Chokluk may be a tiny, isolated village way out at the edges of Infernal territory, but being its patron diety isn't a bad existence.
Teerdavk is a small Infernal god of decay in its aspect as the theft and redistribution of growth and vital force, or put in simpler terms, a sort of vampiric compost god. Chokluk had been founded by a lost foolhardy goblin explorer who happened to stumble into the cavern where Chokluk has been built, and the adjacent bat-infested cavern whose floor was caked with their fertile droppings (for which the village is named, in the Infernal language) and ancient accumulated bat-corpses.
Teerdavk had found itself manifested for the first time as a personification of the village's reclamation pit which is fed by nourishing wastes from the bat caves, cavern insects, the various detritus from the villagers, and occasionally the remains of deceased villagers themselves. The villagers respectfully sacrificed these materials to Teerdavk, who stole the fading vitality from the rot and the scavengers living in it, and in return used it mostly to produce an admittedly monotonous abundance of nutritious mushrooms that kept the entire village well-fed.
This vitality and raw organic material was occasionally transformed in other ways as well.
–
Gods, by their very nature, are generally exempt from the petty troubles of the mortal world, but they do have concerns of their own. In fact at this time, Teerdavk had three in particular.
Firstly, naturally, was the innate urge to grow and be *more* that a typical young diety develops. Teerdavk had felt its potency increase gradually from that first, faint communion with the lone lost goblin who first seeded the cavern's pit with wastes and fungal spores, to the small but well-established village populated almost entirely with infernal persons born one by one from the pit. Teerdavk's new existence as a god of Infernal people granted it certain bits of knowledge gifted to it by The Deepmost, who rules all Infernal gods. Teerdavk now understood that other Infernal gods might become aware of it and seek to steal away some of its potency and influence. Teerdavk also became aware of the existence of the defiantly-oppositional Celestial gods ruled by The Distant, who would seek to destroy Teerdavk outright if they could. In this situation, Teerdavk knew that growing its own power was not only the most gratifying, but also the safest course of action. Better that other Infernal gods should seek to collude, and Celestial gods seek to avoid, and ideally that both should fear opposition to Teerdavk.
This led to Teerdavk's second concern. As it grew, Teerdavk began to feel the presence of other gods. At first, just the overwhelming but far-away existence of The Deepmost, and then later an Infernal god of cold, dark waters who was the patron god of the next-nearest Infernal population - the mostly-inaccessible town that Chokluk's founder had left from to go exploring. Teerdavk felt little interest or intent from that one. However, Teerdavk had very recently begun to notice, just at the edge of its perception, what felt like a forgotten, diminished god. It was old, and quite small, and seemed unlikely to be any threat to Teerdavk regardless of its nature, but its Infernality or Celestiality seemed bafflingly ambiguous, and it was restless.
If gods were purely rational beings, these would have been Teerdavk's far most pressing concerns, but Teerdavk's defining nature made it obsess over a far more urgent problem: Teerdavk was bored of its diet: Guano, half-fossilized bats, cave insects, and fungus. And of course the townsfolk and their garbage, but since virtually everyone and everything in the town was born of The Pit, it was all in effect simply slightly-processed guano, half-fossilized bats, cave insects, and fungus, and so provided very little additional variety. This limited Teerdavk's options, and in any case was no way for a respectable god to live. It was time to have something done about this.
Teerdavk set off through the Dreamlands to find a gatekeeper.
–
There are deep philosophical questions about the nature of the gates of Death and the beings whose purpose is to usher the spirits of the dead through them. From the few who can remember ever seeing them somehow, the appearance of both the gates and their keeper varies substantially. Are there really multiple gates, and multiple keepers? Is there perhaps only one gate and one gatekeeper which appears differently for every spirit who sees them? Is a gatekeeper an agent of the Deepmost, or is it a manifestation of a part of the Deepmost itself? Do they even exist at all, or are they purely symbolic concepts?
For Teerdavk, a godly spirit and therefore entirely native to the Dreamlands, the answer to all of these questions is “It's irrelevant.” If an Infernal god wants to find the Gates of Death, they will be found wherever in the Dreamlands an Infernal god expects to find them, and they will serve the necessary purpose.
The gates of Death rose, just slightly, from the middle of a flat expanse of grey sand. The structure was similar in size to what one might expect the sarcophagus of a vain, wealthy person to be, but angled upward as if for display, and seemingly carved from a single block of bland grey sandstone. Instead of the stone slab of a lid, the top of the gate was a narrow pair of doors which appeared to be of a dull metallic material. Undecorated blackened metal handles were set in them. Next to the gates, a short featureless column of the same grey sandstone, perhaps a very dull lectern. The gatekeeper stood behind it.
If the gatekeeper had been a physical being in the waking world, it might have been described with with words like “squat”,“muscular” and “menacing”, Its real presence only hinted at these qualities though. It was like a creature sculpted out of oblivion itself, a silhouette that was only visible in the sense that where it was, was the only place where nothing could be seen. As it seemed to straighten up and turn a bit to face Teerdavk, there were the outlines of strong arms, a wide body, a thick neck, and a head with short forward-curved horns sprouting from where a forehead would be. Short claws or long nails at the ends of its fingers were briefly discernable as it reached forward to brush dust from the top of the lectern before setting a similarly-unseeable flat, box-like object atop it.
“Welcome, Teerdavk”. Its voice was a paradoxically reverberating whisper that seemed almost to come from the listener themselves. “It has been longer than we expected. Is it time for your little village to grow again?”
“I have particular requests this time.”
The gatekeeper leaned forward slightly, intrigued. “What do you require from us?”
“One that is inquisitive. And also acquisitive. Oh, and with a hunger, so that it can better understand what I want of it.”
The gatekeeper said nothing, but reached for the object it had placed atop the column and lifted the far upper corner, revealing it to be a codex. Its content, if any, was as inscrutable as its cover, but the pages like impossibly thin slices of lightlessness being flipped through by the gatekeeper suggested that something would be there to read if it could be seen. The gatekeeper turned towards the last pages of the codex, tracing along with its finger until it located what it sought, and then turned back to somewhere in the middle. It read, turned another page, read some more. Then the gatekeeper tapped the page it was reading with a finger. It seemed to nod slightly and then strode directly to the front of the gate and opened the doors. They swung silently apart except for the dull thud at the end of their motion.
The opened gate resembled the entrance to a root-cellar filled with heavy black smoke. It was as opaque as tar, but wisps of it flowed out of the lower edge of the gate a short way before evaporating. There were no sounds of footsteps as the gatekeeper marched down into this darkness, but its head bounced downwards in a way that implied stairs before it sank entirely out of sight.
Don't ask where it came from (this is the Dreamlands, after all) but while it waited, Teerdavk began setting a table for two guests.
It seemed to have only been a short time before the gatekeeper's head came bobbing silently back up from beyond the gate, and beheld the table with two plates, one heaped with mushrooms, the other holding just a single large one. The gatekeeper paused only a moment, then stepped up out of the gate. Before it, it held what Teerdavk sought. The spirit resembled a ball of the same opaque smoke that filled the gate. Two bright spots - a memory of eyes - slid together from place to place on the spirit's surface. They turned towards the table. A smokey pair of tendrils emerged from the spirit, reaching for the table. Not able to reach far enough, another pair of tendrils stretched from the bottom of the spirit and flailed clumsily.
“It still remembers arms and legs?” remarked Teerdavk.
“This one has only been beyond the gates for a hundred thousand breaths of the waking world or so. Grasping and running are fundamental elements of this one's nature. It's not unexpected.” replied the gatekeeper, shrugging slightly. “It should serve your requirements nicely.” And then, the gatekeeper stepped up to the table to collect its payment. Holding the retrieved spirit to itself with one arm, the gatekeeper picked mushrooms one by one from the larger plate, pushing them into its face where one would presume there must be a mouth. It paused only to occasionally slap away the roughly-formed spirit's limbs that reached out to try to join in. When the last mushroom was finally devoured, there was a small, subtle sound that might possibly have been a slight sigh of contentment. Then the gatekeeper pointed to the other plate.
“And who is that for?” It was spoken more like a statement than a question, as if the gatekeeper knew the answer but wanted to hear Teerdavk say it.
“It's for that one” Teerdavk answered pointing to the spirit. Teerdavk paused to remember the word for the concept it had heard in the distant voice of the Deepmost. “It is…investment?”
“Ambition *and* wisdom. You grow quickly, little god. Go ahead.” The gatekeeper held the spirit out towards Teerdavk, who broke the remaining mushroom in half. One half was returned to the plate. The other, offered to the spirit, who grabbed at it with half-formed limbs and shoved it eagerly into the wide hole that formed below its eyespots. The hole was surrounded by jagged protrusions suggesting a memory of sharp teeth - well, Teerdavk *had* said it wanted one with a natural hunger. The symbolic binding complete, the gatekeeper handed the spirit to Teerdavk, told Teerdavk the spirit's name, and turned to walk back to its place by the pedestal. Then, uncharacteristically, it stopped and turned back.
“We are not expected to have opinions on such things, but we do hope you remain manifest long enough to reach a worthy end. We expect your progress to be entertaining, and the form your payment takes…” There was a brief pause. “Elsewhere, we have dealings with a small god of suffocating stench, for example. They are an effective and loyal contributor to the Infernal cause but…” another pause. “We find eating mushrooms pleasant.” Then the gatekeeper turned again and stepped behind the pedestal, picking up the inscrutable codex and returning it to whatever mysterious place it had come from, and then crouching down to wait for its next client.
Teerdavk went home.
Teerdavk's home was the metaphysical meeting of the village of Chokluk's reclamation pit in the waking world, and the near Dreamlands.
Teerdavk was not entirely sure if the unusual level of personal interest from the gatekeeper was particularly promising, or particularly sinister, but there was no time to ponder. Without a life to sustain it, a spirit will degrade quickly. Simply “creating life” was something that only those disgusting Celestial-god perverts did. Decent Infernal gods did this sort of thing the appropriate way - by reforming and repurposing already-existing life. Teerdavk directed its intent at the waking-world half of its existence, and felt a mass of worms, beetles, slime-molds, and the diffuse vitality of rot obey, pushing itself together into a unified body. At the same time, Teerdavk pushed the spirit to mingle with the coalescing flesh, and felt the spirit take hold. Now the spirit could choose its own shape, and Teerdavk could concentrate on the last important step - the gift-giving. The gift of language. Knowledge of Chokluk and its vicinity, to the extent that Teerdavk knew it. A purpose. The *hunger* of the pit itself…this gift was, metaphorically speaking, not merely accepted but outright eagerly ripped from Teerdavk's hands and was welcomed into this new person's nature as though reuniting with a long-lost favored co-conspirator. Teerdavk hoped it had not overdone it. Teerdavk paused. Wasn't it forgetting something?
Oh! Of course.
Consciousness.
The sleepy goblin who served as high priestess of Teerdavk for the village of Chokluk was roused from her daily nap by the insistent squelching sounds of a new villager being born from the pit. She yawned and brushed the cavern dust from her ceremonial mushroom-hide robes, and picked up her ceremonial mushroom-fiber staff. It had been a while since a new villager had been born, so she also quickly reviewed the little speech she gave to all newborn villagers.
A substantial portion of the tiny lives in the pit crushed themselves together at the surface of it, forming a fleshy pulsating wad, which then gradually reformed itself into a recognizable body. It solidified into a smallish infernal person. It had short horns on its forehead, fingers that were long and slender, talons for feet, and a whiplike tail. It took a breath. The priestess raised her staff dramatically.
“Greetings, new villager…” she began. Then: “Uh…hello?” The newborn imp snored slightly. Then, its eyes snapped open and it sat up. The priestess sighed quietly, and tried again. “Greetings, new …villager…” she trailed off, distracted. The god was speaking to her! Directly to her!
It explained what was happening. Oh.
“Oh” she repeated, aloud.
“Rejoice, new villager! The god instructs me to ask your name.”
“Oordo.” replied the imp, their eyes still examining their surroundings.
“And what is your purpose?”
Oordo the imp stood quickly, and turned to lock eyes with the priestess. They spoke up with conviction. “Oordo feeds the Pit.”
It was a dramatic moment, until a small but clearly-audible gurgling noise interjected. Oordo blinked and patted their belly. “Also, Oordo must feed the *lesser* pit.”
Oordo knew precisely where to go first. They knew the village of Chokluk as though they'd lived there for their whole life…which, *technically*, they had. Without ceremony, they squelched their way through the Pit's contents from which they had been born, carefully squeezed through the hedge of giant mushrooms growing around the edges, and climbed the braided-fungal-fiber rope ladder out. There, Oordo paused to sneer contemptuously at old dead Choumo, the sole current resident of the village's penal cemetery. He wasn't at the cemetery *now*, of course, that was a few holes dug into the sandstone at the other end of the village. Choumo only occupied his grave when he wasn't needed for labor. At the moment, Choumo was clumsily, plodding, but relentlessly harvesting the largest mushrooms around the Pit, tearing them down and piling them up to drag to the communal kitchen. This job had become somewhat easier once he had literally “worked his fingers to the bone”. Sharp phalanges protruding from the torn leathery grey flesh of his fingers dug into the stalks and gouged chunks out until the mushrooms toppled. His arms never hesitated in their continual chore, but Choumo did slowly raise his head to look in Oordo's direction. A pair of clouded over, sightly shriveled eyeballs wobbled in their sunken sockets and caused the pale greenish-blue glow behind them to flicker. Choumo's chest expanded just slightly and there was a sound like the bending of dry leather as he inhaled, just once. Then he spoke…
“uhhhhhhhh.” Just a quiet, vague breathy noise, accompanied by a visible puff of spores from what was left of a lung.
“Well, you shouldn't have done that horrible thing then.” replied Oordo.
“hhh,” answered Choumo.
And, having exhaled the last bit of unused breath, Choumo turned his face back towards his work.
Oordo felt Teerdavk had been merciful to the greedy old goblin. Although his death was being cruelly withheld from him, at least as a zombie he might eventually get a chance to die later. There was even still a small chance it could be a *useful* death, and after all isn't that all any right-thinking being would want?
(GURGLE!)
…okay, and to keep one's body alive and healthy long enough *find* a useful death, and that required proper nourishment. Oordo continued past the food-production hut. As he passed, he saw Rayl, the imp who was apprenticed to the village apothecary,Dyueef, the old gremlin who was the inventor of the village's food-production process. Dyueef had invented many other useful things as well, and was the oldest surviving villager. The hut itself, like all of the village's buildings, was assembled from “logs” made of smoked mushroom stalks, with a partial roof of more mushroom stalks to keep water from dripping off of the cavern's stalactites onto occupants. Just past the food-preparation hut, Oordo found their goal: the food *serving* hut.
This was the largest structure in the whole village, and served as both a feast-hall and a sort of informal church where the bounty of Teerdavk's gifts of sustenance were consumed. Thanks to Dyueef's and Rayl's cleverness, the nutritious mushrooms were transformed into a wide variety of shapes and textures. Today, they appeared to be a pile of firm patties, placed under a covered portion of the feasting hut on the floor for all to partake as they saw fit. Oordo dashed eagerly towards it, grabbing a patty of nutri-mush and stuffing it greedily into their mouth. They had barely begun chewing as they grabbed another with their right hand, then still another in their left. Still chewing but out of hands, they passed the patty from their right hand back to their tail, which wrapped around it as they reached for another…and stopped. Oordo swallowed the nutritious mush-patty. It wasn't bad. It felt solid and comfortable in their belly, but somehow Oordo found it lacking something. Chewing more thoughtfully on the second patty in their left hand, Oordo realized that it seemed…boring. It filled their belly and would keep them fed, but Oordo now fully understood why they had been given life and purpose. The Pit clearly craved more variety just as Oordo did now.
“Excuse me,” said the other occupant of the feasting-hut that Oordo had somehow overlooked in their initial eagerness, “are you going to eat that one, too?” The voice burbled deeply from a mass of greenish flesh sitting on the floor next to the pile of today's benevolent gift of food. A flabby, stubby-looking arm pointed towards the patty held by Oordo's tail .
This was RoktchOch. He was a goblin for whom the word “fat” was simply too small. “Corpulent” might suffice. Teerdavk's gift of knowledge had included most of the village locals. This one seemed to always be in the feasting-hut, gratefully partaking of the bounty.
“Yes,” answered Oordo, twisting a bit to the side so their tail could reach their mouth to feed the final patty into it. One never knew if the next patty might taste different, after all.
It didn't, but it *might* have. Oordo reached out for one last patty from the pile, just to make absolutely certain that *this* one wasn't different. Roktchoch smiled and, with some grunting and straining, leaned to the side to grab another patty for himself as well.
“Service to Teerdavk is so gratifying,” he said, steadily devouring his nutri-mush patty with surprising fastidiousness. “It is truly a wonder that I am given such glorious purpose.”
“What, exactly, *is* your purpose?” Oordo asked. Roktchoch's beady eyes gleamed as his face took on a greasily beatific joy. “When I am killed, my corpse will be an *extraordinary* feast for the whole village! And then through the villagers, for the Pit itself!” Rocktchoch stared enraptured at his glorious imagined future for a moment, then asked: “And what is your purpose?”
“I am Oordo. I feed The Pit.”
“Oh, that is a good purpose. Are you here to help greedy old Choumo fetch guano from the bat caves?” Oordo had to think about this for moment. The ancient, fertile deposits from the dangerous creatures were good for the Pit, Oordo knew, but this was something the Pit already got fed regularly.
“No. Something new. Don't know what yet. Many new things. I will find them.”
Rocktchoch's face smoothly remolded itself to express confusion, then realization, then awe, and finally ecstatic glee. “All hail Teerdavk!” he breathed, staring into his now-even-more-glorious vision of his future. “Who knows what wondrous new things The Pit may provide for us from what you find for it!”
Oordo didn't know - or even *care*, really - exactly how the god of their village transformed the input to The Pit into edible mushrooms, but it seemed obvious to them that more variety fed to The Pit should provide more variety from The Pit's output. Oordo picked yet another patty from the pile, trying to identify one with a slightly different color in case it might taste different.
It didn't, but it gave Oordo's hand and mouth something to occupy themselves with while Oordo scrabbled around in the memories Teerdavk had gifted them with, hoping to identify in them somewhere they might find something different to eat.
Now that they thought about it, a few possibilities presented themselves for consideration.
Would The Pit perhaps have sprouted some new variety of mushroom? But, no, without being fed something new, this was unlikely. Besides, Oordo had been there only a very short time ago.
Perhaps Rayl, who processed and prepared the food for the feast-hall might be working on something new? No, no, it would still be the same nutri-mush, even if the texture or shape might vary.
Dyueef, perhaps, might be working on a *new* food-production process? But…no, they were always busy. They invented the current process quite some time ago, and they had many other projects they were always working on. There was also a vague sense in Oordo's memories that Dyueef's projects are sometimes dangerous to be around, especially if Dyueef was distracted while working on them. Best to leave the elderly gremlin alone then.
Anywhere else in the village?…Oordo's memory suggested not. There wasn't really any memory of any sort of food-source inside the village. Well, except for the other villagers. Come to think of it, they *were* made of meat, they'd probably taste pretty good. Oordo considered Rocktchoch for a few moments, but decided it was somehow improper to eat fellow villagers, at least not before they properly died.
Outside the village? At one end, furthest from The Pit and just past the penal cemetery, there was a crack in the cavern wall that Oordo's memory suggested led to nothing but twisty passages, sticky cave mud, and dangerously tight spaces. Possibly there would be remains of one or two of the villagers who had tried to explore them over the last few thousand world-breaths, but they didn't seem to be worth the effort and risk to seek out.
At the opposite end of the cavern, beyond The Pit, Oordo now remembered there was the river, where the village got most of its water. It was a narrow, clear, slightly brownish stream that seemed to have carved itself into the rock there, falling from a small hole near the cavern ceiling, running a short way, and then disappearing into a dark tunnel to nobody-knew-where. The tunnel was usually running too high and fast with water to squeeze into without drowning, and nobody who had attempted to explore it when the water was low had ever returned. It was running a bit more sluggishly than usual at the moment, and on rare occasions cave crickets might be found around its banks or even more rarely, small blind cave fish might be found nosing around for whatever it was that they ate.
There was also the guano caves. Oordo's new memories suggested that sometimes small meat-creatures or insects would get lost and somehow find their way through the bats' cave where they could be caught. The carnivorous bats were very large and dangerous, though. It was really only safe to crawl through the connecting passage into there while the bats were off in whatever mysterious other place they seemed to spend their time, probably hunting for food, and Oordo had the sense that now was probably their sleeping time, so not a good time to risk bothering them. Being devoured by an angry meat-hungry bat didn't seem like a very worthy death at all.
Given the options Oordo was able to think up while eating, the river seemed like the best balance of risk-to-reward available immediately, so they turned and walked out of the feasting hut.
They then walked back in to grab one last patty, just in case they changed flavor when he passed through the door, and walked back out again.
–
Oordo strolled back towards the Pit, not even looking as they passed Choumo dragging a long mushroom-stalk towards the food-preparation hut. Oordo turned when they reached the pit and headed down the sloping end of the cavern towards the water. The underground river was more of a small, shallow stream at the moment, so Oordo had no trouble lowering themselves down from the low ledge and down onto the exposed damp riverbed.
The phosphorescent lichens seemed to thrive here even better than around the village, so by Infernal standards, the space was well-lit with its bluish-green glow. Oordo could clearly see opening near the ceiling off to their right where water poured out and down into a wide, shallow pool. From there, it ran as a shallow stream past Oordo and disappeared down into a sharply downward-sloping outlet in the opposite wall. A few stalactites hung from the ceiling. The riverbed/stream-bank was covered with smooth, rounded stones of varying sized, and lines of crusty minerals along the walls indicated to typical high-water mark, just above the height of Oordo's head as they stood there.