Malazar the Desecrator
Part of a Series on the Barmies who reside in the Gatehouse of the Bleak Cabal
(Planar proxy (?) ultroloth yugoloth [he/him] / NE)
You know, it’s a laugh a minute on the Criminally and Irretrievably Insane Wing; more, if you count the staff’s maniacal chuckling. It’s when they stop laughing that a berk needs to worry. One barmy who never laughs, is Malazar “the Desecrator”. He likes it when we call him that, not that he don’t deserve it.
Malazar’s one of our more powerful inmates, and he don’t let us forget it for a moment. In the last few months he’s ripped three Bleakers to shreds; and that was after we locked the cell door and threw away the key! Mind you, if you let ultroloths into your house you’d expect trouble, wouldn’t you? Especially ones who reckon they’re proxies of violated powers.
See, Malazar claims to be the chosen one of some power called Xolotl. Now I’m no priest myself, but I ain’t never heard of him. ‘Course, that don’t mean I don’t believe old Malazar (I’ve seen too many barmies to assume they’re all mad), just that I’m healthily sceptical. A blood’d know that yugoloths, as a rule, don’t usually have much to do with the powers. Well, it seems Malazar’s an exception, though what the other yugoloths think about his dealings with Xolotl’s any berk’s guess.
From what the yugoloth says, Xolotl was a real mean cuss of a power. He gets the blame for just about everything bad that happened to pretty much everyone for a few aeons. While he’s ranting away, Malazar’s claimed variously that Xolotl was responsible for starting the Blood War, shattering the once-solid four layers of Acheron, stirring up Limbo and inventing the concept of death. Foremost in Xolotl’s duties however, was the assassination and execution of other powers. Quite a string of achievements, no?
The story goes that the other powers got mighty sick of Xolotl stepping on their toes and spoiling their carefully laid-out planes. They banded together and cast the mighty beast-power into the Astral plane. Unfortunately for them, he just bounced right back, madder than ever. The powers had to do something big to stop Xolotl for good.
Turning the proverbial tables on the Great Desecrator, the powers seized him by his dog-paws and deformed, backwards legs, boiled him up in a kettle and cut his body into small pieces. These bits they then scattered across the planes, so far and so wide that the power would never be able to reform. The god’s ribcage was dumped in the Outlands, where it became the gate-town of the same name, one of his claws was planted near Bedlam, his horns became the burg of Ceras, his blood was given to the baatezu to guard (and it’s now the River of Blood on Avernus), and his spine was ripped out and sold to the yugoloths. They’ve made it into Khin-Oin (the Wasting Tower in the Grey Waste).
The largest fragment of Xolotl’s brain was hidden deep under the Outlands, where it festered and transformed itself into Ilsensine, the illithid creator power. Even the power’s name’s been taken away and hidden somewhere; maybe that’s why I’d never heard of the cutter until now.
Of course, this might be so much barmy nonsense.
The one worrying part of this story is that Malazar claims to be his proxy. Now, dead powers don’t have proxies, right? Malazar’s certainly got powers above and beyond your average ultroloth (heavens forbid there should be such a thing!) That’d suggest that Xolotl might not be as dead as the other powers reckon.
Even more disturbing is the small lump of fetid red goo that the ultroloth clutches at all times. Malazar claims it’s a fragment of the power’s heart, and that it’s his mission to plant the shard somewhere safe so as Xolotl can reform. We’ve been unable to prise the “heart” from the yugoloth (not that we haven’t tried), but I don’t think it’ll doing any harm to let him keep hold of it for the time being.
Unless of course it really IS part of a god’s heart…
Source: Jon Winter-Holt, mimir.net
