The Buried One

Overview

The Buried One is the greatest shadow upon the desert — a colossal entity bound beneath the sands by the last sacrifice of the Ishkari. It is said to be a being of storm and furnace-fire, a primordial hunger that devours creation itself. It was known as Dazareth, the Maw Below, the name now forgotten.

Though chained, its presence seeps into the land: corrupting beasts, twisting storms into fury, and ensuring the desert never yields fully to life. The Desert Spirits know the truth — it is real, restless, and its stirring shakes the land even now.

Origins

No single story agrees on where the Buried One came from:

  • The Discarded Essence: Some Ishkari texts claimed it was born from the scraps of divine creation, the leftover raw matter of the gods, which festered into hunger and rage.

  • The Fallen Star: Others say it descended from the heavens, a living star that struck the earth, hollowing it with its burning fury.

  • The Abyssal Crawling: Whispers tell that it came from beyond the veil of the mortal world, crawling into reality from the edge where existence frays.

Whatever its origin, its arrival was the end of the Ishkari.

The Shackling

The War of Shackling was the Ishkari’s final struggle. For generations, they threw armies, storms, and sorceries against the Buried One, but it could not be killed — only bound.

At last, their greatest circle of magi enacted a ritual that wove sand, storm, and shadow into chains, forcing the creature into a slumbering prison beneath what is now called the Great Dune. The cost was ruin: their people turned to dust, their lands became the desert, and only their spirits endured.

Influence on the Desert

Though imprisoned, the Buried One’s essence seeps into the world:

  • Monstrous Beasts: Hyenas, lizards, scorpions, and carrion-feeders grow to monstrous proportions, infused with fragments of its hunger.

  • Endless Sand: The once fertile Ishkari homeland turned into dunes, and the desert continues to spread slowly outward.

  • Storms of Rage: Sandstorms, sudden and unrelenting, are said to be the creature shifting beneath the dunes.

  • Madness: Some who wander too close to the Great Dune return broken, muttering about voices calling from below.

Worship

His existence is plainly ignored by most. But whispers of cults linger — fanatics who seek to free it, believing it will bring power or the end of all things. These groups often wear jagged obsidian charms said to be fragments of its prison. They revere it not as a god, but as a force of inevitability: the hunger that swallows kingdoms, the storm that erases tracks, the silence that claims all voices.

The Present Threat

The Great Dune shifts northward every year, as if the Buried One drags itself closer to the Sacred Caverns. The Desert Spirits struggle to keep it chained, but their power wanes with each generation that forgets them.

If the Buried One were to awaken, the desert would burn, the skies would blacken, and the world itself might be consumed.