Tarrasque

Tarrasque, during the God's War

### Other Names

Heaving Earth, Thunder Underground, the Devourer of Souls, the Eater of The Dead, the Half-Demon Goddess

### Precepts

Carnage, cataclysm, corpses left behind by war, destruction, disasters, earthquakes, fissures, hills, hippopotamuses, mastodons, rock slides

### Symbol

Her own terrifying visage, usually a great armoured reptile, a mastodon or a mixture of the two.

### Sacred Colour

Black, red and brown

Tarrasque's holy symbol.

### Alignment

Chaotic Evil

Tarrasque (often spelled Tarasque) is the goddess of carnage, destruction and disasters. Unlike other divinities, she is believed to have only the mind of an animal.

Tarasque dwells in the Underworld's deeper reaches, far below Vaishun. Her lair (or perhaps it is more accurate to call it a prison) is a vast pit fed by both the Calderas of Ignis and the terminus of the River of Urashnys. The bottom of this chamber is wreathed in eternal flame and in the centre of this duat a colossal throne of titanic bones rests. Upon this throne, Tarasque bellows, belches and roars as she chews upon and devours the souls of the corrupt and malicious which are deposited into her waiting jaws by the river which evaporates to steam far above. It is believed that the sounds this half-demon goddess emits are so deafening that they are the cause of all earthquakes and tremors.

Tarasque was captured by the other gods upon her birth and confined within the ground as a form of titanic pet. The Primordial Nito decided that she would be used as a mechanism through which the demon-corrupted souls of the dead could be removed from Creation and deposited in the Outer Darkness to join with Oblivion. Her demonic essence allows that which passes into her stomach to be transported beyond the realms of Order and into the Void. The broken shards of souls that shatter under Nito's hammer are carried to Tarasque's pit by the River of Urashnys. It is unknown why this goddess possesses such limited intelligence, and some theologians theorise that she was in fact cursed by other divinities to her current disabled state. Some believe that it was a conspiracy by the gods, others that it was vengeance wreaked upon her by Oblivion after she defected from the Court of Chaos.

The primary worshippers of Tarasque are various insane bands of zimbwis crazed enough to revere a goddess that cares not for them and would destroy them in an instant. Also, the majority of ghouls dwelling within Vaishun worship this dread goddess and revel in the eating of the hearts of their victims in emulation of the deity's soul-devouring. Whether or not this tradition was established through the goddess's intent is unknown, but this is doubtful the case. Being mindless, Tarasque grants no mysticism to her followers and is likely not even aware of their existence. She has no dogma, although her worshippers seem to be intent on wide-spread mayhem and destruction, which they believe will eventually lead to her release to the surface world, and the consequent end of all harmonious living.

Only one temple exists to Tarasque, standing enormous in the centre of the plains of Haneiya, an imposing edifice of stone and bone erected long ago by her demented followers. Within this infested sanctuary of the damned, there accumulate the remains of animals large and small, as well as the slaughtered carcasses of the cult's sapient victims. While dangerous and repellent, this temple is known well to contain almost every kind of bone within its carved and gore-stained pillars, and adventurers often venture there to recover alchemical components for employers. Scarce indeed are those who return successful, if they return at all.