PERSONIFICATION AND REALM
Although Xhamen-Dor has a physical body, and as such
it must inhabit a physical place, to consider the ancient
sewer or hidden lake or lost cavern it is found within
its realm betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of
the Inmost Blot’s nature. This insidious Great Old One
does not truly live within the tangled mass of bone, hair,
and fungus that one might mistake for its form, but
exists deeper within the tortured dreams and
agonized memories of those who have heard
its name or know of its nature. When this
corrupting knowledge infects a living host,
it spreads within, planting itself in the
unfortunate’s flesh and mind alike. In
time, these “seeded” are transformed
wholly into undead servants of the
Great Old One—slaves that then seek,
above all else, to spread knowledge of
the Inmost Blot to fresh flesh within
which more of their kind may grow.
The exact appearance of Xhamen-
Dor’s physical form changes from
incarnation to incarnation as it is born,
dies, and reincarnates, yet its forms
always share certain features. The
corruption of the Great Old One can
be seen in fungal blights that combine
masses of mushroomlike growths and
twisted tangles of fibrous tendrils that
look like lengths of filthy, gritty hair.
Typically, this foul matter emerges
from the corpse of a massive creature
or grows from the scattered bones left
across a vast battlefield, and when it
does, the fungal fibers incorporate
those bones into the whole. On Golarion, Xhamen-Dor’s
physical body incorporates the remains of what was once
an immense dragon in an disturbing, serpentine form,
although decay and the aberrant, supernatural change to
the remains leaves the actual type of dragon from which
the corpse came a mystery. On other worlds and in other
incarnations, Xhamen-Dor has or shall take forms more
akin to gargantuan cephalopods, scorpion-like horrors, a
living and slithering network of spiderwebs, or a conical
mass of fungal flesh that tapers to a massive, hungry maw
of bones and tentacles. As a creature born in the sewers
of Carcosa, Xhamen-Dor’s physical form always seeks out
areas of moisture, preferring remote lakes, underground
caverns, or forgotten reservoirs as its lair.
Xhamen-Dor is neutral evil and its areas of concern are
decay, parasites, and transformation. The favored weapon
of its cult is the spear. Its domains are Death, Evil, Plant,
and Trickery, and its subdomains are Decay, Deception,
Murder, and Undead. The Great Old One’s priests are
primarily clerics, druids, sorcerers, and witches.
There, in the deepest
vaults of Carcosa, did
the spores of the Star
Seed first quicken.
There, in the lightless
seeps of Carcosa
were the first of its
children seeded. And
there, in the inky
depths of Carcosa did
the end of countless
worlds begin.
— Necronomicon
WHAT
GROWS
WITHIN
Foreword
PART 1 :
Across Accursed
Sands
PART 2 :
The Cradle of
Heaven
PART 3 :
Descent into
Neruzavin’s
Despair
NPC Gallery
Xhamen-Dor,
The Inmost Blot
The
Necronomicon
Pathfinder ’ s
Journal
Bestiary
64
DOGMA AND WORSHIPERS
Worshipers of Xhamen-Dor typically fall into one of
two categories: the nomads and the seeded. Of the two
factions, the nomads are perhaps the more dangerous, for
it is they who seek and choose the worlds for the Star Seed
to harvest. Nomads are almost always alien entities with
little to no ties to humanity, with mi-go and flying polyps
being particularly common among this cast. The seeded,
on the other hand, are almost universally indigenous
creatures that have been transformed by Xhamen-Dor
into undead slaves.
Beyond seeking to prepare worlds for transformation,
the worshipers of Xhamen-Dor have very little interest
in other pursuits apart from covertly spreading hints
and whispers about Xhamen-Dor. As such, cultists of
the Inmost Blot who still dwell within society tend to
be diverse in their other lives, so as to prevent potential
enemies from realizing the true threat they present.
One rather unusual and heretical offshoot of the cult of
Xhamen-Dor should be mentioned as well: the sentinels.
These worshipers do not seek to allow Xhamen-Dor to
complete its goal; worshiping it out of fear, they instead
seek to perpetuate its eternal slumber. As long as the
Star Seed sleeps, it cannot destroy the world, and as long
as it does not destroy the world, it cannot move on to
threaten others. The sentinels understand that the more
they know of Xhamen-Dor, the more they risk becoming
seeded, and so they partake in regular rituals involving
drug abuse, surgery, and magic to alter and control
their memories so that they do not perpetuate more
knowledge of Xhamen-Dor than is absolutely necessary
to keep it and its cult secret. When one of their own
learns too much, that member is usually sacrificed. The
sentinels do not count clerics among their kind, and very
few of them are any other type of divine spellcaster. In
fact, they pride themselves in not knowing the name of
their hated god, giving it descriptive names such as “The
Enemy,” “Invader,” or “Ruin of Worlds.”
TEMPLES AND SHRINES
Xhamen-Dor’s worshipers see the site of the Inmost
Blot’s current physical body as their greatest—and indeed
only—temple. For a cult that exists with the sole purpose
of destroying worlds and assimilating new members
via dreams, the concept of shrines or other permanent
buildings devoted to Xhamen-Dor’s worship is ludicrous.
When the seeded do not dwell near their god’s lair, they
dwell in homes and castles and manors and hovels as
they did before they became the Great Old One’s puppets.
A PRIEST’S ROLE
Once Xhamen-Dor has fed Carcosa (or on those rare
occasions where the Great Old One is defeated or
banished), it launches a tiny core blot of its essence into
the depths of space to seek a new world. Left to its own,
the blot can aimlessly travel through the vastness until it
happens to be pulled into a planet’s gravitational well—
but here is where Xhamen-Dor’s cult often steps in.
When the nomads who serve the Star Seed find a world
that would suit the Inmost Blot, they erect menhirs
known as Star Stelae and infuse them with magic that
Xhamen-D0r can sense. Often (as was the case on
Golarion), these alien scouts are forced to erect multiple
groupings of Star Stelae when they are opposed by local
denizens or hostile environs, but eventually the Star
Stelae draw their god to the planet. When Xhamen-Dor
arrives with the sound of thunder, often creating a vast
crater with his violent penetration of the world’s crust,
its nomad priests mostly abandon the world, leaving
behind a few guardians to help protect Xhamen-Dor as it
grows and establishes itself. The majority of its followers
then hurtle back into the depths of space, always eager to
find a new world to mark.
Once Xhamen-Dor lands on a world, it is a matter
of time before its presence becomes known by that
world’s populace; once that occurs, it can begin to grow
its second group of worshipers—the seeded. As sapient
minds learn of Xhamen-Dor, they dream of it. And as
they dream of it, they invite it into their dreams and
become infested. It is fortunate that on most worlds, the
sanity and structure of mortal minds helps to occlude
and prevent the swift spread of Xhamen-Dor’s influence,
and most minds are eager to forget or ignore its presence
without conscious act. Yet while this resistance often
slows the time it takes for Xhamen-Dor’s seeded to first
rise in a world, it never stops this infestation. After the
seeded are active, they can work to physically spread
the Inmost Blot’s influence, to sow their corruption,
and to hasten their world’s end. The seeded know that
when the time finally comes, Xhamen-Dor will harvest
and consume them, and when it excretes them in the
bowels of Carcosa, they shall achieve immortality. They
welcome the end, for the end of their world helps their
god become all the stronger.
HOLIDAYS
Xhamen-Dor’s cult is somewhat unusual in that it has
no significant traditional holidays. To the nomad priests,
there is only the task of marking the current world or
hunting for the next. To the seeded priests, the singular
day of import is when Xhamen-Dor finally achieves
apotheosis, harvests a world, and returns to Carcosa. Of
course, once such an event plays out, none remain on the
world to celebrate.
APHORISMS
Xhamen-Dor’s worshipers glory in the decay of a world,
transforming the planet into something akin to their
fungal god. They do not seek to convince newcomers
to worship or join by persuasion or missionary work.
They need only spread the name of their god and the rest
can take care of itself.
Know the Inmost Blot, for It Knows You: Once any
dreaming sapient learns the name of Xhamen-Dor,
they can potentially become infested in its dreams. The
fact that many mortals are naturally curious about the
unexplained or the mysteries of the world makes such
tantalizing clues as the Great Old One’s unexplained
name so much more dangerous.
Your Dreams Are of God and for God: To the seeded,
the dreams of the rest of the world are their farmlands,
their hunting grounds, their marketplaces. Anyone who
dreams is a possible recruit to the cult, and even before
such a victim is selected, its capacity to dream just fattens
it for the banquet.
HOLY TEXT
Xhamen-Dor’s cultists keep no specific text of their own,
for they view all texts as potentially sacred. They also know
that information written down can be destroyed, but
worse, to spread the lore of Xhamen-Dor too swiftly is to
risk alerting the cult’s enemies. And for a cult devoted to
the destruction of life, all who live are potential enemies.
As a result, the cult prefers to operate with stealth and
subtlety, creating no single blasphemous text to carry
the infectious lore of their god, but rather infusing that
knowledge via metaphor or a trail of clues across many
unrelated documents. This way, the truly curious (and
perhaps more open and vulnerable) minds will do the
work on their own, while the chances of alerting enemies
remains minimized. This tactic results in increasingly
lengthy “gestations” of the faith, but the seeded have no
fear of the passage of time. They are patient, and they
know those bound by the spectre of decrepitude at
advanced age are not, and are well-practiced at using this
fact and the mortal mind’s natural curiosity as tools.
RELATIONS WITH
OTHER RELIGIONS
Xhamen-Dor’s interests in decay and infestations
might suggest alliances with deities like Ghlaunder or
WHAT
GROWS
WITHIN
Foreword
PART 1 :
Across Accursed
Sands
PART 2 :
The Cradle of
Heaven
PART 3 :
Descent into
Neruzavin’s
Despair
NPC Gallery
Xhamen-Dor,
The Inmost Blot
The
Necronomicon
Pathfinder ’ s
Journal
Bestiary
66
Cyth-V’sug, but its cult eschews all potential religious
coalitions, viewing all other cults as food. Desna has long
stood against Xhamen-Dor, and may well have attempted
to destroy the creature that eventually became Ghlaunder
in a case of mistaken identity, but she also knows that
spreading lore of the Inmost Blot is to empower it. As
such, very few of her cultists actively oppose Xhamen-
Dor. Only Hastur’s cult views Xhamen-Dor as an ally, but
when his cult is active on a world shared by Xhamen-Dor,
they often seek to slow or stop its growth, for if a world
can be harvested directly by Carcosa, it is worth more
than if it is consumed by the Star Seed. In cases like this
(such as what has arisen on Golarion), the cult of Hastur
walks a razor’s edge, seeking to extract Xhamen-Dor and
its cult and return it to Carcosa for redeployment to other
worlds while also suppressing information about the Star
Seed, for fear of
quickening its
transition and
triggering an end
time event before a society
is ready for proper harvest.
