Yurtrus

Yurtrus is the orcish god of death and disease, a constant terror that silently waits for their demise. The vile god is a counterpart to Shargaas, for while the Night Lord symbolizes the fear of what lurks in the shadowy unknown, the morbid Lord of Maggots is the ceaseless threat of sickness and inevitable death orcs face. Shargaas merely hates life, but Yurtrus is nothing more than its denial, embodying the principles that destroy it — antilife.

Description

Yurtrus appeared as a vaguely orcish giant, a 12 feet (3.7 meters) tall abomination riddled with rotting flesh and consumed by corruption. His peeling skin glowed green and was covered in oozing pustules and sores, his repulsive form rupturing with every step. Surrounding the disgusting body of the Rotting One was a huge cloud of noxious, stinking gases, which covered an approximately 20 ft (6.1 m) radius around him. Yurtrus also had no mouth, and so could not utter sounds.

The only acceptable part of Yurtrus were his clawed hands, which were smooth, unblemished, and otherwise completely normal save for their pure, chalk-white color. Manifestations

Yurtrus's omens were usually outbreaks of disease, though he also manifested through the stench of rot or the decaying of white hands or slime.

Personality

Vile and inscrutable, Yurtrus is considered unpleasant even by the orcs. He is infamously uncommunicative (as befitting a being with no mouth) and does not share his secrets. Despite his lawful tendencies, he is known to act on his capricious whims.

Divine Realm

Yurtrus's realm, commonly referred to as Fleshslough, is located on the diseased 1st layer of the Gray Wastes known as Oinos. Practically nothing is known about it since not even avatars sent by other gods ever leave. What is known is that even by the standards of the emotionally-draining wastes, it is a dreary and depressing place. All plant-life dies before getting so far as the border, and each time the entrance (two great black, iron doors set into a hillside) swings open, the stench of death wafts out. Even the yugoloths, ruled in the Gray Wastes by the master of plague and disease that is the Oinoloth, move carefully through his territory. Only Yurtrus and his equally quiet, mouthless petitioners live within.

In the World Tree cosmology, Fleshslough is located alongside the domains of the other orc gods in Nishrek, a land of eternal carnage where orc tribes fight unceasingly to prove themselves to their gods. In a dimension where (much like in Ysgard) those that die in glorious battle simply return to life, Yurtrus is the most feared being of all. Petitioners who fight poorly are sent by Gruumsh to the mighty hill standing above the battlefields where Yurtrus dwells, forced to enter Fleshslough where Yurtrus separates their spirits from their flesh, permanently killing them.

Activities

Yurtrus only sends out avatars to spread pestilence and cause pandemics whenever he so desires. However, Yurtrus is said to have an actual role in his pantheon—that of a punisher. It is believed that orc tribes that go too long without following Gruumsh's decrees by despoiling the land, raiding neighbors or slaying dwarves and/or elves, risk being ravaged by Yurtrus's plagues.

Yurtrus sometimes interferes in the Blood War, sending his priests to start outbreaks of blistering and leprous diseases.

Worshippers

In many respects, Yurtrus was not so much worshiped as he was dreaded and appeased, given fealty by the orcs only because they were afraid of angering him and sought to propitiate him. Some tribes had begun to worship him as a god of food and health (given the priests' duty of looking over the food supply), but he was moreso being propitiated as the reverse.

Yurtrus followers were the outcasts of an orc tribe, those that, due to frailty, deformity, injury, age, or some other infirmity, were too weak to be part of the main body. Rather than face a life of daily ridicule or be exiled or killed, such orcs joined the cult of Yurtrus (or were deemed unsuitable and given over to the cult of Shargaas). Rarely were his priests leaders of their clans, but they were found in all tribes and had a kind of protected status.

Yurtrus's horrifying nature granted his followers a great amount of independence, so they were allowed to stay on the fringes of the tribe, although they were nonetheless held in unease and aversion. Shamans of White Hands walked the line between the living and the dead, gaining unnatural powers of death (and disease) from their nonverbal communion with Yurtrus, and their practice of necromancy (considered taboo even by orcs) created a strange combination of fear and reverence in the rest of the tribe.

Dogma

Followers of Yurtrus believed death was the inevitable fate of all life, and that the ravages of an epidemic were simply death taking victims who had not fallen in battle, allowing orcs to choose what way they would most likely die. Orcs could only forestall the touch of White Hands only by begging for mercy, and as such they were to fear him, but ultimately, it would be of no use. Disease and pestilent doom would come to all, for death always lurked in the shadows of Luthic's caves, and it would certainly strike again.

The clergy of Yurtrus determined if the food and water in tribal stores was too rotted or tainted for consumption, and when plague struck orc tribes, the Hands of Yurtrus or White Hands, as they were known, were responsible for quarantining the sick. If a saved orc could not be fully healed from a disease then the Hands of Yurtrus would instead nurture it, turning the orc into a walking hive of corruption and setting them to violently burst upon the enemy, spreading the diseased message of Yurtrus through their own demise.

Rituals

The clergy of Yurtrus were the intermediaries between their tribe and the Rotting Lord, pleading with him when the community was the victim of a disease or an epidemic and communing with other orcs through the auspices of Luthic, although ironically most removed their tongues to emulate their god and so couldn't speak. Despite his silence, Yurtrus was sometimes receptive to properly respectful prayers and sacrifices to save an individual or tribe from the ravages of disease. Living sacrifices to Yurtrus were offered on an otherwise monthly basis under the full moon, though a great number of prisoners and slaves were given in times of plague. Sacrifices to the Rotting Lord were generally given through their inoculation to a particularly horrible disease.

The divine followers of Yurtrus prayed for their spells at dusk, when the day began to die, and the church recognized two major holy days. The first was the Ceremony of Contagion, celebrated on Midsummer's Eve, when Yurtrus's contagion was said to take root, drain the world of life, and draw it inevitably toward winter and the year's end. After a series of bloody sacrifices to protect the orcs disease, the priests went forth to spread disease and death worldwide, especially to other races. The second holy day, known as the Putrescent Death, was celebrated on the eve of Midwinter. That night, the clergy of Yurtrus recognized the death of the world, symbolized by sacrificing members of other intelligent races. After Death

Every orc knew that the Hands of Yurtrus were the gateway to the ancestors of the tribe, masters of the borders of life and death. It was through their shamanic rites that the spirits of the dead were contacted and the living passed into the land of the dead.

The priests of Yurtrus dealt with matters of death related to the tribe, sending off the dead (whether they perished due to injuries, disease, or natural causes) in funerary rites. They sought out the bodies of fallen heroes, and sometimes even enemies of appreciated strength and ferocity, to honor them by severing their heads, boiling or smoking them to remove most of the flesh, and then ritualistically punching the bridge of the nose to leave a single "eyehole" behind.

Orcs that served the tribe well were meant to be sent via the rituals to meet Gruumsh in the afterlife. Orcs that died in a failed battle were left behind, for they were weak and did not deserve to join Gruumsh, while those that perished from old age (a rare occurrence in orc society) were likely followers of Yurtrus already, and would have their bones repurposed and their souls taken when Yurtrus came for his chosen in absolute silence.

Relationships

By his very nature, Yurtrus did not typically form relationships. He did have a cold alliance of sorts with Shargaas, silently supporting the Night Lord's subtle efforts to counteract the influence of the three orcish gods of war (Gruumsh, Bahgtru, and Ilneval). Ilneval hated both Yurtrus and Shargaas for their underhanded methods and smell of cowardice, but was smart enough to put both their skills and abilities to use effectively when fighting other pantheons. Even Gruumsh, however, was frightened of Yurtrus despite likely being able to kill the Rotting One if he desired, as rumor had it that he was unwilling to get that close.

Outside of his own pantheon, Yurtrus was thought to have some relations with other gods of death and disease like Talona, although it was possibly more a rivalry than an alliance. Like Talona, he sought to usurp the portfolio of rot taken from Moander by Finder Wyvernspur. He was perhaps the mightiest of the non-human gods of Hades with the exception of the sea-confined Panzuriel[note 1] (though if the two ever bothered to fight, Yurtrus would be a serious challenge), but there were perhaps some places so virulent that even he would hesitate to go there. Like the rest of his pantheon, he hated the dwarf, elf, and goblinoid gods, and he opposed them when the opportunity arose.

Yurtrus had no known proxies, but despite his lack of a mouth and generally silent ways, he was known to communicate through telepathic whispers to some.

History

In 927 DR, the Year of the Red Rain, Yurtrus's wrath fell upon the Sword Mountains, causing the Blood Plagues. During this time, the orc shaman Wund united several orc tribes under the leadership of chief Uruth, forming the kingdom of Uruth Ukrypt. The cult of White Hands formed the backbone of that kingdom, and around this time the Brotherhood of the Scarlet Scourge was founded.

Yurtrus

Lesser deity

Basic Information

Titles

The White-Handed
White Hands
The Lord of Maggots
The Rotting One
The Rotting Lord
Rotting Yurtrus

Pantheons

Orc

Serves

Gruumsh

Attributes

Alignment

Neutral Evil

Symbol

White hand, palm outward

Realm

Gray Waste of Hades/Oinos/Fleshslough

Portfolio

Death, Disease

Favored Weapon

Pale white hands (unarmed strike)

Following

Worshippers

Assassins
Monks
Orcs

Alignments

LN, CN, NE

Domains

Death (Plague)
Destruction (Catastrophe)
Evil (Corruption, Plague)

Favored Aspects

Animals/Plants

Boars
Dire boars
Rats
Dire rats

Monsters

Carrion crawlers
Mummies
Otyughs
Skeletons
Spirit nagas
Undead
Violet fungi

Minerals

Amaratha
Zendalure

Colors

White

Manifest- ations

Smell of decay

White rotting hands

White rotting slime