What appears, at first, to be a copy of the Book of Athor is nothing of the sort: The pages inside are covered with scrawled diagrams and heretical desecrations of the Nine Gods.
A closer reading reveals this to be a cult manual for the “Brotherhood of the Blooded Knife”. The cult venerates chaos in all its forms, focusing their blasphemous rituals around the practice of human sacrifice. These sacrifices are given to a Galchutt named Abhoth, who they venerate as the “Source of All Filth” and the “Lord of the Zaug”.
Disturbingly, much of the book is given over to material designed to mock the holy rituals of the Church. It appears that the cult establishes itself secretly in society by posing as other religious orders. Actual followers of the deity may choose to join them, usually to their dismay – either they come to join the cult itself or they die beneath the cult’s “blooded knife”.
In other cases, a few cultists will infiltrate another religion and use force, blackmail, magic, or simple persuasion to sway its members into secretly worshipping chaos. This process can take years, but eventually the cult eats the other religion from the inside out, consuming it until the temple is entirely a front for the altars of the Brotherhood hidden in their subterranean complexes.
The last few pages of the book appear to be a prophetic rambling of sorts, beginning with the words: “In the days before the Night of Dissolution shall come, our pretenses shall drop like rotted flies. In those days the Church shall be broken, and we shall call our true god by an open name.”
The remainder of this section is a description of the faux religious practices for a fanciful “Rat God”, with the apparent intention being that a church could be openly established for this “god”. Eventually, the prophecies, say even this “last pretense” will be abolished and “Abhoth shall be worshipped by all who are not blooded by the knife”.
DESIGN NOTES
This book is designed to reveal that the Temple of the Rat God (Ptolus, p. 363) is the front for a chaos cult. If you can drop some benign references to the Temple of the Rat God into your campaign before the PCs’ find this book, you can get an, “Oh no! They’re already here!” reaction as they finish reading the lorebook. Drop the references into the campaign after they’ve read the lorebook and you’ll instead get a, “Wait a minute! I know that name!”
