Monday, May 19, 2014

Of the Coming of Tiamat

In the aftermath the Red God grew fearful, for ever closer came the armies of his foes during the siege of the Homeless House. So he thought to himself that he needed to secure the gates and bind themthe five pools of the Gegelmesh.

He set his thought toward guarding his realm and he fashioned from his own malice a beast of such hideous demeanor that few living could look upon her. He set her to guard the way to the Gegelmesh, and the Shadow Realms and keep all living creatures from entering. So Tiamat came to be. She was the greatest of his servants, born in the maw of his spite, shaped from his disdain for life, and cast in the mold of the unquenched fires of his madness.

Tiamat guarded the Wretched Plains and the Homeless House beyond, by splitting herself into five heads, placing one before each of the Five Pools. Through them she devoured all that came to the Shadow Realms. In time she grew great, bloated and unmoving, resting her heads upon the arc of time where it met the pools and each of her heads became a cavern, wherein the dead entered and were devoured by passing into the dragon.

These are the Futhnopt, the Five Caves. Her jaws closed the Gegelmesh to the living; for any who sought entry through the Arc of Time must do so through very powerful magics such as only wizard’s possess. Either that, or convince Tiamat to let them enter through some flattery or trick.

She broods there in misery and hatred ever longing to see the light of the sun. It is said she will rise as a great five headed dragon, and breaking the gates of Ealor in violence, bring the oceans to boil. Their steam will cover all the land and blind those who dwell there. Tiamat will rise to vomit up the damned upon the sun and blot out its light forever. In the darkness that follows the Bull, the Red Duke, will return and visit his vengeance upon the world. Or so the Tales of the Gonfod relate.

~The Codex of Aihrde

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