User:GoldenYak/Chronicle/Godlands

The Godlands are a dimension of chaotic darkness formed between the Deep Void and the material realm. A hideous blend of the physical matter of the mortal universe and the infinite madness of the Void, it is a vision of what the cosmos will become should the powers of within this twisted realm triumph over the forces that oppose them.

Within the Godlands are the malefic deities known as the Old Gods, divine monarchs of madness and mutation.

Origin of the Godlands
Eons ago, when Azeroth still lay in nascency, her world-form was infected by a terrible contagion. Out of the darkness between the stars came the Old Gods, eldritch beings of malefic power, who fell to Azeroth's surface like hideous meteors made of flesh and shadow. The Old Gods were manifestations of the Void, the most chaotic and dangerous dimension in all the cosmos, and they sought to infect Azeroth's worldsoul with the Void's darkness, turning her into an avatar of entropic horror. The Old Gods spread their Black Empire across her surface, thinking to drown her spirit in sorrow and madness before they fused their own hideous physical forms with Azeroth's material body. Fortunately for the cosmos, Azeroth's fellow Titans discovered her before the Old Gods could complete their dark design. The Old Gods were defeated, their Black Empire annihilated. Azeroth weathered the corruption of the Old Gods and emerged stronger than ever from the conflict, her spirit pure and untainted. In time, the Old Gods were themselves destroyed, their abominable physical vessels shattered and their Voidborn spirits extinguished. But the Old Gods, even in death, even in utter annihilation, are a crawling cancer upon reality itself. The power of the Void touches all things - time, space, souls, even dreams. While the Old Gods were destroyed, their memory remained, the epoch of their Black Empire a blight upon Azeroth's history, a trauma that she had endured and overcome, but which would never leave her. Evil had touched Azeroth, and while it would never rule her, it had left its mark upon her. Azeroth carried the memory of the Old Gods, and for creatures of such manifold Void-born potency, even a memory was dangerous. For the memory of an Old God was, in some fashion, the thing itself.

When Azeroth created the Titan Worlds she tapped into her own memories - memories of the fallen Pantheon were used to re-create their worldsouls and infuse them into her newly formed planets. Memories of mortal races and creatures were used as templates to create the beings that would populated her worlds. At that time, when all of her cosmic power was turned towards creation and her great mind was focused inwards upon her earliest memories, the dark recollections left by the Old Gods writhed in the core of her being with wicked purpose. The darkness in her memory could not taint Azeroth in the fullness of her cosmic glory, but it could steal a measure of her power to enact its own inimical designs.

The memory of the Old Gods slithered free of Azeroth's worldsoul, stealing fragments of Azeroth's creative energy and burrowing deep into the flesh of the cosmos. Somewhere between the material universe and the depths of the Void, between the starry branches of the Worlds Tree Vrildrassil, the darkness spawned a new world, a new realm, a vile blight on the tapestry of existence. From this seed of dark potential grew the Godlands, a realm once removed from the darkness of the Deep Void itself, a realm that grows like a cancer feeding on the light and energies of the cosmos. Churning with impossible geometries and environments, the Godlands seethe and spill through the cracks of creation like a creeping mold. In its impossible landscapes creatures are born of a terrible blend between the living energies of the material universe and the abyssal potentialities of the Void, eldritch abominations whose sole purpose is to spread chaos and madness unfettered through reality.

Within the Godlands, four immense pustules of Void-corrupted matter writhe and pulsate, awake and aware, their twisted intellects turned towards ineffable designs that would leave the minds of mortals shattered. They are the Old Gods re-created, regrown from the memories that Azeroth once held of their prior incarnations. C'Thun. Yogg-Saron. N'Zoth. Y'Shaarj. They are not truly the same entities that once scarred the world in Azeroth's ancient past...

...but they might as well be.

The Old Gods
The malevolent eldritch beings known as the Old Gods rule the Godlands. They are forever opposed to one-another, warring constantly, their chaotic nature precluding them working together for long - inevitably, any alliances they forge fall apart. Their greatest desire is to spread the Godlands throughout the cosmos and rule all things, though each Old God also seeks to annihilate their kin and ultimately rule alone. The Old Gods are known by many names throughout the Titan Worlds, both individually and as a collective group. Other names for their kind are the Elder Evils, the Lords of Shadow, the Great Old Ones, the Shath'Yar, and the Many-Angled Ones.

C'Thun, the Defiler of Time


The vile immensity that is C'Thun exemplifies the Old Gods - a sprawling mass of organic horror the size of a mountain, with countless lashing tentacles, quivering eyeballs, and gnashing mouths spread across its bulk. Its grotesque body seethes with dark energy, the power of the Void seeped into every twisted and malformed nerve and cell. To gaze upon the form of C'Thun would mean insanity for any but the most iron-willed mortal, and even they would be forever scarred by the horror of what they witnessed. C'Thun, perhaps uniquely among all its kin, sees knowledge and not power as the means to the domination it desires. While N'Zoth is a tempter and manipulator without peer steering others to fulfill their designs, and Yogg-Saron and Y'Shaarj wield great power, C'Thun believes that knowledge of the cosmos will provide the surest route to dominion of it. C'Thun is an architect, an engineer, a creator, raising great sorcerous engines to manipulate cosmic energies and taint them with the darkness of the Void, and dispatching agents throughout the universe to gather more secrets and more knowledge, which C'Thun carefully hoards away. C'Thun is the most emotionless of the Old Gods, even by the unknowable standards of the Shath'Yar psyche. It has few indulgences and eccentricities compared to the others, desiring efficiency and discarding all qualities it deems unnecessary. While Yogg-Saron possesses a masculine persona, Y'Shaarj a feminine one, and N'Zoth changes fluidly however they desire, C'Thun is gender neutral. C'Thun's greatest bastion remains unnamed, for C'Thun does not require such things to know its own domain, and so all others know it as the Nameless Citadel. Within, C'Thun constructs colossal eldritch machinery designed to re-write the laws of the cosmos and provide C'Thun with mastery over all. Most recently, C'Thun has developed an interest in the Timeways, the enigmatic realm where past, present, and future are all born. C'Thun believes that to control this dimension of the cosmos will be the key to its ultimate victory.

Yogg-Saron, the Beast with a Thousand Maws


Also known as the Old God of Death, Yogg-Saron's hunger for the souls of mortals knows no bounds, his many maws constantly gnawing on the sacrifices made to him. His very blood is infused with vast necromantic power, which fuses it into the metallic substance known as saronite. The metal splits through Yogg-Saron's eldritch flesh, forming scales and crusted growths across his immense body. This black metal is how Yogg-Saron spreads his corruptive influence, for the metal bestows tremendous power upon those who make use of it, but ultimately drains away their very living soul, inevitably turning them into the slave of Yogg-Saron. The Beast is a creature of terrible power, reveling in his raw might and the destructive power of his vast armies. Of all the Old Gods, Yogg-Saron commands perhaps the greatest military might. His n'raqi and c'thraxxi creations are laced with saronite deposits, making them virtually indestructible. The true bulk of his armies however are the undead, for Yogg-Saron's necromantic power exceeds virtually any other being outside the Shadowlands, and even some of the mightiest entities of Shadol would struggle to match Yogg-Saron. For every undead creature he raises into eternal slavery, Yogg-Saron devours their soul and grows stronger, spreading like a vile cancer through the Godlands and pouring ever more of his black blood like poisonous rivers into the cosmos. Yogg-Saron lairs within Yog'Kathak, the Fortress of Bones, a truly abominable stronghold constructed from the countless skeletons of Yogg-Saron's mortal slaves and mortared together with his black metal blood.

N'Zoth, the Lord of Corruption


N'Zoth is the most subtle and insidious of the Old Gods. N'Zoth sees mortal life as the most useful tool to achieve their ambitions of cosmic rule, and has turned all of their malefic powers into spreading corruption throughout mortal civilizations. Of all the Old Gods, it is N'Zoth who commands the greatest number of mortal worshipers, with secret cults throughout the Titan Worlds loyal to him. In mortal kingdoms without number, rulers and magisters, politicians and holy leaders, and any number of useful pawns are all followers of N'Zoth, each one serving the Old God for their own twisted reasons. Whether a mortal desires power, control, revenge, or simply to serve a cause greater than himself, the whispers of N'Zoth reach out to them and guide them to carry out the Old God's will, inevitably leading them down darker and darker paths until their principles and morality have been discarded and they are willing to commit any evil to achieve their master's goals. N'Zoth is a plotter and a schemer, weaving impossibly complex stratagems that can unfold over the course of decades or even centuries, the Old God's vision impossibly far-reaching and intricate. N'Zoth appears in a variety of beguiling avatars and forms, appearing as men and women of every possible race, from exemplars of war to wizened elderly prophets, whichever form is best suited to whichever plot the Old God is unfolding. Even their voice is inconstant, as N'Zoth speaks each sentence with a different one, one moment the base growl of an orc warrior, the next the high lilt of a young elven girl. In the end, N'Zoth's web of schemes ensnare ally, pawn, and enemy alike, and even when their plans are seemingly thwarted, more often than not N'Zoth's seeming defeats are simply one more element of a greater plan for victory. While N'Zoth commands the least personal power of all the Old Gods, their ability to manipulate has allowed them to avoid suffering outright loss in the endless conflicts between the lords of the Godlands. Ultimately, N'Zoth schemes to have all of their enemies bring one another to ruin, so that when the time is right they will ascend over a weakened cosmos as its rightful master.

Y'Shaarj, the Sevenfold Terror


Y'Shaarj reigns in the Godlands alongside her evil kin, as they did at Azeroth's dawn. Y'Shaarj does not yet eclipse the other Old Gods as her previous incarnation once did, but in time her power will reach her full height, and the forces of chaos will spill forth from the Godlands to ravage the Titan Worlds. Y'Shaarj sprouts from the very earth of the Godlands like a hideous great tree, her immense fleshy tendrils burrowing deep underground like roots while her body towards overhead, looming above the spires and walls of her great palace-fortress, Nul'Shathar. Seven terrible heads split from the trunk of her body, the prime head crowned with great twisting horns and writhing tendrils. Y'Shaarj's hideous form pulsates with profound fecundity - n'raqi grow in pustules like fruit from her many tendrils, while aqir slither from amongst her buried roots. Her very breath is alive, taking the shape of hideous shadowy creatures that feed on fear, anger, doubt, and other negative emotions. Y'Shaarj produces the most creatures of all the Old Gods - for this, one of her many names is the Mother of Monsters. Her mightiest offspring, the c'thraxxi mutates known as the Thousand Sons, defend her in her palace. These immense mutant c'thraxxi share a link with their mother, feeding on her seemingly boundless energy which allows them to rapidly regenerate from the most grievous injury, making them virtually immortal. From her position of absolute security, the immensity that is Y'Shaarj continues to grow and expand, outgrowths of the Old God spreading throughout the Godlands like a cancer. Given time, Y'Shaarj will spread herself throughout all the realms of the cosmos, turning all that is into a garden of unearthly horrors under her dark reign.

The Old Gods and the Lords of the Void
The first Old Gods were born long before the birth of the Titan Worlds, in a long forgotten cosmic epoch. Malign intelligences within the deepest cosmic abyss of the Void looked out upon the other realms of existence and hungered to possess them. These dark entities wove the Old Gods into being, congealing the limitless potentiality of the Void into horrific shapes and casting them into the material universe to grow, corrupt, and devour, ultimately weakening the cosmic principles that separate the Void from all other things.

The creators of the Old Gods are known as the Void Lords, the shadows of existence itself. Within the Deep Void, the Void Lords exist in uncountable multitudes, billions upon billions in number with new Void Lords continually coming into existence every moment that passes. Individually, a Void Lord is in fact an unremarkable thing, a craven whispering shade shying from the least flicker of power brought against it. But Void Lords bear the knowledge of the Void itself, and are cunning, intelligent, and malign beyond mortal understanding. Alone they are next to nothing, but together, they are one of the mightiest forces in all the cosmos. Working in conjunction and pooling their power, the Void Lords can reach beyond the Void to affect the other realms of the cosmos - in this way they cast their creations, the Old Gods, into the Great Dark Beyond. It took hundreds of thousands of Void Lords working together to craft a single Old God, and many of the shadowy entities were consumed in their making, expending their own meager power. Once loosed from the Void, the Old Gods followed their imbued imperative to obey the designs of the Void Lords and spread darkness and corruption throughout the universe. Though each Shath'Yar was mightier by far than its makers, they could not ignore their inbuilt nature.

Now, however, the Old Gods of the Godlands are free. Through their rebirth from Azeroth's memories, they have slipped the leashes of their makers, reinventing themselves as their own masters. The Old Gods have mutated beyond their created imperatives and now seek their own ambitions - they seek to defile the universe and rule it themselves, rather than deliver it to the Void Lords. Each Old God knows that their creators still lurk within the darkness of the Deep Void, and all of them look forwards eagerly to a time when their cancerous kingdoms will spread into the black realm of their origin, and the Void Lords themselves will become slaves of their most malevolent creations.

Desolation of Zuhn
The Desolation of Zuhn is a realm of ruin, blasted by scouring sand storms and parched by great heat. The sand underfoot is like dried blood, and flows through the ruddy stone chasms and canyons of the region in currents like rivers. The skies are shrouded by sand clouds, but a ruddy sun can be faintly seen through the obscuring storms, though at times the 'sun' seems to split apart and writhe strangely unlike a true solar body. Obelisks of black stone carved with unspeakable images rise up from the desert like needles, which act as sign-posts to those who can decipher them but drive all others who look upon them mad. Some great stones even drift suspended in the air, floating above the desert sands, while yawning chasms and canyons split the land and lead down into unseen darkness, arcane energies and spell-lightning arcing up from the unknowable depths. Those who dabble in forbidden knowledge whisper that C'Thun shaped its home in memory of another land it once ruled. At the heart of the wastes is C'Thun's great fortress, unnamed for C'Thun has no need to name it - all know and fear it as C'Thun's dread abode.

Iron Wastes of Nul
A frozen wasteland of death, expanses of black ice and grey snow covering mountains made of saronite, their jagged black peaks piercing the ebon glaciers like rough fangs. Beneath the surface, monsters carve their cities in the ice and shape the saronite into vast obelisks and ziggurats, temples of worship for their master, Yogg-Saron, the Old God of Death. Undead infest the surface, vast armies of corpses reanimated by slivers of black metal driven into their rotting flesh and bones. This Iron Scourge are but the playthings of n'raqi necromancers, who use the armies to fight wars and prey upon other realms beyond the Iron Wastes. The black metal saronite is the very blood of Yogg-Saron, solidified and metalized, and can wreak strange, chaotic changes upon whatever it comes into contact with. Often, the undead animated by such metal are twisted and mutated into unimaginable new forms. The undead kingdoms of Shadol despise the Iron Scourge of the Godlands, though more than a few foolish necromancers and death-wizards have sought saronite samples for their own experiments in creating 'evolved' undead.

The Writhing Vortex
The portion of the Godlands claimed by N'Zoth is known as the Writhing Vortex, and is possibly the most bizarre and impossible region of all. It is a great maelstrom of roiling water currents, a hundred funnels of spinning dark water and twisters that crawl through the air like angry snakes, chaotic and ever-turning. Drifting amidst the never-ending storms are floating land-masses part stone and part flesh, populated by N'Zoth's nightmarish servants. The entire region is an impossible mixture of air and water, where one can 'swim' through thin air and breathe water. Great eldritch beasts prowl the skies like predators of the deep ocean, preying upon those who dare intrude in N'Zoth's realm uninvited. N'Zoth's aqir and n'raqi servants build opulent palaces of indescribable beauty and grandeur on the living islands of the Vortex, the most fabulous of all being Shag'Modai, the Writhing Fane, where N'Zoth holds court.

The Dread Expanse
The Dread Expanse is Y'Shaarj's kingdom in the Godlands, a vast blighted swampland overflowing with darkness and despair prowled by living shadows. Y'Shaarj's aqir spawn, the mantid, build their hive-enclaves in the great trees that grow in the swamp, with the largest of these being the sprawling city-grove of Manti'vess. The trees of Manti'vess bleed a golden fluid streaked with black, the blood of Y'Shaarj herself. This blood-amber has a variety of uses. The breath of Y'Shaarj has saturated the land, giving rise to creatures call the Sha, the manifestations of Y'Shaarj's hunger. Y'Shaarj rules uncontested within the Dread Expanse, her mortal subjects constantly at war with one-another, and the Sha torment them all, an endless war fought for the amusement of the Old God. Y'Shaarj watches over from her court in the palace-city of Nul'Shathar, where her n'raqi and c'thraxxi servitors sacrifice slaves and captives to her.

Other Regions

 * The Hivelands - An unclaimed wilderness that lies at the heart of the Godlands, teeming with the hives of the insectile aqir, who worship the Old Gods.
 * The Gloaming Expanse - Bizarre regions of un-reality that border the territories of the Old Gods, these lands form an ever-shifting barrier that separate the eldritch kingdoms of the Godlands.

The Nameless Citadel of C'Thun
C'Thun is in some ways the most enigmatic of the Old Gods, already a race of beings that is beyond mortal comprehension. C'Thun seeks to fully comprehend all the myriad aspects of the cosmos, and in doing so attain power over them, so that all that exists might be cast into eternal slavery and darkness. C'Thun eschews all that it deems unnecessary, and so its mightiest fortress stronghold remains unnamed - C'Thun knows its dominion, as do all its servants, and it cares nothing for what others might call it. And so it is known, and feared, simply as the Nameless Citadel, the dread throne of C'Thun itself.

The Nameless Citadel is the nerve center of all of C'Thun's efforts to control the cosmos through knowledge. It is both a fortress and a library of impossible scope, unrestrained by natural laws. Its non-euclidean construction renders its interior seemingly infinite in scale. One of the largest regions is the Archive of C'Thun. Towering shelves of stone hold scrolls, tomes, tablets, and parchments written in every language both mortal and immortal, containing lore from throughout all of existence - secret histories, arcane knowledge, accounts from shattered timeways, chronologies of lost worlds, and other esoteric knowledge. Slithering between the shelves are the robed servitors of C'Thun, some breed of eldritch Voidspawn akin to the n'raqi or the aqir garbed in yellow robes. These are the librarians of C'Thun's archives, forever cataloging and re-organizing the gathered material or adding some new item to the collection. The endless shelves stretch overhead while towers made of immense tomes spiral impossibly high, and a mortal who looks up to find the ceiling of the grand librarium will find themselves gazing into a yawning void, an endless expanse that crawls with crackling lightning, raw knowledge made manifest. Some of C'Thun's hoarded tomes are more than simple parchment and ink. The archive contains dreadful books made of flayed skin from Voidspawned abominations inked in their blood and liquefied organs. Their covers are upholstered in leather stripped from the hides of colossal Umbral Leviathans, dread predators of the Deep Void and favored pets of the Void Lords. Other tomes bear hideous beasts and monstrous faces upon their covers, gnashing maws or quivering weeping eyeballs. For a mortal to even lay hands upon books such as these is doom, for their life-force will be leeched from their bodies and their souls devoured by the darkness of the Void. Other exotic documents take the form of black tablets carved with writhing, glowing runes in the eldritch language of the Shath'Yar, a tongue no mortal can speak without being driven completely insane. Ancient relics and curios from long lost races, star-canticles of the Constellar sodality, Titanforged star-metal inscribed tablets, and whispering shadow-homunculi can be found within the most remote and well-guarded shelves. And in the furthest reaches of the archive are the Untouchable Vaults, heavily protected arcane repositories where the most fantastic artifacts and volumes are kept locked away, forbidden from use by any other than C'Thun itself.

Deeper into the Nameless Citadel are even more spectacular sights. In the great alchemical laboratories of C'Thun, n'raqi flesh-shapers tend great vats of obsidian filled with eldritch fluid and hideous writhing abominations, while Aqiri bio-viziers conduct profane and horrific experiments using bizarre arcane instruments, dissecting not only flesh but souls, natural law, and reality itself. In the Crucible, huge slabs of black stone, Void-grown crystal, and eldritch metal are alloyed together through alchemical sorcery into huge monoliths that thrum with unnatural power. These objects are used by C'Thun as components in colossal arcane engines, each mountain-sized arrangement of monoliths reaching out into the very fabric of the cosmos to bend them to C'Thun's will.

The Nameless Citadel swarms with the servants of C'Thun, from soul-lost mortals and skittering aqir castes, to the great slithering n'raqi bound in wrappings made of flayed beasts and adorned with golden masks and ornaments, to the colossal c'thraxxi, the champions of the Shath'Yar, their enormous bodies laced thick with metallic deposits grafted to them through Void alchemy. Every creature has a purpose in C'Thun's unknowable design, each one laboring like cogs in some vast, eldritch machine for their masters inevitable victory.

The Orrery of C'Thun
At the heart of the Nameless Citadel lies C'Thun's throne chamber, the great Orrery of C'Thun. It is a chamber that is vast is size, seemingly larger than the citadel could possible contain. The floor is lost to sight, shrouded in green-glowing fog, while the ceiling stretches off into a starry void filled with cosmic nebulae and streamers of Void energy. C'Thun itself resides here, like some enormous mountain made of flesh, its colossal form rising out of the mist-shrouded depths of the chamber, a hundred tentacles lashing and writhing, a hundred eyes quivering and gnashing maws chattering. At the apex of its immense body, like some hideous a castle built atop a mountain, is a colossal eye, lidless and obscene, glaring with unknowable alien perception.

Floating in the chamber are hundreds immense rune-carved slabs of black metal, each one different in size and script. These monoliths orbit C'Thun's great body, some hovering far overhead, others drifting barely-seen in the mists. The monoliths crackle with eldritch lightning, forming shapes and images of distant lands, horrible monsters, or mortals of significance. Collectively, these monoliths form the greatest of C'Thun's mystical scrying engines, the Orrery. With this vast eldritch instrument, C'Thun great eye can look upon any realm and dimension in all the cosmos, including alternate time-lines, parallel dimensions, and realities yet-to-be. C'Thun gathers information from the length and breadth of existence, while its hundred maws dictate its pilfered secrets to n'raqi servitors, who ink the revelations onto flayed-skin parchments.

Currently, C'Thun's Orrery is turned upon the cosmic realm of the Timeways, a dimension that encompasses the past, present, and future of reality, and all alternative timelines, realms that could have been but never were. C'Thun is convinced that the key to domination over existence is to seize control over the Timeways. Such a conquest would put the fates of all life, the very stuff of Destiny itself, at the command of C'Thun.

Yog'Kathak - The Fortress of Bones
At the heart of the Iron Wastes lies the Fortress of Bones, the unspeakable stronghold of Yogg-Saron. A monument to death and dissolution, the Fortress of Bones resembles nothing less than a colossal charnel heap, a towering mountain of mouldering bones and broken bodies. Every wall, parapet, tower, and rampart are made of flensed, fleshless bones stacked unthinkingly in great heaps, welded together by veins of dark ice and glistening black metal. Every surface, even the floor underfoot, is encrusted with fearsome sharp edges, with shards of broken bone, ice, and jagged metal sprouted up from the gruesome construction to shred armor, clothing, and flesh.

Jutting from the wall are longer spikes, upon which are impaled thousands of shredded, broken bodies, stripped of skin and muscle to leave only bones and connective tissue. These ruined bodies shudder and twitch upon their spikes, the dark energies flowing through the black metal feeding minute trickles of necromantic magic into the corpses. Not enough to revive the ruined forms into undead, but just enough to make them eternally quiver in a vast and wicked parody of mass death throes.

Filling every hall of the Fortress are the undying legions of Yogg-Saron. Mindless undead number in the millions, drawn from every race in the Titan Worlds. There are more undead staggering through the halls of the Fortress of Bones than live in some entire worlds, and it would seem impossible for Yogg-Saron to have obtained so many bodies. The hideous truth of how Yogg-Saron obtains so many corpses for his armies is a secret kept within the darkest depths of his citadel...

The Fortress itself contains countless vast chamber-halls, their vaulting walls lined with skulls, their broken jaws echoing with their death screams, faint as the barest whispers. Within these great halls, hordes of undead muster around towering faceless ones, n'raqi and c'thraxxi commanders loyal to Yogg-Saron. These eldritch obscenities loom over command tables the size of small hills, formed of bones lashed together with barbed metal wire, bearing maps made of flayed flesh representing battlefields throughout the Godlands and worlds beyond. The faceless ones bellow and chitter in their hideous, unknowable language, discussing stratagems and tactics and bellowing blood-oaths and pledges of sacrifice to Yogg-Saron. The strategy meetings end with rival faceless falling upon one another in short, violent death-duels, the winner tearing the weaker apart and then leading huge masses of faceless and undead out of the strategy halls, mustering outside the Fortress of Bones to launch assaults on some luckless realm.

Shag'Modai - The Writhing Fane
The fabulous and opulent palace of Shag'Modai lies at the heart of the Writhing Vortex, a place of awesome beauty and decadent perfection. The palace is built of pristine black marble and gleaming gold, with elegant spires, soaring arches, and wondrous grand halls. Great wealth is evident in every aspect of the home of N'Zoth - adorning every wall are fantastic tapestries of intricate and brilliant detail, or magnificent ornaments wrought of precious metals and inlaid with jewels. Scones and chandeliers burn with prismatic flames, mesmerizing in their beauty. Statues of wondrous beasts and captivating individuals, carved with exquisite detail, fill decorated alcoves. Not the richest human king, the most wealthy elven monarch, nor the most prosperous dwarven lord in all the Titan Worlds has ever known such splendor, such grandeur. Thousands of mortal worshipers fill the halls, members of every race living together. Dressed in fine clothes, their expressions are those of beatific adoration, captivated by the beauty that surrounds them, talking and laughing with one-another in harmony and fellowship. These servants of N'Zoth rush to and fro, carrying out some task or another for their Old God master, be it some seemingly minor trifle or a matter of great import. Overhead flit the vespari, the aqir-spawn of N'Zoth, the delicate wasp-like humanoids filling the air with the pleasant musical hum of their wings, while bearing censers that fill the air with a sweet-smelling, almost intoxicatingly strong incense. Towering over the mortal crowds are the n'raqi, appearing as magnificent giants of strange beauty, alien but alluring. Their tentacular forms are utterly inhuman and yet somehow fitting for their surroundings, for their twisting bodies and numerous writhing tentacles are also gloriously bedecked in jewelry and adornments of stunning beauty, with sumptuous robes and fine clothes of immaculate white or vibrant royal colors. N'raqi scribes and clerics convey commands to the mortal throng, herding them about their tasks like shepherds, occasionally reaching out a delicate tentacle to caress a euphoric servant with gentle affection.

N'Zoth's court is even more spectacular - an enormous open terrace, where the Lord of Corruption lounges in alien luxury within a scented pool of sweet-smelling liquid. His many tendrils rise from the pool to twine delicately around dozens of decorative pillars of black marble, their surfaces carved with the images of wondrous beasts and monsters. Servitor creatures akin to n'raqi play strange and alien music upon impossible instruments, while buzzing vespari flit to and fro across N'Zoth's great bulk, carrying cauldrons of the same pool fluid and ladling the substance across N'Zoth's many tendrils. About his vast form countless mortals mill about, like guests attending a grand soiree, gossiping, laughing, singing, and performing feats of entertainment for their fellows and their master. Great and wonderful eldritch beings, the lords and ladies of N'Zoth's kingdom, recline of gorgeously decorated plinths and daises around the great chamber, each with entourages of creatures both mortal and eldritch attending to their whims. N'Zoth's enormous crimson eyes gaze out at the merriment through great slitted lids as he reposes in his affluence, seemingly almost insensate with bliss.

To those bound by N'Zoth's corruptive will, such a place might seem like a true paradise. If a mortal free of N'Zoth's influence could intrude upon the Old God's great palace and maintain their sanity, they would perceive the true horror of their surroundings. The great soaring beauty of the palace soon fades as the subtle wrongness of the place seeps through, for the architecture obeys no physical laws, bending time and space in an impossible fashion, its immensity and opulence seeming to crush the spirit rather than inspiring it. Worse still, the very structure seems alive, moving and shifting with terrible life. The black marble quivers and moves of its own accord, as if some living thing slithers impossibly beneath its surface. The golden ornamentation shiver and breathe, exuding unpleasant warmth, like the skin of some impossible beast. The marvelous statuary are revealed to be living things, squamous and tentacled horrors that screech and burble insanely from their plinths. The layout of the structure itself changes, hallways leading to different areas, chambers moving and shifting, never in the same arrangement twice. The n'raqi courtiers no longer seem alluring but horrible, their adornments slathered with unspeakable slime, their tendrils plucking up bleary, unresisting mortals and drawing them into the forest of tentacles that comprise their bodies with hideous, hungry slurping noises. The vespari droning becomes maddening, a hideous insectile whine that grinds upon the senses. Worst of all are the mortal followers, their clothing no longer fine and clean but befouled with blood and ichor, their former serene expressions now revealed as twisted, vacant, idiotic and lunatic, their will and sanity crushed. The stumble to and fro in insane gaits, laughing at nothing, howling with madness, sometimes meek and dumb, other times falling upon each other in violence, tearing and clawing with the same mindless expressions until their unwitting target is cast to the ground and stamped to bloody mush.

But the revealed horror of N'Zoth's court makes all the other terrors of the Writhing Fane pale in comparison. There is no delightful gala of divine festivity to be seen, but a vast and terrible feasting hall of utterly malign horrors, a slaughter-house chamber where hideous N'Zoth reclines in a pit of boiling viscera. N'Zoth's attending courtiers are revealed as hideous abominations feasting on the fruit of their mortal followers' bodies, plucking heads from necks and souls from hearts, guzzling gore and spirit-stuff with dreadful relish. Around him countless mortals debase, defile, and dismember themselves for their lord's amusement, inflicting the most unspeakable atrocities upon one-another, shouting and killing and reveling and enjoying themselves in the terrible ways N'Zoth has taught them. In the center of it all, N'Zoth's baleful gaze, piercing in its awareness, takes in all the hideous sights and the Old God is pleased. Pleased, but never satisfied, and never will he be, until his dominion spreads across all of existence, and all have had their souls flayed by his teachings, and all things know the unbridled ecstasy and freedom of corruption.