Writhing World
| Map | Basic Data | Planetary Image | |
|---|---|---|---|
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Name: | The Writhing World | 
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| Segmentum: | Segmentum Obscurus[1b][2] | ||
| Sector: | Screaming Vortex[1b][2] | ||
| Subsector: | The Gloaming Worlds[2] | ||
| System: | |||
| Population: | |||
| Affiliation: | Chaos (Nurgle)[1b] | ||
| Class: | |||
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The Writhing World is a planet in the Screaming Vortex covered in immense tendrils of living flesh.[2]
Overview
The surface of the Writhing World is covered by worm-like growths of various sizes. The largest, called the Great Tendrils, reach the size of continents and play the role of bedrock and geographic features. The Lesser Tendrils are smaller, ranging in size from as thick as a man to as thin as hair. These act as analogues to trees and grass, but are prone to sudden, convulsive movement. In place of bodies of water, the planet hosts lakes, seas, and rivers of organic fluids teeming with microbiota. According to rumour among the worshipers of Nurgle, an individual favoured by the god would be able to safely immerse themselves in these substances to receive blessings.[1b]
The nature of the planet's surface as it might exist beneath the layers of tendrils is unknown, although multiple failed expeditions have tried to dig through the moving covering. Among the theories proposed about the planet's nature are that it has no surface but consists solely of layers of worm-like flesh, with deeper tendrils likely being dead and decaying, or conversely that the ruins an ancient civilization lie buried beneath the squirming flesh. Theories on the planet's origin also abound, often linking it to the ascension or birth of a powerful being such as a Greater Daemon or a Daemon Prince. Some of these speculate that the world was physically transformed during this apotheosis, or that it is a living creature that came to consume the remains of the entity's birth. Some rumours speculate that, in its moment of ascension, the entity was cursed for an unknown failing and transformed into a planet-sized Chaos Spawn.[1b]
The Writhing World is surrounded by a planetary ring whose component fragments and asteroids are each composed of a smaller knot of writhing tendrils. This ring hosts four moons that, in contrast to the world below them, are home to primitive but normal flora and fauna.[1a] The four moons are Lowenesse, which is covered by steaming jungles and swamps; Graven, which is the most touched by the world's decay and is covered in spongy carpets of moss home to vermiform leviathans; Cantric, covered by shallow water and spindly trees; and Tabelar, covered by mouldering wastes.[1c]
Flora and Fauna
The Writhing World is inhabited primarily by immense versions of common vermin and scavengers. Giant beetles graze of fields of writhing cilia, while scythe-legged lice feed on both tendril-flesh and on whatever vermin or humans they can catch. The seas of the Writhing World are inhabited by large insectoid predators, which are rarely seen but are known to overturn boats to prey on sailors.[1b]
The planet's most famous fauna are bottle flies the size of human heads that fly in miles-long swarms that create a constant low droning that becomes an omnipresent background noise. Their larvae often fill crevices in the landscape, until they pupate and take to the air. Adult flies never land until they die. The swarms are joined by primitive colony minds that are believed to be a manifestation of Nurgle's mind or to otherwise serve as a link to his thoughts. Many pilgrims come to the planet to attempt to divine the complex movements of the swarming insects for meaning, although no attempts have been successful.[1b]
Society
The Writhing World is home to a society of humans known as the huskmen, who live in primitive tribes that rely on the giant vermin for food, tools, and armour. Only strong and tough individuals survive for long on the disease-rich planet, although those that do become corpulent and fat due to the abundance of food.[1b]
Life on the planet is dominated by powerful Biomancer Sorcerers, who study ways of shaping, strengthening, and weakening living flesh. The most powerful Biomancers are rumoured to be able to shape the flesh of the planet that they walk on and to turn even powerful warlords into whimpering wrecks with a gesture.[1c] The greatest of the Biomancers are referred to as the Biomancer Lords[1c] or as Sorcerer-Kings.[1a] The four greatest of these each claim control of one of its moons, which serve as sanctuaries for them and are rumoured to be the origins of their powers.[1c]
The Biomancers make their homes within the Crawling Citadels, living fortresses shaped from the planet's vermin and living substance, which move on six legs and bear palaces shaped from chitin and armed with guns imported from offworld. While the practice of creating Citadels is known to most Biomancers, those of greater Lords are the largest and most powerful. Each Citadel serves as home for both its master and a court of lesser workers, and functions as both a seat of power and a centre of learning. The Citadels' garrisons consist of both offworld mercenaries and warriors from the huskmen tribes.[1c]
Images
See also
Sources
- 1: Black Crusade: The Tome of Decay
- 2: Black Crusade Core Rulebook, pg. 332
