Kyuss

Kyuss, known in hushed whispers as the Worm That Walks, is a sinister and enigmatic figure whose identity straddles the boundaries of mortality, divinity, and cosmic horror. Revered—or feared—as a demigod, an Elder Evil, and a prophet of undeath, Kyuss is most infamous for his grotesque association with writhing green worms and his dominion over corruption, decay, and the perversion of life itself.

Kyuss began, according to most legends, as a mortal—perhaps a priest, necromancer, or heretic—who served the demon lord Orcus, the Prince of Undeath. Driven by apocalyptic visions and a lust for forbidden knowledge, he transcended death not through the natural cycle or even undeath, but by merging his soul with swarms of necrotic worms. In doing so, he shed his mortal form and became something wholly other: a sentient mass of vermin, a walking plague of rot and entropy, a being no longer bound by flesh or spirit.

Now, Kyuss is worshipped as a god of undeath, entropy, and inevitable corruption, though his true nature remains uncertain. Some claim he is an Elder Evil, ancient beyond time, wearing his mortal origin as a mask. Others insist he is a demigod of recent ascension—terrible, but not yet all-consuming. Whatever the truth, his influence spreads through plagues of worms, apocalyptic cults, and undead horrors bearing his mark.

His most notorious creations are the spawn of Kyuss—undead horrors infested with burrowing worms that animate corpses and spread his influence like a contagion. Where these abominations rise, they herald the approach of the Worm That Walks, or at least the deepening of his corruption.

Kyuss’s iconography typically depicts a humanoid figure composed of crawling worms, often crowned or robed like a dread priest-king. His sacred texts are few and largely mad, composed of scrawlings found etched in bone, stitched into flesh, or written in blood. His followers believe in the end of the natural cycle, the triumph of undeath, and the eventual subsuming of all creation into an eternal, rotting stillness.

Some signs of Kyuss’s influence include:

• Swarming green worms found in tombs or crypts where none should live.
• Whispers in the minds of the desperate or the dying, promising eternal life without the burden of flesh.
• Blighted landscapes where death does not bring peace, and the soil itself writhes with unseen life.

Kyuss is not a god to be bargained with. He is the herald of the world’s final decay, the priest of rot, the god-worm of entropy. Whether he walks the world again or dreams in exile, his cults endure, patiently seeding the fall of life, one wriggling worm at a time.