Orcus

## The Grave's Shade

* Artwork
* Symbol

Orcus, known also as the Grave's Shade, was a Demon Lord of the Abyss.

Formerly amongst the most powerful of Demonkind, their power has been diminished significantly enough that it remains uncertain whether they still exist.

## Description

Bloated and swollen, the bulbous form of Orcus was steadied by a pair of perpetually-flapping bat's wings and a long barbed tail. Clad in armour hewn from thousands of bones bound tight to fur and flesh alike, Orcus' head was said to be that of a goat, though rended to bleached bone, within which burning eyes of scarlet-red raged. As if always bathed in the light of a blood moon overhead, Orcus appeared to be forever drenched in gore, with the husks of rotten entrails forming a grisly trail wherever he deigned to creep.

Orcus sought silence across the planes, for life anywhere upon them echoed as irate and intrusive as a rat gnawing and nibbling within his skull. He was served by the ascended being Kyuss, whom carved a space in the Canvas of Night by warping the Far Realm to infect and rot the interior of a star.

## Recent History

According to the planar researcher Elerus Tas, writing in the tome Smoke over the Battlefield, Orcus' presence within the Abyss seems to have all but faded, leaving their layer of Thanator more devoid of life than it had been before. It is suspected that the cause of this was likely through the combined efforts of Demogorgon and Graz'zt, as well as a seemed betrayal by Kyuss, but this is ultimately speculation and unconfirmed - as well as where the power once wielded by the Grave's Shade now resides.

## Thanator

A few visions of the central Plane under Orcus' control have been granted to those unfortunate to dabble in the machinations of the Grave's Shade. Most notable amongst these was experienced by Velkyn Cormrael after he attempted to attune to the Osteal Spur and subsequently found his soul bound in service to the Demon Lord.

*The shroud of darkness lumbers forth, an expanse shifting in rhythmic gloom pulsing from horizon to the shattered stone beneath your boots. Obelisks of granite and andesite pierce through dirt and ash and powdered bone, black iron gates surround disturbed crypts that sprawl to left, to right, and as far as your sight stretches an expanse of desecrated sepulchres and ossuaries lie quiet and still. In the crimson light of a blood moon looming overhead, your steps are guided, compelled, dictated, into a chapel sundered and sullied.*

*A weight lingers, a weight that guides your gaze. No grave untouched, no sarcophagus intact, no coffin unpillaged. The grind of bone against bone, the buzzing of flies swarming over the stench of rot. And in the shadows of gloom mockeries of life haunt, swaying back and forth in vigil eternal.*

*And yet, silence. Silence. Until he speaks.*

*“You are mine, blood of the realms beneath. Not the Spider Bitch who parades as a figure maternal. Not the Branded One, who seethes in exile. Not even the grimalkin Aita, who deals in beginnings but neglects that an ending must in time come for all.”*

*“Each scrap of skin is mine to tear and flay. Each drop of blood, mine to fester and congeal. Every shred of flesh, mine to putrefy and rot. Each and every fragment of bone, mine to splinter and shatter.”*

*“Your soul is mine, and you will serve - or I will make it an agony.”*

*Searing, a pain rends across your chest, verdant flames rising in an instant to burn away cloth and armour alike, and then hungering for the flesh beneath. Bone blackens alacritous, carbonised in an abyssal flame, and yet through eyeless sockets you watch onwards, an emerging skeletal form held only by wisps of cindered ligament. You go to cry out, to scream, to weep, but there is noise not, not for muffled sounds spawned of consternation, for no breath lingers in mouldering lungs thrown into panic, no strength still resides within the putrid muscle of throat, lip or tongue.*

*No.*

*No.*

*For only one thing remains.*

*There is only silence, agonising silence.*