The Lost Codex

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The Lost Codex is a compendium of the lore of The Lost composed by Falnir for his Trial of the Mieli in 2019. The first chapter has been made public and the remainder shall be made available once the trial is completed.


Hod

Who shall sing of the sundering of Phobettus? of the failures of the divided god and the plight of his people? Who shall tell of the nightmare seen by those who dream of days to come and the tragedy of those who bear witness? Who whispers of things to be undone into the ears of dreamers who would lie in blissful peace to then wake hungry for that which cannot be obtained?


For the Path was of countless steps and all taken in our time. But the Great Dreamer sought the Dragryyum. It crosses fire and loam and ice and gale and travels an edge no Allym’yyn can tread. Yet the Nightmare God sought the ochre. The lessons of the Path are naught without the courage to act upon them. Between realms of sleep and dream, Phobettus found the urn.

In the realm of Void and Marr’dun, Phobettus found the red Dragryyum, the sacred ochre, sealed in an urn bound in shadow, for it is here that no thing can be created and all are cast to be destroyed. The Great Dreamer took the ochre, using it to write the lessons of the Path into his flesh. And as he wrote the shadows binding the urn reached out to him and whispered. They spoke of the truth, of the wisdoms of the unknown realms, and this pained the Nightmare God more than all he had written, more than the three hundred and forty-three wounds now burned into his frozen skin. When there was no more ochre left to write, he sought to free himself from the clinging shadows, but the chains held fast. Phobettus cried but none would hear. He fought but none resisted. He wept though none could see. And so it was the Great Dreamer fell silent and surrendered.

He surrendered the hunger which drove him to glory. He surrendered his will to rule and command. He surrendered his spirit to use the wisdoms of the unknown realms. And as Phobettus pulled free of the chains of shadow, they claimed that which he left behind. Phobettus fled the realm of Void in terror, the endless dark, to the world of dreamers and the wakeful. These aspects of the Nightmare God were not destroyed, but bound anew in a form akin to the void of its birth. And the form knew itself to be Hod, Lord of the Void Realms and the Dead, Herald of the Empty Stars and the Shifting of Ages. Hod was bound to the emptiness but was of the Void so it could not hold them. And so they sent out their Chains of Shadow to seek that which was theirs to keep.

The ochre Dragryyum burned at Phobettus’s skin and formed scabs which pained the Nightmare God. He clawed at the wounds and the scabs fell to the earth, forever casting the lessons from his mind. There they remained, for no mortal thing could touch them without fatal pain, nor could the wind nor rains alter the lessons of the Path, for they are essential to all things. And so it was that a hob'khadyynn discovered one of the Phobettyyn scabs and knew it for what it was, for this was in the days Phobettus spoke of his deeds to his creations though never openly. And so the hob took the scab upon his hook and called it Prime, the first. For never before had the presence of their god been so strongly evident.

And it was thus how Hod discovered the lost ochre, for the Void has a hand in all things of change and all that will die one day. And they sent their chains to bind the hob and claim him as kindred. Hod spoke openly to the hob, sharing the first lesson Phobettus had forsaken. And the hob saw his god’s betrayal and that there would be others who found the Primes, for there were many lessons of the Path. And so he named himself Ga’Hadth, the First Defiler, an Acolyte of Bremmen, History, for he saw that the discovery of these Primes would change the writings of time. To keep the Primes safe, Hod made the Acolyte immortal, as they held power over death itself. And this they would do for the eight to discover the remaining Primes.

And the Acolytes gathered the Primes together and constructed a mighty fortress in which to house the sacred texts and they named it Thuul, the Temple Without Time. They spread the wisdoms of the Primes and the sundering of the traitorous god, for only he had the power to use the lessons of the Path for the eternal glory of the people. These became known as the Abhorrent Wisdoms, for there were those who denied the treachery of Phobettus and clung to their fallacies. But there were those who heard the truth and sought the Acolytes. And they welcomed those who proved loyal, granting the Dark Gift to the worthy. These would become the deathrisen, the Dthoum’yyn, the warriors of Hod charged with the protection of his sacred ochre, for they could not perish without Hod’s blessing.

As time passed, their numbers grew slowly for they recruited only the worthy, living and dead alike. And these came in many forms, humanoid and beastial, spectral and infernal, each sculpted by the hands of his Acolytes according to Hod's will. The nine Acolytes were changed by their keeping of the Primes, but remained ageless as their followers slowly rot. For this they were praised and reviled, but none could stand before their might for they held the powers of Death and kept the wisdoms of the Primes in their mind. And they came to be known as the Dark Elders, for their bond to the Void was so strong they extinguished every light. And the Allym’yyn began to worry, for each day the Dthoum'yyn amassed their armies and grew closer to match the living. The Allym’yyn rallied their forces against the strongholds of the Dthoum’yyn, and so began the Great Undead War.

The war began in tragedy for the Allym’yyn, repelled by legions of Dthoum’yyn that rose after they were struck down. The passions of the war hungry ran cold upon the eternal deathrisen, for the dark god went among them and their ranks never dwindled. And so they sought ways to sever the chains of Hod. With the Primes in mind they constructed the Hobben dalamus and engram, two parts of a censer by which one can turn the alchemical forces of order and chaos to one’s will. With this they thought to disperse the chains that bound the deathrisen to this plane. But their plans were discovered by the Dark Elders, and they in turn cast a phylacteral basin to channel their power, the Dalamus of Maug’Aar’Uend, the second of the Dark Elders and the strongest in his art. And as they held the unadulterated Primes in mind, this Dalamus was stronger than any the Hobben could conceive. With the power of the Dalamus, the Dark Elders strengthened the bonds of Hod, and the Allym’yyn sought elsewhere.

Many weapons were contrived by the Allym’yyn to fight the Dthoum’yyn and all have since been lost, for few survived to record the history of the war and its tragedies and only the Dark Elders remain from that time. The defeat of the Demi-Lich Ackryrak’kel-Ashe-takesh signaled the end, and the Dark Elders knew they did not yet have the strength to conquer the Allym’yyn. And so they culled the Dthoum’yyn, leaving but a few in their service and casting the rest to the depths of the Dalamus, for they understood they must wait and gather their strength. The Dark Elders retreated to their hidden citadels, always leaving one to guard the Temple of Thuul and the Primes and so vanished from the eyes and mind of the world above.

For an age the Dark Elders reigned in secret, securing their fortresses in shadow and keeping the wisdoms of the Primes while planning their inevitable return. And all the while Phobettus festered, for while he cast the Dragryyum from his body his mind remained fractured. And as his mind crumbled there came Regret and Terror, for these were all that remained from his journey upon the Path. To save himself from further destruction, the Great Dreamer further divided himself from these so they might no longer poison his mind. And this sundering released a Dark Cloud over the world, a plague of destruction and putrefaction.

The Dark Cloud infested the wind and rode its currents, infecting all in its wake. Those who would survive would be changed forevermore, but they would be islands among a sea of fetid corpses and putrid decay. The Dark Cloud found all of the hidden places of the world and came to the Temple of Thuul. It was the Elder Khal’Rhun’Kannon who stewarded the Temple, the youngest of the Acolytes for she was the last to discover the miracle of the Primes. She watched as the Dark Cloud fell upon her servants and turned them into hives for insects of plague, and she saw how these insects swarmed in hunger and knew they were of the Void but not of Hod. She wept as they discovered the Primes and consumed them, a thousand wings stirring a maelstrom, a hundred mandibles tearing at the ochre. And these insects that devoured the Primes were transformed by them, becoming the lessons of the Path they embodied. They became Kussts - not the Primes which Phobettus first shed, but only the scabs that remained from old wounds. Khal’Rhun’Kannon wept at the destruction wrought by the Kussts and struggled to protect the beloved Primes. She reached for her favorite of these, and in her desperation destroyed the fragile Prime. And it was in this that she understood the Prime and came to embody it as the Kussts did. In this metamorphosis she became Grimm, to walk the Path and know its truths.

Grimm Khal’Rhun’Kannon wept at the loss of the Primes, and it was then that Regret came to her. The Grimm took the hook she had once carried as an Acolyte to carry the Primes and used its point to open her abdomen. And she cried for the Kussts to come to her, for she was as one of them and had the will to command lesser creatures. They flew to her and entered the hollow within her, and she came to house and steward the Primes as she had been charged by her peers. And so Regret left her.

Grimm Khal’Rhun’Kannon allowed the Kussts to enter her, and it was then that Terror came to her. For as each Kusst entered her hollow she came to know its Prime and the power held in the ochre Dragryyum. She panicked as the insects swarmed about her, understanding the force they contained as one by one they crawled inside her. They did not bite nor scratch, but the Grimm burned as she grasped the might of the Primes within which tore at her spirit and mind. She contorted and writhed, bones broke and flesh tore as the primal force continued to be pressed into a body too small and fragile. She became awash in shock and horror but endured as the Primes flooded her overburdened mind and the Kussts made host of her hollow body. As the last Kusst entered her body, the Grimm Khal’Rhun’Kannon’s spirit collapsed, unleashing the force of the Primes in a wave that caused the earth to quake for nine days. The Kussts splintered and propagated in the blast, spreading across the land and leaving the Grimm Khal’Rhun’Kannon a ruined, empty husk. And so Terror left her.

The Temple of Thuul was leveled and the shock echoed across the realms. Those bound by Hod’s chains felt it most strongly, and the Dark Elders above all others, for they were the closest bound to Khal’Rhun’Kannon. It came as a dying scream across the Void, and the Dark Elders recoiled at its force. They fled to the Halls of Crynnd, the final sanctuary of the Dthoum'yyn, formed by the Chains of Shadow, binding all of the realms to their inevitable fate. But the Halls were in turmoil from the power unleashed and the Elders were hurled in the nine necromyk directions. They were lost to one another and our heritage lost with them.


Who shall sing of the destruction of Thuul? of the failures of its keepers and the plight of their servants? Who shall tell of the nightmare witnessed in days forgotten and the tragedy of those who survived? Who hears the whispers of the Void, calling to those who would lie in peace to then rise hungry for that which must be reclaimed?


Rise, dreamer, from realms unknown. There is much work to be done.


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