Zzyczesiya
Ancient tanar’ri lord of forgetful oblivion [gender forgotten] / CE
Realm: Abyss / Zenador / The Palace of Lost Things
So cutter, you be asking ’bout one of them dark whispers that floats through the Abyss, a tale as old as the chaos itself, and it’s got a twisted underbelly to it, so pull up a chair and lend your ear.
Zenador is an ancient layer battered and reshaped by the whims of the River Styx, a place of broken realities and memories lost to the fog of time. It’s the Forgotten Land where nothing’s quite real and everything’s more than a little bit off-kilter. Now in the middle of this miasmic mystery, you’ve got the grand forgotten city of the ancient tanar’ri lord Zzyczesiya (jye-ZEE-sha), a place that’s more like a waking dream than a burg. Towers reach towards the sky in impossible angles, defying all known laws of physics—and probably quite a few unknown ones—and gardens overgrown with weeds which hold secrets untold in their twisted foliage. The whole place is crumbling with age and neglect, as if the multiverse simply forgot about it. Which is exactly what’s happened.
Now this Zzyczesiya, they’re a proper enigma, a master of obfuscation and the patron of all things unclear. Just think what it must be like holding the knowledge of the ages, all the dark secrets and forbidden lore of the multiverse in yer head, and then choosing to forget it all, to revel in the bliss of ignorance. That’s Zzyczesiya for you, a demon lord who turned their back on knowledge, seeking refuge in the haze of forgetfulness. A seeker of oblivion, a sower of confusion, a lord of lost and forlorn souls wandering in the mists of time.
Their philosophy is a twisted one: A call to abandon all burdens of conscience, to drown oneself in oblivion, to embrace the void and forget all that pains you. It’s a dark path of self-destruction and loss, where the end goal is to become a blank slate, devoid of memory, knowledge, and responsibility. Imagine living in a perpetual haze, where nothing matters and nothing is real—and where you can escape the clutches of your demons by simply forgetting they ever existed. But it’s not all darkness and loss. Imagine wandering through streets that you can’t remember from one day to the next. The world would be a place of endless discovery, every day a new beginning, the past a muffled echo and the future an unwritten book. It’s a feeling of freedom, where the chains of knowledge and memory can’t hold you back, where you can be whoever you want to be, free from judgments and expectations.
What thing could an ancient tanar’ri lord possibly fear so greatly that they’d obliviate their own mind to forget it? Now this is speculation of course, but it’s a dark story I rather like to tell. Way back in the primordial days, when the multiverse was still findin’ its feet, there existed entities of unimaginable power. These were beings so ancient and so fundamental to the fabric of existence that their names became words of power, keys to the gates of unfathomable forces. And one such entity, or rather its truename, fell into the clutches of Zzyczesiya the Ungrasped.
Now, truenames, they ain’t just a tag or a title, no. They’re the essence of the beings themselves, a vibrational signature of their very existence, like a loophole into the laws of the cosmos. To know such a name is to hold the very heart of the entity in your grasp, the ability to command its power and to shape its nature. So this is the kind of knowledge that comes with a price, one that can drive you mad with power, consume your body with obsession, or crush you under the weight of responsibility.
Now, I ain’t one to gossip, but the tale goes that this ancient name granted control over somethin’ fundamental to the Abyss itself, a force older than the tanar’ri, older than the obyriths, older even than the powers themselves. We’re talkin’ about a primal chaos, the very stuff of creation, something that could reshape the multiverse—or unmake it.
So there’s the rub, cutter. This kind of power, it’s not to be trifled with, and Zzyczesiya was no addle-cove. Power is a siren’s song that lures you with promises of glory and might, but at what cost? To wield it is to risk losin’ oneself, to become a puppet of churning primal forces, a slave to the whims of an entity that knows no master. Unwilling to use the name themself, but fearing the inevitable temptation, Zzyczesiya tumbled to an extreme solution.
So, the Ungrasped, they fled to a forgotten corner of the Abyss, to a place where memories go to die, a realm of silence and oblivion. They sought to forget, to unburden that terrible knowledge they carried, to erase it from their mind and gain freedom from its grasp. But deep down, in the shadowy recesses of their being, the name still lurks, a whisper in the dark that promises power and domination, and a word that could set planes ablaze or forge a new order in the chaos of the Abyss.
You ask what that name may be? Oh, cutter, you don’t toy with such matters. It’s a word lost to time, a secret kept from even the most venerable archmages and the mightiest of gods. Some say it’s a sound that can’t even be uttered by mortal tongues, a word of such dark resonance that to speak it is to risk unraveling existence itself. And it’s a name now buried deep in the mists of the Forgotten Land, guarded by a being who has forsaken everything—even their own identity—to keep it hidden, to protect themself (and by extension the multiverse, although that’s a secondary concern) from its terrible power.
But who knows, cutter? Maybe one day, some brave or foolish soul will venture into the depths of the Abyss, to seek out the Ungrasped in their haunted city of impossible towers, to uncover the truth and bring the secret name out into the light. But let’s be honest, anyone barmy enough to chase such tall tales is likely to end up another lost soul wanderin’ the twisted paths of Zenador. I mean, maybe the whole sodding thing is too fanciful to be anything but an Abyssal fairy story.
Source: Jon Winter-Holt