Type: Warehouse
Entrances: Ghost Pussy, none yet confirmed - although a number of possible Topside entrances have been circulated. It is rumored that Empty Breath can be reached from the surface only during certain lunar, stellar or solar cycles. In some circles, Empty Breath is considered a "Far" or "Deep" hell - harder to access than others due to its "distance" into Hell's corridors.
Transit Access: Empty Breath has no true bodies of liquid, so none of Hell's many rivers make landfall here. Winding paths between the semi-natural rock formations at the "edges" of Empty Breath may lead to other hells, including possibly the outskirts of Churmish; the Furlough Bus and Route 616 famously pass swiftly through the arid black desert here, but approaching the vast Prison from the outside would serve little purpose - the gate within does not lead Up. Potentially, a team of very daring crashers might assault the walls of Be'YT from this Hell - alternatively, escapees of the great hold might find themselves stranded in Empty Breath.
Citizens: The damned who make up the small population of Empty Breath are allegedly drawn from those who, in life, used honeyed words and silver tongues to deprive the needy of basic human necessities – and thereby profit. All who wander in the bleak wastes of Empty Breath once gilded their own pockets by rationally talking others into denying the weakest of the weak needed healthcare, water, food or electricity. These men and women are now little more than sun-baked and mummified husks, caked in salt and broken glass, shambling across an endless, boiling desert on devastated limbs, their mouths gaping dry holes without teeth or tongues.
A variety of schizophrenic religious-mania are common among the Thirsty Damned of this Hell - the hallucinogenic visions that plague the lands, coupled with extreme dehydration, infect those shackled here even more powerfully than they do the few visitors. Many insane cults of personality have arisen, although all have high rates of attrition and are plagued from within by innumerable "heresies".
Shackles: While the very heat, the wind and the sand of Empty Breath could well be considered shackles of a kind, they are merely manifestations of the root cause: it is the Fevered Eye. It is the Fevered Eye above that chains the Damned in their horrid place - neither truly Sun nor Morning Star, the throbbing orb that inflicts vile illumination upon Empty Breath is deceptive and hateful, casting mirage, shadow and blazing agony down upon the blacked lands in curious & confusing ways. The sorrowful Damned of Empty Breath are ever clumsily fleeing from or pursing after something half-seen in the distance, twisting between the dunes of broken glass and across fields of powdered salt, ever taunted by the shimmering, bloodshot Eye above.
While the Fevered Eye makes no true journey across the bruise-colored heavens, there is no escape from the Eye's monstrous presence. Those who find some temporary shelter will discover that the hateful, cataract Eye slowly bends and warps to and fro across the sky, flowing like a egg on a skillet, suddenly glaring hatefully in through windows and around corners after the hidden, casting reproachful waves of heat upon them & summoning storms of dust.
Screws: Occasionally seen standing atop the jagged-razor obsidian monoliths that jut from the stinging desert, the shades are wisps of something black and cold in the nightmare heat. Bored nearly to insanity, they will gladly parlay with 'crashers who pour something wet into the sands - blood, semen and fresh water are their favorites, but they will slyly settle for urine or saliva.
While it may seem like a bargain to offer the Shades liquids other than fresh drinking water as 'sacrifice', the shades themselves demand far more quantity in other, less valuable "currencies" - a mouthful of water is equal, perhaps, to a full pint of blood. In addition, each shade is unique: some of the shades seem to take sick delight in the horrid vulnerability of a sweat-coated, half-dead 'crasher shame-facedly masturbating for them, while other shades will demand that a particularly desperate group drink great, hot mouthfuls of water until they vomit it up upon the sand.
The ephemeral shades have very little to do, for their charges are locked into an unending agony that the shades can neither improve nor worsen. Seeming to the living eye like hunched men or women wrapped in endless layers of weightless, liquid-shadowy silk, they communicate only in dead languages. In defense of the damned (that is, to prevent their removal), shades will remove their wrappings and touch 'crashers with their bubbling blood - by this method, they possess intruders and then perform elaborate & painful mutilation rituals, intended to cripple and hobble.
Under their yards of immaterial nothing-stuff, the Shades are described as little more than a circulatory system, a jiggling handful of cold, lumpy translucent ooze. As their blackish cloaks flutter away across the sand, passing over and through stone, the grime within leaps - seeking eyes, ears, nose and mouth for infection. Those who cannot fight the spray momentarily become the puppets of creatures who find joy in suffering of the most horrible kind.
crashers under possession by shades have often turned weapons against themselves and their comrades, torn open supplies and destroyed maps, engaged in dangerous behaviors like eating blades or live ammunition, and more than a few have briefly sprinted, giggling, on broken legs into dangerous parts of the desert.Fortunately, these possessions rarely last more than a minute before either the cold mucus of the shade's core is shaken free or the 'crasher is no longer functional - the strange life-blood of the shade has no ambulatory power once it has been thrown. It is said that the splattered remnants of a shade, after soaking into the dry earth, are later reborn from the shadows of obsidian spires as fully cloaked shades.
The Place: Empty Breath has no cloud cover, no terrain to block the forever-noon, and few places to escape the punishing winds - most of those few jealously guarded by the pilgrim damned. There are strange patterns of blinding light and twisting semi-dark that chase each other, sporadically, across the landscape, but these are merely the strange god-hemorrhages of the Fevered Eye as it turns and boils upon itself.
Temperatures in this barren place fluctuate wildy - there are groves of dead, flaking birch trees where life may once have grown, while in hotter sections the sand becomes strangely sticky as it churns slowly into liquid glass, setting exposed human skin ablaze. There are some resources that a crasher may make use of there in the shifting sands, but the maddening flares and warbles of the Fevered Eye begin to grate on even the strongest nerves even before water and food begin to run out.
There is some bizarre evidence to suggest that Empty Breath was once a very different sort of hell - beyond the strange insistences of some Thirsty Damned who claim that the Fevered Eye is some type of "interloper", there are many incongruant geographical and archaeological features, like dry lake beds and piles of crumbling garbage, dotted across the sands. All that remains of whatever once dwelt here is slowly being wiped away by dust storms and unrelenting heat. Broken bones and crumbled brick are the most common discoveries of those who sift through the sand, along with masses of broken glass, but there are objects as diverse as licence plates and tires, sand-choked vacuum cleaners and home furnishings, all manner of electrical cords and rusted hardware tools to be found beneath the dunes.
Electromagnetic and radioactive spikes are common, as well - electronic devices will often short themselves out, sterility and temporary blindness are common along with headaches and nausea, while dental fillings may produce odd noises and aches. The damned here are desperate for hydration of any kind, and careless 'crashers who flaunt their wealth may find themselves torn apart by howling, bone-dry mobs intent on even a drop of water.
The most dangerous malady in Empty Breath is, perhaps, attacks of acute diarrhea brought on by the heat and the maddening effects the Fevered Eye - the loss of vital fluids can be terribly dangerous, an (if untreated) can result in liver failure and other horrid complications.
The occasional appearance of a drift provides the hellish landscape of Empty Breath with chunks of flotsam and jetsam from other Hells, new dangers and the odd chance of escape. The Shuddering Storm, for one, is a welcome sight here for 'crashers - although many religious factions among the damned here react badly to its appearance, setting off riots of clashing would-be escapees and their zealot opposites.
Landmarks:
Lucifer's Reach, a heavily-scored white stone arm that rises some two-hundred feet to the heavens out of the deep desert, around which lie what appear to be the remnants of great stone feathers. The fingers are curled in obvious agony, and graffiti from damned and crashers alike mars every part of the sculpture within easy reach.
The Midnight Pool, a softly churning slick of black glass laid over a superheated molten hole, like some sort of horrid parody of a semi-frozen pond; strange shapes can be seen hardened into the "shallows" at the edge of the pool that many claim tell the future. The furthest borders of the otherworldly lake are well demarcated by the burned remnants of things that got too close - chunks of bone and charred remains of boots, backpacks and clothing stick from the surface, caught in glass. The pool itself has a terrible undertow, and will pull burning flesh under the mantle and into unknown depths.
The Burning Folly, an ever-thick column of toxic smoke spiraling up out of the waste. This odd burnt offering to whatever gods might hear it is a way-station for a strange religious faction of the damned, where they congregate in groups of a half-dozen or so to pile whatever trinkets they can pull from the sands into the smoldering, gagging blaze, hoarsely moaning useless, wordless prayers for some temporary easing of their plight, begging for a redemption that will never come. Here, trade is done in sign language, and 'crashers can occasionally make very profitable bargains - or wind up tossed upon the inferno.
The Throne of the Lamb, a strange circle of thirteen jagged obsidian standing-stones that occasionally "sweat" a kind of thin, bitter liquid akin to rusty water found under drinking fountains. The odd trickle nourishes an ugly, unkempt garden of thorn-covered plants all around the place, which intertwine with dozens of painted children's
skulls. A small cult of Thirsty Dammed called the Judas-Dousers guard this horrid place with extreme vigilance, employing whatever weapons they can to mete out savage violence against outsiders. This cult practices a vile ritual similar to 'priming the pump', whereby they fetishistically cut open one of their own, chosen via some unknown system, to increase the chances of moisture beading on the faces of the plinths - running their cracked, dry rictus lips against the black glass, they moan in ecstasy when they catch the foul reddish stuff. Those who are cut open slowly heal in the center of the circle, and thus may participate in the sacrifice of the next "lamb". Some debate exists among the Judas-Dowsers as to the properness of sacrificing
non-members.
The Whispering Palace; (see The Sultan of Whispers)
Notable Demon:The Sultan of Whispers