Venom does not merely destroy. To the flesh it may bring mortality, but it serves a higher purpose. It transforms. It translates. To endure venom’s bite is to find strength. This is how we will bring strength to the world; by being the venom which will test its worth.
This small, gray-covered volume is a paean to all manners of vile activities – drug abuse, sexual perversions, acts of cruelty and violence – treated with the reverence of holy ritual.
In totality, the book appears to be a cult manual for the “Brotherhood of Venom”. They worship chaos, speaking of the “slow swarm of the Elder Brood” – by which they appear to mean the slow, methodical, and (above all) secret sowing of chaos and dissolution. They perceive ordered society as a curse and seek to undermine it through a slow and steady erosion of disintegration.
Entire passages are given over to describing the basic dynamics of power and how to subvert them – serving as a generic manual on how to infiltrate the highest levels of a society through its most important individuals.
The cult prefers the clandestine. They are patient and careful, never wanting the authorities or other potential opponents to know they exist.
A name is scrawled on the inside back cover:
BROTHERHOOD OF PTOLUS
DESIGN NOTES
The Brotherhood of Venom appear in “Temple of Deep Chaos,” one of the adventures from The Night of Dissolution.
