The Abyss

The Abyss is a plane within the Elemental Chaos and is the home of the daemons.
==History==
===The Obyriths===
The oldest myths and legends tell of the obyriths, a race of vile entities that once presided over the remains of a dying universe. In the last age of their race, the obyriths breached the barrier between their realm and another by pushing a shard of uttermost evil through the fissure between realities. They hoped to corrupt and enslave the most powerful beings of this universe with the shard, and then rebuild the planes in their own vile image. Eons passed as the obyriths slowly died, but when only a handful of their kind remained, the plan they had enacted so long ago finally came into fruition. A powerhungry deity known as Tharizdun seized the shard of evil, and at once his mind and spirit was corrupted and the god was driven to madness. The obyriths demanded that Tharizdun plant the shard of evil in the Astral Sea in exchange for total dominion over the realm. Instead, the mad god travelled to the farthest reaches of the cosmos and placed it in a primordial expanse of the churning Elemental Chaos in an attempt to seize the realm for himself.
===Birth of the Abyss===
The planting of the seed of evil in the Elemental Chaos unleashed power like that realm had never seen before. The nascent evil of the obyrith's realms flared one last time as the black flame, exploding through a yawning vortex that formed where the seed was cast down. Forced to act even though their plans had gone astray, the obyriths allowed themselves to be drawn through the vortex as their own realm was consumed and finally destroyed. The obyriths had seemingly won their prize - a realm in which their evil could se spawned anew. But as the tear in the fabric of reality closed, Tharizdun faced off against his would-be masters. The vortex that formed around the shard was the Abyss, growing within the Elemental Chaos even as Tharizdun and the obyriths fought to control it. In a battle that raged for eons, the mad god tore through the stuff of the nascent Abyss, following the shard of evi and calling forth minions from its burgeoning substance. The first demons howled in fury at their creator's commands, throwing themselves at the obyriths in wave after suicidal wave. The shard of evil had granted Tharizdun far more power than the obyriths could ever have predicted. Instead of a puppet, they faced a being of unmatched strength and absolute evil. Only by working together did the last twelve obyriths stave off destruction and, over the course of endless battles, force the mad god into a stalemate. As both sides withdrew to plot the other's destruction, the growth of the Abyss settled and slowed. Beings outside the newly created realm took notice of it for the first time.
===The Prince of Demons===
Drawn by whispers promising power and dominion over the unfolding realms of creation, the first primordials entered the Abyss. The shattered realm they observed within the vortex was thoroughly corrupted, but these creatures were unconcerned with morality and pressed on. Eventually, they came upon a great, blood-red ocean, and they knew they had reached the heart at last. Floating there in the shallows of the Blood Sea, the shard of evil called out for one strong enough to step forward and claim it. The first to step forth was a petulant primordial of unbridled fury called Demogorgon. As Demogorgon waded into the turbulent surf, however, another being rose up from the darkened depths beneath the sea. The interloper, an obyrith called Dagon, challenged Demogorgon for the right to claim the shard. As they fought a battle that changed the sea into a bloody storm, a third being crawled up from a hitherto unseen pit to claim the shard as his own. Obox-ob, a loathsome obyrith of putrescence and filth, had become the first Prince of Demons.
===Final Formation ===
Despite the unparalled power he gained as Prince of Demons, Obox-ob was not the full master of that power. As it had with Tharizdun, the shard compelled its wielder to plant it in the Astral Sea. Obox-ob, suffering under the shard's powerful weight, struggled to carry it forth from the Abyss and complete the purpose for which his kind had created it. However, the primordials Demogorgon, Orcus, and Baphomet, already in the throes of demonic transformation, feared rightly that Obox-ob's actions would grant him control over all the cosmos. They attacked the Prince of Demons before he could reach the Astral Sea, flinging Obox-ob and the shard down again into the vortex beneath which the Abyss had formed. Where Obox-ob struck, the Abyss was sundered, forming a deep fissure into which the sea drained away in a boiling storm. As they followed the newly-created Blood Rift into the lightless depths, Demogorgon, Orcus, and Baphomet were finally transformed into demon lords. Yet as they did so, they felt their power begin to wane and so they retreated. In time, more pits began to appear across the arid surface of the Abyss. Exploration of these chasms whisked creatures through extradimensional conduits to uncharted regions of that realm. Within these new layers, the demon lords established their demesnes, bending the very fabric of the Abyss to their indomitable will.
===The Cult of Elemental Evil===
The intrusion of the primordials into the Abyss pushed Tharizdun to act. He tried to force the demon lords into slavery, but their combined power proved too great for him. Rather than risk defeat in single combat, Tharizdun strove to marshal the power of the Elemental Chaos and its denizens in his bid for universal domination. The primordials, already angered with the gods' meddling in the affairs of the world, were easily swayed by Tharizdun's call to arms. They believed that if the mad god could retrieve the shard of evil now buried in the heart of the Abyss, it would ensure their triumph over the gods in the Elemental Chaos. Calling himself the Elder Elemental Eye, Tharizdun attracted powerful followers, only a few of which knew him as the god he was. Chief among Tharizdun's lieutenants was a powerful primordial called Miska the Wolf-Spider, who was charged with assaulting the Abyss to find the shard of evil. But by then the attention of the gods had been drawn to the Abyss and the primordials who had entered it. When Tharizdun's plans were discovered, his immortal kin attacked. Though a powerful foe, the mad god was overcome by the combined might of the gods. Locking him away in a remote abyssal layer, they called him the Chained God and struck his name from history. Tharizdun's armies were scattered, but were not yet defeated. Marshaled by Miska and the Princes of Elemental Evil, the host fought on.
===Queen of Chaos===
Above the cosmic maelstrom of the Abyss hangs a cruel, stationary sun. Once every milennium, an immense orbiting mote of elemental earth eclipses this star, blanketing the Abyss in total darkness. It was in the first of these rare periods of occulted twilight that the most powerful obyrith - called the Queen of Chaos - saw a chance to seize the power over which the demon lords and Tharizdun's followers fought. As the eclipse commenced, a mass battle was raging on the Plain of a Thousand Portals. The armies of Obox-ob were defending the layer's portals against Miska the Wolf-Spider and his armies. As Miska's army eventually cornered the weakened Prince of Demons and they were about to gain access to a portal that was believed to lead to the shard of evil, the Queen of Chaos struck. On the bleak plain, the powerful obyrith slew Obox-ob, dethroning the Prince of Demons even as she offered his reign to the Wolf-Spider. Having long feared that Tharizdun might never be freed, Miska was already succumbing to the call of the Abyss even before the obyrith's offer. He thus gave his alleigance to the Queen of Chaos in exchange for her aid in destroying the gods of the Astral Sea. With the might of the Abyss and the armies of the Elemental Chaos behind her, the Queen of Choas was suddenly vaulted into a position of near-absolute power, looking past the Abyss with the dream of controlling all creation.
===Chaos United===
The alliance of the Queen of Chaos and Miska the Wolf-Spider began a climatic epoch of the Dawn War. With the combined forces of chaos batterings its deities, the Astral Sea seemed lost. However, as the gods' bastions fell, an exarch of Moradin and seven angels of Bahamut known as the Wind Dukes of Aaqa worked in secret to craft the Rod of Law. With this powerful weapon, the gods hoped to defeat the hosts of chaos once and for all. In the end, it was what turned the tide of the war in the Astral Sea. It broke the will of the invaders when it was used to strike down Miska the Wolf-Spider, then banish the Prince of Demons to an unknown plane. The shattered Rod of Law became known as the Rod of Seven Parts as Miska's armies retreated into the Elemental Chaos. The Queen of Chaos, her power dimished and her will broken, dissipated back into the Abyss. Her true fate remains unknown. While the forces of the Queen of Chaos were dying and in retreat, Demogorgon chose to act. Though content to stand behind their queen while she held power, the obyriths retreated into hiding as she fell. Having had the foresight to keep their true identities and nature a secret, the obyriths could not be targeted by demon lords who saw their power as a threat, but they were forced to watch in rage as Demogorgon asserted his claim as the Prince of Demons. After crushing his rivals and gathering their followers into a devastating force, Demogorgon repelled the forces of the Astral Sea from their assault of the Abyss.
===The Fallen Angel===
Even as the Queen of Chaos attempted overt conquest, others among the obyriths pursued more subtle plots. In the aftermath of Miska's failure and the obyrith queen's fall, Pazuzu slipped out of the Abyss in secret in order to stake his own claim to power. Making his way by secret portals to Tharizdun's prison, the obyrith presented himself to one of the deific guards there - an angelic paragon of chastity and virtue called Asmodeus. The angel listened as Pazuzu plied him with flattery and lamented that the gods had chosen to repay Asmodeus' loyalty with an eternity of service at a thankless task. This planted a seed of vanity and false pride within Asmodeus, who soon believed he was more righteous than the deity to whom he had sworn alleigance. Abandoning his duty to guard the Chained God, he stole a sliver of the shard of evil, forging it into a ruby-tipped rod of incredible power, and led an invasion of the Astral Sea in which his former divine master was slain. For his betrayal, Asmodeus and his infernal army were imprisoned in the dominion of his late master. This dominion became the Nine Hells, and the army became the devils. Milennia later, Asmodeus had become a deity in his own right, but still he hungered to return to the heart of the Abyss and steal an even more powerful fragment of the shard.
===The Blood War===
Over the next age, demons and devils destroyed each other on an uncounted number of battlefields. Evan as Asmodeus sought the power of the shard of evil, the demon lords sought to return his stolen fragment to its rightful resting place. Devils were soon pouring into the Abyss at an alarming rate, constructing iron fortresses and holding large stretches of the strategically significant Plain of a Thousand Portals. The forces of the demon lords drove the devils back, waging battle on the hellish planes of Avernus. For untold milennia, the Blood War raged with no end in sight. Then unexpectedly, recent centuries have seen the endless battle devolve into a state of sullen truce. On the heels of civil war in the Nine Hells and the constant struggles for power among the demon lords, the losses of the Blood War became too high a toll. 
==Powers of the Abyss==
*Baphomet is the metaphorical embodiment of the savage aspect of nature and the creator of the minotaurs. He is an aggressive, boastful demon lord with delusions of grandeur that infects his worshippers with blinding zealotry. The Horned King is easily angered and although he can be cunning, he prefers to act on impulse. He despises Yeenoghu and the goddess Melora. 
*Dagon, also known as the Prince of the Depths, is an obyrith and oldest living demon lord. He has the appearance of a giant sea-serpent with hundreds of tentacles and teeth the size of a man. Dagon possesses a treasure trove of lost knowledge and blasphemous secrets, which the obyrith will gladly bestow upon mortals for a steep price. Although they fought at first in the Blood Sea, Demogorgon is now the obyrith's greatest ally.
*Demogorgon is the two-headed Prince of Demons. His head and torso resembles that of a giant baboon, but tentacles are present where his arms should be and his legs and tail are reminiscient of a scorpion's. Demogorgon's heads, named Aameul and Hethradiah, both have different personalities. The former prefers deception while the latter craves destruction. They often disagree with one another but turn disagreement into their mutual advantage. Many demon lords desire his title, including Orcus and Graz'zt.
*Graz'zt is the schemer of the Abyss and is known as the Dark Prince. Formerly a devil general of Asmodeus, Graz'zt was charged with invading the Abyss and stealing the shard of evil. After conquering three layers, the Dark Prince rejected his heritage and became a demon lord. His appearance is that of a 7 foot tall human with obsidian skin, six small horns upon his head, and six digits on each hand and foot. He rules the city of Azzagrat, which is the largest settlement in the Abyss that isn't hostile to non-demonic visitors.
*Juiblex, the Faceless Lord, is the demon lord who rules over slime creatures. He has few mortal cultists and worshippers, but he cares little for them. He is perhaps the simplest of demon lords, both in appearance (a contorted mass of slime with the occasional eye) and in his goals. Put simply, Juiblex's goal is simply to exist and to destroy, kill, and corrode anything he can get his tendrils around. He is allied with Zuggtmoy, the Lady of Fungi.
*Orcus is the Demon Prince of the Undead and the greatest enemy of the Raven Queen. He commands legions of followers, both living and dead, and cults dedicated to him in the natural world are terrifyingly widespread. Living creatures seem to enrage him by their mere presence, and as such he has laid waste to countless mortal kingdoms. He has the appearance of a giant, red-skinned humanoid with powerful goat legs, a desiccated head similar to that of a ram, and great black wings that stir up a cloud of diseased air.
*Oublivae, Queen of Desolation, is believed to be the personification of the seed of evil. She stalks the empty wastelands, lurks within toppled ruins, and haunts the starry void between planes and worlds. Oublivae's eternal work is to divide what is united, isolate those divided pieces, and leave only lifeless, barren desolation in her destructive wake. She is fascinated with history, and her knowledge is rivalled only by that of Ioun, Vecna, and Graz'zt. 
*Pazuzu is an obyrith and Asmodeus' secret ally. He is a master manipulator and corruptor of mortal souls, and lusts after innocence, purity, and honesty more than anything else. He is one of the only demon lords that can walk on the mortal world, and as such can be summoned by uttering his name three times in succession. Pazuzu will often grant aid to those who summon him, but his assistance comes at a steep price. In exchange for his boon, Pazuzu requires a creature to swear utter obedience to him for a week - and takes full advantage of this service.
*Yeenoghu, the Beast of Butchery, is the 12-foot tall patron of the gnolls. His forces are one of the most powerful in the Abyss, but fortunately are almost constantly in a state of chaos. Always suspicious of treachery, he wears armour assembled from the pieces he scavenges on the battlefield. His pride is his flail, a weapon he assembled from the bones of a god he had slain in the Dawn War. He wars with Baphomet since both demons believe they should be the rulers of the natural world.
Orcus.jpg|Orcus
Demogorgon.jpg|Demogorgon
Graz'zt.jpg|Graz'zt
Dagon.jpg|Dagon
Oublivae.jpg|Oublivae
Baphomet.jpg|Baphomet
Pazuzu.jpg|Pazuzu
Yeenoghu.jpg|Yeenoghu
Category:World Backstory
Category:Miscellaneous Lore