The Silt Verses is a horror-fantasy podcast by the makers of I am in Eskew. It was created by Jon Ware and Muna Hussen, who both worked on Eskew. There are 46 episodes split between 3 seasons, with a large cast of characters. This page will contain Spoilers so read on at your own risk!
The world building of The Silt Verses is what captured my interest when I first found it. There are a lot of gods in this world, which can be created and shaped by regular people. When we first meet our main characters, Carpenter and Faulkner, we learn they are followers of an outlawed religion worshipping the Trawler-Man, a god of the White Gull River, the major river in The Peninsula. Other gods include:
any many more! Most of the legal gods are regulated and corporate- Sweet Jolly Crunchtooth just sounds like a cereal mascot, The Saint Electric helps provide the country with power, et cetera.
In addition to gods, you can have saints and angels. The difference between these is sometimes hard for me to tell but generally, saints are humans who were hallowed and made into a saint as an act of devotion to a god. Angels are living creatures (the Trawler-Man has hermit crab saints for example) that were made as a byproduct of the god, and can be animals or concepts. We see an angel at one point which only presents as an echo in a cave, but it is just as deadly as an angel or saint you can see. This brings me to my next point, saints and angels are dangerous. In the second and third seasons, they are used frequently as weapons in the war between the Peninsula and the Linger Straits. The government turns people into saints and drops them down like bombs.
Being that this is a podcast, there are not really generally agreed upon character designs for most of these characters. I do not like most of the designs I see for these characters online. Most of the fanart you see is of Carpenter, Faulkner, and Paige. Carpenter is old!! She is wise and has gray hair at the very least from stress if not age. Other than that, I think people have really cool art inspired by the world. I saw someone at my college who had art at an art display at the end the semester of the Saint Electric. I lost my mind because this podcast is still relatively small so finding another fan in person was really surprising! I tried to find the person who made it but there were too many people there.
The first couple of episodes start off relatively slow, but there is a reveal in the beginning about sacrifices which I absolutely love. First, we learn the Trawler-Man is an illegal god, aw sad its illegal for them to practice their faith. Then we learn that they sacrifice people, including children, to the Trawler-Man, aw what the hell! Talk about an unreliable narrator, they shouldn't do that! Then, we learn that liscensed faiths like the Saint Electric also sacrifice people on the regular, and my expectations slip away. This initial back and forth subversion establishes that we are dealing with unreliable narrators, and made me question aspects of the world building at first. For example, certain faiths will declare their god to be the one true god, which made me question if the gods were even real at all. After all, things like the tide and electricity are things that exist in our world, so do they really have proof of these gods existing in universe? Are they really just attributing natural phenomenon to a host of different gods? Then, very obvious displays of power from the gods happen and we realize oh, these gods are very real and can cause very real harm.
This is the money, my favorite part of this podcast. There are a lot of different faiths and gods, and they are all very clever and interesting. Here is a list of some of the gods.
A god of the White Gull River. The Trawler-Man has two faces, one which devours and one which spits out silt. He is worshipped by the Parish of Tide and Flesh, which is low on numbers after many members were killed. This is the faith we know the most about. Followers will sacrifice people by tying them up at the bottom of the river so they drown when the tide comes in.
A god of electricity and radio. Regular sacrifices are made at power plants and anywhere that uses electricity frequently in order to feed the Saint Electric. Her sigil is put on coffee makers, and on sacrifices strapped to the front of trains to make them run.
A god of caffeine and work. Grinding as in coffee and also working yourself to the bone. We hear a radio show in worship of the Grindinglord where the radio host stays awake until he dies. The Grindinglord makes coffee and tea which they sell.
A god of grain and cereal. Sweet Jolly Crunchtooth was made to replace the miscellaneous smaller harvest and farming gods scattered across the country. The farmers dislike this, but eventually wind up going with it anyways.
A god of books and decay. Silverfish and maggots and things that eat paper are associated with the Waxen Scrivener. It likes libraries and book stores, places with stores of physical knowledge. We see a saint of the Waxen Scrivener described as a large worm-like thing, which used to be a man named Abel. "Upon black ink and rotten parchment, truth shall be revealed"
A god of cops. Most cops operate on their own, because The Cloak is thought to be everyone's partner.
A god of lost things. It takes things people want to lose as sacrifice, and returns them when you want them back. This is the only god we hear of that does not seem to recquire the sacrifice of living things.
A god of lying. This is a personal rhetorical god of the cop Daggler (fuck that guy). Rhetorical gods like this are highly illegal, but Daggler got his hands on one. It allows him to be very effective at lying, which he makes use of in his profession frequently.
A god of victims and martyrs. We watch this god be created by Paige and Hayward, in response to their anger at the outrageous amount of sacrifice that happens. The hope is that people who are about to be sacrificed or hallowed into saints can use the prayer mark of the Many Below, and it will claim them for itselves, and maybe do a bit of damage on its way out.