The City that Writhes Beneath

Akkarik City is a forest of limbs formed from the gargantuan parasitic worms that feast off the earth. On the surface, the smooth appendages have calcified, with those who dwell there hollowing out and residing within them. Far below the surface, though, the wriggling wretches are a smooth and sticky as they were when they came here 1000 years ago - in a liminal state of half-deadness. The surface dwellers call these the Hungry Roots. Occasionally a Hungry Root will devour something other than the rock and magma in the veins of the earth, like a millennium old magical ore system. When this happen the dead appendage buildings can alter. Sometimes they wrench themselves free from their near dead state. Sometimes they just up and turn into gas or blood. Akkarikians call these events The Writhing.

Writhing Table
1. The Hungry Roots release a pheromone that attracts the undead
2. The roots begin to sing a discordant hymn. D100% of the population starts to dig in the ground in search of relics
3. A building crumbles to dust
4. A building explodes into congealed blood. Anyone it touches suffers parasite nightmares for 1d10 years.
5. The sewer system becomes tainted with magic. Time starts to slow down.
6. A building reforms as a writhing appendage, lashing out in a 300 yard radius.

Who are the Akkarikians? They could pass for human in some places, but their purple mottled skin and yellow pupils show them to be something else. They were once human, but through centuries of Writhings and proximity to the parasites they have become People of the Worm. Each morning they bathe in the great Pool of Tothannon, a slick black sludge made of parasite feces, but is consecrated holy ground to these people. The Bishop of Knowing blesses all with a wash of this awful ichor before they begin their days. Visitors MUST cleanse themselves in the pool if they are to stay. Doing this for at least a week will give them nightmares of the Hungry Roots. For more than a month their complexion becomes increasingly purple and sore. They feel an affinity with the city.