Heart of Hate

The seething core of the Black Forest, the crystallized heart of a dead god, the prison of the Adversary. The Heart of Hate is all of these things, and the source of true evil on Nascindor. No one that lives, with perhaps the exception of some of the eldest shamans of the Pale Men, has seen the Heart with their own eyes, as mere proximity to its hateful radiance is damning to a mortal soul.

It is only through the constant performance of the Eternal Hymn across Nascindor that this dread prison does not crack open and release the unbridled madness of the Adversary upon the world and all worlds beyond.

Influence

The heart radiates the Adversary's nightmare throughout the Black Forest and Hatelings are birthed from its mass at a constant pace, ejected from the heart like abominable newborn that writhe and squirm on the desolate ground before they grow into the multifarious monsters that roam the Black Forest and throw themselves at the Seekers patrolling its outskirts.

Just as it corrupts the physical world, the heart's sinister influence creeps its way into the Tapestrum Arcanum as well, staining the layer of magic within the forest with its madness or outright destroying patches of it.

The Enlightened Few are especially troubled by this, and it is not unusual for the great telescopes of their observatories to be directed at the heart to observe it from the relative safety of Pluthem.

Recent developments

With the recent surfacing of Host incursions, dark murmurings proclaiming that the Adversary is waking or even awake already circulate in the shadows and seedy taverns across the lands.

The church of Resounding Truth maintains the stance that the hymn is still just as effective as ever, and that the Host uprisings are simply bouts of fitful sleep for the vile god and nothing to be worried about. The truth is, however, that the Hierarch is worried. Very worried.

May the Hymn continue unabated, for all our sakes.

–The closing words of the speeches held by the Hierarch

by Midjourney

_{The Heart of Hate}