Tulchulcha
Tuxulxa, The Lord of Torture, Lord of Scalpels, Lord of Razors. CE Abyssal lord of torment, torture and malevolent amusement [genderfluid]
Realm: Abyss / Layer 129 — Towers of Black Iron
Tulchulcha is one of the oldest named demons in the multiverse, predating the current Abyssal cataloguing system by millennia. Ancient Etruscan myths tell that they served as the second-in-command to Charun—no, not the pallid ferryman of the Greeks, but the hammer-wielding ogre-god of death. Their role was the punishment of the damned once Charun had rendered them down to the Underworld. Chant goes that their other name, Tuxulxa, means simply ‘the demon’—which gives a berk an idea of just how old this fiend might be.
Tulchulcha’s body is a deliberate obscenity of hybrid forms. They have donkey ears, long and twitching, all the better to catch the screams of the tortured. Their piercing red eyes can bore into a soul and find the exact thing it most fears to lose. Their mouth is a vulture’s beak, hooked and yellow-grey. Their hair is made entirely of writhing and venomous serpents, while their beard is a mass of churning worms. While their torso is that of a feminine humanoid wearing a toga-style chiton, and skin the bright pink of freshly flayed meat, instead of arms they have a pair of snakes. Whether Tulchulcha is male, female, or something more fluid isn’t known and I’ve yet to meet a planewalker willing to take the risk to ask them.
Tulchulcha rules the 129th layer of the Abyss, placing them deep within what Fraternity of Order cartographers call the Abyssal Pits, a vast and dangerous band of one hundred layers dominated by the realms of the great Abyssal Lords. The 129th is a layer of scorched, windswept plains broken by the enormous black spires of the Towers of Black Iron, which grow as if alive—because in a sense, they do. The black metal from which they are built is frozen anguish, the crystallised suffering extracted from petitioners and slaves by Tulchulcha’s abhorrent instruments. Petitioners are rare on the 129th. The layer is not a common destination for the dying, perhaps because the psychopomps know about Tulchulcha’s practises and refuse to send souls to their demise. Whatever the reason, this scarcity has made Tulchulcha extraordinarily patient and methodical for a denizen of the Abyss—they have perfected the art of extracting maximum anguish over the longest possible duration. Their servants are not spared the knife either—the poor sods are all flayed, and many of them missing eyes or other useful organs.
When Tulchulcha needs to hunt, they take to the plains in a vast mechanical construct of their own devising—a thing that resembles what you might get if a mechanical dragon bred with a stagecoach. It moves by galloping with its front legs, and its joints are oiled with something dark and thick. The sight of it cresting a ridge on the 129th is the last coherent memory of most petitioners on the layer.
Abyssal Chess
Tulchulcha’s leisure hours—and you’d better believe an ancient demon with few petitioners to torture has many of those—are frequently spent at a game planewalkers call Abyssal Chess, because its true name causes physical pain to any mortal who hears it spoken aloud. The game uses possessed mortals on the Prime plane as pawns, manoeuvring them across the board of history; a well-played game ends with the rise or fall of empires, sometimes both in sequence. Matches last decades, and Tulchulcha is considered a formidable player.
Chant goes that Orcus has sat across the board from them at least once. Their relationship is better described as ancient mutual awareness than alliance. They are acquaintances from the ancient Etruscan pantheon, long before either had a fixed place in the Abyssal hierarchy—and that is a very long time to know someone without trusting them.
Sources: Rip Van Wormer (article rescued from defunct Geocities archive); Dalmoth (article rescued from defunct Planewalker.com archive); adapted by Jon Winter-Holt and brought more into line with historical details of the Etruscan demon Tulchulcha, including their bizarre look.
