Death Dells

The layer is a wretched and oppressive wasteland, a land drenched in blood, desperation, and the howls of the ravenous. Bathed in the rust-red light of a bloated and ever-setting sun, this layer of the Abyss is a fractured killing ground shaped by the violent will of Yeenoghu, the Beast of Butchery. The realm pulses with predation, madness, and the echoes of slaughter without end.   The layer’s terrain is as cruel and chaotic as its master: scorched savannahs dotted with gore-soaked altars, rotting forests where vines drip pus instead of sap, and choking winds that carry the cries of prey long since consumed. The earth itself bleeds, and the air tastes of iron and filth.  

Notable Locations

The Dun Savannah

The central expanse of the Death Dells, this cracked and sun-blasted plain is the bloodstained stage upon which Yeenoghu’s brutal dominion is displayed. Clans of feral worshippers, many long since lost to bestial madness, roam the wastes in pursuit of sacrifice and slaughter.  

The Screaming Peaks (Northern Boundary)

Jagged cliffs constantly echoing with unnatural wails, some wind, some not. Beyond them lies Azael’s Waste, the last region untouched by Yeenoghu’s will, a haunted and desolate tract of shattered dunes and dead cities where planar manipulation fails.  

The Seeping Woods (Western Fringe)

A festering, humid forest of semi-sentient plantlife and bone-covered undergrowth. The flora oozes black sap and the trees whisper ancient oaths of vengeance, remnants of the realm’s long-dead predecessors.  

The Curswallow Sea (Eastern Edge)

A stagnant, oily sea whose foamy waves carry the remains of offerings cast into the water. Its tides connect to the wider Abyssian Ocean, though none who sail it survive the voyage long.  

The Crawling Bastion

Yeenoghu’s iron-banded fortress, more siege engine than citadel, is dragged across the land by thousands of chained slaves. The Bastion rarely stays still, each stop marks another campaign of slaughter or tribute. When it halts, war follows.  

The Vujak Encampments

Vujak-Sesko, Vujak-Riln, and Vujak-Kesk are semi-permanent, sprawl-like encampments of gnollish warbands and slave pens. Each is drenched in the blood of internal purges and inter-pack raids.  

The Great Gate

A jagged obsidian archway that functions as a shifting portal to countless Material Plane worlds. Sacrifices or desecrated relics can attune the gate to specific regions, allowing for raids, slaver incursions, and planar abductions.  

Inhabitants

Petitioners

The layer is crowded with damned souls consumed by their own bloodlust in life, many now barely sentient, gnawing on bone and biting at the sky. Their forms resemble hyena-faced savages, locked in eternal feasts or endless pursuit.  

Enslaved Mortals

Those unlucky enough to be dragged here via the Great Gate often find themselves used as fodder, both for labor and ritual consumption. Few survive, though stories persist of resistance cells hiding within the Seeping Woods or the bones of Azael’s ruined cities.  

Legacy Echoes

Some of Azael’s former constructs and wards still flicker to life when disturbed, offering brief glimpses into a time before Yeenoghu’s reign. They are often corrupted, unreliable, or worse, assumed to be possessed by lingering spirits of hatred.

Azael, a lesser demon lord of ruin and dust, ruled at the beginning, remaking the layer into a bleak desert of grandeur and despair. His reign ended abruptly when the enigmatic Ma Yuan, a divine entity of beastly destruction, walked the realm. When Ma Yuan departed, all that remained of Azael was a bitter oil slick, still seeping into the dust.   Yeenoghu rose in the vacuum, called by the scent of blood, and crowned by carnage. He remade the realm in his own image: a place of frenzy, desecration, and gnawing hunger, where war never ends and the hunt never stops.