Sorcerer heads and Specie-spells – for Richard G's Counter-colonial Heistcrawl

It's well-known that the captains who steer their great fortresses over the ocean are sorcerers. At will these men can detach their heads from their bodies and send them drifting out over the waves, over the sand, over the forest. They spy on our counsel by day and they use our words against us. By night they observe the comings and goings of our dreams - or else waylay our dreams and prevent our dreams from speaking to us.

Jan Coen, Courtesy of Richard G

These heads are fearful to behold. They're wide as a barrel and made of stone, only the eyes betray a flicker of life. They drift silent on the air like monstrous pollen beads, their face-sides hidden so as not to be readily observed. (Their stone faces like their flesh faces are swollen and bristled like a boar's.) Sometimes they'll float by a cliff face, or hang behind a waterfall or about the roofbeams of a temple or trader-house like evil statuary. Then, when the time is right, when some unsuspecting prey passes beneath them, they drop like thunderbolts and strike men dead with their great weight. Then they ponderously rise up into the air again.

If you see a floating stone, beware. Don't let it get above you, don't let it overhear you, and don't sleep within proximity of it. Like as not, it is a Dutchman.


ADDENDUM: ON THE COIN

From this observation about sorcerer heads we may surmise that a similar principle governs the manufacture of the strangers' coinage. Why would a monarch affix his head to a small metal disc? To spy on his subjects, naturally! And when the disk in question is a precious metal, endowed with that metal's charms, its medicinal properties, etc. the disk may on these accounts readily find its way into the hands of the innocent. (We must grudgingly acknowledge the awful cleverness of these tactics.)

Thus one cannot be too careful around coins – and indeed a little coin may be hiding anywhere. Fortunately coins possess no great strength when isolated, and with a sharp knife, with a milling stone, or with the aid of a firing kiln, any monarch may from a coin be excised. This noble act not only renders the metal fit for appropriate use, but also, we can hope, may do some small harm to the royal person of the sorcerer in question. 

Emanation of the Sorcerer-King Carlos III