Of Bortothelo

Bortothelo [Hiddengarde] is situated forthway and crossers to the pale milky starflow of the Cosmic River. It is a ruinous city-planet orbiting the epileptic sun called Mote, a defunct star that burns the skin a mottled canary yellow. The place has temporal confluence with many planes and may be accessed through the ancient networks of the Elder Archaics.*

Currently occupied by scattered gangs of rat-men magic-users, abhuman fetish-mongers, hideous elves and their questionable offspring, and long-armed goblin snatchers and hobo-burglars, Bortothelo was built in a time beyond memory, when the godlets stalked the worlds in raiment of naked flesh. Its primary architecture is studded with brutalist towers that rise like decaying fangs, occasionally dropping their crumbling upper masonry onto the serpentines of streets far below them. Many of these structures stand empty, or largely so, due to the inhospitable nature of their interiors,  where it is said many monstrous fungi bloom thick as darkness, befouling the air.

A few towers, like Jorn's Tooth, are hives of activity where the more powerful gangs, cabals, conclaves and syndicates conduct their business. These enterprises rely on the city's access to an unknown number of worlds (the "potshards" in the local dialect) to operate.

All those who dwell in Bortothelo for three consecutive blinks of the Mote-star will begin to have an unquenchable thirst for the ichor of the chained godling Nyctalion, He who is imprisoned in the hollow heart of the city-planet that lies below their feet. Nyctalion's blood is a blue nostalgium for a divine place-that-never-was, and mortals who consume it will recall that non-place's surreal beauty and be transported to a state of bliss for a short period. None who stay in Bortothelo will be capable of leaving by their own will, though the practice of exile is common.

The supply of Blue Ichor is controlled by a greedy clan of warty dwarfs called the Dungbeards (due to their inordinate fondness for the guano of bats -- they have mastered its properties). These reprobates crafted Nyctalion's bonds and muzzle from a metal they call Scorn, jet black and lusterless and harder than Adamant. Their unassailable dwelling is the Aortic Fortress where they have squatted for untold blinks of the Mote's eye, having murdered or imprisoned all of its former occupants long ago. The Dungbeards dress and eat extravagantly, flaunting their wealth and power like grotesque fops when they travel to the surface. They employ a small army of servants, veritable zombies to the Ichor, slaves to the thirst for it.

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*Elder Archaics: That long-dead race of proto-reptile travelers who still journey along the Cosmic River in their mobile sky-necropolis, the Ossuary.