Leng
The Terror Beyond Dreams
The Plateau of Leng is a distant demiplane of nightmares within the Dreamlands, barely known to even the greatest scholars of the Great Beyond on Golarion.12
Geography
Leng is accessible from virtually anywhere via the Dreamlands. Those who travel too far into the realm of dreams can find themselves caught in a vast sea and carried by the tides to the Dreaming Shore, the southern edge of Leng.3
Leng is a cold, desolate, inhospitable realm hedged in by two titanic mountain ranges that run from the Dreaming Shore and converge at the Cold Waste in the north. The plateau rises ever upward as it travels away from the rocky coast, but no two travellers describe the lay of the land identically. Upon the tableland sit numerous scattered stone villages, both inhabited and ruined.34 The greatest of these ruins is the abandoned city of Sarkomand, the original home of the denizens of Leng. Two stairways descend from Sarkomand to the cyclopean underworld of Leng.15
Inhabitants
Leng is home to creatures that defy facile categorization or even understanding. The primary inhabitants of Leng are the mysterious denizens of Leng, who ply the Dreaming Shore to prey upon those seeking to escape Leng by sea. Denizens of Leng also travel to the Dreamlands and the Universe in their strange ships to collect slaves. Many of these slaves are sent to the almost-humans' moon-beast masters on the Nameless Rock, to be sacrificed in their foul rituals.2561
In some villages, like Lelag-Leng, degenerate beings resembling fiendish humans perform profane rites of worship to blasphemous deities, which are malicious enough to shatter the mind of onlookers. Nightgaunts and Leng hounds roam the skies of Leng, hunting prey for their masters. The underworld of Leng is home to the titanic bholes, and the Leng ghouls and ghasts who are far more powerful than normal ghouls and locked in a war against the four-armed gugs.1
In the Spider Vales nestled in the mountains, the massive Leng spiders plot their revenge against the denizens of Leng, who were responsible for driving them nearly to extinction, and eagerly prey upon any trespassers. Scarlet walkers also lurk in the mountains, feeding on living creatures.1
Others include the draconic monstrosities called shantaks and the infamous hounds of Tindalos.4
The most powerful being in Leng, perhaps its ruler, is the mysterious yellow-clad High-Priest Not To Be Described, who presides over the plateau's culture of blood sacrifice.4
The true horror of Leng lies at the central peak where the mountains meet. Beyond the Cold Waste, a row of malevolent statues known as the Watchers in the Waste stand guard over an impossibly-high mountain, atop of which lies unknown Kadath, which reaches a further several miles above the mountain's peak, and where the Outer God Nyarlathotep rules.21
On Golarion
The runelords of Thassilon were aware of Leng and often conjured its inhabitants to do their bidding; Karzoug the Claimer even built his capital, Xin-Shalast, in a location where the border between Leng and the Universe was unusually thin to take advantage of the dimension's eldritch energies.7
Knowledge of Leng on Golarion is sketchy at best, limited to glimpses in nightmares and drug-fueled visions and its origin is unknown. Some believe it to exist physically on the Universe or another dimension. Others claim it is a surviving piece of a dead plane from before the current multiverse. Yet others believe that Leng is the nightmares of mortal dreamers shaped into a physical place.4
Geography
The following locations exist in the nightmare world of Leng.8
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 . “Chapter 3: The Great Beyond” in Planar Adventures, 218. Paizo Inc., 2018
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 . “Spires of Xin-Shalast” in Spires of Xin-Shalast, 20–21. Paizo Inc., 2008
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 . “Leng: The Terror Beyond Dreams” in Into the Nightmare Rift, 65. Paizo Inc., 2012
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 . “Other Dimensions” in The Great Beyond, A Guide to the Multiverse, 52. Paizo Inc., 2009
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 . “Bestiary” in Spires of Xin-Shalast, 79. Paizo Inc., 2008
- ↑ . “The Great Beyond” in The Inner Sea World Guide, 245. Paizo Inc., 2011
- ↑ . “Spires of Xin-Shalast” in Spires of Xin-Shalast, 7. Paizo Inc., 2008
- ↑ A gazetteer of Leng appears in Pathfinder Adventure Path: Into the Nightmare Rift.
External links
- The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (real-world work of fiction) on Wikipedia
