There is no torture worse than one people learn to live with and even embrace as part of their life. From one of the Abyss' infinite layers, such a dark and terrible deity works his way into the hearts of mortals. There are no temples to his name, his priesthood is not prosecuted, and there have been no holy quests against his work. He is the ruler of Zahhak and is known to the rank and file of his cult only as Apathy.
The 28th layer of the Abyss stands forgotten among the greater and more active evils that make their name infamous across the Material Plane. Its ruler does not care for recognition as long as he collects his due: the dreams and hopes of everything that lives, crushed under his smothering grip. The bitter words of ex-lovers, the exhaustion that remains after anger has left, the boredom that stains the simplest joys, the disillusionment of goals unattained, and the inertia of a life without direction are the evils that Apathy spreads and that coalesce in Zahhak, with its unending landscape of ashen dunes.
Ash is all that is left behind after a fire has burned, and so does Zahhak remain where hope and faith die. The dark lord of the Ashen Waste is not a terrible deity that threatens the world with destruction nor plans campaigns of conquest spanning worlds. He is a thousand times more dangerous because he is allowed to exert his influence unpunished. He is content to let the soulwinds of his realm erode all that is good and pure.
Apathy's minions attract those who can not or will not appreciate the holy spark of life they hold inside their hearts, drinking their abandoned dreams and distilling them into elixirs of false promises. Anyone condemned to the mounds of ash is doomed to become a shell of what he used to be, and anyone foolish or unfortunate enough to fall into this realm risks losing any will even to exist.
Zahhak exists unchallenged, a lesser evil squashed between demons and dark deities, testimony to the great harm mortals can inflict upon themselves. They say evil triumphs only when the good man does nothing. In the dreary eternity of the Ashen Waste, this could not be truer.
Zahhak: The Ashen Waste of the Abyss is the second title of The Planes, a new series of sourcebooks from Mongoose Publishing detailing new and old planes of existence. Designed to be seamlessly slotted into any fantasy-based d20 games system, these sourcebooks provide thousands of new adventure hooks across planar boundaries, adding literally whole new dimensions to any campaign. Each book of The Planes series gives Games Masters entire new settings into which to plunge their players, exploiting the heights of fantasy and legend to create stories of epic proportions. Zahhak is a smothering layer in the Abyss, a graveyard of faith, hope, and dreams where the land itself saps the strength from body and spirit alike.
Within this sourcebook you will find an entire layer of the Abyss ready to drop straight into your campaign. Zahhak is fully detailed, with locales and features of each of its realms. In addition, Games Masters will be able to make ready use of the new creatures that populate the plane as well as the spells, magic items, and artefacts that comprise the dark knowledge of Zahhak's denizens. Demons drink from their prisoners' souls, distilling into tradable merchandise and usable goods the strengths that drive people in their lives. In the grey palaces of the demon princes, nothing is sacred.
Zahhak is a place of grey oppression where even the strongest of heart will lose hope and abandon themselves to the eroding soulwinds, no longer caring when the thirsty demons come to collect. An entire chapter is devoted to helping the Games Master insert Zahhak quickly and easily into his existing campaign, with ways to infiltrate and escape its ashen wastes, and plot hooks and scenarios to challenge the hardiest adventurers. Few players will ever forget the adventures they endure in a realm of ennui and oblivion, where they must protect the very fire that burns in their hearts.
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