The Infernals

 

The Infernals are Tear's malevolent deities. In virtually every religios tradition, the Infernals predate the Celestials, in some cases representing the primordial forces that existed before the Celestial Creators brought Order, Light and Life to the universe.

Infernals are universally monstrous, horrific and cruel. Morally, they represent the opposite of everything virtuous. They are bent on death, destruction, suffering and deception, and they embody many troubling, sinister taboos.

The Infernals do not have a hierarchy among themselves the way the Celestials do - any Infernal listed here would readily unleash their dread powers on any other Infernal here, just as they would on mortals. They have no allegiances among or between them and are generally speaking, independent, unaligned beings who answer to no one.

That said, many of these Infernals have their own underlings; demons, devils, and other horrors created or corrupted by the Infernals as a means to achieve their terrible ends. Within these Infernal hordes, various Lords and Overlords constant vie for power and for the favor of their Infernal Prince or Princess - which is at best fleeting and fickle.

This 'demoniu politiku' as it is called, in perhaps the very thing that makes it possible for the Celestials to keep the Infernals in check, for if the Infernals were ever able to organize and work in concert to destroy the works of Celestials, it is likely they would succeed.

Gib’l-Gorach the Ravenous

Gib’l-Gorach is represented as a slimy, black lamprey-like creature a thousand kilometers long, with a circular mouth ringed with billions of teeth, wide enough to devour a city in a single bite. The mouth is ringed by thousands of tentacles each with its own enormous mouth easily capable of swallowing an elephant whole. Gib’l-Gorach's presence drains the life from anything in a hundred kilometers - crops turn to dust and living creatures wither and collapse from weakness and starvation. Gib’l-Gorach is said to live deep underground where he feeds on Tear itself, hollowing out the world until one day there will be nothing left, and he will come to the surface to devour all of creation. When drought or famine hit a region, it is said that Gib’l-Gorach passed too close to the surface. Gib’l-Gorach's hunger is insatiable, and after he devours Tear, he will move on to devour Vehira and then to drink the fires of Azane and extinguish the sun.

Awhout-rout-yuth the Wretched

Awhout-rout-yuth is represented as a half-shredded tangle of torn-flesh and broken bones, constantly screaming and howling in ecstatic agony. His shambling form is dragged everywhere by a pack of rabid, insatiable, giant hyenas who tear at his flesh and feast on him eternally. Awhout-rout-yuth's screams and wails, combined with the howling laughter of the hyenas makes for a sanity-shattering melange of terror, laughter, agony, and bliss. In some sinister cults, Awhout-rout-yuth represents the suffering and cruelty of life that must be endured in order to find eternal salvation. Where Awhout-rout-yuth goes, reality begins to fail and minds unravel. Those who seek to escape the torment of existence become enslaved to him for eternity.

Mol-Imit the Undying

Mol-Imit is the Infernal Queen of the Undead; dedicated to the annihilation of all life, and to the elimination of death itself. She is described as having the head and shoulders of a beautiful woman with long, flowing black hair, coal-black eyes, and full red lips concealing vampiric fangs. She has four arms: the top two are porcelain white, and smooth, the bottom two dried, grey and dusty with long twisted fingers and jagged, overgrown fingernails. The middle section of her body is withered and desiccated and from her hips down she is a skeleton whose feet give way to dust.

The symbol of Mol-Imit is a white oval with a red infinity sign - often depicted as an eyeless mask in white porcelain with bright red lips. Those who seek ascendance to Mol-Imit's particular brand of lifeless immortality - perhaps as vampires, mummies or liches, might possess such masks, and rumours of necromantic cultists who wear such masks are a common in times of unrest, upheaval or mass-hysteria. Possession of such a mask would immediately put anyone under suspicion of necromancy, regardless of their status.

As Mol-Imit's principles reflect a fundamental rejection of even our most basic concepts, her symbol has also been generally as the flag of piracy in a blasphenous, if largely secular gesture. A black flag, with a white oval and a red infinity sign or red slash is considered a pirate flag anywhere on Tear, but does not carry the same direct associations with the undead generally or Mol-Imit specifically. Pirates also consider this interpreation of 'Mol-Imit as the ultimate rebel' to be their patroness, though, again this association has little religious implication and is considered to be a simplistic blasphemy, less significant in every way to the secular crimes of piracy itself.

While Mol-Imit is sometimes conflated with the Versai Golmongarion, the God of Death, these two figures are strongly opposed to one another. Those who claim to worship both are generally seen as being morbid, ignorant thugs. Sincere attempts to appeal to both will never be successful, and may end very terribly.

Kharag-Gar the Berserker

Most traditions hold Kharag-Gar to be the secret child of Sixthos and Scilisanthes, but the preponderance of evidence suggests his worship predates either, with some traditions holding him to predate all the Gods. In these traditions, Kharag-Gar is concieved of as a primordial storm of eternal chaos with all of existence - including the emergence of the Creators, the Siblings, the Versai, all of the other Infernals and the existence of Tear and mortals - to be just a moment of calm in the eye of the storm, soon to be thrown back into total chaos and annihilated.

Kharag-Gar is associated with volcanic eruptions, tornados, tidal waves, earthquakes and all manner of natural disaster. He is also commonly associated with war, though from a religious perspective this is inappropriate, and those who erroneously attribute him status as the God of War are committing a blasphemy. That said, the chaos and rage associated with him is not entirely constrained to geological forces; his influence is often used to explain or sometimes excuse, crimes of passion and childhood temper tantrums are fabled to be visitations of Kharag-Gar. Endearingly, children's first chaotic scribblings that resemble people are said to be their 'little Kharags'.

Kharag-Gar's symbol is a bloody hand-streak, and on the battlefield, many warriors will invoke his name while slicing open their palms and running their hands over their faces, and prayers to him may be incorporated into rituals (performed with or without ingestion of toxins or potions) intended to induce a berserker state. While appeals to the Infernals are almost universally outlawed, most armies will overlook this on the battlefield, as enforcing such laws would be infeasible, and turning a blind-eye may actually be beneficial.

Shishish the Shadowed One

Shishish is the most mysterious and nebulous of the Infernals. In many cultures she is taken simply as a bogeyman - a tale told to warn children against misbehaviour. In other cultures, she is cast as a murderous shade who claims her victims in the night leaving no evidence aside from a pale, wide-eyed corpse that appears to have died of terror. Some religious traditions hold Shishish to merely be a misinterpretation of Uleila, and not an Infernal at all. In any case, Shishish is the Infernal most commonly dismissed as being merely a myth, or omitted from the Infernal pantheon entirely.

Some religious scholars, however, argue that all of these ambiguities that surround who or what Shishish is, or whether she even exists are in fact the clearest indicator of existence. If Shishish does exist, they insist, such confusion and obfuscation is exactly the context she would foster in order to remain hidden and to do her dark work.

While Infernal worship is rare and typically forbidden, many thieves and spies secretly worship Shishish and carry charms or trinkets to appeal to her for protection. Makeshift shrines to Shishish are not uncommon in abandoned buildings, or the corners of sinister alleyways frequented by criminals. Sometimes, within clandestine organizations or even within the covert branches of well-known organizations, indoctrination into higher levels of power requires swearing allegiance to Shishish or making some sort of reconciliation of Shishish and Uleila.

P’ut-Pa-Guhk the Vomitous

P’ut-Pa-Guhk is an indescribable shamble of twisted, malformed and diseased limbs; arms and legs rolling over one another in a tangled heap to propel an elongated, disease-ridden torso that coughs and chokes and drags its erupting boils over the ground as it shambles forth. P’ut-Pa-Guhk is automatically infected by any disease, and suffers from and propagates all of them, but cannot be destroyed by disease. The stench of his approach can incapacitate people from a kilometer, and anyone within a hundred meters of this monstrosity risks being infected by some horrific disease.

Plagues are said to be caused by the visitation of P'ut-Pa-Guhk, and those who suffer from particularly gruesome diseases may be accused of being in league with him. Some who suffer particularly horribly have even been known to openly praise P'ut-Pa-Guhk and to draw glyphs and symbols to him using their fluids. In the majority of documented cases of these so-called Infernal worshippers, the heretic in question is a disease-infested prisoner, probably seeking to provoke a quick death sentence as a way to escape their suffering.

Loab the Appellate

Loab has no fixed form, and she can choose to take the form of anyone, anywhere, at any time. While prayers to deities are commonly referred to as 'appeals', the word has a specific connotation in the case of Loab, who is known as 'the Appellate'. Appeals to Loab take the form of a ritualized request for the death of a particular individual. The specifics of the ritual to be performed are secret, or possibly lost, but the belief is that if the ritual is properly performed, Loab will present the Appellant with a path to murder their target and get away with it.

Loab's domain is not murder in general - sadly murder does not require Infernal intervention - rather Loab's domain is deceptive murder and her Appellants are specifically those who aim to murder with forethought and planning and who aspire to get away with it. Thus, Loab is worshipped in secret by assassins, and those who have done wrong (even if not murder) will often secretly keep an idol to her in hopes she will protect their wrong-doing from discovery.

Ch’mch’m Chotl the Forsaken

In a certain sense, Ch’mch’m Chotl is the most benign of all Infernals, as she is seen as the adoptive mother of orphans and unwanted children. Most religious teachings even hold that she legitimately oversees and cares for these unfortunate souls until they find loving homes or grow to fend for themselves. There are orphanages named for her, and nursery rhymes about 'Mama Chimi', though direct worship of her remains a serious offense in most places.

While Ch’mch’m Chotl's adoption of abandoned children is redeeming, it is her coersion of mortals into blasphemous, criminal, or otherwise immoral unions that makes her truly despicable. In virtually all religions, regardless of their various and often complicated positions on what is righteous versus blasphemous sexuality, everything on the blasphemous side is typically attributed to the domain of Ch’mch’m Chotl.