Spawn of Rovagug
They are the greatest malignancies of the Rough Beast’s inexhaustible humors, each spat forth of dread imbalance in the mighty engine of His churning wounds: Volnagur, born of ragged breaths; Ulunat, from blackest bile; Xotani, shaped of hot-sprayed blood; Chemnosit, burn of deepest hunger’s gnaw; Kothogaz, pus of raw and bursted wounds; and great Tarrasque, born of sweat and tears and rage itself. A dozen and more horrors bear forth the soul of Holy Rovagug, each more awful than man’s feeble imagining... yet these are the True Kings of all those living nightmares.
—Hathga-Tah the Ninshaburite, Loremaster of Gormuz
It is the most foolish and useless of errands to attempt categorization of the Spawn of Rovagug: their vast forms follow neither rhyme nor reason; their savage minds are warped and screaming things raging hot and wild, incensed by hunger and fatalistic abandon; their terrible limbs and maws the cruel, spasming product of a destructive hate that has burned since the first light of creation dawned across the empty void that predated the world. Yet it is in the immutable nature of humanity to find or forge some explanation and order where none exists. Since the first of the Spawn was vomited forth from the Pit of Gormuz some 40 centuries before the founding of Absalom, countless scholars have bent in hushed and ink-stained study to the task of cataloging and codifying these incredible and legendary manifestations of godlike devastation and horror.
To the eternal frustration of those whose research delves into the acts and deeds of the Spawn of Rovagug, only little can be learned of them beyond whispers collected from fragmented texts, which often describe their varied anatomies and cataclysms as simply huge beyond comprehension, ferocious beyond reckoning, or nightmarish beyond all measure. Still fewer records remain of the opening of the Pit of Gormuz and the fate of the nameless city that vanished into its maw, legendarily ruled by a debased noble caste entirely loyal to Rovagug. Many accounts attest that a pre-human city called Gormuz was destroyed during Sarenrae’s final struggle with the Rough Beast himself; other accounts place the fabled, unnamed capital’s devastation in the second half of the Age of Anguish, with the Pit opening within the city’s very walls, and still others describe a sprawling slum, called Gormuz-of-the-Pit, laid to waste along with its entire empire by the Great Spawn Tarrasque in the closing years of the Age of Destiny, less than 700 years before the rise of Aroden.
So deep are the mysteries surrounding the Spawn of Rovagug that intense debate rages among some scholarly circles even as to the etymology of the word “Gormuz,” from which the legendary Pit takes its name. Although it is widely accepted that Gormuz was once a location (perhaps a city), certain Keleshite sultans loyal to the Padishah Empire of Kelesh maintain that the name is given in honor of an ascetic holy-man in service to the sun goddess Sarenrae who, according to myth, spent 1,111 years personally guarding over the foul Pit during the Age of Darkness, abandoning his ancient body to dust only once the sun and stars had returned and humans had relearned the magic of the written word. In contrast, the Rough Beast’s faithful among the mad orc oracles who attend the fuming Brimstone Haruspex far to the north in the Hold of Belkzen attest that “Gormuz” was the first of the Spawn, and that it shall return to life with the coming of a dark comet.
More modern accounts of the Spawn and the horrors that follow their destructive reigns encounter similar problems. Often, those few who somehow survive a Spawn’s direct assault perish from a poisoned air that roils behind them, or of wasting diseases borne in the blood and breath of such titanic monstrosities; the creatures famously leave little in their wake but ash, rubble, and corpses. Refugees have even starved to death, walking for days to escape the blighted path a Spawn leaves, finding only a trail of scarred earth that stretches for miles in every direction. Similarly, the degenerate adherents to the mad faith of the Rough Beast keep few records or even holy texts; their jabbering exultations to the All-Slayer more often take the form of hoarse screams, barks, shouts, and stomps around pyres of severed limbs and heads. Hand-painted icons of the Spawn themselves are often little more than grisly smears of ichor and fouler stuff. If any prophets of that deviant assemblage possess deeper insight into the nature of the Spawn themselves, their visions regard only a suicidal desire to raise up and reanimate the broken bodies of the colossi long ago brought low by sacrificed armies of wizards, miracle-workers, and heroes.
Some simple facts, however, are known regarding the Spawn of Rovagug and their origin. The trackless lands of Casmaron’s barren Windswept Wastes, controlled in name only by the Padishah Empire of Kelesh, contain a vast, howling void which spans some 20 miles from edge to edge: the Pit of Gormuz, said to lead to the eternal prison of Rovagug, God of Wrath and Disaster, born to destroy the world. This otherworldly landmark is the birthplace of the Spawn; for more than eight millennia, this chasm has expelled countless horrors of unfathomable power. Not all of the Spawn emerge directly from the Pit, however. Horrific creatures such as Xotani have ravaged countries—and even continents—far from the borders of the Windswept Wastes without ever being seen in those lands; beings of such epic power, it seems, can burrow through the solid stone floors beneath the oceans as simply as birds might wing through empty air. Each of the Spawn is unique—a singular expression of the Rough Beast’s all-consuming need to break free of his god-wrought prison and consume the world.
—Hathga-Tah the Ninshaburite, Loremaster of Gormuz
It is the most foolish and useless of errands to attempt categorization of the Spawn of Rovagug: their vast forms follow neither rhyme nor reason; their savage minds are warped and screaming things raging hot and wild, incensed by hunger and fatalistic abandon; their terrible limbs and maws the cruel, spasming product of a destructive hate that has burned since the first light of creation dawned across the empty void that predated the world. Yet it is in the immutable nature of humanity to find or forge some explanation and order where none exists. Since the first of the Spawn was vomited forth from the Pit of Gormuz some 40 centuries before the founding of Absalom, countless scholars have bent in hushed and ink-stained study to the task of cataloging and codifying these incredible and legendary manifestations of godlike devastation and horror.
To the eternal frustration of those whose research delves into the acts and deeds of the Spawn of Rovagug, only little can be learned of them beyond whispers collected from fragmented texts, which often describe their varied anatomies and cataclysms as simply huge beyond comprehension, ferocious beyond reckoning, or nightmarish beyond all measure. Still fewer records remain of the opening of the Pit of Gormuz and the fate of the nameless city that vanished into its maw, legendarily ruled by a debased noble caste entirely loyal to Rovagug. Many accounts attest that a pre-human city called Gormuz was destroyed during Sarenrae’s final struggle with the Rough Beast himself; other accounts place the fabled, unnamed capital’s devastation in the second half of the Age of Anguish, with the Pit opening within the city’s very walls, and still others describe a sprawling slum, called Gormuz-of-the-Pit, laid to waste along with its entire empire by the Great Spawn Tarrasque in the closing years of the Age of Destiny, less than 700 years before the rise of Aroden.
So deep are the mysteries surrounding the Spawn of Rovagug that intense debate rages among some scholarly circles even as to the etymology of the word “Gormuz,” from which the legendary Pit takes its name. Although it is widely accepted that Gormuz was once a location (perhaps a city), certain Keleshite sultans loyal to the Padishah Empire of Kelesh maintain that the name is given in honor of an ascetic holy-man in service to the sun goddess Sarenrae who, according to myth, spent 1,111 years personally guarding over the foul Pit during the Age of Darkness, abandoning his ancient body to dust only once the sun and stars had returned and humans had relearned the magic of the written word. In contrast, the Rough Beast’s faithful among the mad orc oracles who attend the fuming Brimstone Haruspex far to the north in the Hold of Belkzen attest that “Gormuz” was the first of the Spawn, and that it shall return to life with the coming of a dark comet.
More modern accounts of the Spawn and the horrors that follow their destructive reigns encounter similar problems. Often, those few who somehow survive a Spawn’s direct assault perish from a poisoned air that roils behind them, or of wasting diseases borne in the blood and breath of such titanic monstrosities; the creatures famously leave little in their wake but ash, rubble, and corpses. Refugees have even starved to death, walking for days to escape the blighted path a Spawn leaves, finding only a trail of scarred earth that stretches for miles in every direction. Similarly, the degenerate adherents to the mad faith of the Rough Beast keep few records or even holy texts; their jabbering exultations to the All-Slayer more often take the form of hoarse screams, barks, shouts, and stomps around pyres of severed limbs and heads. Hand-painted icons of the Spawn themselves are often little more than grisly smears of ichor and fouler stuff. If any prophets of that deviant assemblage possess deeper insight into the nature of the Spawn themselves, their visions regard only a suicidal desire to raise up and reanimate the broken bodies of the colossi long ago brought low by sacrificed armies of wizards, miracle-workers, and heroes.
Some simple facts, however, are known regarding the Spawn of Rovagug and their origin. The trackless lands of Casmaron’s barren Windswept Wastes, controlled in name only by the Padishah Empire of Kelesh, contain a vast, howling void which spans some 20 miles from edge to edge: the Pit of Gormuz, said to lead to the eternal prison of Rovagug, God of Wrath and Disaster, born to destroy the world. This otherworldly landmark is the birthplace of the Spawn; for more than eight millennia, this chasm has expelled countless horrors of unfathomable power. Not all of the Spawn emerge directly from the Pit, however. Horrific creatures such as Xotani have ravaged countries—and even continents—far from the borders of the Windswept Wastes without ever being seen in those lands; beings of such epic power, it seems, can burrow through the solid stone floors beneath the oceans as simply as birds might wing through empty air. Each of the Spawn is unique—a singular expression of the Rough Beast’s all-consuming need to break free of his god-wrought prison and consume the world.
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