Kutha

Kutha

The Underworld Itself (an old name for the burg)

Location: Planes of Cordance / Nether / Kur

CHARACTER: Kutha is the living’s precarious answer to inevitability of death. It’s a burg built atop a crumbling mound of mud and ice, forever battered by storms sharp enough to scrape a berk’s skin raw. The town is dry, chilly, and well-defended—solid walls ring the mound, as much to keep the sand and mud out as the fiends at bay. The whole place feels tired, but stubborn, with each settler clinging to whatever spark of life survives in a plane where where demise literally snaps at your heels. If there’s a lesson to be learned here, it’s this: life will always find a way, though the price might be seeing it snuffed out mercilessly tomorrow.

WHO RULES: Addan (planar half-elf fighter-cleric of Nergal [he/him] / N) runs himself ragged keeping Kutha out of the dead-book. Politics, faith, the weather, and everything else—all are his problem, but none are his fault. He’s exhausted, overburdened, and painfully aware that if he falters, the burg will fall to the Perishing: his failure would keep the cycle spinning, passing the misery down to the next poor sod. Still, Addan soldiers on because, he believes, someone has to. It’s a surprisingly thoughtful stance for a priest of Nergal, but Addan has learned more than most about what really happens down there in the Underworld, and the more he’s found out, the more he’s reconsidering his life choices.

WHO REALLY RULES: The forces that shape the burg are far older than any mortal office: the Perishing itself, that gnawing entropy waiting for every unguarded soul; and Nergal, Lord of the Tombs, who holding sway through his city’s central temple. Below the streets, fiendish intrigues gnaw at the town’s foundations. The sahkil lurk outside the burg’s defensive walls, phasing through at night to sow fear amongst the population. Kutha has always known too many puppet masters and too few heroes.

MILTIA: Kutha relies on the Order of Demise—a mix of unholy crusaders and merciless enforcers led by General Pholtik (planar tiefling champion of Nergal [he/him] / NE). He’s a cutter who takes threats to the burg’s security as a personal affront. The Order is run by warpriests, not clerics; don’t mistake them for bleeding hearts, as they fight like fiends when the town’s threatened. If outsiders think putting priests in charge of security might makes a coup easy, they soon learn attacking Kutha is nearly as dangerous as defying Nergal—and anyway, the militia would raze their burg before letting an enemy take it.

PHILOSOPHY: Kutha embodies an exhausted, stoic defiance: everyone accepts that death is coming, but in the meantime, living is a form of rebellion. Locals here don’t mess with the dead—they simply allow the souls of new petitioners to arrive on the River Huber, and pass through the town to the Crystalline Palace where they are judged. Even the Church admits there’s little to do against cosmic entropy except hold the line for one more day. Here, hope and meaning are constantly worn down, but a sort of grim affection for existence persists like a stubborn weed in the sand.

SERVICES FOR PLANEWALKERS:

• E-meslam, the Temple of Nergal sits at the burg’s heart, constructed from magical stone and black basalt—some smuggled from Nergaltos itself, in the Gray Waste. Cutters seeking to commune with ancestors need only offer a name and a date when they were alive, but beware: you’ll speak to who they were at that moment in time, not the know-all oracle you wish they’d become.
• The Annoying Crow offers safe rest for wanderers. The Inn is owned by Sin-Nasir (planar human fighter [he/him] / Bleak Cabal / N), a Bleaker with a knack for dreary hospitality and expensive drinks.
• The Bloody Weave will repair or replace a body’s shredded glad rags, using materials from origins best left unexamined. If you must know, the fiend-skin they use is worth the jink it costs, resistant to heat, cold and acid too.

A Day in the Death of an Anunnaki Petitioner

Many of the petitioners from all three of the Ancient Mesopotamian pantheons—the Anatolian One Thousand Gods, the Sumerian Dingir and the Babylonian Igigi—will end up in the same Underworld, unless they’re rescued from it by the meddling of another patron power. Those who aren’t separated from the peers in the Underlands are sent on the long walk to Nether, and ultimately to Kutha, the gateway to the Underworld. The smart ones buy passage on a barge down the River Huber, but that depends whether the relatives who buried them made sure their body had the fare.

Palace of Reeds

However they arrive at Kutha though, the first thing a would-be petitioner of Kur sees is the Palace of Reeds. Here dwells Ningikuga (LG demipower of reeds; medicine; care for petitioners [She/Her), the Lady of Life and Death. The Palace of Reeds ia woven from dried pampas grass and floats on the Huber just outside of Kutha’s walls. An accomplished physician and medic, Ningikuga heals any lingering ailments that petitioners might have died from. Her convent of catrina psychopomps soothe the newly dead, providing them with fresh clothing and clean water. Ningikuga ensures that the souls have the best possible start to their afterlives, perhaps through a sense of guilt, for she knows that it is all downhill from here.

The petitioners then file into the burg of Kutha where they are catalogued and processed by the bureaucracy of death. Mammitum [mam-EE-tum], LN demipower of ice, judging of the dead [She/Her] is the ancient Ice Queen of Kutha, is the most emotionally distant of Nergal’s three wives. She rules with frosty detachment from her stronghold in the burg above the deeper realms of Kur. While Ereshkigal commands the shadowy depths of the Underworld and Laṣ offers mercy and intercession, Mammitum governs the frozen bureaucracy of death itself. She oversees the processing of doomed souls with emotionless precision, never allowing sentiment to cloud her judgment or warmth to crack her icy demeanour. Her Crystalline Palace in Kutha serves as the administrative hub where the newly arrived petitioners are catalogued, sorted, and dispatched to their final destinations down below in Kur. Mesopotamian culture dictates there should be no retribution of the deceased, and the dead are neither punisher or rewarded—at least, not by Mammitum.

The Staircase to Kur awaits those seeking their final resting places. After an arduous descent that’ll take days rather than hours, the petitioners encounter seven sealed gates, each watched over by guardians. Petitioners are tested but ultimately let through. The gates are there to keep the living out, and the petitioners in. If you’re lucky enough to look mortal, you’ll need to win over the guards with the right incantations, a healthy garnish or a strong sword arm. Beyond the final gate, guarded by Neti, is the cavern of Kur and the realm of Irkalla…

Sources: SGreen and Jon Winter-Holt. Mythwatch: This location is homebrew but based on our interpretation of Mesopotamian Underworld mythology.