//: Journey to the Heart of the Rot
Red | 1/24/26
After dozens of repeated excursions into the noxious bowels of the so-called Dead Kiraak — nearly all of which were met with immediate hostilities from the leprous amalgams that inhabited it — the stars of an economy stretched thin by a ceaseless interplanetary war had finally aligned. The time had come for the Nälkä to coordinate a proper diagnostic survey of the Dead Kiraak in hopes of deriving some sort of clue as to what might have, at some point in Nerivia’s infancy, led it to earn its namesake. With only the dim glow of Nerivia’s twin moons to light their way, a handful of Vātula Opiskelja, Lihakut’ak, and Greeniveras, having been personally selected by the Lihan Paimen to take part in the expedition, were escorted by a diverse posse of elites from the Solomonari and the Hunter’s Black Lodge to the inverted starfish of a maw that was the Dead Kiraak’s entrance.
The aftermath of a crude and wayward attempt by the Global Occult Coalition to exterminate the Dead Kiraak made navigation to its interior rather difficult for the Nälkä, all of whom had to take immense care in traversing the limp branches of necrotic tissue that pointed the way inside. Just as soon as they had reached solid footing, the Nälkä were greeted by a solitary Rotspawn that, for once, did not react to their mere presence with homicidal aggression. A Vātula Lihakut’ak tentatively proceeded to Embrace the Rotspawn as part of their examination, to which the Rotspawn, in a croaked voice, responded with only one word: “More.” Upon hearing that, the remaining three Vātula in the Rotspawn’s immediate vicinity all attempted to treat it with an Embrace, but the Rotspawn exhibited no visible improvements in its condition. The Rotspawn then uttered a new word, “Death.”
To that, the Nälkä, after debating briefly amongst themselves, chose to offer to the Rotspawn a Beavatott from the Hunter’s Black Lodge as a sort of sacrifice. The Rotspawn immediately obliged, hacking off the top half of the Beavatott’s skull with one definitive swipe of its malformed claw. The Beavatott collapsed, the contents of their brain oozing out of their head and on to the spongy ground beneath. A Solomonari then stepped forward to speak, pressing one foot over the corpse of the Beavatott to prop themselves up and as close to the Rotspawn’s eye level as they could conceivably get, “Take us to the heart.”
“No.” The Rotspawn’s reply echoed with finality from its ruined throat, but it stepped aside nonetheless, gesturing broadly to the vein-like tunnel of gangrenous flesh that lay behind it and seeming to grant the Nälkä passage into the remainder of the Dead Kiraak. Without another word, the Nälkä proceeded through the tunnel and emerged into a cavernous chamber — a mass grave of Fleshspawn, Flesh Hands, and one remarkably well-preserved Scholar embedded at the center with a copy of The Blind Swan clutched tightly in one of its mummified hands. At the opposite end of the chamber was a smaller tunnel that seemed to lead directly to the Dead Kiraak’s palpitating heart, but just as the Nälkä were beginning to inspect it, a Rotspawn and a trio of Rot Hands shambled into view, the Rotspawn spitting out an all-too-familiar phrase as they did so, “No.”
A pair of Vātula Lihakut’ak, seeing that as a potential distraction, broke away to funnel into a third branching tunnel with a mouth that seemed to glow a dim, sickly green. The two soon found themselves in a room overgrown with wide swaths of tumorous boils, which pulsated with an infection that, despite a rigorous set of analyses, could not be identified. On the far side of the room was an outcropping of a pillar that, like all the rest of the strange ruins on Nerivia, predated recorded history. The Lihakut’ak, noting that many of the same infected boils had already been seen dotting the decaying walls of the Dead Kiraak and even the bodies of the Rotspawn, considered sampling the growths but decided against it for the time being, instead opting to return to the chamber from which they came to organize a safer method of collection.
The Lihakut’ak re-emerged to find that a Scholar had recently arrived to aid the Nälkä in its still futile attempts to negotiate with the Rot. The Scholar was flanked by Nälkä on every side but its front, which was occupied solely by the Rotspawn, its crooked posture twisting into something defiant as it choked again, “No.”
The Scholar twitched as if the word had struck a physical blow, and it angled one of its trunk-like arms backward to drop the scroll that it had just been holding over the Rotspawn’s face back into its carrier, which was filled to near-overflowing with dozens more that had already been read. Then, without a semblance of warning, the Scholar expelled a mass of acidic droplets towards the Rotspawn, which reacted with a sharp jab of its claw into the Scholar’s abdomen as the surrounding Rot Hands all rushed in to attack.
The negotiations had failed, but the way was open. As the Rotspawn and Rot Hands preoccupied themselves with the Scholar, the Nälkä promptly funneled their way through the tunnel and into the heart chamber. The Vātula, now sidestepping most of their usual precautions in the interest of time, began sampling everything from blood to brainstems from the many carcasses of Rotspawn that encircled the irregularly-thrumming heart of the Dead Kiraak. Shortly thereafter, the Scholar — alive but significantly worse for wear — limped out of the heart chamber entrance to rejoin the Nälkä, who swiftly and unanimously concluded that to be as good a signal to leave as they were ever likely to get.
Pursued by the fledgelings of Rotspawn and Rot Hands who overstepped the boundaries of the Dead Kiraak’s innermost bowels to give chase, the Nälkä, with their Scholar in tow, made a collective mad dash for the tunnels’ exits and scaled the jelly-like inclines of the Dead Kiraak’s putrified walls, breaking for the cargo truck that they had arrived on just as soon as the cool midnight air of the outside lapped at their faces. By the time the first Rot Hand had fully vaulted itself over the rim of the Dead Kiraak’s maw, that cargo truck was little more than a shrinking dot on the horizon.
To what extent the diagnostic survey of the Dead Kiraak was a success, as of now, remains to be determined. Neither the infection that ails the Dead Kiraak nor its source have been identified, and while samples have been recovered, it has been deemed too high of a risk to move them into the Kiraak for further study. As such, assistance on the part of the Serpent’s Hand in securing a dedicated research site may be required.