The Abyss, Bottomless Agony

The Court of Decay

The Last City, a hulking necropolitan ruin in the center of the Abyss ruled by the Demon Prince of Undeath, is home to insidious undead creatures— called the Deathless and the Soulless, they are creatures of hate, memory, and mind who refuse to yield to law and surrender to the grave.
The Court of Decay and the Court of the Deep maintain a taut, uneasy truce. The Deathless have no souls, so they yield no power to the demons of the depths. But they do not fall into lethe and therefore pose a constant threat.
Ancient kings of the Mundane World, these Deathless Lords mastered unholy lore in life so their unfailing will would overcome the sleep of death.

Zaar Anathema, the Shackled King, the King in Gold

Zaar, the Thane of Kalas Mithral and Lord of House Q’or, once ruled the empire of steel dwarves and personally arbitrated disputes between the Celestial domains and the Terran Empires. He was a wise king, just and true. Now Kalas Mithral is dead, forgotten, and he who once ruled now serves in the Court of Decay.
The end of Kalas Mithral came with the war against the astral celestials’ first Army of Night sieged the walls of Kalas Mithral for months and weeks and days, six and six and six. The Legion of Adamant was mighty in warfare and impervious to sorcery and sword. But the greatest weapon the astral celestials wielded was treachery and corruption, and the Legion of Adamant, once called the Legion Unyielding, faltered.
The King in Gold foresaw the ruin of his house, his capital, and his people. He swore a vow that Kalas Mithral would not fall while he lived and in answer came a howl from below. A bane placed deep within the earth at its creation called out to Zaar. Long had the elementals known that Ord placed hideous blights within his masterwork, entombing them within the world. Fringe sages among the dwarves wrote that all Orden was a prison for something poisonous to the timescape. Zaar summoned the Order of Fabrication, a team of elite mechanists. He pointed to the floor of their deepest chamber and uttered one command: “To the heart of the world.” And thus the Order of Fabrication undertook their greatest making.
A mighty engine did the mechanists build, its corkscrew tip sharp enough to pierce the shell of the world, its hull clad in a metal never seen before or since, its core able to withstand the titanic pressures and temperatures. Thirty elementals could the vessel hold, engineers to man the controls and Zaar’s elite wardens to battle whatever they encountered below, whatever guarded the bane at the heart of the world. War-ender did they name the great machine, for they believed the power below would end the wretched siege and bring their people salvation.
None now live who remember the War-ender’s expedition, but this much is known: many days after it pierced the shell of the world, the Warender emerged, its hull shattered, its crew gone.
Only Zaar remained, manning the controls alone. And gripped tightly in his hand, exhumed from the depths of the earth, was the Tellac Oranic, a stone that radiated death and turned the living into shadows. At first, the lords of the other houses believed Zaar had unearthed their salvation. For three days Zaar led the Legion of Adamant with the verdant stone in hand, and the Army of Night melted away before him.
But the other houses quickly realized the price. While the Army of Night retreated, the dwarves of Kalas Mithral died, turned into dark umbras by the hideous stone. What seemed at first a victory was instead devastation—the Army of Night simply withdrew while the Tellac Oranic feasted on legions of life.
Zaar did not heed his noble court’s pleas as they begged him to surrender the stone. When he turned his back on them, they declared his house Anathema and stripped him of his rank and title. But Zaar did not notice this shame.
Eventually, the Legion of Adamant was gone, their souls fed to the stone. Only as he stood alone on the battlefield, the Army of Night an oncoming flood of death, did Zaar realize his folly. He called out to Ord, to Aan, to Myr and Kul, the makers of earth and air, of water and fire, and the four gods heard him. But their answer was not mercy—it was condemnation.
Sea, Sky, Mountain, and Magma cursed Zaar. And Ord, maker of the world, shackled the King in Gold, bound the Tellac Oranic to him for eternity. As his flesh and mind decayed, he died howling, watching the mile-high walls of Kalas Mithral, which had never known tarnish nor blemish, fall to Night.
The star elves slaughtered the steel dwarves to the last, sparing none, and pulled their gleaming silver city down around their corpses. Zaar, the Shackled King, fell into the Unthinking Depths, where he drags the green stone through the Last City, remembering nothing of his days of glory—only the death of his people and the king who failed them.

Khorak, Jarl of Drengrheim

When the Nine Clans of Vanigar rose in the north, Khorak the Stone Giant warned the other giant tribes that humans would spread, multiply, and drive the giants into extinction. Some agreed, and though they joined Khorak against the spread of the clans, their forces were not enough and the Vanirmen repelled them.
Khorak took his remaining followers into the arctic wastes of Vanigar and there made bargain with Olkhar, the Vanir God of Trickery. Olkhar gave Khorak and his followers the power they needed to conquer the Vanirmen, but his bargain cost them an eye. A ragged band of giants entered the frozen desert, but a cyclopean horde emerged—a force whom none could stand against.
Armed with Olkhar’s gift, a prophetic power called deadsight, Khorak and his followers won many battles against men, and more giants joined his growing legion. Khorak personally slew each of the chieftains of the Nine Clans in battle and claimed the lands of men. An empire of giants emerged, called Drengrheim, with Khorak the Far-Seeing at its helm. But these victories and this empire could not sate Khorak’s hunger, fed by the visions of the deadsight. It told him everything, showing endless lands and treasures to claim—all while hiding from him the means of his undoing.
He turned against the other giants, seeking to control their resources, and did what the humanoids could not: united the clans of giants against him. The Cloud, Fire, and Ice tribes united under the banner of Jarl Manghild, a fire giant princess Khorak orphaned and thought left for dead. In the end, Khorak died in battle against the jarls of the combined tribes. Never before had they allied, and never would they do so again.

Telcezalco XXVIII, the Blood River

Telcezalco was the last king of the inantzicatl, the serpent folk of Orden. The serpent king’s devotees gladly followed him into wars on other islands, worshipping him as a god. But Telcezalco was mortal. Every passing day reminded him of that fragility.
The inantzicatl believed the terror lizards of the island—the tetzahuitl—were sacred. They offered food, jewels, and other sacrifices to the tetzahuitl before hatchings, long journeys, and battles to ensure good fortune, and never harmed the lizards lest they risk angering the gods. Telcezalco suspected their blood contained great power—power over life and death. He was right…but the only death he gained power over was his own. Telcezalco and his followers slaughtered thousands of tetzahuitl, pouring a river of blood that they bathed in. They emerged immortal and undying, but their victory over death was short-lived.
Defiling the sacred pact between the inantzicatl and the tetzahuitl woke Goxomoc, the god of the terror lizards. Telcezalco’s newfound power was nothing in the face of Goxomoc. The titan lizard decimated the island and the inantzicatl empire. No more would the snake-men of Ix build or smelt or write, for Goxomoc destroyed all they had. The few survivors left Ix in search of more habitable lands.
Telcezalco, twenty-eighth and last, ruled over the death of his empire. Now he serves in the Court of Decay, and all fear the arrival of the final king.

Máelodor Rhyllearnán, King of the Foxglove Court

Long before the first empire of man, Máelodor Rhyllearnán watched the Gol spread across the land. Where once only elves, dwarves, and dragons lived, now a fourth mortal people walked among them.
They did not farm, nor build roads, nor cut wood, all the offenses elves would later levy against men. But they worshipped many gods. Máelodor refused to share his kingdom with the humans, so the Gol went to war. They had warred against elf and dragon and dwarf—they had even warred against each other. Máelodor didn’t scare them. Such defiance filled the king with rage.
“They will consume the world,” Máelodor said. “Leave them. They will consume themselves,” the Queen of the Foxglove Court observed. But the king became obsessed with the Gol. Their expansion unnerved him, and he spoke incessantly about his never-ending war with these humans. The Queen in Digitalis urged her husband to seek a truce and appeal for peace. Máelodor ignored her wisdom. After years of watching her people die for Máelodor’s obsession, the Queen of the Foxglove Court left in the night, leaving her husband to his lonely war. She and her guard and favored courtiers slipped away in the moonlight and established the Orchid Court, which rules the Great Wode still.
Máelodor raged. He claimed the Gol ensorcelled his wife. It was their fault the battle continued, and now it was their fault he fought this bloody conquest alone. He howled a vow to his god that day, and Val heard his cry. The Oath of the Hunt bound the King in Digitalis to his own fury. On the longest night of the year, he gathered his devilhound cavalry and began the Solstice Hunt, the hunt against humans.
For weeks did the Solstice Dogs hound the Gol, their bows and hawks and jaws hewing men before them like weeds razed from a garden. Máelodor’s forces caught the Gol surprised and pressed the advantage. Finally, a Gol leader summoned the demon Taamgul, who carved into men sorcerous tattoos. These Gol, their skin still bleeding from the arcane ink, rode against the Solstice Dogs with Taamgul at the lead and cleaved the hunt’s devilhounds out from under them.
Taamgul slew Máelodor Rhyllearnán, the King in Digitalis, but the King’s vow sustained him. Dead, he fought on, and Taamgul was forced to embrace him. When she returned home to the Abyssal Waste, she dragged Máelodor with her. Máelodor Rhyllearnán now serves in the Court of Decay, but legends tell of powerful necromancers summoning the ancient king, and his dread cavalry sometimes rides out against all humans, thirsting for vengeance.

"Men will be the end of this world.”

Tristan Vaslor, the King Below

Three thousand years before the Council of Aberdanon, men from the Commonwealth flooded into the region then known as the Central Plains. They were organized and bore advanced technology. From Khouirsir they brought the stirrup, and from Kalas Mithral they brought the secret of steel. Riding at the head of their armies was Tristan Vaslor, a warrior unmatched. In a search for great power, he led them to war with the Gol, the first humans.
But the Gol were lorecrafty and called upon the demons Khuurtok the All-Seeing, He of Five Hundred Eyes; Bytorr the Wolf; and Ullrok the Blighted, Consort of Flies. These demons fought alongside the Gol and pushed back Tristan Vaslor and his army. An uneasy truce settled, but Tristan Vaslor desired conquest.
The Central Plains were wild then, populated with hidden temples to unknown gods and mystic towers where hermit sages delved into knowledge man was not meant to know. The wizard Pellum lured Tristan to the White Tower, a tower of necromancy, and offered him aid in exchange for service.
“Seek you the Temple of Primordial Chaos,” the wizard called out from atop his tower. “There you will find the sword Maethelgas, which shall aid you in your domination. And also a book I desire, one of little value to you.”
Tristan and his knights rode out, found the temple, and made to sack it, but the temple was vast and many things hostile to light and life dwelled and warred within. For one year did Tristan’s knights siege the temple, building a makeshift city around it, delving deep, disappearing for weeks, until Tristan emerged with the codex Pellum desired…and a great black iron runesword in his hand.
Pellum was true to his word—bound to Maethelgas, Tristan was able to drink the souls of his enemies. Many Gol leaders did he slay, and each time Maethelgas grew in power.
Finally, the vast plains were conquered. The region was named Vasloria, and Tristan ruled for 300 years, his life extended by the powerful sword at his side. But the blade required souls—Tristan’s conquest could not cease. Soon the humanoid tribes were brought under his sway, and this was not enough. The elves and dwarves did he fight, and still the blade called for more.
Eventually, Tristan turned against his own dukes and fed their souls to the blade. After this massacre, his knights damned him, entombing him in the crypt he built for his many dead wives.
For three days, the knights of Vasloria thought their nightmare ended, but in his desperation Tristan fed his own soul to Maethelgas. The crypt quaked with a necrotic surge, splitting asunder as Tristan emerged from his crypt as the Dead King. For ten years, the King Below, the One Below All, ruled over Vasloria. Under his dread hand, Vasloria descended into a nightmarish realm of cruelty and suffering. The people cowered and lived in fear. None dared stand against their dread sovereign.
Not until two brothers, Adun and Cavall—one a farmer, the other a soldier—preached a new way of living. Not to remain slaves to fear, but to resist, to fight, even if it meant death. Even the grave was better than this wasteland they endured.
They led their growing congregation to the Dead King’s castle and there confronted him. While none imagined they might live, much less prevail, Adun and Cavall prayed. Their prayer rose in righteous light and banished Tristan Vaslor to the Abyssal Wasteland, and as his undead howling faded from castle walls, the rule of the King Below ended and Vasloria knew peace.
The One Below All once ruled a continent, and in power he remains after death—he serves in the Court of Decay at the right hand of the Lord of Decay, the Ultralich, Khorsekef the Infinite.

Khorsekef the Infinite

First Pharaoh of the Khemharan Empire, Khorsekef was immortal and ruled for over 3,000 years. It was impossible for the Khem-hor to imagine a world without their god-king. Even now, five millenia later, the fashions and traditions Khorsekef ushered in are synonymous with Khemhara. The cometary impact of his rule still echoes loudly in the desert.
Under Khorsekef’s rule, the people of Khemhara thrived in the desert. Khorsekef used his power to ensure this, providing an oasis for an entire nation. What his people could not know, because the desert isolated them from the world, was that Khorsekef’s rule denied them the right to change or grow. They worshipped their god-king, who never died, and he watched while generation after generation turned to dust at his feet.
Children were born, grew old, married, had children, but nothing ever changed. Names, like nesses, even identities, inventions, and discoveries were endlessly recycled. The Khem-hor thought this was the cycle of the world. The truth was hidden from them.
At least, they did not until the coming of the great explorer Lady Agatamori from Higara, who crossed the desert in the ingenious sand ships her engineers built. Lady Agatamori, a cartographer eager to chart new lands, did not bring war, but she caused one. A civil war. A rebellion. A war against time.
Khorsekef captured Lady Agatamori and her retinue almost immediately and hid them in one of his pyramids, called hedrons. But it was too late— word spread. There were other humans in the world
Humans who strove, created, invented. Humans who were not bound to the Khem-hor’s eternal cycles of rediscovery and reinvention, recycling the same knowledge, even the same identities, through eternity.
Still, this might have remained a rumor, soon forgotten, but for the captain of the Pharaoh’s guard who was so overwhelmed by the bright souled humanity in Lady Agatamori that he smuggled her and her crew out of the Great Tet and into the Atenopolis.

Like a virus, understanding began to spread. The people of Khemhara had been lied to. They were not alone in the world, and they did not have to die repeating the same generation over and over. Armed with new knowledge from conversing with the Khem-hor, Lady Agatamori’s vizier unlocked the final clue. Khorsekef’s hedrons were not, as he had told his people, mausoleums for noble citizens. None were buried there. Instead, the hedrons had been set in certain astronomically significant locations for a secret purpose. The vizier thought he knew why.
While the Pharaoh’s loyal guard closed in on Lady Agatamori’s hiding place in the city, brave Khem-hor brought word of the vizier’s discovery to the Heironauts, the Pharaoh’s cadre of wizards. They quickly assembled the clues and realizedthey, too, had been lied to. Their position brought so much privilege and luxury that it was easy to trick them into thinking their limited knowledge was the sum total of world lore.
The Heironauts discovered the great lie: the hedrons were engines that stored time, absorbing it from the topology of the manifold, a time-looped reality created by the Pharaoh, and transmitting it into the Infinite Pharaoh to preserve him while stagnating everything else. Nothing in Khemhara changed because nothing could change.
Time itself had stopped. Each generation wasn’t merely like the previous—it was a single population giving birth to itself, burying itself, over and over through eternity. They thought their pyramids were tombs. But the desert was a tomb, and they were the embalmed.
Powerful magics erupted in the desert as the Heironauts broke the oppressive cycle and made massive strides in lore. Within days they discovered new spells, and soon reached a limit imposed by the hedrons. So they focused their lore on the hedrons and began to drain their power for themselves, using the stored time to fuel their magic.
The Pharaoh, their god-king, could not allow this. He used the power given him by the hedrons to bring battle against his own wizards.
Cause grappled with effect as the War Against Time engulfed the Atenopolis. Though the Pharaoh initially proved stronger, the Heironauts were growing more powerful by the hour. Soon, the very fabric of the manifold would rip, spilling the Atenopolis out into the Real.
The Pharaoh then did the unimaginable: He opened the Great Tet. The Great Tet was not like the other hedrons. The other pyramids stored time like batteries, releasing it to perpetuate the manifold Khorsekef created. But the Great Tet had never released its stores of time. The Pharaoh broke the seal on the massive hedron, freeing the millennia contained within. Even the Heironauts had not known of the deep stores of time kept inside—it was an emergency measure Khorsekef had built exactly for this contingency.
Opening the Great Tet, the Infinite Pharaoh drank deep of the eons stored within, but its power was so great no physical vessel could contain it. His atoms burst with stored time and shredded apart, leaving only his will.
The white-eyed, dessicated form that remained was the animated memory of the Will of Khorsekef. He was no longer the Pharaoh. He was now the Ultralich, a mind so powerful no force has yet been discovered that can end him.
Facing annihilation by the newly dead god before them, minds filled with new spells and ideas from Lady Agatamori and those of their own creation, the Heironauts did something no citizen of the Atenopolis had done in a millennium. They improvised. They dared stand against the pharaoh’s stagnant rule. “The gate swings both ways!” the First Heironaut declared, and her council understood. Using the residual power stored in the remaining hedrons, they invented a ritual to negate the Infinite Pharaoh’s millenia-long program.
They took the geometries of the manifold he had created, the cul-de-sac of reality they had lived in for uncounted centuries, and inverted it. They spilled its contents across the timescape, and the Atenopolis reentered the Mundane World. At the same time, the fabric of the pocket universe they lived in wrapped back against itself, against its center. The point of origin. Khorsekef, the being that had created it.
Caught within his own imploding manifold, Khorsekef was hurled downward into the Abyssal Wasteland. There, he ascended as the Lord of Decay and the King of Death. The Ultralich, commanding the loyalty of the Court of Decay. They skirmish with the other courts while Khorsekef seeks a way to return to the Atenopolis and restore his infinite rule.
Khorsekef vowed he would return, and the oracles of Khemhara predicted exactly that for the last several millennia. But in the meantime, an explosion of learning and innovation propels the Khemhor forward. The Pharaohs of the desert weave the Eternal Design in preparation for the Infinite Pharoah’s return. If they can complete it before he returns, Khorsekef will find nothing but sand and dust and scarabs where once was a bright civilization—the Khem-hor will have saved themselves and found a paradise.

Court of the Deep

The Abyssal Wasteland is a dead plane filled with ruins of once-great cities. Or are they the degenerating reflections of existing cities in the timescape? Sages differ. Demons call this place home, this rotting reality where forgotten gods go to die. It is a land of entropy and the creatures that call the Waste home consider order a poison. This is the deepest world in the timescape.
Creatures who sink this far down find themselves unable to organize their thoughts, unable to plan or scheme beyond base emotion and survival. Only by feasting on the souls of others can a mind rise above this entropy and muster order enough to plan and, possibly, escape.
Cruel and unyielding, the demons who rank in the Court of Depths gorged on souls until their minds were sharp enough to plot and scheme and climb over one another in a desperate attempt to rise out of the depths and perhaps, one day, loose themselves on the Mundane World, where souls are rich and potent.

Groyle Fleshender

Barely able to form coherent thoughts, Groyle has souls enough to hate and hungers for more. A dullard and a brute, Groyle has no capacity for cruelty—he has not the imagination or patience. He rends and demolishes his way across the battlefield, seeking out whichever creature’s soul shines the brightest, endeavoring to consume them whole and alive. Their screaming desperation gives their immortal soul a sweetness the Fleshender can’t resist.

Hara’antar the Soulthief

Hara’antar the Blasphemite is the last acolyte of the Blood Sun cult. Effulgent in her unholy worship, she intends to complete the bloodshadow rite, assume the mantle of the High Priest, and start the cult anew.
The soulthief’s prayers are unique in the Court of the Deep; with tolling reverence empowering her hissing orisons, she can fuel her dark spells with the souls of nearby enemies without needing to consume them first. This makes her a pariah among the demons; if Hara’antar can tap into the dozens or hundreds of souls each great demon carries, what power could she gain?

Zor’yal Lifeswallower

A cloud of blood surges across the battlefield. Within its crimson deluge is the Lifeswallower. The sanguine torrent cloaks Zor’yal from other demons’ soulsight—without this invisibility, Zor’yal is weak. But do not underestimate this deadly assassin. Her claws are so potent, anyone caught unawares will die to their sting.
Zor’yal led the assault on Kham, her demons warring with the products of the Lords of Kham’s beast-magic until the codex incabulum was opened and the demons banished. Zor’yal is less now than she was, but she remembers. Her insatiable hunger for revenge against the Mundane World drives the gory squall that carries her into battle after battle until she can wreak her vengeance on the world above.

Vorg'aut Harrowfist, the Lady Blight

The Lady Blight is the greatest warrior of the Wasteland. She leads the Corrosion, a unit of elite demon heavy infantry responsible for singlehandedly repelling the Inexorable invasion of the Waste after the rest of the Depths broke morale and began to feed on each other. The Corrosion stood alone against the advance of Integral, Axiom’s premiere cavalry—unable to sunder Vorg’aut’s adamant stand, Integral was forced to retreat. With hulking fists radiating crimson light, Vorg’aut commands the Wasteland, equal parts leader, warrior, and siege engine. Even the battlefield yields to her will, for the Lady Blight is unbending.

Trall the Mindbreaker

When sages across the timescape dare to turn the oracular eye downward, peering into the Abyssal Wasteland and seeking forgotten lore that long ago sunk beneath the surface of the Real, they find Trall’s ivory void eyes, purging and all-consuming, staring back at them.
The Mindbreaker is attuned to any divination targeting the Waste and, rather than trawling the depths looking for souls with some spark left in them, she stabs leeching psychic tendrils through the arcane conduit, draining the soul from the poor wizard, sorcerer, or warlock foolish enough to peer into the Deep.
Thus does the Mindbreaker stay sated with souls. An augur unmatched in foresight and cruelty, she is both mage and anti-mage.

Sylt Bloodheat

The greatest demon of the Court of the Deep, Sylt commands the grudging obeisance of fiends within the Abyssal Wasteland. Unlike the others, Sylt has never fallen into lethe—she has transcended it, subjugated it, until the very flow of souls is hers to dominate.
Sustained by the Bloodheat, Sylt drinks souls in a never-ending flow, feasting on that which empowers the demons and rewarding the legions at her side. Demons under her command find their powers and intellect grow as their supply of howling souls is refueled, effortlessly sustained in a banquet given to her most loyal.
The Court hates Sylt—she is a dark and fell intelligence who prefers to wait and scheme rather than succumb to temporary hungers. They crave bloodshed and feasts of souls and sinew, impatient with her cunning and insidious plots. But none gainsay her right to rule. Many in the Waste wait for her word to lead them across the timescape in a bloody war of anti-life.