Seth'Arax¶
"We are all Arax, soon you will be with us." — a whisper of Seth'Arax on the Araxian Plane (S197)
Contested
This page is named in the open questions Seth'Arax: domains and the name of the Pitch and Seth'Arax's awakening and the Well of Souls. The Fifth Age documents disagree on what he is god of, what his pitch-spirits are called, and whether he is free.
Seth'Arax, the Beetle-God, is the Elder God of Supremacy, Nobility and Travail, a member of the Council of Izhtari and, in the Fifth Age, the one Elder God who is "fully awake" (S112). He is the master of the Araxians whose swarms broke the Sancturi Empire and now sprawl across the north and east of the Broken Sea, and his servants are the Pitch, fragments of the great souls he has consumed. The Fifth Age notes rate him Strong (S101).
Also called: Seth-Arax (S031, S076), Seth'arax (S020, S194), Setarak (S193, S194); in history, "The Lexamorph, The ?? Collector" (S101).
Nature¶
Seth'Arax "is associated most frequently with Beetles" and sits "on the Council of Izhtari (one of Izhtari's advisors)" (S101). Like all the Elder Gods he "did not get along" with his peers, and the earlier notes name his "particular enemies": Lha'nott, the phoenix goddess, and Nox'Somn, the sleeping bear (S160). His brother is Amun'rak, god of predation and storms, with whom he "has a difficult and complex relationship … which varies between cooperation and hostility" (S101).
"Seth'Arax had minions among many races and did not consider himself a patron of any specific races except for the strong. He favored strictly hierarchical systems where a few strong individuals had dominion over the masses (ie, hive minds especially). He often granted immortality to his most favored minions by intertwining (and dominating) their souls with his" (S101). The Chitine are named as one kind of minion (S101). The Fifth Age deity list calls him "the elder god responsible for the creation of insects" (S020).
The Pitch¶
Seth'Arax keeps no Ascendants. His equivalent is the Pitch, which the newest notes class as his Ulraspex and call "essentially an extension of Seth'Arax. Seth'Arax has consumed many of the greatest souls to walk on Terrun. These have become intertwined with his Einar soul and he can manifest themselves as 'pitch' when they are separated from him, which he uses to destroy and control. Further, each pitch can separate pieces of themselves to exert control over and/or corrupt/influence others. While this weakens the core, it can extend their control and influence dramatically. Completely destroying these satellites hurts the core" (S101).
The pitch takes several forms: Twisted Pitch, which snakes across a victim's flesh and drives them while "the victim still has a portion of their former consciousness"; Spinal Pitch, which burrows along the spine so that the host "looks the same" but may be controlled at will, "often used for infiltration"; Swarming Pitch, one mind in hundreds of beetles, mice or insects; Pitchwater, "a black water elemental"; Pitchblade, "reserved for those who have dedicated themselves to Seth'Arax willingly", infecting one limb and collecting the minion's soul at death; and Pitchmorph, the dying host's last energy turned into "a being of pure black ooze able to take many different forms", often ridden by one of the lesser Uhl'Arax souls (S101, S160). The pitch does not like light; the party of the Sancturi campaign trapped one with prisms and mirrors in his hidden shrine (S178). The creature pages describe the pitch beings themselves; the Araxian Darkmetal "imbued with the soul energies of the vanquished" and the hammer Soulcrusher belong to the Artifacts.
In the Sancturi-era logs the same beings are the Thur'arax, and a Thur'arax grows through five estates: from mere Pitch, "a pure force of destruction", through a single Araxian Thrall and then many thralls, to the Araxian Focus that opens portals to the Araxian Plane while its core remains there, and finally the Araxian Nexus which "spans two planes at a time … and needs to be killed in both" (S197). The Thur'arax Bhol-tho, met in a drowned dwarven shipyard, said of itself "I am BHOL-THO" and of its master "We are Legion"; its heart, encased in darkmetal atop a citadel on the Araxian Plane, reflected images of the mortal world (S197).
Imprisonment and awakening¶
Seth'Arax was imprisoned by the Kalari like the rest of his kind (S020). The prison had many parts. A defiled Aquitanian temple of Seth'Arax held his prison behind a Dread Gate, where "Pitch is trying to free its master/creator Seth'Arax" (S177). Six coloured soul fragments, "soul fragments of Seth'Arax that he himself created and hid", lay in his hidden shrine, each a curse and a gift to whoever absorbed it (S178). "7 seals of Seth'Arax" bound him, and by the end of the Sancturi campaign "at least one has failed" (S196). The Fifth Age timeline sets "Seth'Arax Awakened" at 721 of the Sancturi calendar, within the Sancturi Period (S016); the post-Sancturi lore says simply "The Elder God, Seth'Arax is fully awake" (S112).
The 2022 plot notes tell a different state of affairs: "It is believed that Seth-Arax is still repelled from the mortal plane by its lack of a soul. It is still forced to exist only in its own demi-plane", and his avatar Nicoleta gathers Eldritch Soulcruxes and hunts the Well of Souls in the Rift to restore him; in the same notes "Seth-Arax and Bhaal are allies", and Araxian forces seize the prison of Bhaal from the Light of Kalar (S076). These are brainstorming notes that the newer lore does not repeat, and the question is open.
The Araxians and the Araxian Empire¶
The Araxians are "several broods under the control of Seth'Arax", and the Vrix, "Vermin Beetles, etc", are broods that "have broken from Seth'Arax" (S024). "They operate in swarms managed by Overlords. Their advance and expansion has been relentless, but have slowed recently. They consume the dead and recycle their organic material in spawning pits" (S112). "Historians mark the end of the Sancturi Age in 904 SM when the capitol Sanctorum fell to an Araxian onslaught led by the Thur'arax Dread Overlord Nikee" (S112); the Araxian Wars that followed destroyed the Proturan settlements of Lyrspire and the Uthein colony (S066). By the time of the Proturan campaign the Araxian Empire sprawls "across the north and eastern edges of the Broken Sea" and has helped bring down "every human kingdom on the north side" (S076). Seth'Arax and his Araxians are the second-ranked source of magic in the Age of the Divine, after the Divine himself (S112).
The Araxian Plane, reached through orange rifts that leave black flakes on the skin, has "a sky black like a starless night with orange wispy clouds" over "a volcanic wasteland", flat perforated dens from which the swarms climb, and a floating citadel; there Seth'Arax whispers to intruders, "We see you!", "You bring doom upon your world!", "We will remake your world and fix that which was broken", "Arax rises again" (S197).
Nicoleta, avatar of Seth'Arax¶
Nicoleta, a hero of the Sancturi campaign, bound her soul to the Araxian Hive and kept the power it gave her: "She is not part of the Hive, but her soul/essence is entwined with it", so that powerful Araxians "will almost certainly be able to control her" (S198). The dreams of Inwe record Inwe's death "at the hands of Nicoleta … Avatar of Seth-Arax" (S031), and two centuries later "Nicoleta - still presently serves Seth'Arax" (S112) as Araxian High-General (S076). What she did in play is told in the Sancturi Campaign.
Hand of Setarak¶
The Hand of Setarak is a cult of ogres in the mountains of the White Towers. They occupied an abandoned dwarven shipyard and "worship 'an awakened one' of Seth'arax" (S194). The shipyard was ruled by Rupyt, "Merged Pitch Monster + Frost Giant", who "killed and drove away the other frost giants" (S194); Rupyt had once been imprisoned in a sunken Araxian temple "which was built around him", and the bear-spirit Lokgorm of Nox'Somn hoped to repair the prison and put him back (S196). An Ogre Council of four and the battlecaptain Broxug led some fifty ogres on the shore (S196). The shipyard's blue glow was "an ancient dwarven power source the Thur'arax is using to energize itself" (S197).
Earlier accounts¶
The session notes of 2019 make Seth'Arax the "Elder God of Plagues, Infestation, Corruption and Decay vs creations of Kalar", opposing an unnamed "Elder God of Rebirth" (S194), and the northern-powers list of 2021 leaves his domain as "??" with only "beetles, bugs" beside it (S015); the 2023 notes settle on Supremacy, Nobility and Travail (S101). The same 2019 notes name the Pitch "Thur'Arax" where the 2023 notes say "Ulraspex" (S160, S101). The dwarf Berek Beetleslayer of Proturas earned his name in "the Southern campaigns in the Araxian wars" (S028, S061).
Gap
No source explains the titles "the Lexamorph" and "the Collector", describes a symbol or holy day of Seth'Arax, or says how the seven seals were made or which of them has failed. The relation between the Araxian Plane and the "demi-plane" of S076 is not stated.