Thirteen Horrors of the World

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== The Thirteen Horrors according to the Hithlone Citadel ==
=== Great Maw ===
See Holy City of Tents
=== Blackstone Prison Island ===
See Blackstone Prison Islands
=== Maelstrom ===
See Ortuga
=== The Nothing ===
See the Nothing
=== Great Temple of Uun ===
The Great Temple of Uun was one of the biggest temples in the ancient Merfolk Empire. Built around the year 100 BBE, it has served as the main temple of the capital of Akuwamaden for centuries. It was the preferred temple of adoration for the Cult of Uun, and many celebrations took place. The temple also became a great center for artists, as some of the most skilled artists and artisans made great works to decorate the temple, turning it into one of the biggest and most archetypical works of mefolk architecture, with organic curves and vibrant colors. So many works in honor of Uun were created that the depths of the temple were expanded to store the incredibly valuable works and treasures it received over the years.
After the Curse of Uun in 1660 ABE, the whole world began investigating the horror that had befallen the ancient Merfolk Empire. It was in the remnants of the Great Temple of Uun where truth of what had happened was revealed. The temple had gone into disrepair, as if it had artificially aged many centuries in the span of weeks, with the shadows projected by daylight acting unnaturally, sometimes taking the shape of screaming souls trying to escape their torment. The vibrantly colorful windows had been stained into all kinds of depressive grey, cracked and crizzled, with all faces contorted into impossible shapes, twisted into unrecognizable shapes. The lush gardens around it had become rotten, as if the plants themselves were in pain. But it was when the exploratory team went within when the true horrors were discovered: Within the murals, preserved nearly intact as a form of mockery to the fate of the rest of the empire, a single word was recorded. Written in liquid dark gold, the last message of the merfolk god: “Bored”.
From that point on, no one has even dared to go to within the Great Temple of Uun. The Curse of Uun, now clear for all to see, has kept even the bravest gravediggers from even getting near the ancient temple, consigned to its fate as the remainder of a god’s cruelty to its people. While many believe the massive treasures of Uun are still there, no one really dares to take their chances robbing the cruel god.
=== Cocoon Islands ===
See Cocoon Islands
=== Cursed Battlefield ===
The Cursed Battlefield is a massive barren area of land occupying the region Cardammon Plateau. Historically the area had always been a bleak and desolate area, with little more besides a sea of red grass. However, the place became a key strategic location, as it was there where the divine dragon egg was discovered, triggering a series of events that led to the infamous Battle of Empires. A clash of unparalleled proportions between three of the biggest empires at the time, the unleashed horrors during the fight tainted the land irreparably, and ever since then, it has been considered a haunted place, where no sane man would want to be anywhere near it. However, the sheer scale of the battle and the powers that participated in it means that the remnants of the battle still linger there, making many foolish thieves and graverobbers to try their fortunes on the land, dismissing the warnings of those wiser than them and meeting their end in the misty lands of the Cardammon Plateau.
Those who have travelled through it and survived to tell the tale mention horror stories. Miles upon miles of toxic mist covering the land, forming shapes of the warriors that violently died during the fight, still screaming in agony. The land bleeds dark matter, boiling and bubbling while flowing in rivers, causing horrible chemical burns to the barest of touches. The land is scattered full of tens of thousands of skeletons, many of them covered by the rusted and rotted ancient armor they once wore. Many of them became animated by the foul magic unleashed at the time, and will attack anything they see on sight, sometimes seeing like mountains of skeletons rising at once in tides of rotten bones and broken swords. The magical effects of the land go beyond mere undead, however. The few creatures that lived in the area and managed to survive the torrent of magical energies unleashed became twisted and mutated, seemingly infected by the pain and hatred of the fallen warriors, ripping and tearing anything they see. Monstrous constructs shriek and clank around, somehow able to move despite their fuel having ran out millennia ago. Time itself broke when the final weapons of the khenomeri went off, and in many areas of the plateau, bubbles of unreality float around the area, seemingly invisible due to the fog. All those who touch then will have their perception of time horrifically shattered, with tales of young explorers suddenly aging to dust in mere moments after getting in contact with one of these, all while experiencing every second of their passing lives with excruciating detail as the world is seemingly frozen around them.
Few people dare to venture through the deadly realm. Outside of a few crazed treasure hunters that often meet their demise in there, the only people who frequent it are necromancers and the undead. In particular, the Vzdoruye have crossed the Cursed Battlefield many times in search of great bodies to take for their necromantic experiments. Indeed, the Vzdoruye consider this realm as a promised land of sorts, and will try to pilgrim to the deeper parts of it to conduct dark rituals.
=== Terminus ===
See Terminus
The abandoned city of Terminus is one of the most remote places in the entirety of Giantstep. A city deep within the Eldritch Jungle, knowledge of the fabled ruins originally came from legends shared between some populations south of the Mona Ki Ngi Xica Savanna. These groups often told legends of “the black city at the end of the world”, and how the gods brought them low due to their hubris. However, these tales were taken as local folklore until an expedition led by bumese explorer Skor Lodygin. A seemingly maddened venture, he had heard of the tales of the Mona Ki Ngi Xica and assumed they must have had a grain of truth, and thus the world traveler started his voyage across the deadly jungle, reaching it 3.011 ABE with a tenth of the people the expedition started with. In his journals, he described the “Black City of Terminus, the End of the World”, a massive forsaken city made entirely of ebony stone. Strange pyramids and buildings with seemingly no identifiable purpose at all littered a wide area free of vegetation, as if the presence of the city killed all plantlife around and within it.
Very little was left of the city other than its architecture. Neither art nor treasure, nor really any remnants of its past inhabitants remained. Other than a small couple of trinkets and a strange sarcophagus, impossible to open, the crew exited the city empty handed, but not without first discovering the “World's Steep Fall”, a small piece of space right on the edge of the world where the strange mirage phenomenon that happens at the edge of the step seemingly fails. The explorers described looking across this small gap and seeing impossible colors and “looking right into the eyes of the unknowable truths of the universe”, though they still could not cross beyond it. At their return to Bumi, Skor Lodygin managed to finally open the casket, finding it disappointingly empty. However, after this act, a terrible malady befell Bumi, known as the "Devil's Scourge", spreading rapidly through Scimitarian and Western Giantstep. While the disease killed many during these days, it became truly catastrophic in Bumi, as if it was a punishment for daring to open the sarcophagus. In 3.026 ABE, the bumese people, in desperation, fell into the cult of Mg’umba, to beg for its aid in defeating the curse that threaten to eradicate all life in Bumi. To this day, the name of Skor Lodygin is cursed in Bumi for bringing them doom into their lands.
=== Sea of Bile ===
See Sea of Bile
The Sea of Bile is one of the main oceans in the world, bordering the southeastern edge of the world and the Leviathan Gulf. It is one of the less traversed oceans in the world, as there is no identified landmass within its waters, with sailors only adventuring there to investigate the strange nature of the sea or to hunt the monstrous fauna that live there. The Sea of Bile has been a poorly understood place, as the sheer distance between it and the nearest landmass caused that only the most recent vessels have a chance to reach it and go back safely, though rumors and legends about the area exist since ancient times, suggesting a previous arrival to the Sea of Bile. However, the most probable thing is that the currents bring from time to time carcasses from the strange insectoid fauna to the far shores, creating myths about the faraway sea.
The waters of the Sea of Bile contain a series of strange substances that gives it a sickly appearance, first becoming a nauseating green to vomit yellow and then a rusted red tint. The density and the viscosity of the waters result in all travel through them being incredibly dangerous, as some areas are so viscid and thick that ships simply get stuck, with the local winds being unable to move the vessels back again, condemning the crew to a cruel starvation. The currents also bring rotting gasses which can poison the air, the most dangerous of them being easily flammable, which often results in fiery explosions during thunderstorms, where lightning ignites vast swathes of the sea into burning infernos, giving the few explorers who witness this horror nightmares for the rest of their lives. The area is also littered with horrible disfigured fauna that has evolved to survive in the extreme habitat of the Sea of Bile, being particularly noteworthy the giant flies and mosquitoes that move around the surface of the sea, feeding of anything organic that surface from below the waters.
Ancient tomes discovered in the ruins of the Merfolk Empire could potentially bring some light to the nature of the Sea of Bile. The documents mention the legend of the “Leviathan”, a colossal creature that was cursed by Uun to serve as food forever at the depths of the ocean for daring to challenge his divine authority. While legends about gods punishing mortals and monsters are not rare, the mention of Uun and the knowledge of Uun’s nature after the Curse of Uun give this tale much more weight. It would also explain the nature of the sea, as the constantly rotting colossus below the waves could explain the corrupted nature of the local waters.
=== Mossovoy Bone Dome ===
See Mossovy
=== Okhost Islands ===
The Okhost Archipelago is a series of islands located between the Carisibi Sea, the Marisibu Sea and the Leviathan Gulf. It include seven major island and hundreds of smaller islets, all well known for their constant volcanic activity. The islands have a constant spew of cinder and ash, frequent enough to have showers of ash on a nearly daily basis. This has made the islands adopt a jet black appearance, with the plant life growing on them growing differently depending on the island: some have lush green vegetation adapted to the soot while other islands are barren rocks where life is nearly impossible, as the sunlight is completely blocked by the floating ash. This combines with frequent tropical storms that makes travelling through the islands a daunting proposition, though since the birth of the isthmus connecting Squid Island with Giantstep, it has become an inevitable point of crossing in one wants to reach the southern areas of the world. Due to this constant ashen pollution, the air around the islands is often unbreathable, making the land mostly uninhabitable but a handful of islands. However, the islands are not empty, as the arrival of Vandervax the Vile, the True Lich, turned the islands into the Necrocracy of Okhost.
It is unclear when exactly Vandervax took control over the Okhost Archipelago, with many suggesting that Vandervax arrived at the islands between the 5th and the 6th century ABE. Whatever the case, from that point on, the archipelago became the biggest concentration of undead in the world. Ash and smoke could not harm the undead, and the few populated primitive populations living in isolated islands fled in panic, taking down the pirate centers. It was in one such centers where Vandervax founded the city of Vukasin, in an area relatively protected by the ashen storms, and near a spot within the eastern shore of Provonost Island. This protection is also reinforced by sorcery, making a small bubble where the living can pass through, making Vukasin is the only place where the living can visit in relative safety. Even then, those travelers who go there describe the place as surreal, tenebrous and immensely uncanny, as the undead do not need to mimic any semblance of normal lifestyle anymore, making the living feel like they do not belong. Realistically, only those wanting to become undead and drunig travelers needing to stop on the city ports to resupply to continue their travels south visit the island for any extended period of time.
The rest of the islands paint a lugubrious picture, as tens of thousands of undead occupy the land while the ash hides the sunlight, with the deep blue shade of undead eyes illuminating the volcanic shadows. Over the millennia, Vandervax has accumulated a veritable legion of undead, with rumors talking about him reserving his strength to one day launch a crusade against the world to rid the step of vampires.
=== Demon Breaches ===
See Succubus Breaches
=== Martyr Island ===
Martyr Island, also known as the Island of Skulls, is the biggest island of the Oroma Archipelago. The island is the most volcanically active of the archipelago’s islands, and the home of the magma dragons, making it an incredibly dangerous place to travel to. Most of the island is covered by a wild and dense jungle foliage, many of the plant species are unique in that they are able to resist a great deal of heat, while also seeding in such a way that the frequent magma flows stimulate them to throw great amounts of floating seeds into the air, which then grow quickly in the safer areas. The clouds of ash spewed by the volcanoes allow the soil to recover rapidly. This makes Martyr Island’s landscape a very shifting one, as parts of the island are growing and shrinking depending on the lava flow, while entire swathes of forest grow quickly to replenish those that are burnt by the molten rock.
At the center of the island, there lies a massive volcanic caldera, going deep within the island. The temperatures in there are extraordinarily high, and only the most prepared of travelers can even get near the mouth without suffering severe heat wounds. This area is the home of the magma dragons, descendants of the mythical dragons of old. These dragons are a far cry from their legendary forbearers, having little sentience of their own, acting like brute beasts more than wise beings, while also being smaller in size. They will happily tear each other apart in brutal bouts to the death, littering the island with their remains, also feeding the fleeting patches of forest. Many broken bones and skulls can be see covering the island, and some adventurers have made a living of taking these remnants to sell back on the mainland, though that, alongside the blue banana harvesting, is an extremely dangerous way of life.
However, all of these creatures will act, either due to instinct or some remaining bit of reason, bring the biggest bones of their slain opponents to the deepest part of the volcano, where the dragongod Sarrunis resides. The dragon is believed to live at the deepest areas of the inner volcano, where the heat is such that even the other dragons cannot get near unscathed. Legends tell that Sarrunis is the progenitor of all the other magma dragons, and that she passes the eons sleeping. Rumors also say that the size of Sarrunis is such that she can no longer exit the volcano. If she wanted to do so, the force she would need to exert would cause such an eruption that would erase the islands from the map, and cause devastation in all nearby coasts.
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