The Dead God
"You do not find it. It finds you. And once it sees you, you will never feel safe again."
Hidden deep in the heart of The Grandgleam Forest, beneath centuries of moss and silence, lies something no map dares name, a corpse so vast that even the trees bend to hide it. Those who claim to have seen it speak of the world changing long before the bones appear, the woods grow still, time stutters, and paths turn against their own feet. The air smells of flowers and iron. Then, through the fog, comes the clearing, an impossible skeleton sprawling across the earth like a fallen cathedral. Its skull alone could house a cottage, its ribs arch like towers, its hollow hands claw the soil as if even in death it tried to rise again. The bones gleam white and clean, untouched by decay, and no light clings to them. Not a bird sings. Not a single insect stirs. No text, no scripture, no fragment of history speaks of this being. Some whisper it is a great giant of The Origin Age, erased from memory; others say it fell during The Great Schism, its body hurled into the forest where even Devils feared to tread. Those who linger near it hear voices, sometimes their own, sometimes not, urging, mocking, commanding.
Many go say they find it go mad. Others vanish entirely, leaving only scraps of bone and laughter that does not belong to them. At dusk, shadows with white eyes rise from beneath its ribs, pulling the living apart before dissolving into smoke. Magick fails near it; compasses spin; time folds. The Grandgleam itself seems to guard the corpse, or serve it. No settlement claims the site, yet pilgrims, madmen, and cultists still seek it, leaving offerings or bodies in its hollow chest. Woodcutters whisper that to speak of it aloud invites its gaze. Scholars avoid the topic entirely. The few who return from it can never find the place again, the forest seals itself behind them as if ashamed of what it showed. The only proof of its existence is a single tooth once brought back to Halt-Cliff in the early years of The Civil Age; The man who carried it burned in a fire that devoured half the district, and the artifact was never found. Whatever it was, it is not finished. The Dead God sleeps beneath the Grandgleam, patient and aware. And sometimes, in the mist between the trees, its upright hand is said to move.Purpose / Function
No one knows. The Dead God was not built, it simply is. If it was once a divine creature, a giant corpse that has evaded all of history; Perhaps intentionally erased, or a unique thing that never had a name, its purpose dying with it. But the place has become something else over the centuries, a shrine of fear. Superstitious woodcutters leave offerings there, hoping to pass through the Grandgleam unharmed. Cultists make pilgrimages to its bones, believing they can coax its spirit back, then themselves, never come back. Scholars avoid it entirely. The Dead God answers no prayers. It does not heal. It only waits, and something waits with it.
Design
The site is not a structure, but a natural amphitheater carved by its fall. Hills have grown around its broken form like a crown, and the bones themselves have sunken half-buried into the ground. Grass and moss have climbed halfway up its ribs; vines wrap around its fingers like chains. The skeleton lies on its side, its skull turned so that its hollow eyes face the path of the sun, twin sockets like caves, dark even in midday. The jaws are wide-open, as if it had in the hour of its final moment, screamed. The size of the remains defies any known natural scale:
- The skull alone could house a cottage.
- Its ribcage could cradle a grove of trees.
- Its femur would reach as high as a two-story house.
Entries
There are no paths, no guideposts. Those who find the Dead God do so by accident, or by following the stories. The Grandgleam swallows all trails within a mile of the site, leaving only the dense forest to mark the way. Once within sight of the skeleton, there is no sign of animal life. Even insects are scarce. The only movement comes from drifting leaves, the occasional curtain of mist, and the shadows that appear at the edges of your vision, but are never there when you turn to meet them.
Sensory & Appearance
- Sight: A giant skeleton, bleached and cracked covered in a mass of plant-life. A graveyard where no corpse should be.
- Sound: The wind stops. Some swear they can hear whispers, even their own name spoken softly from the skull.
- Smell: Damp moss and wildflowers, overlaid with a strange coldness, as if snow had been laid over the air.
- Feel: Dread. A sensation that you have walked into the belly of a beast.
Denizens
The Dead God has no living inhabitants. But those who linger report the following:
- Shadow-Men: Black, human-sized shapes with eyeless, staring faces, silent and without physical form. They emerge from the skeleton’s shadow when crossing it, tearing the trespassers apart before dissolving like smoke.
- The Whispering: Some claim to hear a voice in their head urging them to stop, to turn back, to kill. Many who stay too long fall into a frenzy.
- The Abandoned: Not creatures, but remains. The area around the skeleton is littered with human bones, some half-buried, some gnawed.
Contents & Furnishings
There are no structures, no relics. Only the bones themselves, overgrown by the Grandgleam. Some hunters have found wildflowers that do not grow anywhere else, flowers black as ink, with petals soft as feathers. Many of those who take such flowers never make it back to town.
Valuables
None known, yet. And yet, despite this, people go there. Some search for enchanted relics, perhaps what felled it now embedded within its body, others for proof that the being was real. Those who survive say the greatest treasure is simply living long enough to tell the tale. The only item ever allegedly retrieved from the site was a tooth an explorer returned with in the early Civil Age. The man's legacy burned in a sudden and ferocious wildfire that consumed half of an entire district of Halt-Cliff; His prize never found among the rubble.
Hazards & Traps
- Psychic Influence: The longer one lingers, the greater an inexplicable pull into madness seems to take-hold.
- The Shadow-Men: White-eyed loosely-humanoid figures attack without hesitation, dissolving when destroyed but reforming soon after. In rare cases where explorers found themselves here in-search of another, their reports indicate these shadow-men called out to them in the vopice of the one they sought.
- Magickal dead Zone: No magick functions properly here by witness testimony. Healing spells fail, maps twist, compasses spin. The degree of these claims are entirely unknown and to the day still unfounded like any real trace of the creature's origin.
Special Properties
- Magickal Interference: As the stories go, spells falter near the bones, as if the air itself consumes them.
- Whispers: Many hear their thoughts echoed aloud, or their own voice answering them back from the empty skull.
- Fauna Absence: No animal crosses within a mile of the site, ones that do appearing constantly on-edge.
Alterations
The only changes to the site come from the forest itself, vines that grow over the bones, moss thickening each year. The skeleton has not moved in all the centuries since it was first whispered about. One concerning anecdote though is the Dead God's hand, all accounts depict the body as limp, unattached to one-another with ligaments long-decayed; Yet with no muscles or support from the ground, the arm stretches outward like someone casting a spell, raising a half-closed fist to the sky, a motion far-too specific for a dead body to have.
Architecture
None. The Dead God is a corpse, not a monument.
Defenses
There are no defenses built here. Whatever black magicks stir within the bones would appear to be defense enough.
History
There is no known record of the Dead God’s fall. No culture claims its bones. No scripture remembers a god of this form. The first written account comes from 190 CA, when a lone logger wandered back into town speaking of a giant skull the size of a toolshed. Within two days, he hanged himself. Since then, hundreds of accounts have followed, from peasants, travelers, and outlaws. Not one account has ever contradicted another, like The Dead God is intentionally sending a message.
Tourism
Those who go there fall into three distinct groups:
- Scholars, desperate to uncover its origin or prove its existence.
- Cultists, convinced that praying at its ribs will grant them forbidden knowledge.
- Seasoned adventurers and outright fools, hoping to be the first to bring back proof.
Founding Date
Unknown. For all anyone knows it could be before history even began.
Alternative Names
“The Whispering Bones", “The Empty King".
Environmental Effects
The Dead God by all accounts seems to warp the land around it:
- The forest grows unnaturally thick within a mile, but no animal dares cross.
- The air grows cold and dry, even in summer.
- Plants grow in unnatural patterns, as though bent around the bones.
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