Editing Dwimmermount: If Trouble Was Money (section)

=== Era 5: The Turmaxians ===

Dwimmermount was created by the Great Ancients, the ancestors of men and the founders of the world’s first civilization.

A man entered Dwimmermount and became a god. This was Turms Turmax, who was arrested and imprisoned by the Thulians for defying the Great Church’s ban on mages and preaching the pursuit of immortality. 

Typhonians are followers of Typhon, mightiest of the Gods of the Great Church, who led the rebellion against Turms’ usurpation of the Thulian Empire and work to keep his dark secrets imprisoned in Dwimmermount. They are opposed by Turmaxian cultists who seek to bring about Turm’s dreams of empire and gain the secret of his apotheosis. The Turmaxians have been working for centuries to convince people that all of the Gods of the Great Church are merely aspects of Turms Termax, as his coming divinity echoed into the past.

Eryn confirms that there is a constant struggle within the Temple of Tyche as well, to keep the Turmaxian infiltrators from spreading heretical ideas. Some sections of the church have already undergone a schism. 

In time, like the Eld before them, the Thulians encountered resistance to their continued rule. Outlying regions of the Thulian Empire struggled for independence; and non-humans, particularly goblins, sought to chart their own courses, free from human interference. Again, like the Eld before them, the Thulians brutally fought back against these rebellions, slowly descending ever further into tyranny.

Into this environment stepped a man known to history as Turms Termax. His origins are unknown, though it is believed he came from an eastern province of the Thulian Empire. In any case, Turms was a powerful magician, perhaps the most powerful since the days of the Great Ancients and the Eld.

Turms believed that magic was man’s vehicle to godhood, and he preached against both the decadent Thulian Empire and its inquisitorial Great Church. Needless to say, his activities drew the ire of the authorities, who searched far and wide for him, lest he inspire others to rebellion.

Eventually, the Thulians captured Turms and took him to Dwimmermount, where he was prosecuted for heresy, judged guilty, and beheaded. But Turms did not perish. According to legend, rather than die beneath the axe blow of a Thulian headsman, Turms achieved apotheosis, becoming a god, as he had always claimed he would.

Shocked to their cores by this event, his Thulian persecutors became his most ardent followers. Within weeks of Turms’s capture, the Empire espoused his philosophy, lifting the restrictions against magic, and reforming the Great Church to teach the new truths that the Thrice-Great (so-called due to his mastery of magic, alchemy, and astronomy) had revealed.

The Thulian Empire continued to rule—under Turmaxian control. At first, the followers of Turms acted as “advisors” to the Thulian emperors, guiding their decisions and using their command of magic to shore up the teetering empire. Later, the Turmaxians seized direct control, with Turmaxian necrolytes wearing the Iron Crown of Thule. 

Under Turmaxian rule, worship of the Thulian gods gave way to worship of the Man-Become-God Turms, with the older gods being seen as little more than prefigurations of his glory. The Turmaxian coup injected some vitality into the dying empire, but it was not enough, especially given the way that they accorded themselves and all mages special privileges over others. 

Though the Turmaxians began to deploy powerful magic from the workshops and foundries of Dwimmermount, it was not enough to stop the rebellions. Led by clerics of Typhon and Tyche, neither of whom accepted the new order of the Turmaxians, entire provinces seceded from the empire. Chaos reigned.

As the insurrections grew more numerous and the Turmaxians more desperate, reports of atrocities spread. The Turmaxians began using monsters as shock troops, supporting their offensives with the darkest Chaotic magicks of the ancient Eldritch grimoires. These proved insufficient to ward off the relentless assaults of the rebels, seemingly blessed by Typhon and Tyche to end the sacrileges the Turmaxians had introduced. After a series of decisive victories, the rebel armies were within a league of Dwimmermount, poised to capture the mountain fortress and cut the Turmaxians off from their great magical arsenal.

Strangely, when the rebels reached Dwimmermount, they found the fortress had already fallen. Its lights were darkened; its enchantries and manufactory were quiet; its main doors had been magically sealed; none of the other known entrances were operational. The fall of Dwimmermount deprived the Turmaxians of their strongest fortress and most powerful leaders. Without any knowledge of what had happened or why, the victorious rebels nevertheless took advantage of the situation. The remaining Turmaxian armies were soon routed, and the Empire collapsed.

In its place arose a patchwork of city-states and principalities. The most powerful remaining institution was the temple of Typhon, which had supplied many of the leaders of the rebellion. The Typhonians, vowing to prevent future tyrants from obtaining the dark and potent magicks of Dwimmermount, established an enduring watch on the dungeon from the nearby town of Muntburg.

The fall of Dwimmermount was two hundred years ago.