Obyzouth

Lore

The demon’s name can be traced back to the Greek word “abyssos”—“abyss,” which in turn was borrowed from the Akkadian “Apsu” and the Sumerian “Abzu,” the primordial freshwater ocean beneath the earth from which all life and the very fabric of the cosmos came forth.

In the magic-religious practice of antiquity it was believed that knowing a being’s true name gave one power over it. Obizu, being an ancient spirit, is acutely aware of this metaphysical vulnerability, so she possesses “tens of thousands of names and forms,” making her banishment an extremely difficult task.

Obizu’s anatomy defies the laws of physics and biology, balancing on the edge of the material and the etheric planes. She is described as a limbless entity hidden in absolute darkness, from which only a head with a phosphorescent greenish face and serpent-like, chaotically writhing hair can be seen. Her eyes radiate a bright light while her voice remains pure and clear. This shadowy shroud serves as perfect camouflage, rendering the demon invisible until she is harmed, after which the gloom disperses and her true form is revealed.

At the dawn of time Obizu was neither a fallen angel exiled from paradise nor the soul of a damned sinner. She was born from the primordial salt sea at the very moment the world and the beings that filled it came into being. In the oldest traditions she may have been revered as a stern sea deity or a personification of the storm, but all legends converge on her central tragedy: she was cursed with absolute barrenness. She turned that barrenness into grief for the unborn and envy toward mothers, becoming an inexorable force of nature—a predator. Unable to bear children, she feels a burning, maddening hatred for childbirth and the institution of motherhood itself. Because of her parasitic nature you will not encounter her in deep forests or isolated caverns devoid of people. Her “hunting grounds” are human settlements. She favors urban slums, abandoned buildings near towns, hospital wards, orphanages, and above all houses where women in late-term pregnancy or newborn infants are present. She is an eternal nomad, a wandering spirit who never sleeps by day or night. In the wild her behavior classifies her as an apex, solitary predator. She is not social and is fiercely territorial, but only for brief periods: once she commits her atrocity, she moves on to another region, driven by her inner curse.