Mak Thuum Ngatha, called the Nine-Tongued Worm and the Devourer of Worlds, was a horrid elder evil of the Far Realm worshiped by some wormy aberrations and certain crazed cultists. It was perhaps the best known of a number of similar beings of like power and purpose, each with their own devotees.[1][2][3]
Description[]
It was described as an enormous thrashing worm-like thing.[3]
Worshipers[]
Outside the insane chaos of the Far Realm and its aberrant adherents, few folk were even aware of the Nine-Tongued Worm, only some alienists, cultists, and half-farspawn things, and fewer still knew much about it.[1][2][4]
It was known that Mak Thuum Ngatha was given homage by the nilshai,[1] a tentacled race of things from the Ethereal Plane that threatened the star elves of Sildëyuir;[5] by the psurlons,[1][6] psionic worm-like creatures dwelling in the Underdark;[7] and by the tsochari, masses of tendrils that inhabited the bodies of others[8] and infiltrated Undermountain and the Shadowdusk family.[9] The tsochari were the most zealously faithful of all aberrations and the priesthood of Mak Thuum Ngatha was the most powerful caste within their society.[10]
Symbol[]
The symbol of Mak Thuum Ngatha was a fan-shaped glyph, consisting of nine squiggly lines radiating upward from a central shape of unknown meaning.[1]
Activities[]
Unlike a lot of the potent and terrible denizens of the Far Realm, who stood either aloof or unaware of the affairs of mortals, Mak Thuum Ngatha possessed a disturbing degree of interest in the Material Plane. However, what its plans were or what it wanted one could only guess at and dread, but be sure they would be inimical to all life in the Material Plane.[1][2]
Among such aberrations as worshiped it, it was believed the Nine-Tongued Worm was a proponent of bringing down all barriers, spanning all of space and time, and obtaining infinite knowledge. Its priests saw themselves as emissaries or messengers with a divinely given purpose to take worship of Mak Thuum Ngatha to other lands and races, together with its dangerous eldritch knowledge. But this often meant invading worlds of the material plane home to humanoids; plundering their riches; sacrificing their people to the glory of the Nine-Tongued Worm; and converting those who were reckless, power-hungry, or crazy enough to follow them to the faith.[10][note 1]
Insofar as Mak Thuum Ngatha could be said to favor any being or thing, it favored the tsochari as its agents and minions. To their priests, it gave missions of importance to its inscrutable goals.[10] In fact, as Mak Thuum Ngatha thrashed, it shed tendrils that escaped the Far Realm and slipped into the Material Plane—these were the tsochari, extensions of the Nine-Tongued Worm dispatched to prepare the way for its coming. Noble tsochari were channels for its magical power, while worm servants were its overseers. The tsochari were to gather magical power and assemble some means of opening a stable passage to the Far Realm, so that the Devourer of Worlds might slither through.[3]
History[]
According to chronicles maintained by the Fraternity of Order in Sigil, in an ancient time known as the Age of Creation when even the Elemental Chaos was young, there was a primordial known only as the Prime Architect. Inspired by a vision of the perfectly ordered Accordant Expanse, the Prime Architect and four elemental lords worked to bring order to the Elemental Chaos, creating the elements and allowing mortal life to exist. But no sooner had the Prime Architect finished this great work and surveyed it than minute flaws began to appear, quickly growing and multiplying into flesh-like threads of corruption that writhed in blueish slime. Finally, these tendrils ensnared one world and swallowed it into their mass, where it was consumed by some immense worm-like thing—the entity later known as the Nine-Tongued Worm.[11]
Stirring from its shock and horror, the Prime Architect did battle with the worm in a desperate effort to stop it chewing a hole in the planes and crawling fully out of the Far Realm, the chaotic counterpart of the Accordant Expanse. While accounts of their titanic conflict were vague, the Prime Architect defeated the Devourer of Worlds, but only narrowly and at the cost of its own existence. Dying and unable to stabilize the Elemental Chaos, the Prime Architect drew on the Accordant Expanse, bathed in the energy of absolute order, and abandoned its flesh.[11]
Then the primordial was reborn as countless individual mechanical creatures—the modrons. The modrons assembled themselves into an army and advanced across the planes to seal all the breaches to the Far Realm, before they returned to the Accordant Expanse, built Mechanus, and created Primus, a vestige of the Prime Architect. Periodically, the modrons went on their Great Modron Marches across the planes, their purpose not revealed but surveying sites and occasionally closing, sealing, and collapsing planar portals and gates as they went...[11]
Appendix[]
Background[]
Mak Thuum Ngatha is the center of suggested adventures in the Steal This Hook! series ("The Sky Is Falling!"), The Book of Vile Darkness: Dungeon Master's Book ("Hunger of the Nine-Tongued Worm"), and Dragon #430: "Time Travel". However, these are only adventure proposals, do not detail Mak Thuum Ngatha itself, and are not set in the Forgotten Realms, so they are disregarded in this article.
Notes[]
- ↑ This information is taken from the lore on tsochari priests of Mak Thuum Ngatha in Lords of Madness. This article assumes it is applicable to nilshai and psurlons and to Mak Thuum Ngatha itself.
References[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 Richard Baker, James Jacobs, and Steve Winter (April 2005). Lords of Madness: The Book of Aberrations. (Wizards of the Coast), pp. 176, 177. ISBN 0-7869-3657-6.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 Richard Baker, John Rogers, Robert J. Schwalb, James Wyatt (December 2008). Manual of the Planes 4th edition. (Wizards of the Coast), p. 30. ISBN 978-0-7869-5002-7.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 Robert J. Schwalb (December 2011). “Dungeon Master's Book”. In Tanis O'Connor, et al. eds. The Book of Vile Darkness (Wizards of the Coast), pp. 65, 66, 67. ISBN 978-0-7869-5868-9.
- ↑ Richard Baker, James Jacobs, and Steve Winter (April 2005). Lords of Madness: The Book of Aberrations. (Wizards of the Coast), p. 153. ISBN 0-7869-3657-6.
- ↑ Richard Baker, Matt Forbeck, Sean K. Reynolds (May 2003). Unapproachable East. (Wizards of the Coast), pp. 67–68. ISBN 0-7869-2881-6.
- ↑ Richard Baker, James Jacobs, and Steve Winter (April 2005). Lords of Madness: The Book of Aberrations. (Wizards of the Coast), p. 165. ISBN 0-7869-3657-6.
- ↑ Bruce R. Cordell, Gwendolyn F.M. Kestrel, Jeff Quick (October 2003). Underdark. (Wizards of the Coast), pp. 5, 114–116, 121. ISBN 0-7869-3053-5.
- ↑ Richard Baker, James Jacobs, and Steve Winter (April 2005). Lords of Madness: The Book of Aberrations. (Wizards of the Coast), pp. 122–123. ISBN 0-7869-3657-6.
- ↑ Eric L. Boyd, Ed Greenwood, Christopher Lindsay, Sean K. Reynolds (June 2007). Expedition to Undermountain. Edited by Bill Slavicsek. (Wizards of the Coast), pp. 34–35. ISBN 978-0-7869-4157-5.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 Richard Baker, James Jacobs, and Steve Winter (April 2005). Lords of Madness: The Book of Aberrations. (Wizards of the Coast), pp. 126, 127, 129. ISBN 0-7869-3657-6.
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 Brian James (August 2012). “The Ecology of the Modron”. In Steve Winter ed. Dragon #414 (Wizards of the Coast), pp. 1, 2.