The Bellhouse
According to ancient records, when The Church first spread into Chetkia, they encountered a pair of living gods - a man and a woman, both ancient, both powerful. They ruled that land between them, and the people lived in fear of their wrath.
The Church sought to humble these living gods - to break their worshippers away from them and convert them to the worship of God in Heaven. They even summoned forth the Herald Gladius, who obliterated the city of Aksugnut, dispatching hundreds of thousands of souls into Beyond in a moment of divine glory that marked the sky for three days after.
This act broke the power of Chetkia's living gods - but it did not slay them.
The woman vanished into the wilderness. Her name was struck from the records by the scholars of The Church, and she is known only as Grandmother now. She may still abide there, if her magics yet sustain her life. Tales of Grandmother are still told in Chetkia - and to meet her is to meet death.
The man did not vanish. He chose a darker path. Deprived of his borrowed divinity, he mantled himself in the power of another - a creature from Beyond, whose might could rival that of a Herald. It infiltrated every part and portion of his soul, and he became something else. He became the Death of Worlds.
The records of The Church say that he was imprisoned within the tower, bound in chains of gold inscribed with Enochian glyphs. He was placed within a chest, and the chest was sealed inside the tower on the island in the lake. All records of the battle to defeat him were destroyed by order of the Hierarch, who left no account of their reasons. Those scholars permitted to read what remains have speculated for generations - but it seems that something shameful, or worse, must have transpired. And many believe that there is some lonely soul imprisoned with the ancient god - for who is it that rings the bell?
The bell, they say, will ring until the former god is dead and gone, and no longer threatens the world.
They make no prediction of when that day will come.
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