There is no sun. There is no night. There is only the red, and the pits, and the sound of every soul you have ever wronged calling your name from somewhere below.
Testimony of a soul freed by Kymara, as recorded by the Church of Sol Anon
Xodod, xodian for "spiritual death," was built to be a prison. El Anon made it to hold the Soul of Zodo, with the aid of Zodo's own son Xeno, and it succeeded: the Soul has never left. But a prison is only as secure as its walls, and Xodod's walls were never meant to hold back a god from within. The Soul of Zodo conquered his prison, and made it a kingdom. Today, Xodod is the destination of every soul the Soul has claimed, and the place most faiths on Nor'Ova warn the unrepentant will end.
Nearly everything known of Xodod comes from those Kymara has freed. They are few, their memories are rarely whole, and their accounts are painful to record. That they agree as closely as they do is considered either strong evidence of their truth, or deeply unsettling. Frequently both.
A Brief History
Xodod was made as a cage for one being. According to the account preserved by Spector's faithful, Xeno approached El Anon to help seal away his father, and the plan succeeded only in part. Zodo's other son, Kamele, betrayed it at the critical moment, and only the Soul of Zodo was imprisoned rather than the whole. As reward for his service, Kamele was made a prince of the very realm meant to hold his father.
The Soul did not remain a prisoner for long in any sense but the literal one. Over ages no mortal can measure, he subdued the realm, raised demons to serve him, and began to claim the souls of the dead. Every soul he claims makes him and his servants stronger. What began as a prison became a throne, and what was meant to contain Zodo now feeds him.
The Land
Xodod is a single vast landmass, surrounded by a churning red expanse that the freed describe as neither sea nor sky, and scattered with smaller islands along its edges. The land itself winds inward in great uneven rings around its center, like something that has been coiled tight and left to harden. Grey highlands rise throughout it, split by deep fissures that spread outward like cracks in stone. Between them lie long pale wastes, where the freed say the ground is ash and the air tastes of brimstone.
Three rivers are known to flow through Xodod. The Acheron is the longest, winding through the heart of the realm. The Styx and the Cocytus run through its northern reaches. None of the freed have described what flows in them, and none have wished to.
Above it all drifts the Eye of Zodo: a vast, distended eye that wanders the skies of Xodod, and through which the Soul sees everything that happens in his domain.
The Pits
Xodod is a realm of countless pits, and each pit is a hell of its own. The freed name them - Sheol, Gehenna, Tartaro, Hades, Abaddon, Tehom, Naraka, Avici, Mashchit, Dumah, and many more - but rarely describe the same pit the same way twice. Some scholars take this as proof that each pit is shaped to its prisoners. Others take it as proof that no one who has seen the inside of a pit ever truly remembers it.
Scattered throughout the realm are the Cages: vast pens of soul-cages, clustered in places like the Gehenna Cages, the Gor'Goro Cages, Myr'sk, Baal's Cages, and Gomora. What the caged souls are waiting for, the freed do not say.1
- 1. Theologians have proposed several answers - judgment, sorting, or use as fuel for the Soul's servants. None of the proposals are comforting, and the freed have confirmed none of them.
The Principalities
The Soul of Zodo rules all of Xodod, but beneath him the realm is divided into principalities, each governed by one of the three high demon princes.
- Maal'Zodo is the Soul's own principality, at the very center of the realm. It is governed in his name by Kamele, brother of Spector. Here stands Xodai, the seat of the Soul's throne of tortured souls.
- Maal'Ammon spans much of the north and east, ruled by Prince Ammon from Ammon's Keep.
- Maal'Belthazar spans much of the south and west, ruled by Prince Belthazar.
- Maal'Eynyx is a buffer between them. Its northern half answers to Ammon and its southern half to Belthazar, while a demon lord rules the whole from Castle Eynyx, a seat that changes hands often and rarely peacefully.
Notable Locations
- Kymara's Door: The one door in Xodod that opens outward. It is from here that Kymara calls the souls she frees, and beyond it lies freedom. Only Kymara holds the key.
- The Gates: Xodod holds other gates as well: Abadon's Gate, Gehenna's Door, Vera's Gate, the Suffer Gate, and Baal's Pass. Where they lead, no freed soul has said.
- The Suicide Forest: A great forest in the far northwest, whose trees the freed will not describe.
- Shattered Hope and False Hope: Two places whose names the freed give, and nothing more.
- Pandemonium: A place near the heart of the realm, at the edge of the Soul's own principality.
- The Lone Tower: A single tower rising within Maal'Zodo, near Xodai.
- Rockcastle Ruins: The ruins of a castle in the west. That anything in Xodod could be a ruin, and who might have built it, is a question few theologians have been willing to raise.
