> [!infobox]+ Tharizdun > > <div class="infobox-coat-of-arms"> > <div style="text-align: center; padding: 5px;"> > <div class="character-name-container"><div class="character-main-name">Tharizdun</div><div class="character-epithet">the Chained Oblivion</div></div> > </div> > </div> > <div style="text-align: center; padding: 0.2em;"> > <img src="TharizdunSymbol.png" alt="Tharizdun" style="max-width: 250px; height: auto;" class="internal-image"> > </div> > <table class="infobox-table"> > <tr><td class="infobox-label">Province</td><td class="infobox-data">God of Darkness, Destruction and Madness</td></tr> > <tr><td class="infobox-label">Alignment</td><td class="infobox-data">Chaotic Evil</td></tr> > <tr><td class="infobox-label">Symbol</td><td class="infobox-data">A crooked seven-pointed star of chains around a broken spiral</td></tr> > <tr><td class="infobox-label">Holy Day</td><td class="infobox-data"><em>None</em></td></tr> > <tr><td class="infobox-label">Type</td><td class="infobox-data">Unknown <a href="Deities.md" class="internal-link">Deity</a></td></tr> > <tr><td class="infobox-label">Home Plane</td><td class="infobox-data">Chained in the deepest layer of the <a href="Abyss.md" class="internal-link">Abyss</a>, tethered by eight chains, since his sealing at the Den of the Chained in the <a href="Dawn-War.md" class="internal-link">Dawn-War</a></td></tr> > <tr><td class="infobox-label">Divine Champion</td><td class="infobox-data"><em>Not Known</em></td></tr> > </table> ### About Tharizdun, the Chained Oblivion, is the god of darkness, destruction and madness, and the most feared of the [[Betrayer Gods]]. He is darkness unending, less like a god and more like another world, and within him there is neither life nor death, only utter ruin and madness. Bound in the [[Abyss]] since the dawn of the [[Age of Founding]], he has never walked freely upon [[Aeborhia]], yet even in his prison his mind dreams, and those dreams seep into the world as horrors and aberrations. Even the other [[Betrayer Gods]] treat him with caution. His cultists await the day his chains will break, when, they believe, all things will be consumed in an oblivion without end. What Tharizdun truly is remains one of the great mysteries of the [[Deities|divine]]. The oldest accounts speak of him as one of the Pantheon, one among the gods whose power and madness were too great for the rest to bear. Others hold that he was never of the Pantheon at all, but something far older, an Elder [[Deities|Deity]] like [[Harkon]], undeniably more powerful than any of the gods who bound him. The boldest theory of all, that the Pantheon itself was born from his shattered mind, is spoken of only in whispers. None can say which is true, and if the gods know, they have never said. ### Depiction Few have dared to depict Tharizdun, and fewer still agree on what they saw. The oldest texts describe a creature of rolling, hungry ink and darkness, a spreading cloud of lightless destruction born from a thousand ravenous mouths. Later depictions show this darkness bound by chains of gold and black that barely hold it at bay. His holy symbol, a crooked seven-pointed star of chains around a broken spiral, is carried by his cultists as iron amulets, stitched in glowing purple thread upon their robes, and inked as chains about their arms. ### Divine Domains Tharizdun's clerics are most often granted powers of Death, Trickery or the Grave. ### Holy Day Tharizdun has no holy day. His faithful keep no calendar of worship, only the long wait for the day his chains will break. ### Commandments of Tharizdun - Offer up your strength to the Chained Oblivion, and siphon it from the world, until the day of his liberation. - Uncover, restore and exalt the forgotten shrines and relics raised in his name. - Ruin and raze the realms, for the end is not coming; it has already arrived. ### Enemies of Tharizdun Tharizdun counts every god of the Pantheon as his enemy, the [[Betrayer Gods]] no less than the [[Prime Deities]]. It was all of them, standing together for the first and only time, who sealed him in the [[Abyss]] at the dawn of the [[Age of Founding]], and even those who would later turn against their kin have never sought his freedom. The other Betrayers regard the Chained Oblivion with a caution that borders on dread, and his cultists, for their part, name the whole Pantheon the false gods. Above all he hates [[Ioun]], whose rites bound him at the Founding, a deed he never forgot, and who gave herself as bait to see him bound again in the [[Dawn-War]]. Her few remaining followers are sworn to see that he is never again unchained. Close behind her stand [[Pelor]], whose light drove him back into the deepest layer of the [[Abyss]] at the Den of the Chained, and [[Kord]], who held the mouth of the Den while they did so. ### History - #### The Age of Founding No record tells where Tharizdun came from. The oldest accounts say only that when the gods first came to [[Aeborhia]], one among them was too much to bear, a darkness so vast and so mad that the rest could not abide it. In 8999 BD, by rites of [[Ioun|Ioun's]] devising, the gods together bound him in the [[Abyss]], a prison wrought for him alone, a deed he never forgot. Yet it did not remain a prison. Layer by layer, it is said, he dreamed it deeper, until his cell had become his domain, teeming with the demons born of his dreams. When the [[Betrayer Gods]] broke from their kin and the [[Age of Founding|Schism]] tore the world apart, Tharizdun took no part. His prison held. - #### The Age of Arcanum Through the [[Age of Arcanum]], the Chained Oblivion was little more than a name in the oldest temple records, and his worship survived only in scattered cults that met in secret. - #### The Dawn-War In 817 BD every prison failed at once. Those who lived through it called it the Escape. No record survives of how the [[Betrayer Gods]] broke free, only that they did so in a single day, and that within the year the world was at war. The other Betrayers walked free, but only a fragment of Tharizdun's essence slipped its chains. Even this sliver of the Chained Oblivion was a power to rival any [[Deities|deity]]. His cult gathered in their thousands around a cave where a pit fell away into the darkness below, a place they named the Den of the Chained. There, in 815 BD, the gods answered. [[Ioun]] and [[Pelor]] devised a desperate ambush. [[Ioun|Ioun's]] followers and three thousand of [[Pelor's Swords]] cut through the camp while [[Ioun]] descended into the pit as bait, and [[Kord]] held the mouth of the Den so that nothing could follow them down. Tharizdun came, and his strength proved overwhelming. [[Ioun]] was left gravely wounded and her followers almost annihilated. Only with the blessing of [[Avandra]] did [[Pelor]] at last overcome him, and together the Dawnfather and the Knowing Mistress completed the Rites of Banishment. The Chained Oblivion was driven back into the deepest layer of the [[Abyss]] and tethered there by eight chains, which are said to lie hidden across [[Aeborhia]] to this day. [[Pelor|Pelor's]] faithful healed the scarred earth around the Den and raised the Dawnwake Priory over its mouth. Around it, in time, grew the city of [[Reedmere]]. - #### Post Dawn-War When the gods withdrew from the [[Material Plane]] at the [[Divergence]], Tharizdun remained bound. His chains have held for over three thousand years, but his cults have never wholly died. ### Modern Worship of Tharizdun The cult of the Chained Oblivion has never been a church in any true sense. It has no temples that stand in daylight and no high priest known to the world, only scattered sects that keep to cellars, caves and forgotten shrines. They are bound together by coded letters and by the chains inked upon their arms, and they know one another as those "on the path, yet still chained". Worship of the [[Betrayer Gods]] is outlawed across much of [[Aeborhia]], and even where it is tolerated, Tharizdun's faithful find no welcome. In recent years the cult has grown bolder. Sects have been uncovered in [[Amberholt]], [[Reedmere]], Xa'amond, Port Lusaro and [[Muxnir]], and along the [[Diskarn Mountains]] near [[Zhavrin's Gate]], where the [[Golden Scales]] have rooted out cells that abducted and sacrificed the innocent. Its clerics undertake dark rites to harden themselves against the corruption of [[Vangrallag]], and those who complete them set out into the [[Vangrallag|Dead Lands]] in search of a place the cult calls only the Chamber, hoping to emerge as their god's chosen. Few have ever returned. Above all, the cult speaks of a "Ritual of Release", which it seeks to prevent by any means necessary. ### Known Worshippers of Tharizdun #### Champions *Not Known* #### Other Worshippers *Not Known*