duskmourn's "cellarspawn" horrors? We talked about them being "Enchantment Creatures," like the setting's Nightmares, meaning that they're manifested by the House itself, but Nightmares are brought to life from the dreams of the house's victims, whereas Cellarspawn are born from the subconscious of the house itself, or at least, the entity at the true top of its hierarchy.
The production of these creatures increases on a plot-relevant cycle we'll talk about eventually, but their purpose in the house seems to be as the primary "harvesters" of human(oid) victims, I guess kinda like Horrors are its Digestive Enzymes??? And it's not just that they outright kill people; if a cellarspawn catches you, you apparently always die of pure fear before it actually eviscerates you or bites your head off or anything.
