Ninth Splinter: Thanatos
Ash-gray clouds fill the cold black skies of Thanatos, the Belly of Death, where daylight never intrudes. The layer's immense, melancholic moon changes phases at random when covered by clouds, making time difficult to measure.
Visual Interest Board
Properties & Geographical Features
The air on Thanatos is thin, taxing those who need to breathe. Very little plant life exists on Thanatos. Mortals wishing to find sustenance must rely upon the indigenous mosses, molds, and fungi, and even these grow only in relatively temperate locales like The Final Hills or Oblivion’s end.
Which came first - Alere’s undead or Orcus’s undead?Alere and Orcus developed undeads independently of one another. However, if you cleave to the theory that the Dark Dimension is Evara’s twin, then Orcus had the opportunity to create undead before Alere because Orcus existed first.
Under most (but not all) circumstances, undead are evil as a result of the methods and intent behind their creation. This can be how they died, how they were dragged back, etc. A lot of those involve horrible agony, loss, anguish, or willing debasement of the self and others to become something inhuman. Undead that are created through necromancy involve an inherent twisting of the path of a mortal soul, and damaging the mortal soul is among the worst acts an individual can commit. For these reasons, all undead are generally shunned in Evara, regardless of whether they are the products of Alere, Orcus, or other beings.
Notable Inhabitants
Orcus
Epithets
Demon Prince of Undeath, The Nihilarch, The Shadow That Was, The Cleansed Skull, Tenebrous, Demon Prince of Ceaseless Unrest, The Bound KingStat Block
As Orcus (MPMM p 204),with the following changes:
Hear Name. Orcus hears his name when spoken, regardless of distance or planar boundaries. If a creature speaks the name "Orcus" (hereafter "the caller") twice within a minute, Orcus learns the caller's name and general location. If the caller speaks the name thrice within 1 minute, Orcus learns the caller's name and precise location. Orcus can also perceive through the caller's senses for up to the next 666 rounds (1 hour and 6 minutes) while remaining aware of his surroundings. The connection ends early if Orcus chooses, requiring no action.
Once per long rest, while not imprisoned in the Divine Dimension, Orcus can cause the caller to make a DC 18 Charisma saving throw. On a success, the caller feels comfortably numb. For the next 24 hours, the target is under the effects of Calm Emotions and cannot benefit from magical healing. Undead have advantage on attack rolls against the caller during this period. On a failure, the speaker must make a DC 18 saving throw against Power Word Kill as if cast through the Wand of Orcus.
While Orcus is imprisoned, speaking his name aloud any number of times triggers strange phenomena. For example, when the name is spoken, all flames within 120 feet extinguish for one round; clerics and paladins of good deities within 1 mile immediately feel a divine warning; the bones of any nearby corpses tremble, or even rise briefly before collapsing again.
Mortal Gaze. If a creature starts its turn within 30 feet of Orcus and the two of them can see each other, Orcus can force the creature to make a DC 23 Constitution saving throw if Orcus isn't incapacitated. On a failed save, the creature's Strength score is reduced by 1d4. It must repeat the saving throw at the end of its next turn. On a success, the effect ends. Otherwise, the reduction lasts until the target finishes a short or long rest or until cured. The target dies if this reduces its Strength to 0. Creatures slain by Orcus’s Mortal Gaze rise again 1d4 rounds later as ghouls under Orcus’s control.
A creature that isn't surprised can avert its eyes to avoid the saving throw at the start of its turn. If it does so, it can't see Orcus until the start of its next turn, when it can avert its eyes again. If it looks at Orcus in the meantime, it must immediately make the save.
If Orcus sees himself reflected on a polished surface within 30 feet of him and in an area of bright light, he is affected by his own gaze.
The bloated Demon Prince of Undeath is the omniverse’s staunchest advocate of stagnation. He sees the activity of life as crude and maddening. It rakes at his senses like the claws of a rat scratch across a hard floor. In his view, the omniverse can know peace only when the incessant hum of life is replaced with the quiet of undeath. He aches for a world where the noise and excess of life are extinguished, and a unified necropolis populated solely by undead under his command rises. It is believed that Orcus is responsible for creating the rituals and curses used to create the first of several types of undead, including ghouls, stone-cursed, death knights, and devourers. He wielded enormous power over death prior to the ascension of The Chimera, Alere, and The Grey Maiden, Erela.
Mortals who pay homage to Orcus may do so because they see the gods as cruel, unjust creatures. They resent that mortals must suffer and die at the whims of these entities. In Orcus, they see the promise of release from pain without the demand of obedience. What they fail to understand is that there is no need to obey without free will. Intelligent undead do not willingly serve the Nihilarch, although vampires, liches, and others have been pacted, coerced, or deceived into his service.
Orcus is one of the most powerful demons ever to exist, and Thanatos was his seat of power. He presided with absolute control over a world of undead and constructs. For the last 100 years, Orcus has been imprisoned in The Blind One, Sadoc’s, divine realm.
Thanatos belongs to Asmodeus by right of “conquest”. Asmodeus’s primary domain is Nessus, which lies outside the 10 primary splinters. Thanatos does not connect to Nessus, nor does it connect with any other devil-occupied or devil-dominated splinter.
How did Orcus end up in God Jail?This came to pass because of a scheme of Asmodeus. The Unbound King summoned Orcus to stand trial for breach of contract: taking souls that had been pacted to devils without the devils’ consent. Orcus answered the summons with violence, for he refused to acknowledge any law or order beyond what he himself imposes on others. This pattern of summoning and savagery persisted for an age. After Sadoc’s ascension, word of a mortal becoming a god reached even the darkest corners of Evara’s multiverse. And Asmodeus requested that Sadoc, the incarnation of justice, adjudicate the trial. This event had little impact on the lives of Evarans, but was monumental to the Divine and Dark.
Sadoc summoned both Asmodeus and Orcus to appear before them. For the first time in an age, Orcus agreed. But Asmodeus’s legal defense reduced the demon lord to familiar patterns of violence. Thus leading to Orcus’s imprisonment. The Blind One currently holds Orcus for contempt of court.
Some applaud Asmodeus’s cleverness at removing a key opponent from the board and forcing the gods to get involved in his politics. Others say that Orcus knew what he was doing - his proximity to the gods and the Divine Dimension might give him a long-term edge in the conflicts to come. Even if his Dark domain doesn’t survive his absence, the home of Evara’s newest god could be conquered and converted.
Harthoon
Stat Block
As a Lich (Monster Manual '14, p 202)with the following changes:
Spell Replacement
- Ray of Enfeeblement replaces Melf's Acid Arrow
A capable administrator who served as Orcus’s castellan and moonlights as a master embalmer. This lich is pacted to serve The Demon Prince of Undeath until his phylactery is found. Given the occupation of Thanatos by Asmodeus, Harthoon is serving Orcus by calling in favors and pacts owed to the Nihilarch. When mortals attempt to summon Orcus, Harthoon appears to bargain with them in his master's stead.
Kauvra the Maul
Epithets
The MaulStat Block
As a Vampire Warlock (Tome of Beasts, p 425)with the following changes:
Profane Secrets. Kauvra's Intelligence ability score is 20 and her Wisdom ability score is 19.
Aura of Death. Kauvra emanates a deathly aura that extends 30 feet in every direction from its space while it isn't incapacitated. The aura is blocked by total cover. While in the aura, Kauvra and any friendly undead are immune to the frightened condition and have resistance to radiant damage. Enemies suffer disadvantage on death saving throws while in the aura.
A female vampire (an orc, in life) who served as an enforcer for Orcus on Thanatos. Her rages are infamous, as is the long list of creatures that she has slain single-handedly. She leads the resistance against Asmodeus's occupation.
Places of Interest
Naratyr (Devil Territory)
A fortress city occupied by Asmodeus’s conquering armies. A moat fed by the River Styx encircles a frigid necropolis of tall mausoleums, towering funeral obelisks, crypt parapets, and carpets woven of hair removed from the thousands of unquiet dead that reside in Naratyr. Nearly all residents of Naratyr are dead, many of which are engaged in continuous battles with one another and with Asmodeus’s Honor Guard. Those brave living creatures who stay in Naratyr do so in magical disguise. The central castle of bone has interior walls of leathery flesh and carpets woven from hair..
Deathless Dells (Neutral Territory)
A town of 10,000 zombies, all victims of the evil of Orcus who seek a true death. That they will never receive while trapped in Thanatos. They are ruled by a zombie king, who is just another zombie on a throne.
The Final Hills (Demon Territory)
Gloaming Thur (Demon Territory)
A dead city encircled by a great stone wall and a gate of iron. This sweeping city of narrow avenues and towering minarets houses perhaps as many as a thousand liches - failed Skull Lords personally transformed by Orcus into his enthralled undead servitors. These remorseless creatures, the Disgraced, seethe with frustration regarding their failures and seek to impress Orcus in undeath. When not administering to the Nihilarch's pacts and agreements with mortals, the Disgraced wander the Plains of Hunger in search of a horde to command, but at best, these agents of Orcus work as facilitators to living Skull Lords. The sorcery of their creation prevents them from sabotaging the efforts of their masters - both mortal and demon - but all burn with intense jealousy and a desire to rebel. If only they could.
The Frozen Sea (Neutral Territory)
South of Naratyr, the seemingly endless Frozen Sea extends far into the horizon, a frigid desert of icy wasteland capping unknown depths filled with hideous aquatic creatures seldom seen by the inhabitants of the plane. The ice extends for miles below the surface, and only a few ancient citadels built into the frozen shelf itself connect to the ocean's watery depths. Some explorers claim the sea spans so far to the south that it eventually thaws, but few who have set out to prove the theory have ever returned with their sanity (or lives) intact. Here and there, enormous ancient shipwrecks peek up from the biting plain, entombed in ice far from shore.
Oblivion's End (Demon Territory)
On the periphery of civilized Thanatos, beyond the Final Hills, sprawls a desert of bone meal. Howling windstorms scream with the cries of lost incorporeal undead, forever bound to the desolate wasteland. At the center of the waste of Oblivion's End stands the massive fortress of Everlost, a towering structure built from countless bones retrieved from Orcus's conquests. Everlost is and has ever been the Nihilarch’s seat of power. From this remote locale, Orcus once issued decrees to his cult and slaves, pronouncing death sentences that touched the minds of his debased followers all over the omniverse.
The Osteospire (Neutral Territory)
A 4,000 foot mountain made of bone. It forms into strange shapes using the bones of the deceased and serves as a landmark for navigation across the grey wastes.
Death
- Undead regenerate 1 hp every hour in Thanatos. More powerful undead regenerate 1 hp per round or at their usual rate of regeneration, whichever is faster. Undead regeneration does not function if the creature takes radiant damage that round.
- Mortals who die in Thanatos rise in the next 1d12 hours as undead under Orcus’s thrall if not returned to life before then. Only a wish spell can reverse this effect (because becoming “undead” is a creature type).
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