Whispers Upon the Waste

Filed by Argent Longfellow, sage and planewalker of the Planewalker’s Guild of Sigil:

The following was found within the papers of the noted planar scholar and former member of the Doomguard, Nirash Petulark following his suicide by self immolation. It purports to have been found inscribed upon a block of slate lodged within a crater in the Gray Waste. Which layer on the Waste in which it was found is not noted. Oddly, Nirash’s writing makes mention of the ‘Lord of Sorcerous Corruptions’ and a series of runes that he seems to have been unable to translate. They bear a striking resemblance to the runes found upon the so-called Loadstones of Misery, themselves also upon the Waste. Nirash also claims that the crater was sunk into a bluff overlooking the Wasting Tower of Khin-Oin, some fifty miles in the distance, as well as a series of footprints burned into the rock leading off in the direction of the tower before fading from sight.

The text, as recorded by Nirash, is reproduced below:

“Hope is a shallow, hollow concept, devoid of meaning except to those fools who mistakenly believe that it holds any worth.”

“In Baator and the Abyss, the Baatezu and Tanar’ri alike give unknowing tribute to this blasphemy against truth. Hope is lodged and ensconced at the heart of the Abyss and Baator, a horrid flaw within what should be pure. A crack in the pillars that hold and exalt the fusion of perfect evil with both law and chaos. Imperfection upon imperfections upon the face of evil.”

“Petitioners there in Baator, which mortals call Hell, have a chance albeit slim to escape their torture and slavery at the hands of their fiendish masters. Hope is granted a place, even if it involves becoming that which oppresses, rules and tortures because that it what it does. That black-hearted hope exists. This evil is imperfect, this torment incomplete, this ‘Hell’ nothing of the sort.”

“In the Abyss, the doomed mortal souls are part and parcel of the never ending and mindless slaughter. The butchers and ravagers of the infinite layers of the plane of obliterative chaos are ultimately wasteful and self-consuming. They turn their destructions inwards more than outwards and the mortals condemned to this place are given hope. Though that hope comes only by joining and becoming part of the Tanar’ri hordes, there is a chance to rise above their own pain by inflicting it on others. They can escape their torture. Even the majority of Abyssal Lords are ultimately from ascended mortal stock and not from those of their original stock from which we populated the Abyss. Their pain has a relief, a refuge and a release. They have their so-called hope, and their torment is hollow and incomplete.”

“But not here… across the three planes of conflict, the crèche, bastion and pit of the Yugoloth race, there is no such thing as hope. Within the furnaces of perdition there is only the will of the strong and the subjugation of the weak. The weak are made into their station and will die within their station. Petitioners have no chance of rising above their position of torment. At best they are capable of avoiding their fate for a time before inevitability draws its claws upon their souls. And in the end their struggles only prolong the latent suffering inflicted upon them by their plane. In the end the furnaces burn hot upon their soulstuff.”

            “Within the Red Prison of Carceri there is no escape from torment, either inflicted by self styled wardens or self inflicted exile. Their prison walls are borne from their own failures, their own weakness, and their fate. Such is their lot in life, and beyond. Be they fallen powers or mortal traitors at once their fate is both forever removed from their ability to alter it, and wholly their responsibility. More often than not they make their own cages, their own nooses, their own shackles. We simply aid along in the process… Locked away, abandoned, forgotten, they will eventually saturate the orbs with their spilt blood while their essence is stolen and tormented beyond torture.”

            “And in the end, they are at fault for what they cannot change. That is the gnawing torment of the plane, the secret that harrows the hearts of Crius, Cronus and Hyperion alike, all the way down to the triple aspected traitor of his own kind… they are doomed by their own hands.”

            “But the depths of the Waste are reserved for the purest of evils; cold, remorseless, clinical and detached. The agonies of the Waste are constant and cannot be driven away by any act of will or show of strength. It saps the life, emotion, motivation and the will to live from the greatest hag to the lowest larvae. It is omnipresent and uncaring. The agony of the Waste pays no heed to whether you are strong or weak, it kills you slowly and painfully because it can. You are bereft of any influence upon your torment whatsoever. Will matters not, circumstance matters not, and not even the glimmer of release from your self imposed torture exists that might upon Carceri. You are nothing, you are unimportant, but you will suffer all the same.”

            “The Waste gnaws at the souls of its petitioners minute by minute more so than even Nidhogg upon the roots of Yggdrasil. You are slowly devoured by misery and regret, apathy and acceptance is the only route of potential escape from it all. And that hope is a false one, an avenue to greater tortures. Eventually, bereft of what it was that made you hurt, bereft of any reason to your pain, bereft of meaning to it all and your own existence, you have only your pain to dwell upon. You clutch it tight, making it worse because that pain, your pain, gives your hollow existence a meaning and a purpose that you otherwise cannot claim. It makes you special, it makes you unique and it makes you hurt all the more so. You embrace your agonies against all reasons, for none exist but those you perceive in the absence of the self, in the absence of what it was that once made you your own being.”

            “Your hope that makes you clutch to your own misery will devour you wholly. Most will simply cease to be, or continue on nearly catatonic to the outside world, aware of nothing but their own unceasing pain. Some will be sold by the hags and given a false release. Others will be killed by creatures afflicted just as much as themselves. Still others will be used by we Yugoloths to fuel the infernal sorceries and engines of the Wasting Tower, to turn the cogs of evil, to fuel the Loadstones more and more. We are perfection born of horror. Out of purposeless agony is born purpose, out of meaninglessness is born meaning. Out of your pain we arise to turn you upon the spit once more. The cycle repeats over and over and you fuel our hunger against all reason. Out of your miseries we emerge. Out of your agony I exist.”

[Publisher’s note: We have published this material under contract, though the individual who made arrangements with us originally has since passed on and we are unable to relay correspondence to him by any curious individuals. He took his own life shortly after the publication of this manuscript, according to the report filed with and available from the Sons of Mercy he gouged out his eyes before hurled himself from the edge of Suicide Alley in the city of Sigil. He was carrying the original documents from which these papers were produced at the time of his presumed suicide. We direct inquiries to his organization, the Planewalker’s Guild, Market Ward, Sigil c/o guildmaster Balthasar Thames.]