The Plague Monks of Y Pryll Glaw

The History of Y Pryll Glaw

In a previous age, after the jade towers of Imryrr had sunk beneath the waves, and the Light of Amon was but a distant dream, the land of Ynys Prydein was plagued by a cult dedicated to a dark and powerful entity known as Ilu Ezeru, the Plague God. The cult attracted the wickedest, most depraved folk. From their sanctuary on the rocky island of Y Pryll Glaw, the ochre-robed priests of this malevolent being spread across the land, preaching physical, mental, and spiritual perfection through the wasting power of disease. Everywhere they went, despair and death followed, for they brought with them the “blessing” of their god. Great battles were waged between the servants of Ilu Ezeru and the heroes of Albion, but at last the cultists were defeated and their god imprisoned in a strange plane far from the eyes of even his most devoted followers. The remnants of the cult eventually returned to their ruined island sanctuary, in search of their lost master.  When they reached the abandoned vault of their god, what they found filled them with despair.  The god lay in a magical slumber, impenetrable by even the strongest magic, bound with adamantine chains.  Though they could not release their god, they found they could still draw on the power of his dreams.  And so they recorded their rituals and ceremonies on forbidden parchments.  But the secret incantations for the greatest power they drew from their chained god were recorded in an enormous tome bound in black hide, sealed with magical sigils, and locked with bronze.  Thus, left to their own devices, their origins half-forgotten, the priesthood of Ilu Ezeru dwelt in secret devotion to their shapeless deity, consulted only by the mad or the desperate as oracles and keepers of arcane knowledge.
As the centuries lengthened, the Sages of Y Pryll Glaw, as they called themselves, offered to aid ambitious princes and evil wizards, always furthering their own wicked goals.  When the legions of Augusta reached Ynys Prydein, bent on conquering its warring princes, the Sages of Y Pryll Glaw aided them, in revenge for the imprisonment of their master long ago.  It is thought their aid was of prime importance in the Empire's conquest of the White Isle, and especially in the destruction of the Sacred Groves on Ynys Môn.  Therefore, after the Emperor secured his hold on Ynys Prydein, he restored the site of Y Pryll Glaw to its former glory, erecting a temple to A’ani the All-Knowing, for such was their poor understanding of the god who was worshiped there.
During the early years of imperial rule, the temple on Y Pryll Glaw became a center of learning on the White Isle.  But it was not long before the priests there began once more to acquire a sinister reputation.  The A'anian Creed of Scientiam Scientiarum ("knowledge for its own sake") allowed the cultists of Ilu Ezeru to practice openly, so long as they supported the Empire.  But during the Tyranny of Pagus the Chain, a plot to spread plague among the imperial family was uncovered.  It was further discovered that the Cult of the Plague God had permeated virtually the entire priesthood of A'ani.  Such a discovery set in motion those events that led to the Fall of the Nine Gods.  As the Light of Amon grew stronger in Ynys Prydein, the cultists were again overthrown. The corrupted Temple of A’ani was razed and a new temple dedicated of Illtyd the Wise, whose priests had been so instrumental in tracing the tendrils of the cult, was built in its place.
For many years, monastery and temple flourished.  The monks of Y Pryll Glaw were renowned for their knowledge, as much for their willingness to share as for their diligence in pursuing it.  The temple was supported by an impressive monastic compound with its own library and school.  It was perhaps the very reputation of the priests of Illtyd for unimpeachable integrity that led those who would otherwise keep watch over the place relax their guard.  In time, rumors began to spread that even the priesthood of Illtyd had been corrupted by the evil that was still said to dwell therein.  Stories circulated about certain dangerous books forbidden to all but a few whose minds were deemed strong enough to peruse them, of secret societies in the upper echelons of the priesthood devoted to the study and understanding of such works, and of initiates in those societies performing strange and arcane rituals in dark vaults that had been discovered below the temple and that evidently predated the works of the imperial builders themselves.  Some spoke of a book bound in black hide of unknown origin, of which even to whisper was to invite flogging.  The monastic father, reputed to be a young man at the time, was said to have developed a rare illness that caused accelerated aging.  One morning, as he began to lead the service at terce, bent and stooped within the sanctuary, he was taken with a sudden illness and died on the spot.  His body was allowed to remain there for some time before the other monks worked up the courage to take it up and inter it among the vaults of their other departed brethren.  A small but influential faction of monks quickly voted one of their own as the new abbot, a man of quick spirit but disfigured by leprosy and given to speak of the scourge of the body to sharpen the mind.
The new abbot commissioned some of the greatest sculptors in the Empire to carve a statue to reconsecrate the sanctuary, which had fallen under a shadow due to the former abbot's sudden death.  Almost all these artists left the compound in despair, laying aside their tools and retiring to remote monasteries under self-imposed and lifelong vows of silence that were, for the most part, of mercifully short duration.  Only one remained to complete the work, a sensitive young man brought to the love of Amon in the Eternal City under the personal tutelage of the Archcleric. This young man, hailed even by his rivals as the greatest artist of his day, had been born blind.  Yet it was said that his blindness, far from being a hindrance to his work, was a boon, for he was said to have telepathic visions of planetars and solars and could see with the eyes of faith, of devotion, and of love.  The boy completed work on the sculpture under the direction of the abbot, who guided the chisel but would on no account allow the creator to explore by touch the completed shape of his work nor grasp by any conceptual process the holistic sum of his labors.  When work was completed, the young man was given a handsome fee with which to depart.  But enthusiasm to know his own work compelled the doomed youth to enter the sanctuary at night and attempt to feel with his hands what he could not see with his eyes.  Whatever his touch revealed must have driven him beyond the limits of his already tenuous sanity, for he fled the sanctuary weeping in a fit of utter abandonment and despair, made his way to the rocky precipice on which the temple stood, scattered the gold he had been paid, and then, perhaps distracted by grief and disorientation, either stumbled over the edge of the cliff, or cast himself with full deliberation into the dark and churning waters below.
The unexpected death of such a promising young man, blessed with true seeing, his life ahead of him, a favorite of the Archcleric himself, might have cast the monks into a prolonged attitude of mourning, contemplation, or even prayer.  But instead, a few days later, a group of riotous brothers, in heated argument with their fellow monastics about the future of their abbey, cast into the sea the statue of Illtyd that had previously graced the ordered haven of their temple sanctuary, and from the same precipice off of which the despairing young artist had taken his own final leap into eternity.  They replaced their discarded marble divinity with the sculptor's repudiated work, already a wonder and the source of much whispered conjecture around the compound.  Those who had seen it reported it to be barely half-finished, or, if finished, of so formless a nature that the eye ached to look upon it, tormented by its apparent subversion of any attempt to find a point of focus, its shapeless monstrosity comprised by a riot of lines and angles that seemed impossible by any known principle of geometry.  Curves would appear straight and straight lines unaccountably curved, acute angles opening into obtuse figures that on further inspection were not seen to be angled at all.
The sculpture elicited responses as strong and contradictory as its appearance. Those who had championed the work looked upon it in a state of near reverence or rapture, content to lose themselves in its unpredictable and seemingly mutable anti-structure while the stronger-minded oblates departed the abbey in a mixture of disgust and horror. The remainder, too weak of mind to reject the sculpture's tumultuous non-configuration but too addicted to the comfort of routine to embrace its dizzyingly labyrinthine nature, lost all sense of direction or purpose, and that evening, for the first time since undertaking their devotions, they ignored the bells that called them to worship at the temple, remaining behind instead, hiding and trembling in their cells. Unspeakable rites were practiced that midnight in the great sanctuary of Illtyd the Wise, where amid the sickly glow of yellow-green light, the entire congregation raised their hellish voices in a keening wail that might have been equal part paean and dirge. Yet as the cries of the worshipers reached a fever pitch, dark clouds gathered over the temple, and a barrage of deafening thunderbolts rained down upon tower and roof, drowning out the inhuman anthem within, shattering the temple walls, and killing all the postulants who had assembled there for that unholy conclave. When the timid brothers who had huddled all night in their retreats emerged the next morning to peak inside the ruined sanctuary, all that remained were scrolls on a parchment of uncertain origin along with an ominous black book of enormous proportions, bound in brass and sealed in glowing runes of an eldritch nature. These sickening artifacts of a decadence they dared not contemplate and an origin best left unspoken they feared to touch or even look upon at any length.
A general purging of the compound, at the behest of the Archcleric's representative in the White Isle, was undertaken in the weeks following. The temple and monastery were said to have been cursed by Illtyd himself and were never reconsecrated. The library and school were removed to their present location at Caer Tewdrig. The scrolls reputed to contain the cultists' rituals were not destroyed, for it is anathema to Illtyd that any book should be burned. Instead they were hidden away from all save the wisest and most trusted of the Order of Gnosos, and by those only at great peril and under the direct supervision of others empowered to forcibly remove the scholars from their reading if necessary. What became of the Black Book is unknown, for it was not included in the catalogue of the works removed. The island was abandoned, left to those sea birds that nested in its rocky cliffs and perched upon its stony ruins.

The Coming of the Plague Monks

Y Pryll Glaw may well have remained forgotten if not for the curiosity of a young novice. An eager, bookish young man called Brother Aurelius, named for the scholar-emperor adherent of A’ani the All-Knowing, had pledged himself to the Order of Illtyd and was sent to study at a small monastery on the Gwr peninsula. The abbot was an easy man, and finding the lad apt and enthusiastic, he encouraged him to make free use of the monastery’s extensive collection of books. Deep in the library, Aurelius found a series of ancient scrolls written in a language hitherto unknown to him. Through painstaking research, Aurelius deciphered the language and was soon drawn to the arcane secrets it unfolded. In addition to the forgotten rituals contained therein, he found references to a book long presumed lost—the Black Book of Y Pryll Glaw. Aurelius became obsessed and began to shirk his duties. The harshest discipline was ineffective in bringing him back to his senses, and, what was worse, other monks began to harken to his ravings. Before long, a cult had grown within the monastic walls. The good abbot learned of the treachery too late, and when he tried to put an end to it, he was murdered, along with all the monks who had supported him. The murderers then burned the monastery to the ground and departed with their depraved leader, whom they now elected as their new abbot.
Thereafter, the monks traveled from village to village, preaching doom and gathering followers as they went. These followers were often the most desperate men, sunk in poverty and racked by disease. The favored of these were the lepers, whom Brother Aurelius cured of their illness and took on as his own adopted sons. Disdaining beggary, they pillaged first for sustenance, then for luxury, and finally for sport. A dangerous group of brigands had soon multiplied around Brother Aurelius, who took the name Defilicus and grew more and more convinced that disease was the path to renewal and rebirth. Everywhere they went, they brought plague, resistant to cures both magical and mundane. Terror began to spread throughout the land, but little did folk know that the traveling monks who tended the afflicted were the very ones who brought the affliction in the first place.
Meanwhile, following the clues in the books, Defilicus came at last to the ruined abbey on Y Pryll Glaw. There he hoped to find the answers – and the power – that had so long eluded him. His followers made a home among the ruins, his “sons” dwelling in the buildings and caves near the foot of the island while the monks dwelt in the ruins of the church at its summit. There Defilicus found a hidden temple, and, through a series of rituals recorded in the books, created the terrible plague that would be the key to the new world he hoped to create. With his monks and growing army of “sons,” Defilicus spread the plague throughout the countryside. The scores of the afflicted were brought to the isle. Those who survived joined the sons of Defilicus; those who died rose as terrible plague zombies. Ever he searched for the legendary Black Book and ever the secret of its hiding place eluded him. Still, what transpired on the island remained unknown to the folk of the mainland.
But the presence of the monks on the island attracted the attention of the priesthood of Illtyd at Caer Tewdrig. At the urging of the Bookworm, Keeper of the Library, a band of adventurers was sent to the island to see that all was in order. It was not. When Defilicus tried to kill them, they slew him along with his monks and then plumbed the dungeon vaults that had thwarted the mad abbot in his search, uncovering the hiding place of the Black Book of Y Pryll Glaw. Thereafter, all trace of the book was lost. Most believe it was secreted away in the Great Library at Caer Tewdrig.

Plague Monk (Subclass of Cleric)

The Plague Monks of Y Pryll Glaw were an order of monastics devoted to the Elder God Ilu Ezeru, also known as the Plague God, and dedicated to the belief that world has become so corrupt that it can only be redeemed through the medium of plague and disease. Those who experience the blessings of the Plague God are tested to determine their place in the new social order. Those who survive plague occupy the highest echelons of the ruling class, but those who have been improved by it (mutated) are the greatest among them.
Those who do not survive the ravages of plague must serve as plague zombies, their mind and will destroyed and their singular drive focused only on spreading the gift of the Ilu Ezeru through the world.
Plague monks are empowered by the rituals contained in their sacred writings. The most powerful among them gain disease-based spells as clerics. They are also able to cast spells as a group through chant. The kinds of spells available to them is entirely dependent on the size of the group and the monk who leads them in song. The more monks participating in the chant, and the higher the level of the musical leader, the more powerful the spells.
The Plague Monks are believed to have been destroyed by a party of adventurers in the summer of CY 720 and their scrolls have been returned to the Great Library at Caer Tewdrig for safe-keeping. It is rumored that the adventurers also recovered the fabled Black Book of Y Pryll Glaw, but there is no current record of its location.

Ilu Ezeru (Elder God)

Also known as the Plague God, Ilu Ezeru is one of the Elder Gods, who inhabited the multiverse before the creation of the Outer Planes. Although from a humanoid perspective, this being appears "evil," it is actually a creature that exists before the advent of the duality of good and evil and thus transcends both concepts. It may or may not be allied with or identical to that being known as the Elder Elemental God.
The Dark God Isstixx, God of Madness, Nightmares, and Evil Sendings is closely connected to Ilu Ezeru and indeed may draw upon the mad dreams of this slumbering entity.
Ilu Ezeru has not been seen even by those that profess to follow it since it was defeated and bound in the Elder Days following the sinking of the Sea Kingdom of Imryrr. But its dreaming form sometimes manifests itself as a giant leech, worm, or maggot. These are only the forms it can adopt in a material reality and within the limited structures of material imagination, for in itself it is without form, or more properly speaking, antecedent to form.