Ghyll:Deathood

  Unfortunately, immediately after I completed my submission, Deathood members pretending to be BOFK operatives stormed into my home and, despite my best efforts to stop them, confiscated the entire work along with my notes. Fortunately, I managed to snatch most of the pages of notes from the rear pocket of one of the departing members, and have attempted to reconstruct the entry from this information and what facts I can remember of the few pages that got away from me. How the Deathood found my home is still a complete mystery, but needless to say, I will soon be moving. –Dfaran L’Eniarc

Almost nothing is known about the Deathood, and this is because they censor any attempts to make publicly available what few facts have been revealed about their nature and purpose. Many people haven’t even heard of them at all. They are some sort of secret organization, and they are often associated with evil, although they are so incredibly secretive that nobody is exactly sure what is evil about them. It is also assumed that they have arcane powers, although this has not been demonstrated in a tangible way.

BLACK HALL

What IS known is that the Deathood were involved in the construction and protection of the Odlucian Library’s Black Hall, and guard it to this day. Their methods of protecting it are completely unknown as most people are afraid to enter the Hall even on legitamite business, much less in a way that would set off the security. The Library has done much to promote the idea that the Deathood posess terrible powers. This is a surprisingly open and public action for the Deathood to undertake – before it happened, most of the few people who had heard of the Deathood did not belive that they even existed. The Deathood continue to work for the library by searching out new books to add to the Black Hall collection, and many people belive that the reason the Deathood is willing to work with the Library is that it gives them the opportunity to censor works that may contain information about them.

THE INTELLECTUALS’ CONSPIRACY

Although I scarcely like to mention this absurd theory and propogate it even further, I feel I must for the sake of academic completeness. There are those who belive in something known as the Intellectuals’ Conspiracy, a gigantic plot orchestrated by the Deathood and involving such organizations as the Bureau of Forgotten Knowledge, the Odlucian Library, the Council for Quezlarian Research, the Brothers of the Lantern, and basically every other organization in Ghyll to some degree or another. Some, such as Bobby Shwarmph, suggest that Alezanians created the Deathood and still run it from some alternate orthogonality, although Shwarmph has suggested a connection to the Alezanians in so many instances that anything he says about them has, how shall I put it, a certain lack of credulity. Then again, many belivers in the conspiracy suggest that the Deathood is being run by some other, even shadier group, and there are even some who suggest that this even shadier group is being run by yet another, deeper group. I have yet to hear claims that this deeper group is also being run by someone in the even deeperer shadows, but I have no doubt that they exist.

THE DEATHOOD IN HISTORY

Surprisingly enough, there have been many remnants of ancient culture that seem to reference the Deathood in some way or another, although there is nothing so blatant that it is inarguable. Scholars and crackpots alike have suggested that several phrases have been codewords through the centuries for the Deathood, assuming that they really have existed that long – most predominantly, the phrase “Oomis upon Usal”, thought to reference a location once used as the Deathood’s main headquarteres, and the word “Smuffle”. Certain visual motifs supposedly represent the Deathood as well, most notably the Thrice Woven Circle. Conspiracy theorists would have you belive that this is what is depicted on the back of the Quezlarian Ooo, although it is in fact the crest of the Amphitheatre aristocracy. There is also some supposed connection between the Deathood and the Vorpcara, although I could not find the exact nature of this connection in my research – it is most likely a load of bunk.

THE DEATHOOD AND WHINGELISM

One of the things we know for sure about the Deathood is that they are dark-side whingelists, because they openly admitted it while constructing the Black Hall. They remain one of the most prominent examples of such practices to this day. Of course, so little is known about them that this doesn’t actually tell us anything about such practices, but at least whenever anyone askes “but who, when it comes down to it, DOES practice dark-side whingelism?” we can point our fingers and say “They do.”

TRADITIONAL GARB OF THE DEATHOOD

The Deathood members usually wear dark indigo hooded robes, which conceal the face entirely. Despite this fact, they also wear black-jewled masks under their hoods. We know this as a fact because one of them acidentally dropped their mask during the construction of Black Hall. It was recovered by one Fermous Ibb, father of Morphous Ibb, who donated it to a nearby museum where it stood on prominent display for exactly two days.

Citations:Bureau of Forgotten Knowledge, Whingelism, The Intellectuals' Conspiracy --Dfaran L'Eniarc 01:16, 10 Jun 2005 (EDT)