Whetstone

Perched atop a jagged, crystalline rise in Skindjur’s broken landscape stands Whetstone, a fortress where sharpness reigns supreme. This place is both a smithy and a place of artisanal bladecraft but more importantly, it is a temple to cutting edges, where the flensing philosophy of Skindjur is manifested in steel and horn, claw, and fang. Its many spires twist upward like serrated blades carved from obsidian, constantly catching the attention of the lightning-streaked skies. Its blackened walls glisten as though perpetually wet with freshly drawn blood, and crackle with electricity.

Whetstone is a laboratory of lethality, and a death sentence for any who tread its halls unprepared. Every fiend, mortal cutter and prisoner here exists in service to the blade—whether they wield it, craft it, or are forged themselves into an extension of its deadly purpose.

The Purpose of the Burg

Whetstone serves as one of the most important blade-forges of the Abyss. It’s a place where weapons are not just made—they are perfected, honed beyond mortal comprehension. The bulk of its output contributes directly to the Blood War, supplying the tanar’ri legions with weapons of impossible sharpness, armour that slices rather than shields, and beasts so viciously augmented that their bodies are as deadly as any weapon forged of metal.

The demand for Whetstone’s products is ceaseless. Every tanar’ri general believes that to wield a blade from Whetstone is to cradle death itself in your hands—a razor-thin advantage that could tip the scales of war. The fortress churns endlessly to meet these demands, sharpening, grafting, and improving tanar’ri tools of slaughter.

But Whetstone’s purpose is not only practical, it is also ideological. As the tanar’ri saying goes, “to cut is to dominate”. Every blade honed in Whetstone and every clawed beast that emerges from its gates embodies a fragment of the essence of sharpness, the perfect instrument of carnage against the hated baatezu.

The Forging of Impossible Edges

*Keeningfiends at work deep down in the forges*

At Whetstone, ordinary weapons are discarded as waste. After all, this burg is where legends are forged: Blades so fine and so sharp they can carve through souls as easily as flesh, arrows that burrow their own paths of destruction through the fabric of reality, and specialised ghostknife scalpels used for flaying even incorporeal entities immune to physical torments.

The processes used here are not for mortal eyes. The Forge of Blades, the heart of the fortress, is said to be powered by the screams of flayed angels, their anguish fuelling furnaces that burn hotter than Abyssal fire. Demonic artisans, known as Keeningfiends, hammer raw chaos-stuff into solid form, their hands blistered and swollen from wielding molten shards of crystal and steel.

Among their most prized creations are the Soulshards, weapons capable of slicing through the immaterial. A soulshard blade severs the ties between body and spirit, leaving its victims alive yet hollow—a perfect torment reserved for the Blood War’s most hated foes.

Whetstone isn’t just a forge—it’s also a place of biological enhancement, where the tanar’ri come to sharpen their own bodies. The fortress houses vast surgical chambers where demons undergo brutal grafting procedures. Claws are filed to impossibly fine points, horns are lengthened and reinforced, and spines and fangs are sharpened into jagged spikes.

Some tanar’ri warriors undergo even more extreme procedures, their bodies modified not just to kill but to become weapons themselves. Keeningfiend surgeons graft obsidian blades into their forearms, replace teeth with serrated saws, or line their spines with shredding needles. Those too weak to survive the operations are discarded without thought—or simply used as raw material for new projects.

This honing process is not without its risks. The enhancements often induce overwhelming bloodlust, driving the modified tanar’ri into frenzies that make them as likely to destroy allies as enemies. These unfortunates are kicked through the nearest portal to another Lower Plane without a thought—perhaps they can be of some use wearing down the enemy after all. In Whetstone, however, such wasteful risk is simply seen as part of the process.

Dangers of Whetstone

The air here seems sharp, charged with an unnatural sharpness that leaves exposed skin prickling and bleeding at the edges. The fortress is a labyrinth of jagged hallways and serrated staircases, where every surface gleams with a cruel edge.

Visitors are expected to bleed. In fact, no one gains entry to Whetstone without contributing some part of themselves—whether it’s a finger, a horn, or a pound of flesh. The blood spilled is collected and funnelled through arcane channels to fuel the great Whetstone itself, a massive grinding wheel that is housed in the fortress’s largest tower.

The eponymous Whetstone is an artefact of immense power, said to grant any blade sharpened against its surface the ability to cut through reality itself. But the wheel demands constant sacrifice. Every turn of the grinding stone releases a wail that echoes through the halls, the cries of those who failed to appease its hunger.

Who Rules Whetstone?

At the top of Whetstone’s brutal hierarchy is Karz’kral (planar balor tanar’ri [they/them] / CE), a balor known as the Bloodsharp Baron. Unlike most balors, Karz’kral has no flaming whip or sword—instead, their body is the weapon. Their claws are honed to impossible sharpness, their horns curved into wicked razors, and their wings lined with serrated blades that shred the air as they fly. They rule with bloodthirsty menace, personally overseeing the enhancement of the fortress’s finest warriors and the forging of its deadliest weapons. Any keeningfiends who fail to meet their exacting standards are thrown into the Whetstone itself, a little extra lubricant to smooth its eternal grind.

Who Really Rules Whetstone?

While Whetstone may appear to be ruled by the Bloodsharp Baron, the true power behind the fortress is something far more ancient and conceptual—a force tied intrinsically to sharpness itself. Beneath the grinding wheel of Whetstone, beyond the screams of flesh and the clang of forged steel, lies the essence of its true master: Evisceris, the Eternal Edge.

Evisceris is not a being in the traditional sense. It is a concept given form, an archetype that dates back to the formation of the Abyss itself. According to myths whispered only in the shadows, Evisceris was born when the first blade was ever drawn and blood spilled—an embodiment of sharpness and the unyielding violence of cutting. Tanar’ri myths claim Evisceris was born from the First Flaying, when a demon lord of old peeled the flesh from a rival’s body in an act of brutal precision. The pain, beauty, and power of that moment birthed a fragment of eternal sharpness that still hungers for the perfection of the cut. But the tanar’ri are liars, and Evisceris existed long before they did.

Described as an intangible, shifting presence, Evisceris manifests in a myriad of forms: A voice like the scrape of steel on whetstone, a shadow razor that slices the air, or a towering, featureless figure clad in jagged obsidian armour. Some claim it takes the form of an impossibly sharp blade the size of a mountain, buried deep beneath Skindjur and radiating its will upward through the grinding fortress.

Evisceris is not alive in any way mortals could comprehend. It simply is—an eternal force that hungers for refinement. But there are darker whispers amongst the Doomguard that speak of another legend, that Evisceris is perfecting itself—each blade sharpened in Whetstone, each deadly edge crafted in its halls, brings the entity closer to breaking free from its tether beneath the fortress. Some say its ultimate aim is to become the Blade That Ends All Things, a weapon capable of slicing apart the multiverse itself.

Why Come to Whetstone?

Despite its obvious dangers, Whetstone attracts a constant stream of visitors, each seeking something only this fortress can provide.

For Generals of the Blood War, Whetstone’s weapons can turn battles. A tanar’ri commander wielding a soulshard sword or armour imbued with the fortress’s dark essence is a force to be reckoned with. Many come to commission these tools of destruction. Fortunately the prices are high enough that its a rare battalion with more than one or two such blades.

Fiends from all parts of the Lower Planes seek Whetstone’s brutal surgeries, hoping to sharpen their bodies into instruments of greater carnage.

The Doomguard faction also has an interest here. While the keeningfiends have so far kept their process secret, Factol Pentar has persistently courted Karz’kral, offering Sinker weaponsmiths as apprentices. Her first goal is to try and acquire the dark of the sharpening magics, but learning more about Evisceris is a tempting prize too. Perhaps one day the faction will gain a foothold in this place, an event that would surely swing the balance of Sigil’s kriegsanz.

Source: Jon Winter-Holt