The Cess of Kyuss

The Cess of Kyuss is a book recovered from the library of Humbleblossom Estate.

## Description

Focusing in part on the Cult of Kyuss, the Cess of Kyuss also details the fallen demigod's origins, intentions and allegiences, particularly with regard to servitude in the name of its master, Orcus.

## Research

### Completed by Vaedryn'Drada Arkenviir

As any banker from Tulis or Mol Boramm would be like to tell you, as they have told me, a cess is a levy paid upon goods, services or other contracts - and so seems out of place when discussing the nature of the entity known as Kyuss, sometimes also referred to as the Master of Maggots, the Marrow Lord and the Worm that Walks. But nonetheless, the Cess of Kyuss does exist, a levy placed upon the lives taken in his name - past, present, and no doubt future. The original of Kyuss has been long speculated, but it seems likely that he, alongside Orcus, the Demon Lord with which he is most commonly associated started life as mortal beings upon another plane of existence. Through foul and sinister magics alongside cycles of destruction, determination and death, both have found themselves transformed into powerful entities wielding control over such matters themselves. Worship to these entities is few and far between, quickly quelled by the Realms - and most often rarely distinguished from reverence of a member of the Malign, or rarer still the Darkbringer.

Nonetheless, it is through the documentation, holy texts and other assorted ravings and rituals of the Sect of the Tenebrous - a continuously splintering, self-feuding and reforming cult fundamentally associated with the concept of unifying the Realms through undeath - that we know more of Kyuss, and the toll enacted by his will upon Ahlus. The first to find folly where those that initially found themselves enamoured by Kyuss' doctrine, who, in his actions to transcend his own mortality, ordered his clerics to butcher his congregation before consuming the mortal essence of those priests them in turn. Such a ritual garnered the attention of Orcus, Demon Lord of the Undead who offered Kyuss the immortality through undeath that he coveted. In a foul mockery of the Celestial Citadels of the Ahlusian Pantheon, Kyuss, now ascended, carved a space for himself in the night sky, warping the Far Realm to infest and rot the interior of a star. It should be that while its appearance was known to waver and shift on the canvas of night, it has no longer been visible since the Year of Worms and so the foul green haze corrupting the night sky that marked days, weeks and months of sickness and decay is but a distant memory to most.

The reason for this is placed more often than not at the feet of Kyuss' master, Orcus. Having long since turned his attention to the eternal conflicts with the Nine Hells, it is believed that Orcus seeks out a sufficiently powerful soul with which to empower Kyuss, as to unleash his serf onto the Prime Material Plane once more to enact his goals. Seeing the possibility of the destruction of an Archduke within their homeplane as this opportunity, Orcus and his hordes of the undead join the ranks of the Abyss, fighting with blade and bone alike upon the banks of the Styx and beyond. Despite this, it is said that the Lord of the Undead surveys the Planes on the prowl for other befitting founts, but giving the nature of Demon Lords, their true intentions can rarely be accurately speculated upon - particularly so when one has not rhyme nor reason to visit the wasteland heaths, dark forests and desolate valleys of the one hundredth-and-thirteen layer of the Abyss to ask him directly.