The Driller’s Hives
Realm of Tharzax, obyrith lord of the ekolids
The Driller’s Hives, now there’s a place I wouldna wish on me worst enemy. Right at the gory heart of Tharzax’s domain in Descolada, the second layer of the Abyss. It’s an abominable land, filled to the brim with the nightmares of every poor sod who’s terrified of crawlin’ critters. It’s a sprawling, maddening place, built on the bodies and fear of countless victims. A stroll there is like a descent into madness, with every step a journey deeper into a living nightmare where your worst fears come to life, a jumble of grotesque imagery and fever dreams, enough to turn the hardiest stomach.
So try and imagine a landscape so horrific that it defies the imagination, a place where the ground itself seems to shift and squirm with a life of its own. Imagine walkin’ through a land where the air is thick with the smell of decay, where every step takes you deeper into a twisted maze of jagged badlands and rivers of shuddering sticky resin that threaten to swallow you whole.
But it ain’t just the land itself that’s hostile, oh no. It’s the inhabitants that truly make the Driller’s Hives a place of unending horror. The ekolids, now they’re a terrifying fusion of every nightmare ye ever had about insects, and then some. They’re the kind of fiends that make even tanar’ri knees quake in fear, monstrous obyrith that embody the very concept of infestation. They exist only to spread fear, pain, and madness wherever they go.
Within this bloody realm, the ekolids have built cities, gruesome parodies of human societies at their most decadent and degenerate. Imagine a burg built of corpses, where every building is made from the bodies of the ekolids’ victims, coated in a layer of viscous putrid ooze that captures their final moments of agony for all eternity. It’s a place where death is an art form and suffering is celebrated with grotesque, perverse glee. It’s a sight that can drive a body to madness.
The Chattering Markets are the worst of it, let me tell ya, a bustling hive of activity where every manner of poison and envenomed blade is for sale, where slaves are bought and sold like cattle, destined to become incubators for the next generation of ekolids. It’s a place of unspeakable cruelty, where the choicest victims are chosen for what they call “performance hatchings”—grotesque ceremonies where the ekolids compete to see who can create the most graphic, horrific death. It’s a sick parody of entertainment, a bloody spectacle which always ends in cruel, agonizing inevitability. Cutter, this a place of darkness, a place where hope goes to die, where the air is filled with the constant, never-ending buzz of wings and the chittering laughter of the ekolids as they revel in their cruelties. It’s a place you’d do well to avoid, unless yer tired of living, that is.
Inside all of this horror, is Tharzax’s Palace, a place where even the shadows grow teeth. Oh, berk, ye’ve really got to be addled to even want to hear about this place. But it’s my job to warn you, cutter, so here goes nothin’. Nestled in the dark heart of the largest forsaken ekolid city of Driller’s Hive, the palace is a towering, writhing mass, a fortress of flesh and chitin, where the walls pulse with a sickly rhythm, like an appalling heartbeat. Now take that image and turn it up to eleven.
Tharzax’s throne room is the pièce de résistance of this house of horrors. The lord of all them crawlies holds court in a chamber of pulsating flesh, where the walls gurgle and writhe like the innards of some great beast. Picture a throne made of living, squirming worms, where Tharzax sits in all his grotesque glory—a being so foul and venomous that just lookin’ at him can drive a body barmy.
They say there’s a kind of sick elegance to it all, though, if you’ve got the stomach. The way the flesh and bone structures meld together, the way the light plays off the wet, glistening surfaces, it’s a kind of twisted beauty, a testament to the perverse creativity of its master. But that’s the kind of thinking that got me banged up in the Bleakers’ Gatehouse, in the first place now, ha!
Now imagine trying to navigate this labyrinthine palace, with its halls that twist and turn in impossible ways, defying all logic and reason. It’s a maze of the mind, a place where reality itself warps and twists, where time loses all meaning and space folds in on itself in mind-bending ways. Ye can get lost in there for days, wandering in circles while Tharzax’s countless minions hunt ye down, a never-ending game of spider-scorpion-wasp-monster and mouse where you’re always the mouse—always the prey, oh yes.
So there ye have it, cutter, the realm of Tharzax, a place of madness and horror where every moment is a struggle for survival, where every step takes ye deeper into a nightmare made real. A place where the Prince of Vermin holds court, surrounded by his horde of chittering, buzzing, writhing minions. It’s a place ye want to avoid at all costs, unless you’re just plain barmy.
How did I get out? Well. That, that would be telling.
Source: Jon Winter-Holt
Recommended reading: Entry for ekolids on the Forgotten Realms wiki.
