Nature: Primordial Change Spirit
Origin: Nascent Expanse
Notable Influences: Vaerath, First Paradox
Expelled from Creation: 34 Yilaver, 8753 SE
Associated Events: Harrowing
Associated Artifact: Rift Spar
Othrazhul was a Primordial Change Spirit from the Nascent Expanse whose nature had been profoundly altered through contact with Vaerath, the Broken Hour, and the surviving consequences of the First Paradox. Unlike most beings originating in the Expanse, Othrazhul had acquired an unusually persistent identity before its encounter with Kor Sirok. That identity was nevertheless built around relationships that could not exist naturally within stable Creation, allowing states such as death and activity, decay and persistence, or ending and continuation to remain simultaneously true within it.
Othrazhul became the principal threat of the Harrowing in 8753 SE after Zhaken Amberheart accidentally established a powerful relationship between the entity and Kor Sirok through the Rift Spar. As that relationship strengthened, Othrazhul manifested in the skies as an enormous moon-like body and disrupted the normal boundaries among life, death, decay, and temporal continuity across the world. The dead rose from their graves while crops and stored food spoiled with unnatural speed, producing a catastrophe whose secondary famines and conflicts killed millions even after the entity had been forced back beyond Creation.
Othrazhul was ultimately driven back beyond Creation by the Brass Blades. After the group defeated the Aspect of Othrazhul, Davrek Valzorwyn used Wish to send the other members to safety and drove the Rift Spar into the Aspect’s heart. The release destroyed the Aspect and the larger moon-like manifestation, severed the relationship sustaining Othrazhul’s presence within Creation, and killed Davrek. The Rift Spar survived and became the catalyst for Abendigo’s apotheosis moments later.
Primordial Origin
Othrazhul began as one of the beings collectively described as the Primordial Change Spirits. Such entities arose from or persisted within the Nascent Expanse, where identity, form, causation, and even continuity are not dependable in the manner they are within Creation. Change Spirits are not a single species or civilization, and their individual natures vary enormously depending upon the circumstances through which they acquire enough continuity to become recognizable as distinct beings.
At some point long before the Harrowing, Othrazhul encountered Vaerath. The Broken Hour was already a wound within Creation created by the catastrophe surrounding Aevareth and the First Paradox, preserving places where incompatible histories and states had once been forced into dangerous proximity. Although the First Paradox itself had been expelled from Creation, its consequences remained deeply impressed upon Vaerath.
Othrazhul’s contact with those conditions changed it in a way that neither ordinary Creation nor the Nascent Expanse alone would likely have produced. Instead of contradiction destroying its developing identity, Othrazhul incorporated contradiction into the means by which that identity persisted. A condition could have ended and still continue; something could be dead while remaining active; matter could decay while the significance of its former state refused to disappear. These were not philosophical ideas Othrazhul consciously adopted but relationships that became embedded within what it was.
This interaction also gave Othrazhul an unusual affinity for disruptions of temporal continuity. Vaerath had been damaged during the event in which Aevareth fixed the underlying progression of time within Creation, and Othrazhul emerged from its encounter with the Broken Hour particularly responsive to magic capable of manipulating relationships across that progression. This affinity later made the Rift Spar uniquely capable both of drawing Othrazhul toward Kor Sirok and of severing the relationship that allowed it to remain established within Creation.
Nature
Othrazhul was not undead in the conventional sense. It had never lived a mortal life, died, and returned, nor did its continued existence depend upon necromancy, a trapped soul, or the ordinary principles through which undead creatures are created. The resemblance arose because the contradictions embedded within Othrazhul undermined the same boundaries that distinguish life from death.
Within stable Creation, death normally represents a meaningful change in relationship. A body ceases to be a living organism, the soul is separated from many of its physical anchors, and the remains begin ordinary processes of decay. Othrazhul carried a condition in which those transitions did not resolve cleanly. Its growing influence could cause a corpse to remain dead while nevertheless behaving as though activity had never fully ended, producing the uncontrolled rising of the dead seen during the Harrowing.
Living systems were harmed by the same principle. Crops, preserved foods, and other organic materials depend upon stable processes that allow their current condition to persist from one moment into the next. Under Othrazhul’s influence, those relationships became less dependable, causing accelerated decay and biological failure. The worldwide undead rising and the destruction of food supplies were therefore manifestations of the same underlying distortion rather than two unrelated powers.
Othrazhul did not need to consciously direct each corpse or choose which field would rot. Once its relationship with Kor Sirok became sufficiently strong, the incompatible truths within its own existence began imposing themselves upon the surrounding world.
Appearance
When Othrazhul became visible during the Harrowing, observers across Kor Sirok perceived an enormous dark celestial body that appeared to be approaching the world. Its scale was comparable to a small moon, hundreds of miles across, and its apparent growth in the sky became one of the most universally remembered images of the catastrophe.
Its surface appeared barren and hostile, consisting largely of dark stone broken by immense pits, fissures, and irregular formations. Portions of the manifestation were coated in a thick black substance with the appearance of putrid slime or decomposing organic matter despite the otherwise rocky environment. Seen from great distance, patterns in the terrain could suggest the distorted features of something once shaped like an enormous head, though it is uncertain whether this resemblance reflected Othrazhul’s actual form or the way mortal perception attempted to interpret a being never meant to possess a stable physical body.
The moon-like manifestation should not be understood simply as Othrazhul’s ordinary body flying through physical space from a distant astronomical location. As its relationship with Kor Sirok strengthened, Othrazhul acquired progressively greater physical expression within the universe. What observers saw was the form that its presence assumed once enough of the entity had become relevant to physical reality to possess location, mass, surface, and visible shape.
By the final stages of the Harrowing, that manifestation was sufficiently real for the Brass Blades to reach and physically confront it.
The Aspect of Othrazhul
Othrazhul’s enormous manifested body contained a more concentrated manifestation known as the Aspect of Othrazhul, through which much of its immediate awareness and power could be expressed. During the final confrontation the Aspect appeared as a massive, headless humanoid figure whose body resembled ancient fossilized flesh coated in the same black corruption visible across portions of Othrazhul’s surface.
The Aspect functioned in a manner broadly comparable to an avatar, but it was not a divine avatar in the ordinary sense and was not a separate creature serving Othrazhul. It was a localized concentration of a being whose full manifested presence was too large and metaphysically diffuse to confront as a conventional opponent. Damage inflicted upon the Aspect weakened Othrazhul’s ability to maintain its relationship with Kor Sirok, allowing the Brass Blades to affect an entity that otherwise existed simultaneously as an enormous physical manifestation and a Primordial Change Spirit whose deeper existence remained beyond Creation.
Defeating the Aspect alone was not enough to eliminate Othrazhul. As long as the deeper relationship drawing it into Kor Sirok remained intact, the entity could continue to persist despite severe damage to the portion of itself the group could fight directly. The confrontation was therefore necessary to weaken Othrazhul, but another means was required to sever the intrusion and force it back outside Creation.
Relationship with the Rift Spar
The Rift Spar was uniquely dangerous to Othrazhul because of the entity’s history with Vaerath and the First Paradox. The artifact could manipulate relationships involving time and continuity, forcing connections among states or events that ordinary temporal progression would keep separated. Its effects had already been demonstrated when Abendigo accidentally used the artifact in the destruction of Mount Caraphat, an event that also damaged the Twilight Veil.
Zhaken Amberheart later acquired the Rift Spar and attempted to use it to reach toward the Nascent Expanse. His goal was to draw power from an entity beyond Creation, not to summon Othrazhul or deliberately initiate a global catastrophe. The artifact nevertheless established more than the controlled relationship Zhaken intended. Because Othrazhul had been altered by the Broken Hour and possessed an exceptional affinity for disturbances involving temporal continuity, it responded to the Rift Spar in a way Zhaken had not anticipated.
The Spar effectively created a relationship in which Othrazhul became increasingly relevant to Kor Sirok’s present. The Sundering had made Kor Sirok difficult to reach through ordinary planar relationships, while the Twilight Veil specifically resisted intrusion from the Nascent Expanse, but the Rift Spar’s temporal effects approached the problem from a different direction. Othrazhul was not simply moving across an ordinary planar distance; the artifact was helping establish a condition in which its presence increasingly belonged to the same temporal and metaphysical circumstances as Kor Sirok.
Damage previously inflicted upon the Twilight Veil at Mount Caraphat made that process still more dangerous. By the time Zhaken understood the scale of what had followed his attempt, Othrazhul’s relationship with Kor Sirok had become strong enough to continue without his direct control.
The Harrowing
Othrazhul’s arrival produced the event remembered as the Harrowing, lasting from the 31st through the 34th of Yilaver in 8753 SE. During those three days, the entity’s moon-like manifestation dominated the skies while the dead rose throughout Kor Sirok and food supplies decayed on a global scale.
The crisis affected places with no direct knowledge of Zhaken, the Rift Spar, or the Brass Blades. Cities became particularly dangerous because graveyards, crypts, recent casualties, and dense populations provided enormous numbers of bodies capable of rising among the living. Rural communities faced a different disaster as fields failed and stores intended to sustain them until the next harvest became unusable.
Othrazhul’s expulsion ended the supernatural effects but could not repair what had already been lost. Famine, disease, crime, displacement, and conflict continued long afterward, and later estimates attributed roughly fifteen to twenty percent of Kor Sirok’s humanoid population to deaths during the Harrowing and its aftermath.
The event made Othrazhul one of the few beings from the Nascent Expanse whose existence is widely documented within recent mortal history, even though the true nature of the entity remains understood by only a small number of scholars.
Defeat and Expulsion
The Brass Blades eventually reached Othrazhul and fought upon or within its manifested moon-like form. Their confrontation culminated in the defeat of the Aspect of Othrazhul, reducing the entity’s ability to maintain the relationship through which it had established itself around Kor Sirok. This created a brief opportunity in which the Rift Spar could be used against the same relationship it had helped create.
Phelps, the adopted son of Davrek Valzorwyn, took the Rift Spar and attempted to make the necessary sacrifice himself. Davrek refused to permit his son to die in his place. Knowing that Phelps and the others would stop him if they understood what he intended, Davrek used Subtle Spell to cast Wish without giving the group an opportunity to interrupt him, forcing the other Brass Blades to safety against their will.
Davrek remained behind and drove the Rift Spar into the heart of the defeated Aspect. The resulting release destroyed the Aspect and broke apart the larger moon-like manifestation while severing the relationship that had allowed Othrazhul to become established within Creation. The deeper Primordial Change Spirit was not annihilated. It was sealed away and forced back beyond Creation, ending the immediate incursion.
Davrek died in the release. Restoring him later required True Resurrection, and the unusual nature of his death made the associated resurrection ritual substantially more difficult than normal. The ritual succeeded, but Davrek had no assurance of that outcome when he chose to remain behind. The Rift Spar survived and, as the manifestation collapsed, descended to Kor Sirok and struck Abendigo, immediately preceding his apotheosis.
Expulsion and the Nascent Expanse
The defeat of Othrazhul demonstrates an important distinction concerning beings originating in the Nascent Expanse. Destroying a manifested body within Creation does not necessarily annihilate the deeper being beyond it. In Othrazhul’s case, the Brass Blades destroyed the Aspect and the moon-like manifestation through which the entity had become physically relevant to Kor Sirok, while the Rift Spar severed the exceptional relationship sustaining that intrusion.
The final use of the artifact therefore acted upon the connection rather than erasing Othrazhul’s identity from existence. Its affinity with the temporal relationships Othrazhul had acquired through Vaerath and the First Paradox made it uniquely capable of forcing the entity back across Creation’s boundary and sealing the immediate route by which it had become established.
Othrazhul consequently survives beyond Creation. The Harrowing provides no evidence that it can readily repeat the same intrusion, and the circumstances that allowed it to reach Kor Sirok were extraordinarily unusual, but its defeat should not be mistaken for permanent annihilation.
Mortal Understanding
The existence of Othrazhul is unusually well documented for a Primordial Change Spirit because its manifestation was visible across Kor Sirok and its expulsion occurred within recent recorded history. Survivors, astronomers, clergy, governments, and scholars independently recorded the appearance of the new moon, the rising of the dead, the rapid spoilage of food, and the disappearance of the manifestation at the end of the Harrowing.
Its deeper nature is much less widely understood. Most people know Othrazhul principally as the entity responsible for the Harrowing and may describe it as an undead moon, a dead primordial, an aberrant god, or some other category familiar to their own traditions. None of those descriptions accurately captures its origin.
The connection to Vaerath and the First Paradox is primarily a matter of advanced planar and historical scholarship, and even scholars possessing the correct pieces of the history cannot easily reconstruct precisely what occurred when Othrazhul first encountered the Broken Hour. The relationship between that ancient event and the Rift Spar is clearer only because the artifact’s behavior during the Harrowing provided unusually strong evidence that Othrazhul possessed a special vulnerability to temporal manipulation.
Othrazhul is therefore remembered with much greater certainty for what it did than for what it was. For most inhabitants of Kor Sirok, that distinction matters little. For three days, a new moon appeared in the sky, the dead rose, the living world rotted around them, and civilization came closer to collapse than it had in thousands of years.