HOME | DD

Toth Wormbeard — Description

There had been a few rumors and pondering tales of what happened to Toth. A high priest in the upper echelons of the Church of Divine Wealth, no doubt on track to climb even higher. But then disaster struck, the Church was shaken, and suddenly old Toth was nowhere to be found. Amidst the chaos that went down that night, many assumed that Toth had perished, and his death had been covered up. The entire holy city had felt what had happened deep in the heart of the Church, creating nothing but sheer panic and confusion. Perhaps it was during this blind moment of terror and upset, that Toth either died or was killed. Some started a rumor suggesting that Toth was the whole reason this chaos had occurred, as it was easy to blame someone who wasn't there to deny it. It was believed that Toth had done this, and the Church had him killed and disappeared so that none would know of this treachery. Others think it was sabotage, and Toth fled in the night to avoid the Church's punishment. There are dozens of variations of his tale, and there is no telling which is true, if any. Regardless, the Church keeps these rumors hushed, and they do not speak of Toth any longer. Evidence of his existence still exists in scrolls he wrote, and blessings he granted, but one will find at a point that he simply ceased to exist in the Church. They do not hide this evidence, but will say no more of him, so it gives the impression that the Church believed he indeed just vanished into thin air one night, and no one has bothered to look into it since.

If some had heard of what truly happened to Toth, they would say that half of the tales got it right. Toth didn't die that night, he fled the Church and the holy city, living out somewhere in the wilds. Indeed, Toth had been in the Church when it all went down, when something deep within shook it to its core. As they would say, something cracked the very foundation of the Church of Divine Wealth, and its divine leaders hurried to hide these wounds. But while the esteemed priests of the Church chose to fill these cracks and pretend this failure had never happened, Toth was one who dared to peer inside. He looked into the cracks of the foundation, and saw something deep within the Church that destroyed his faith. He knew he had witnessed something unspeakable, and that the Church would want him dead, so he fled that very night. He escaped into the wilds, and lost himself deep in the unknown. He was able to get out with his life, but he was far from intact.

What he saw ruined his belief in the Church, and made him doubt everything he had been taught. He couldn't even bear to kneel before the golden Ichor, for that godly fluid was now besmirched in his eyes. Once, he was a man who had all the answers, preaching them to the masses and spreading it throughout the world. But now he knows he had been given nothing but lies, and all he had done was spread this infection further. Ruined and desperate, he sought to find his own truth, his own answers, but his journey was met with countless failures. Nowhere he turned gave him the comfort he yearned for, and soon things grew even worse. The Church began to fracture, a civil war within it boiling outward til to infected the world. Countless factions seeing an opportunity for usurpation, and joining the maddened fray. Now, the Church wasn't the only thing ruined for Toth, it was the very land itself, tainted with blood, misery and death. The gods had failed him, man had failed him and now the world itself shattered what little hope he had left. What good was answers, if there was no one left alive to speak it?

It was during the fighting and his deepest misery that he chose to imbibe Feverish Sweat. He had heard that its boiling touch could grant strange dreams and bizarre visions, and he was desperate at this point. All the other fluids had failed, so what was the harm of seeking the heretical for their opinion? He gathered a dose of Feverish Sweat and took it in, giving himself to its warped madness. It was this fever dream that revealed all to him, opening his mind to things he had never known. The visions showed a path, one borne of pallid flesh and crimson branches. Of gods and stars turning to rot, of the very cosmos itself losing to entropy. All his years, he had throttled his genius and pondering to the confines of the human mind, but now he saw a better way. If the grand intellect of man had no answers, than it was time to find a different mind. After that first vision, he tracked down the followers of the Arimakki and demanded to join their ranks. He underwent the Koroni Netsu, and soon gave everything to the burning hives of worm and blight. And that is where some would say the other half of the rumors was right, as the Toth everyone had known perished, though not on that night specifically. Those who undergo Koroni Netsu do not come out the same, as all is burned within the baptismal fever.

His baptism by Feverish Sweat turned him into one of the followers of the Arimakki, forsaking his mind and humanity to join their ranks. However, something within him still clung on as the fever seared his very essence. A fraction of his sanity somehow survived the burning purge, and what awoke from the ceremony was a being of both madness and wisdom. Despite sacrificing so much, Toth still has a shred of his mind intact, and he is the only follower of the Arimakki still capable of speech. He can talk, think and feign the ways of man, yet the Feverish Sweat within him still causes babbling outbursts, erratic thoughts and prophecies of a rotted universe. Toth himself knows he is an anomaly, that he has somehow become something different than the others. He stands between two worlds now, and he understands what powers that grants him. He can now act as the tongue between man and parasite, a speaker for the White Worm and the Vile Red Tree. He can walk amongst Arimakki unharmed, and can still communicate with the people he once belonged to as well. Some would say he is the leader of the Arimakki, but he wields no control over them. Instead, he serves as a maddened brain, a force willing to push the parasites to new heights. The Arimakki have no minds or thoughts to them, they do not dream of anything more than persisting and reproducing. But Toth sees a path, for both parasite and man. A vision that shows that there is a future for this war torn land. Like the Arimakki priests before him, he sees human intelligence as a sickness, our grand thoughts and morals bringing nothing but misery and death. Civilization has only been built to be kicked over again and again, our greatest inventions used to satiate primal blood lust and savagery. Toth sees that these shackles must be cast off, but he also sees that humanity would never admit to its failings. They would cling to the madness of sanity and intellect, even as the world crumbles. So Toth seeks a way to force this change, to personally escort humanity to a new age, not of enlightenment, but of simplicity. Abandon the mind, embrace the purity of the madness. All things are fated to end, this land, this world, this very universe. The rot will claim all, and it is the rot that humanity must seek.

The Church is falling, humanity is doomed to drown in its own blood and the fluids themselves bear no answers. The skies above hold no hope, for the dying gods cannot grant blessings to escape this fate. They have no power in this world, for there is something far greater. If the gods are truly divine and all knowing, than what of the parasites within them? What does that make them? And if all the universe is doomed for entropy, wouldn't the rot be the one god amongst all? If we are all destined for nothingness and decay, than let us join the worms and rejoice.

-----------------------------------------------

Hey, finally a character with an actual name for ol FOI! Crazy ol parasite priest! And also this is the last of my Arimakki batch. For now....