This long scroll of human skin has been stitched into a moebius strip. It speaks of dark and blasphemous rites:
In the days before the Slumber, the One Who is of Many Doors came unto those who saw the truth of annihilation. And they who drank of the Truth of Blood reached through the Mouth of the Void and grasped the Worm of Which There is One and Many, and drew it forth from that place unto this. And in that birth-death of separation-completion, the arc of wisdom leapt.
These cultists – referred to as the Followers of the Forgotten Worm – would graft the worms taken from the Mouth of the Void onto themselves and others. “And those who were touched by wisdom were one with wisdom and one with the Mouth. Their hearts were as the hearts of demons.” The cult grew strong and the scroll speaks of a time when entire cities were “enthralled to wisdom”.
Then comes the time of “the Slumber”, after which it apparently became more difficult to gain access to the Mouth of the Void. Long passages are given over to the care and breeding of the Worms that remained, but these were apparently difficult or even impossible efforts. The power of the cult was broken and their cities were overthrown.
The cult apparently now exists in small sects, perhaps prospering among the jungle isles of the southern Teeth of Light. And although the Mouth has withdrawn from this plane of existence, contact with him does not seem wholly impossible: “As he is beyond time, beyond beginning, beyond ending – so like a fractured mirror which is yet whole can he be seen beyond the borders of the possible.” References are made to a rite referred to as the “Shadow Harbinging”, although the details are not to be found here.
So he serves as the stalking herald of the Shadow That Never Passes. And those who are touched by his wisdom are blessed by that which is seldom seen in the light of darkened days.
The end of the scroll transitions from concerns of the present into vague prophecies of a dark and terrible future culminating in “the time of greatest congregation which shall become the communion of worlds”.
So shall it be when the corona of the obscured sun shall reveal the stars which are never seen. Such shall presage the end of all slumbers.
And then, through the twisting of the scroll, the end becomes the beginning and the “time of greatest congregation” becomes the “days before the Slumber” and the scroll begins again.
DESIGN NOTES
This cult worships Dhar Rhyth (Chaositech, p. 97). I’m fairly certain that I came up with the epithet Worm of the Void and the name Followers of the Forgotten Worm, and this is another example of a chaos cult not currently active in Ptolus. (Or, at least, not connected to Wuntad’s activities.)
