Cosmology

Prime Material

Avendar is the name of the world within the Prime Material plane, the main game continent, and the MUD itself.

Void

The Void is nothing, the rift of pure emptiness that encompasses and embraces the Prime Material. It is the demesne and corpus of Ashur, who is also emptiness. It is a space of pure entropy, the end of time, and utterly inimical to life.

Many places exist within the Void, and many are populated by demons. A demon is nominally any denizen of the Void, whether native or transformed. Many different kinds of demonic species and varieties exist of varying levels of power and hostility towards mortals and the Prime Material. Void magicians frequently summon and bind demons to various ends with the use of rites that pierce the Silver Veil, the planar barrier that isolates the Prime Material. The nature of those pacts varies, as does the attitude bound demons have towards their binders, though it is rarely positive.

A summoning rarely brings a demon itself onto the Prime Material. The summoner calls some part of its essence, at times the whole of it, and gives that essence a physical form through sorcery. When the rite ends or the form is destroyed, the essence returns to the Void.

Profane Saints of the Void

The Profane Saints are thirteen demon lords, each god-like in strength within their own sphere of influence. Mortals also call them the Thirteen, the Thirteen Demon Lords, the Lords or Kings of the Void, the Thirteen Great Hells and the Saints of Ashur, and the seraphs name them the Greater Thirteen. Their names and natures change, and every few centuries one Saint gives way to another, but there are always thirteen. Ashur is always the thirteenth, both Overgod and chief Saint.

No Saint can be compelled. Summoners deal with them under the ancient Agreement, in which each demon names its Price, and some Saints mark mortals with their sigils. Mortal demonology describes the Saints in mortal terms, as kings and consorts, mothers and sons. These are loose, mythological readings of bonds that have no true mortal equivalent.

Malefactors who walk the Void Scholar's Path of Nightfall swear themselves to three of the Saints, and each patron grants them a gift.

Agduk the Hunter, Terror of Chaigidon

Agduk is a creature of guile and malice who hunts his foes across the planes and keeps their weapons as trophies. Demonologists call him the Scion of Xth'jich, born of Xth'jich and Pricina, and he reminds any summoner who calls him unbidden of that lineage.

Nightfall gift: Nightstalk

An'akarta the Infernal Hunger, Flame of Logor

An'akarta is the most powerful of Bayyal's fire devils. Bayyal's eruption from the Grave of Storms released it into Kutlaset, where it annihilated whole shuddeni clans until, during the War of Fire, a grand shuddeni rite bound it to Logor. It licks its wounds in the furnaces there and waits for a chance to breach the veil again. During the War of Night, Aramril and the first Champions recovered its golden scales from the shuddeni and used them to remake the Dome of the Sun on the Tower of Aramril.

Summoners have called part of An'akarta onto the Prime since. A Dragon of the Coven of the Shunned brought it into Earendam before the Fourth Saurian War, it was summoned again during the Eyeblight War, and in 1530 CC Eshrin Linphori took its flame for Alil and burned Endeqil with it.

Nightfall gift: Flame of Logor

Bahhaoth the Watcher in the Black, Queen of the Sea That Is Not

Bahhaoth rules the dead seas, and the old texts call her the black slime-queen and She Who Despiseth the Living. Her red, all-seeing eye watches the deep places of the sea where the veil wears thin. It hangs in the sky over her sea as a red star, and her spiral lies in the depths beneath. The ship Ilal was lost sailing waters under her thrall, and its wreck was later carried back to the Prime, where it lies at Rahh-Nefor.

Nightfall gift: Profane Flesh

Barkja the Infernal Sage, Keeper of the Arcanum

Barkja lurks within an endless library of foul tomes and trades in knowledge and riddles. Silk-robed and stick-thin, he is said to have been Xth'jich's advisor before the Titans struck the Imperator down. He shares his knowledge with those who bring knowledge of their own, and a summoner who calls him must answer his riddle or die. His sign is the Vkoren Configuration, and his curse falls on weapons and armour.

The Conclave of Arisuth now answers to Barkja's servants, and the verge beneath the Ngahe has been realigned to him.

Nightfall gift: Fetid Divination

Igray'iitu the Verminous, Beast of the Grey Wastes

Igray'iitu holds dominion over the hellfrost of Oame, also called the Grey Wastes or the Wastes of Oame, and its countless fetid scions are his spawn. His avatar stands nearly fifteen feet tall, with glistening, slimy skin and a face somewhere between a frog's and a fish's. The old texts warn travellers away from his black gate, where flies and spiders swarm about the toad-fish that crushes all who come. Even learned demonologists call him a mystery.

Nightfall gift: Web of Oame

Isetaton the Maze, Demon Sultan of Selb-Kar

Isetaton is the Maze of Flesh, and the Maze is Isetaton. His avatar's form is largely alien to the Prime, a mass of worm-like tentacles and eyestalks with jaws that break through its own flesh. He delights in madness: the minds of mortals are his playthings and sustenance, and their flesh is his mortar.

The Conclave of Arisuth was long ruled by his will through pacts with the Maze, until the Grand Federation of Merchants and the Champions of Avendar purged its cult. Beneath the Ngahe desert, an ancient alatharyan temple has become the Isetatan Verge, a stable breach of his flesh into the Prime that could cut the continent in half, and it remains a death-trap. The demon sealed beneath Kor Thrandir is also Isetatan, sealed but never vanquished.

Nightfall gift: Labyrinth

Kil Zu the Rapacious, King of the Courts of Flesh

Kil Zu is the newest of the Thirteen. A former incubus, he took the Courts of Flesh by orchestrating a coup against their previous Queen, Pricina, and is also called King of the Concubi. Why he moved against her is not known. He is a voracious hedonist and a talented sculptor of flesh and soul, and his avatar takes the form of a statuesque shuddeni with alabaster skin. He has made clear that he will abide by the pacts made with the notoriously isolated Courts.

Nightfall gift: Kiss of the Blackened Tears, still granted in Pricina's name

Khamurn the Avaricious, Magistrate of the Iron Law

Khamurn, the Black Magistrate, holds a court of order and greed in which insectoid syndics squabble over coin. His avatar is a twelve-foot reptile in purple silk whose ruby eyes smoulder at every treasure not yet his. When a manifestation of his is destroyed, he declares, "I am Avarice! You can no more slay me than you can kill the greed in the hearts of men!" Those who bear his crest strike harder the more coin they carry.

Malenrion, Highlord of the Raiders, was Favored of Khamurn. At his death Khamurn offered him immortality, and he became an immortal profane.

Nightfall gift: Verdict of Khamurn

Nyogthua the Sorceress, High Priestess of the Arcanum

Nyogthua is a high priestess of lost magics, and her aspects linger where the veil thins. Her domain is the Arcanum in Xiganath, where she appears as the Dread Herald, Emissary of the Abyss: two-headed and four-armed, her chest flayed open like a macabre flower. The Coven of the Shunned invokes her in the Shroud of Nyogthua. Older texts call her the Wizard or Sorcerer of the Arcanum and speak of her as male.

Nightfall gift: Scepter of the Arcanum

Tzakmeqiel the Desecratrix, Queen of Pestilence

Tzakmeqiel the Desecrator is also Queen of Miasma, Mistress of Plague and Lady of Rot, and she rules the void realms of disease and decay. All who behold her are doomed to her poxes. She is the architect of undeath and the planter of Gamaloth, the Tree-that-is-not, whose rust-red spores have overrun the ruins of Nordath. When one of the undead meets its final death, what remains of it goes to her, added to her everlasting dominion.

Nightfall gift: Touch of the Desecrator

Vaeshir the Demilich, Grand Vizier of Logor

Vaeshir is the only Saint known to have been born mortal. A shuddeni archmage of the Void and High Priest of the Coven of the Shunned, he subverted a dark prophecy of the Grand Vizier Chagrob to his own ends, and in 412 CC Chagrob yielded the Iron Throne of Logor to him. Of all the Saints he knows the minds of mortals best, and he entertains their pacts more readily than the others. He has held the throne against the Warlord Zyal.

Nightfall gift: Vizier's Will

Xth'jich the Eternal Demon, Imperator of the Legions of Chaigidon

Xth'jich is the most martial of the Saints, and destruction is his domain. His avatar stands twelve feet tall, black-skinned and bat-winged. A mage of Istilail once confined him for three hundred years, until he caught his jailer off guard and devoured him. He destroyed the Iilim, a peaceful and gentle race, and the devourers of Iilim are among his legions. The cult of the Maevis'Hra summoned his lieutenant, the fire demon-lord Kzroth, who was bound in ice beneath Kohli in 1141 CC and slain there in 1513 CC.

His martial nature led to the internment of his physical form. The Titan Captain Oradan struck him down at Anda, and he remains sealed in the palace of the Titans. Demonologists once called him King of the Thirteen, with Pricina as his consort.

Nightfall gift: Armor of the Oppressor

Ashur, the Great Dragon of the Void

Ashur has always held the thirteenth seat. The Pentagram of Summoning is cut with the signs of the Thirteen, and the last of them is the symbol of Ashur.

Nightfall gift: Aura of Silence

Former Saints and claimants

Pricina, Devourer of Hearts and Queen of the Succubi, ruled the Courts of Flesh until Kil Zu overthrew her. Red-haired, with pupils that open in sharp, cat-like slits, she is remembered as the consort of Xth'jich and the mother of Agduk.

Chagrob was Grand Vizier of Logor before Vaeshir. He yielded the title and stayed on as Vaeshir's advisor, a fallen once-Lord of the Thirteen.

Zyal, Warlord of Chaigidon, was an albino void templar who seems to have acquired the status of a demon lord since his death. He covets the Iron Throne of Logor, though the Coven holds that he is no Great Lord, however hard he tries to seize the title.

Astral realm

The astral realm is the realm of mind and soul that overlays the Prime Material, where thought meets form and spirits dwell. The astral is not a place that can be reached in body. Every living thing on the Prime makes ripples in it, and spirit magic is the means by which mortals work upon it. Kyana, a servitor of Jolinn, was given stewardship of its natural cycles: in the age before the Weave, souls entered the astral at death, decayed there, and returned to the fabric of existence.

The Weave changed that cycle. Made by Rystaia in the War of Night from the divine corpus of Vaialos, it catches the energy of souls and slows its decay, preserving the memories and identities of the dead. The fragments it holds cannot return to the cycle, and their buildup has given rise to dangerous and imbalanced astral entities. The Weave also touches the spirits of the astral that existed before it.