Atlas of the Planes

Gehenna: The Crawling City

What I hate about dealing with Yugoloths is that unlike devils and demons, it feels like Yugoloths don't actively
TRY to be evil. They don't have any dark agenda of destruction or conquest. They basically act like any
merchant in Sigil, but the nastiness just spills out naturally into everything they do. That's exactly what I find
so disturbing in dealing with them - of all the fiendish races, Yugoloths are the most relatable.
-Archmage Flint Baldirk
Welcome to Gehenna! I'm so excited to have you here, and thrilled that you would consider me,
Greithrot the Eviscerator, as your guide. You may be wondering what I, a humble mezzoloth, bring to
the tour-guide table that the other yugoloths don't. In a word - PASSION! I am not just doing this for
the money, I am THRILLED to work with you delightful squishies from the Prime Plane. Other
yugoloths consider it a burden to work with Prime Planers, but I genuinely consider your people to
be fun.
In fact - if I may share a personal anecdote - it may surprise you to learn that I am one of the few
yugoloths in the city who has visited the Prime Plane on a regular basis! It's a funny story, really. A
few years ago a wizard there found out how to summon and bind me. The thing is, he didn't get the
declension of the final syllable in the binding ceremony just right, so I showed up there, completely
uncontrolled.
I know what you're thinking - Greithrot, you went ahead and eviscerated that mage, didn't you? But I
didn't: instead I pranked him. This is the hilarious part - I pretended I was totally under his control!
"Yes sir! No sir! As you wish, my master!" All that stuff. So he orders me to guard his tower while
he's away saving the world or something, and I'm like "I'll totally do that, you bet!" Anyway, this mage
had a troll he was running experiments on, trying to find a way to cure diseases or something, and
when the mage leaves town, I skin the troll, wear its skin over me like a suit, and then go out and
have a little fun. When the mage comes back, he's all like "My god! The village was attacked! Half
the townsfolk were eaten!" and I'm like "WHAAAAAAT! No way! Sounds like something a troll would
do!" and the troll is like "Grrraer! Vrish Nugler Greg Arrr!" (Which I guess probably means "No, I
didn't do it! Greithrot did while he was wearing my skin!") Anyway, the point is that a bunch of knights
were eventually sent to kill the mage and put a stop to his out-of-control troll experiments, and as
he's lying there afterwards all depressed in a pool of his own blood, wondering why his horoscope
didn't predict this day, or why I ran away and hid during the fight, I come up to him and I whisper "My
dear master, I just wanted you to know... you weren't really trolled! You were yugolothed!" He didn't
say much, just made a weird face and died, but I knew deep down that he finally got the joke.
Anyway, my point is that I understand and appreciate prime planers. You have the most delightful
senses of humor. In fact, if I ever evolve into a baernoloth, I'd like my new form to look like one of
your prime plane clowns, just to be able to express my appreciation for comedy. I mean, I'd add a
few more spikes and chitinous legs, of course. And obviously I'd need sharper teeth or mandibles,
since human clowns can't bite for shit (believe me, I've tested this out). But the point is, your race's
innovations inspire me, and I just wanted to express this to you.
I'm sorry, I'm rambling again. Onwards and upwards! Time for the tour!
DISCOVERY
Before we get to the sights, I'd like to apologize for the difficulty involved in getting you here. All the
gates to the Crawling City are larvae-activated, meaning that you have to pass one larvae through
first for each creature to use the portal. It's a precautionary measure so that the city can never get
invaded, you know? Bringing an army through a portal means that you'll also need to bring an army
of larvae with you, and that's like herding cats. Not that anybody would ever be stupid enough to
invade the Crawling City, but you know how our corporate masters get... they're paranoid. More
realistically, having larvae-activated gates means that anybody who gets here has the finances to do
business, you know? The Crawling City welcomes anybody who's here to trade, but we don't want to
become a home to deadbeats.
Anyway, since you didn't want to deal in larvae for some reason, we had to get you on the hard way
- through a portal to Khalas and then overland to the Devourer's present location. For yugoloths, this
isn't too hard - we're immune to acid and poison, so what you squishies call "deadly environmental
pollution" doesn't really effect us too much. And ascending the Devourer's legs isn't too much of a
problem to us because every yugoloth can teleport, so if we lose our footing or get caught up in its
sticky tentacles we can just teleport away before it can take a bite out of us. But since you don't have
that capability, I had to hire an Arcanaloth to cast the Fly spell on you - which is part of why your
travel expenses were so expensive. Arcanaloths don't come cheap, you know!

SURVIVAL
Most of the rest of your expenses come from that magical police brand on your arm - after my
finder's fee, of course! You see, with that soft pink skin, you look... how can I put this delicately... like
a bit of a target. Fortunately, as part of the complete tour package, you're paid up for the next week
with our police force. What this means is that if you're assaulted during that time, they'll do their best
to protect you, since fifty percent of their fee is paid by me only after you've left the city without any
incident. Additionally, if something DID happen to you here - not that it would, but in the hypothetical
case that it did - any yugoloth who caught the murderer would be entitled to all of their goods and
possessions. That's also why the police employ an arcanaloth who will occasionally be scrying on
you through the brand - this way if somebody kills you, our police force of highly trained
professionals can immediately apprehend the guilty party in order to get first dibs on everything they
own. Obviously, that's a pretty hefty deterrent. You know, a lot of uninformed people who have only
met Yugoloth mercs say that the Crawling City must be a dangerous place, but that's not true at all.
As long as you have money to spend, anybody can live like a king here! It's only once the money
runs out that you have to be concerned for your safety. But you're obviously a biped of taste and
breeding, not some filthy pov, so you got nothing to worry about.

MYSTERIES
Ah, here we are at Luxe Row! I love this place. One day I hope to own a home here. Look, they're
demolishing a building to make space for a bigger building! Hopefully the extra space will make
property values drop. Watch that wrecking ball go! Bam! Crash! Reminds me of a fun siege I took
part in about four hundred of your mortal seasonal cycles ago back when I was hired to work for
Bergamot the Mad, one of your prime plane dictators. Gosh, those were some good times... wait, is
something wrong? I recognize that prime plane expression. You look shocked by all the blood in the
street. Haven't you ever seen a building bleed before? Oh, I forgot - this is your first time on the
Devourer. I guess I should explain to to you about the city's cardiovascular system.
See, the Devourer is basically an exceptionally large... "house centipede" type of thing from the
plane of earth - what those egghead ultroloths call a "petrophage" - something which primarily eats
rocks. It uses that rock both for energy and to grow larger. Its carapace is what this city is built on.
But of course, commerce waits for no loth and ain't nobody can wait millions of years for the
Devourer to grow. We may be immortal, but we don't have THAT kind of patience! So what
yugoloths do is we expand the carapace ourselves with buildings and sidewalks and stuff, and if the
building is thick enough, then the Devourer's circulatory system kind of grows into the walls. This
means that the Devourer's biology has to spend less effort on growing its shell, since the loths living
in the city expand the carapace for it. And all that added energy instead goes towards increasing it's
size. That's why the Devourer is so large, you know. Normally I hear that they don't get much bigger
than a houseboat, but when you factor in a bunch of loths helping it to grow for thousands of years...
well, that all adds up.
Hey, do you want to hear a spooky story? Some loths say that it's not just the devourer's circulatory
system that grows through the buildings, but occasionally other sensory organs. They say that there
are little eyes growing all over the buildings in secret spots, and little tympanic membranes so the
Devourer can hear everything that goes on the city. And maybe, when you're all alone, the Devourer
may whisper dark secrets to you. Secrets that will either destroy your mind, or grant you
enlightenment. Some say that the devourer is itself a baernoloth, and that it secretly manipulates
every high ranking yugoloth in the city. BOOGA-BOOGA-RAAH!!! Ha ha ha, scared you good, didn't
I? But seriously, people do say these things. A good friend of mine claimed to start hearing the
Devourer's whispering, then he evolved into a baernoloth. Unfortunately, before he evolved, he also
went completely insane, and now he just wanders the Grey Waste of Hades playing "Let's make a
deal" with randos he meets there.
You want to hear another story? It's how I got my surname of "the Eviscerator." See, when I was
serving in Bergamot the Mad's army, I socialized with a few of his more open-minded prime plane
soldiers and there was this thing they sometimes did called a "wedgie" where they would seize
somebody's undergarments from behind and yank them up roughly over the other person's head.
Anyway, I wanted to get in on their camaraderie so I thought I'd give it a try. Unfortunately these
claws aren't designed for fine movements and I didn't realize how hard it is to grab just the
undergarments, so after shouting "wedgie!" I ended up yanking my buddies lower torso right off his
spine and stuffed the whole thing right on top of his head (apparently you mortals have a hole
between your legs where the head can kinda fit if you squeeze it, oddly enough). And then none of
the other soldiers wanted to hang out with me anymore. But seriously, isn't that kind of sad though? I
mean, you get into a few bloody massacres with people, think you're really bonding, but when you
make ONE screw-up they shun you and call you "the Eviscerator"? I mean look at me, I'm such a fun
Mezzoloth; you're think they'd have called me something more fun like "the Prankster" or "the Joker."
Ah well, I didn't like my nickname at the time but I suppose it was better than what they
posthumously named old AssFace.

THE LOCALS
As long as we're in Luxe Row, let me point out a few places of note. See that building over there?
And the penthouse apartment at the very top, with the garden? That's where Cholerix lives. She's
the CEO of Inner Weapons, our biowarfare corporation. Bioarcana has been really big for the past
couple of hundred cycles, so you'll probably recognize the names of a lot of the movers and shakers
here, such as Bubonix, Typhus, and of course Anthruxus, our former Oinoloth. He resigned halfway
during his term to make way for Midianchlarus. Some say that Midianchlarus made him step down
by whispering a secret in his ear - a secret so disturbing that Anthruxus abdicated power because he
couldn't handle it anymore. Me, I say that he probably threatened Anthruxus with blackmail evidence
of something ridiculously embarassing, like balling a night hag or something.
Wait! Do you see that?!? It's Maeldur the fallen angel! I'm good friends with him! Maeldur! Maeldur!
Do you remember me? I saw you at that "Ethics and the Exploitation thereof" seminar that the Blind
Clockmaker taught! It's cool, you don't have to acknowledge me or say anything, buddy! I know
you're a busy guy and I don't want to take up your time with idle chit-chat! That's what makes our
friendship so special, Maeldur! Maeldur? Huh... well, see you around, buddy! Let's do lunch
sometime!
Sorry about that, Maeldur is a bit of a celebrity around here. He's the only Solar to ever acknowledge
the importance of the free market, after having a long conversation with the Baernoloth Daru Ib
Shamiq. Of course, those ignorant socialists in Arcadia didn't approve of his newfound libertarian
convictions, so they tried to kill him. But Daru was nice enough to give him a job, and he lives in
Gehenna full-time now.
See that 20-story tower over there? That's the branch office of the Tower Arcane, which is run by
Helekanalaith. She'll be your host on when you visit the Tower Arcane in Khamada, so we'll stop by
there near the end of your stay to make the necessary travel arrangements.

POLITICS/RELIGION
Now this impressive building we're passing by now is the headquarters of the Pragmatics, currently
the dominant political party in our two party system. The headquarters of the other party - the
Spirituals - is on the other side of town. I don't really recommend getting involved in politics while
you're here. Dangerous? Well sure, I guess. But mostly I meant because it's really, really boring.
Really? You want me to tell you about it? sigh Fine. It all stems back to that ancient story about our
race's origins, and how the General of Gehenna freed us all with the words "Live for yourself." But
did he really write that? Or did he write "Live for your self?" It may not mean much to you, but to us,
that space means a great deal. "Live for yourself" means that you should focus on the things, the
material possessions, that could make your life happy. But "live for your self" means that you should
try to attain selfhood, a personal identity. To establish a link with your past life and hopefully, evolve
into a baernoloth.
Of course, over the millennia, the agenda of each of these political parties has changed
substantially. At the end of the day, it's all about power, after all. Even so, there's still a certain
corporate culture to each of them which has lingered through the years. Spirituals tend to focus more
on attaining arcane power, favors, and knowledge. Pramatics tend to focus more on tangibles like
money, rank, and status. Of course this is not a hard and fast rule, just a general leaning.
Speaking of money, check it out! Over there is the headquarters of the First Bank of Gehenna, which
has branch offices throughout every one of the Lower Planes! Fun fact - did you know that over forty
percent of the money in the Lower Planes has passed through there at some point? It's
true! Banking is the lifeblood of this city, and the oil that helps every one of the Lower Planes
function.

TRAVEL
Anyway, here we are back at the hotel, and that concludes our tour for today. I'll stop by tomorrow to
show you some more of the sights, but in the meantime, feel free to wander around and take in
some of the nightlife! I recommend visiting Soft Alley - just about a mile that way - it's where a lot of
expats hang out, as well as quite a few succubi who are willing to provide more than ample
entertainment for the right price. One word of advice, don't drink any cocktails unless you know
exactly what liquors are in it. It's not that anyone is going to actively try to poison you, but we
yugoloths tend to have much stronger constitutions than you humanoids. Have a great night!

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