Crom Cruach
Contents
Crom Cruach
Titan: Crom Cruach -- Lord of the Earth
AKA: Most Foul, The Maggot God, The White Worm, The Great Maggot
To the Tuatha and their children, Crom Cruach is everything ill and foul in the world. In many ways, he represents the polar opposite of the Tuatha: He is the World in winter, the earth as a place of death and stagnation without any life save that which promotes rot. This Titan is the madness of the dark and of isolation, a place in which all that is bright is extinguished and made soiled. The Morrigan’s wintery aspects are of fertility past its prime or the points in time between cycles of fecundity; the barrenness of Crom Cruach, on the other hand, is all-encompassing and eternal.
Crom Cruach is called the Maggot God because the creeping, squirming things beneath the earth are born of him. The old tribes were cautious when digging in the earth because they knew that, if they dug deep enough, they would find the pale whiteness of Crom Cruach waiting there. Though Crom Cruach is a fallow force, he has many servants. These are not birthed in the way that other Titans create their spawn. Crom Cruach prefers to corrupt where he can, sucking away fecundity and creativity the way a sponge soaks up water and leaving only dry hate and contempt for the living things.
PROMINENT FEATURES
The inner expanses of the Great Maggot are dark and claustrophobic. The air hangs heavy with some kind of chalky sediment, which lines the throat and lungs of those who breathe the stuff for months afterwards. Water is nowhere to be found; it soaks into the strange, dry silt of Crom Cruach’s innards almost immediately, leaving no trace of its existence. Unlike many of the other Titans, Crom Cruach does not have discernible locations within its expanses — such things bespeak a desire for self-expression and identity that the Great Maggot does not possess. To Crom Cruach, there is only dissolution. The Tuatha believe that Crom Cruach will not rest until it has crushed all things into rot and decay. Only then will it be content to cease moving and die itself.
Even now, Crom Cruach brings ruin to Tír na nÓg. A great circle of rotted vegetation surrounds the outer edges of the Land of the Young, and that circle occasionally bulges with tumor-like hills of white chalk. From out of these cancerous carbuncles tear titanspawn horrors and nemean centipedes, worms and other vile things, all intent on feasting on the verdant land. Crom Cruach has completely encircled the Overworld of the Tuatha Dé Danaan, and they fear that he burrows beneath them as well. The armies of the aes sídhe rally strongly, battling the hordes of fomorians that rise from the expanses of Crom Cruach’s belly. Every fomorian foot that steps onto the Blessed Land does so at dear cost, but the Children of Danu cannot miss the fact that the foul creatures pay that cost gladly and often.
SAMPLE PASSAGES
The easiest way to travel into the belly of Crom Cruach is by digging into the rotted ground at the edges of Tír na nÓg. Eventually, the ground beneath the digger collapses and gives way, dumping the traveler deep into the stinking expanses of the White Worm.
In the World, a number of barrows on the British Isles are close enough to the chalk layer and riddled with sufficient rot that they serve as passages to Crom Cruach. A traveler of sufficient Legend may enter such a barrow and seal the passage behind him. When the darkness surrounding him begins to stink with a chemical acridness, he has come into the gullet of Crom Cruach.
The body of Terra touches on the expanses of the White Worm as well, and delving into caverns and barrows in Terra’s form can lead to the worm-riddled caverns of Crom Cruach’s body-realm.
Provinces: Animal (Worm-like Creatures), Darkness, Death, Earth, Fertility (carrion beasts), Frost, Sacrifice
Banned Provinces: HEALING & SUN
Dark Virtues: Rapacity & Dominance.
Dominions: BEASTS, DARKNESS, DEATH, EARTH, ENDURANCE, FERTILITY, FROST, PASSION (Fear), PROSPERITY, SACRIFICE
Realm: Magh Slécht - {The plain of prostrations}
Holy Days: Samhain
Sound Effects & Soundtracks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oU0nu2TIu8U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7fiXi7fWIM&list=PLohYzz4btpaRTRtHyPB4DpEgo7pp9ianN
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W4XWFa16Tc {low rumble}
