Research: Demon Lord Juiblex in Cumae: The Orbis | World Anvil

Research: Demon Lord Juiblex

Juiblex is an exceedingly old and alien demonic presence - in some myth, it's there at the creation of the Abyss itself. The common characteristics in every mention of this being are:   It's the Faceless Lord. It goes by any number of other names, and from time to time is described with the pronoun 'he' but is clearly an asexual 'it'. Its bodily substance is a glistening gelatinous fiend-stuff akin to but vastly more resilient than slimes and oozes. Strange organs like eyes, mouths, and hair sometimes appear on or in the mass, but it's best understood as a gigantic, hyperintelligent Amoeba rather than anything that is or ever was humanoid. While never referred to in any known document on the subject as a protofiend or Obyrith (a term given by scholars to the original enemies of light and goodness left over at the Creation), Juiblex does fit the typical description of what an Obyrith was said to look like - dark, foul, formless, and cold.   It's associated with two different layers of the abyss - 222 and 528. 222 is also the layer of Zuggtmoy, a demon lord (Lady) of fungus and rot; often in the stories she and Juiblex are fighting against each other for control of 222. However her entire sphere of influence is completely within the rot and goop portfolio of Juiblex, and her powers are profoundly weaker than his are seen to be, so she is likely to be either a vassal or merely a more humanoid representation of Juiblex itself. Any conflict is easily explained by the fact that most demons are at war with each other regardless of their reasons for fighting; they are the epitome of Chaotic Evil and need no reason to fight. More to the point, Juiblex arguably is too much a creature of chaos and destruction to even have a plan, per se, to take over anything; it is a stomach hungering for the universe and belching endless rivers of black and green acid with which to devour it. But from time to time, it does interact with other Demon lords; the best guess as to the nature of its relationship with Zuggtmoy is "It's complicated."   Predating the conflict with Zuggtmoy, older legends going back to the Cumaeans and the days of Thule suggest he ruled over or even originated from (or as) the 528th layer of the Abyss, a place where slimes and oozes perpetually devour each other. The throne of Juiblex was said to be the largest garbage pile in the universe, infested not only with gelatinous creatures but also common denizens of trash piles such as otyughs and carrion crawlers. All the slime-based living entities of the material plane are explained as colonies sloughed from their seed origins in Juiblex itself; without Juiblex even the concept of an ooze could not exist. It does not merely 'rule' the oozes, as if an ooze was something with a will beyond its base survival and self-replicating drive. Juiblex in this explanation is the father and mother of the concept of gelatinous life, and the literal source for every slime in existence, as an extension of its own body and perhaps linked to its consciousness.   Still other tales, perhaps the darkest origin story of all, suggest that Juiblex is not a fiend at all, but a construct - designed by an unknowable demiurge deep in the Far Realm and injected from the corrupted extradimensional realms into our universe for unknown but clearly evil work that furthers their inscrutable aims. These stories position the mind flayers as savior and liberators who used this construct-substance for their own ends, relentlessly mind blasting and psionically molding a new kind of creature, the Oblex, pitting their extended hive minds against the decentralized consciousness of Juiblex and its creators and masters in the far realms.    The truth may be some or all of these - the Abyss is infinitely deep, after all, large enough for every profane possibility.

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