Dis
The Towering, Demonic Hive-Metropolis of the Near Umbra
While demons have many settlements scattered throughout the Duskscape (the same way humanoids do on Waking Materia), far and away the largest such settlement is the towering metropolis of Dis. It is a set of colossally tall, conical structures so ridden with warrens, apartments, tunnels and common areas that it seems structurally impossible. Enormous platforms jut out from the hollow centres, each the size of a Material town. Enormous, pulsating, tentacled “living cities” float about the central skyway or around the periphery. The air is thick with pollution, chemical signals between nonverbal demons and the screams of market barkers.
Aside from Epitaph, Dis is the most well-documented of the demonic city-states: an entire chapter is dedicated to it in the Umbral Encyclopedia of The Dragon Knights of Tallarax, and there are several more surviving attestations by Waking Dreamshepherds and demonologists. Lichlord Nir herself wrote of her visits to Dis, though she greatly disliked the place.
Material travelers who have business in Dis must struggle to retain their sanity, let alone avoid angering a dangerous resident. Nonetheless, the great hive city relies on trade like any other civilization and the wanton murder of Material visitors is generally (generally!) seen as useless until it's established they have nothing to offer. Some particularly insane Waking people even make their homes here.Geography
See also: Dis Image Gallery (External)Dis is a single megastructure, found well within the Near Umbra. Some think it is a city of multiple conical towers—and it is partly that—but they are all connected by a vast network of warrens beneath the surface. The city is surrounded by The Wilderness of Statues. It surrounds the roiling, circular nihil of Quietus, deep below the underlying catacombs.
Pedantically speaking, Dis is the name of the tallest tower-city; the smaller ones do have names. Others known are Qis, Qos, Šet, Vaš, Ijmt and Nrt.Rule
Dis is a tyrannical theocracy ruled by a Supreme Pontifex and its numerous Archbishops. The current ruler is the CCXXVIX Supreme Pontifex, a calamitously powerful humanoid demon and former warlord who calls itself The Dust King. Originally known as Malbolg the Tribeless, it wrested power from the CCXXVIII Supreme Pontifex, Jovia of the Emerald Dream.
Though surviving histories of Disian cults in the Second and First Ages are rare, archaeologists have pieced together an incomplete list of demonic demigods who have sat the Diadem, as well as their approximate reign in the Yasnan Calendar.
- CCXXVI. The Dust King (late 2nd Age - Modern)
- CCXXV. Jovia of the Emerald Dream (middle-late 2nd)
- CCXXI?. Húm Quoth of Incertae Sedis (late 1st)
- CCXIX?. Ducat Idol-Robber (middle 1st)
The Old Accords
Dis is famous for being one of the few demonic city-states who reject The Old Accords, which limit the use of dead or dreaming souls in chattel slavery. It was the Dust King itself that pulled the metropolis from the Accords shortly after ascending to the throne, approximately three centuries ago.Quietus
For more on this phenomenon, see the full article on Quietus.Below and within the great cylindrical city is the spiraling, descending, seemingly infinite abyssal chaos of Quietus. Whether Dis is built around this unfathomable hole in reality to contain it, protect it, draw off it or otherwise is known only to a few of the most ancient demonic archbishops.
Illus. Kosaka Jun
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