Square Nails

Square Nails

Square Nails is an ancient tome penned in the God Era. Written by Demogorgon, for a long time it was
thought to be a war journal. Many reading it for its insight on his war strategies, supplying a demon army numbering twenty legions, and his ideas on the conflict his enemies called the Demon Spawn War. On reading, Square Nails does not come off as one written by one of the Abyss's most brutal and evil demon lords.

Demgorgon writes, "most of us wanted a prosperous land of our own, away from the evil tearing apart Piranoth's Steps." When Demogorgon retreated from Bal-Kriav, returning to what most of his kind called the Abyss, he left Four Nails in the hands of a trusted mortal. The book eventually found its way into someone who could appreciate its value. It was a good read for both historians and war planners, and even interesting to the casual reader. Having looted it from its previous owner, an orc grunt of the Gud-Mortoth tribe came into possession of this book. He passed it on to his war shaman who copied the book and then passed it on to his chieftain, who in turn made copies and passed it on to his sub-commanders. The reprints were the problem with these books. Once someone had copied the words to another book they took on a slightly different meaning. This changed to be something more about Demogorgon's greatness and his desire to raise up the downtrodden and the oppressed. These copies became the books of Demogorgon's first proselytizers.

In the First Epoch, various churches began burning these books. This was based on evidence that the copying process cursed the writer into becoming a Demogorgon cultist. People stopped making copies. Even so, six millennia had passed since the first reprint, thousands of copies were out there. Furthermore, those who made copies spared no expense in getting the book out into the wilds, enlightening the barbarians to the words of Demogorgon.

It is a problem, a serious problem. Square Nails does not portray its writer as a demon, or a pitiless monster bent on destruction and the vilest of deeds. He comes off as a freedom fighter. Reading his flowery words, his great stature, poise, and unmatched strength, you would think he is attractive looking, when in fact he is one of the most hideous of the demon lords.

- Giracian, commenting on the book Square Nails - "Bal-Kriav Affairs, 1890 HE"

Lightless Cyst

Monstrous Slime

The Lightless Cyst is an area of deep darkness where the light of ghostly lichens only functions if the area's master is away on business. This master is the magical staff Eldacil's Vine. When this sentient item is home, buried in the pulsating mass of a colossal-sized ooze, it keeps the area in darkness so deep that only those of advanced sight can make their way around. It does this because the hill-sized mound of goo that it inhabits, was once the body of the demon lord Juiblex. One of the favored attacks of this sickly ooze demon was lurking in an area of impenetrable darkness, savoring the panic of those that could not see into it.

Late in the Demon Spawn War, the Covenant general Melrith cornered Juiblex in a long unnamed cavern. In the ensuing fight, hundreds of twig blights charged upon Juiblex, throwing their bodies into certain doom. Hiding among the charging soldiers was Melrith and a staff designed to re-balance the energy composition of others. Melrith, distant from Covenant operations for the past decade, a product of the growing darkness inside her, boldly took on Juiblex alone. Luckily she had enough body shields around her to take most of the blows. Melrith succeeded in driving Eldacil's Vine into Juiblex. The power staff devoured the demon's energies, but like four times before in the Demon Spawn War, the body was killed, but the mind escaped.

Melrith could not believe the amount of energy the staff absorbed. She had a telepathic link with the weapon, but could not reach it. Next to the battle, she had set the staff's many faceted tip to Dark Nature Energy. She had hoped to use whatever energy the staff absorbed in her experiments. Melrith was never able to retrieve the staff. The caustic juices of Juiblex body kept her away. This was unusual because in previous kills, Juiblex's body would go into demoniac death throes. Forced to leave the Mortal Systems in the Angelic Departure, Melrith left Eldacil's Vine in a still-living blob; Juiblex's 7th Incarnation. Many years later, Melrith learned that it was the staff's sentience, Eldacil, that was keeping the body alive. The goodly nature of Eldacil was such that she did not like taking lives, so she kept the unthinking mass alive by feeding it. Somewhere during this process, the Dark Nature Energy the staff was holding, an enormous amount give that Juiblex was a demon lord, corrupted the staff. Not so good anymore, Eldacil used one of the pseudopod of Juiblex's 7th Incarnation to turn the staff's facet to an empty slot. This begin the release of the staff's energy into the area around it.

In the next age, the Lith-Crillion Era, the staff and mound grew to be one. Using Juiblex's stolen energies, nearly all converted Dark Nature Energy, the staff went to work spreading a vast root system outward. This corrupted Underdark fey in the process. Myconids, shriekers, and any other subterranean plant-life that came within range had their Nature Energy replaced by its antithesis. Some of this made it to the surface, bolstering the Dark Nature of Emeldimir's three blighted forests.

Near the center of the Lightless Cyst is a vine covered hill that still pulsates. This mound is Juiblex's 7th Incarnation. It and the staff are responsible for making Velkyn's northeastern reaches a place of Dark Nature.

The Lightless Cyst is a Focus for Dark Nature Energy. Because of its dark nature focus, all druidic spells using dark nature energy are 25% stronger and have a have a +4 to their difficulty checks.

Even though Juiblex has no connection with its old body, oozes, slime and puddings are attracted to this area.

Gambriath

Dark Treant

Gambriath was once a grassland hemmed in by two swamps and their two mountain rivers. In the Demon Spawn War, after the Covenant war against the demons moved to faraway areas, members of the 9th Deception Wing under Melrith made it their home. In Covenant records, the 9th DW-M as they coded it, was a brigade sized-unit of sprites. They were noted for being mischievous tricksters, and to be kept away from more organized and lawful minded units. Ares wrote that they are best used for stirring up trouble behind enemy lines.

Around 1800 HE, a Theegan warrior, an Araj ex-patriot, retired to this area. He was the first of a couple dozen those that would come to this area. What they all had in common was a distaste of the growing numbers of horse-cultists taking over southern Emeldimir. This part of the valley was home to Theegan settlers, frontier breakers on the northwestern fringes of Araj's contested claim. Influenced by the valley's unicorns, many of them took to worshiping horses. Two centuries later, in the start of the First Epoch, these cultists became the faces of the Jara race.

To reach Gambriath, the ex-patriot Tel'kaut had to cross lands claimed by the city-state Antokepf. Goblins mounted on black unicorns, Antokepf's elite patrols, told Tel'kaut that he was free to settle in Gambriath. Araj had long been at odds with Antokepf, leaving Tel'kaut surprised at their sincerity and friendliness. They were up front to him, stating the area ahead has a more recent name, one less known, the Wood of the Lost Fey. They said early in the Horgon Era (845 HG to be exact), their ancestors, Antokepf's founders, passed through this area on a northerly route. It was a harrowing journey leaving hundreds of dead and wounded spread across a hundred miles. Tel'kaut wrote of this meeting.

Then looking off in the distance at the setting star, then back at the looming forest ahead, the goblin lieutenant nervously said, "as Merioss began to wane, the sprites would come out drunk and belligerent. This led to some fighting. The worse though was all the stealing they did, leading to dissension in our own ranks. Our own accused each other of theft, and sometimes proven true with the wily sprites planting one's gear in another's wagon or pack. These sprites, who we now know as the descendants of Melrith's 9th Deception Wing, were consummate pranksters, loosening straps and tack with their magic. Much time was spent gathering up livestock lost in the night. They applied their fey magic in annoying aways, but nothing overtly aggressive. Some took it upon themselves to dole out reprisals, leading to our worg riders setting ablaze our foe's tree cottages, or vengeful arcanists leaving fire trap spells in them. Sprite attacks became more bold. They captured some our children, taking them off to be slaughtered, strangely to raise them. Things turned for the worse, when necromancers were employed to raise the dead. They positioned sprite zombies and our own fallen, on the edge of the march, the first line of defense for a thousand men, woman, children looking for a new home. Luckily for them, the sprites, perhaps seeing a dark omen in their kin raised as zombies, ceased hostilities.

 - Tel'kaut, from a personal journal - "12 Temporal 1801 HE"

What the guards did not tell Tel'kaut, was that decades after the founding of Antokepf, 869 HE to be precise, a goblin necromancer named Kyvile returned to Gambriath. In the crossing, he had lost his entire family to the sprites. Now a seasoned necromancer, he came back for revenge. He killed nearly a hundred of them before tiring of the slaughter. Before he left, he burned the sprites in a massive funeral pyre. Unbeknown to him, this was a violation of the sprite's sacrosanct burial practice of letting the dead lay where they died. A few of the dead sprites, their soul energy still wandering aimlessly about Arcadia, pleaded to the gods for revenge. Melrith answered, returning a baker's dozen to Gambriath as ghosts, the Lost Fey. These sprites had hoped this would be something on the order of reincarnation into something more dangerous like an elder treant, but instead they became wisps of negative energy with the power to take over the bodies of the living.

When Tel'kaut came to the area, one of these ghosts took possession of his body. It was not done out of maliciousness, but to experience living one again. The sprite that took possession of Tel'kaut was named Tin'tat. When the sprite was a mortal, he enjoyed gardening. He was never a warrior, only getting killed in the fighting because he was drunk. Tel'kaut the Possessed went to work on his gardens, using his magic items and his great wealth to build something so expansive and grand that it would come to cover all of Gambriath with trees, briars, a multitude of plants that has been called part-maze part-city in its layout. In the early stages of all of this, Tel'kaut befriended the area's mischievous sprites, convincing them through his possessor, that he could be trusted. Tel'kaut had one of these sprites carry messages to some of his Theegan friends, telling them of the good life to be had in his new home. Frontier types did come, but they too ended up possessed by the Lost Fey. These other ghost sprites were jealous of what Tin'tat had. They could see his enjoyment at once again acting like the living, experiencing things they now greatly missed. When their hosts died of old age, sickness, or other causes, these Lost Fey took to finding others to continue "living" through another.

In the First Epoch, the Rúmil came to the lowland forests south of Gambriath. They learned of these ghosts and saw the effects of over a millennium of their dark deeds. The grassland had become a deep and tangled forest, one built by many application of the druid plant growth spell and similar plant enhancing magic.

Gambriath is a Focus for Dark Nature Energy, a home for dark treants, evil fey, and undead. Except for the Lost Fey, the area is devoid of sprites. Because of its dark nature focus, all illusion, charm, domination and influencing magic cast in Gambriath have a +2 to their difficulty checks.

Sal'rurg the Castrated

Sal'rurg was a very charismatic, cunning and power hungry dao. During the time of the Tinnanguth Empire, his beginnings were like many other Earthen, pulled from their home world Granitoid to serve under Sussgurd masters.

Sal'rurg Thad

At the age of 15, he was yanked from his world, pulled across the vastness of the Void in but an instant. He found himself on a mortal world, staring in the face of a lone Sussgurd wizard. It was a surprise, but not unexpected. Back on Grantoid, word was spreading of this type of magic. Sal'rurg had heard a wise one talk nervously of this, "a remarkable mortal achievement, binding something outside the Mortal Systems and then summoning it to you. They have come far since our [the primordials] invasion rifts dotted their worlds like honeycombs."

In 410, magically summoned to Bal-Kriav, Sal'rurg was given a magical adamantine amulet called a Holentur Hook. This device made it so that the duration of conjuration spells, and the Earthen summoned, lasted years instead of hours. Sal'rurg's amulet was not unique. He joined a dozen other dao and hundreds of earth elementals as diggers. In the decades that followed, these numbers would grow ten fold. Sal'rurg was the first of Tinnanguth's Earthen workforce that improved his station. He became a bodyguard for a merchant then an administrator of his master's home, then overseer of a Holentur adamantine mine. After his master's mysterious death, he was imprisoned for six years under suspicion. The investigation came to a stop when it was learned that the state was running an project to determine the ability of dao in roles other than digging and building. After being released, he was picked up by a new master. Sal'rurg was picked up to serve as a harem master. In this role he was to watch over his master's concubines, preventing others from defiling them, and keeping the concubines from escaping or have dalliances with the staff. Under the cover of magic, Sal'rurg went on to bed many of them. He did this in the guise of a temporary cook, cleaner, or other that took care of his master's palatial dwellings. It was only after he had given up his carnal desires of mortals, pledging allegiance to Geb, and becoming known as The Castrated One, that he learned he was again playing a part in an experiment. It was another of Tinnanguth projects, this one to see if half-elementals could be created from magic and nature intercourse. His treatment and that of many others were an impetus of the Dao Insurrection.

In the Dao Civil War, Sal'rurg's cunning led to him becoming the master of the other dao warlords. On 21 Temporal 840, he established the Rilirthad Empire, with him its first Dao Khan.

Mauhúl

Dire Zebra

The Mauhúl valley is dotted with ancient ruins of a time when angels and their mortal allies battled an Abyssal invasion. Since that time, nobody has sought to build a settlement in this area. This is because of extreme measures taken, Mauhúl became a disease-ridden place of sickness and decay where only the hardiest of creatures can survive. For centuries, only plant-life existed here. Eventually, the animals that did manage survive and give offspring, gave rise to those of exceptional constitution, toughness, and strength; what some call Dire types. Theologians of Gimhak, particularly those following the god Naraz-Nâru, consider this "beast-only blessing" the work of the god Silvanus. They claim that it was his way of giving thanks to those that once fought alongside the Covenant and great commanders like Silvanus and Naraz-Nâru. There is another group on the other side of this thinking that said such perversion of the truth is said to discredit Silvanus, for he was neutral, father of the idea that nature should be left to take its course. They say if Silvanus was involved in this matter, then it was merely to enhance creatures to survive in a changed environment.

Mauhúl was a hotly contested area in the Demon Spawn War. This was because the highlands flanking it on the east, Bileddanul, are laden with mithril veins. The demon invaders were not interested in the resources, only that someone was in their way. The forces positioned here were Turkûn-Khâl serving under then archangel Naraz-Nâru. His opposite were under the command of Ahnuthall; who in turn answered to Orcus. Facing the typical numerical superiority of their enemy, the Covenant decided to take extreme measures. There is no record of who gave the go, today's priests of Naraz-Nâru will tell you that their god was adamantly against it. He had warned his Covenant superiors, "the greatest risk is of it getting out of control, once it is in the wild, it is wild, no longer under our control." Even today, the use of disease to debilitate your enemies is often taken as a last resort. This is because of the unpredictability of diseases. The Covenant's deployment of RT-12 Leech ended up spreading to both armies. Because of its virulence, and for the rest of the war, neither side sought to hold the valley. Both retreated away from it. Ahnuthall went east to deal with a threat in the Bowkrak hills. Izanargam on the edge of disease-ridden valley, continued to supply ore and arms to Covenant soldiers for the rest of the war.

Oddly enough, today's Blighters got their start from the research that went into making the RT-12 Leech. Blighters, a bane to civilization today, had their beginning as a team of druids assisting alchemists developing a disease that would wreck havoc on their enemies. Since the agent they were working on could not be safely deployed in the enemy lines without risk of affecting their own, the research team came up with a way of melding RT-12 Leech into plants. This made it so that every season, during the plant's pollination time, the disease would be released onto the land around it. For whatever reason, Covenant decision-makers behind this germ warfare did not consider streams and brooks, and the Foronir river, and the movement of seeds from one area to another by birds and critters. Eventually, plants affected by the RT-12 Leech were taking root in and behind the Covenant strongholds dotting Mauhúl.

In the valley's southern parts, it is often wet and pocked with fog banks. In some areas, the fog is perpetual. This is most noticeable near the Idrongrun bog.