In the shadowed depths of the Underdark, Hunger was born to a matriarchal trollkin tribe, a modest clan where a fierce female held sway with iron fists. Their ravenous appetites stripped the caverns bare, tearing through fungal groves, devouring river fish, and leaving beast carcasses strewn across the stone until the tribe faced ruin. Hunger, broad-shouldered but not sharp of mind, knelt in the gloom, his calloused hands shaking as he struck a pact with a dark entity he couldn’t name, its whispers promising to save his bloodline. The cost was his tribe: he turned on them with his wicked claw and voracious bite, starting with his closest of kin, their blood soaking his feet as he hacked through flesh, their dying gazes searing into him, their souls lingering as silent shadows. The entity’s power coursed through him, preserving his lineage’s essence, but the act left him hollow, a brute haunted by what he’d done.
In the Underdark city of Darkel, fate found him in an orphanage, a hulking trollkin among outcasts. There, he met The Will, a youth with a sharp mind and sharper will, and Resavati, a sly snake human hybrid with gleaming scales and a tongue quick with half-truths. Orphans all, they forged a bond in the dark, Hunger’s brawn, Resavati’s cunning, and The Will binding them with unspoken purpose. The trio ventured through the tunnels, scavenging and scrapping, until a brutal clash ended them—blades piercing, blood pooling, their bodies crumpling together in the dirt. Hunger awoke on a misty shore, the Styx lapping at his boots, a hooded boatman looming—Charon, though he didn’t know it then. Visions flooded his dull mind: ancestors ravaged by troll hands, females of his line broken across generations, their pain a weight he couldn’t grasp but felt in his bones. The Will and Resavati stirred beside him, spared too, and Hunger’s heart roared to protect every female he’d ever know, his dread of death a gnawing fear of losing their purpose, their potential. Charon’s silence sent them back, Hunger’s ancestor—Skorn, a towering eidolon with clawed hands and mournful eyes—rising at his side, her soul a gift he vowed to return to life. Together, the three climbed toward the surface, toward Nimbus, where they would found the Church of the Cosmic Skull. In a prior rite, Hunger gouged out his heart with a jagged brass knife, offering it in a blasphemous chalice to the entity—now known as Charon—its beating stilled hardening into a dark soul stone that The Will pressed back into his chest, a slow pulsing mark of loyalty.
Now, on a solstice night, the crypt beneath the Vault of Silent Secrets shimmered with the Styx pool’s unholy glow, Hunger stood with The Will and Resavati, the yuan-ti patriarch’s scales glinting as he coiled nearby, a witness and protector. The Will handed Hunger the Styx Chalice, its dark water rippling, and rumbled, “Your will is Charon’s.” Hunger drank, the cold burning his throat, his slow mind clinging to Skorn’s face. Skorn stepped forward, her enormous form trembling, tears streaking her cheeks as she raised her claws. With an ancestor’s sorrow, she sliced into his abdomen, then his chest, her cuts slow and deep, blood spilling in thick streams over long minutes, pooling at his feet to swirl with the murky Styx waters. Hunger’s massive frame quivered, his brute vigor pushing against the agony, lips rasping, “For you, mother,” as he endured, his skin paling, blood draining until his legs buckled. The pool itself stirred, its surface bubbling and gurgling, a low, resonant sound rising—a voice from the depths, thick and watery, shaping the word “Mercy” in a burble that echoed off the crypt’s stone walls. Hunger’s head tilted, his fading eyes widening as the Styx’s murmur reached him, a balm to his guilt, a promise whispered through the ages of his kin’s suffering.
The Will stepped closer, his hands rising as a spectacular effort poured from him. From the Styx pool, a writhing filthy mass surged (fleshworm infestation, with greater contagion), tunneling into Hunger’s wounds, their slick forms burrowing toward the soul stone in his chest. The stone cracked, shattering with a sharp snap, its dark energies—Hunger’s soul, his tribe’s lifeline—spilling free, swirling into the mass as his body slumped lifeless, filth staining his flesh in dark patches. Resavati’s coils tightened, a silent nod to The Will as the mass shifted, rising into taking form—Hunger reborn, his form a testament to Charon’s will. Skorn’s tether faded, her voice a whisper, “Mercy… yes, that will do nicely,” claiming the name as she turned to The Will, speaking of her duty to guide, her duty to the church. A new tether stretched from the pool, a scorned ancestor’s soul emerging, her spectral glare fierce as she took Mercy’s place beside Hunger’s mass.
That solstice night birthed the Feast of the Final Ferry, a holiday woven into the Church's soul, a celebration of faith, sacrifice in life, and eternal reward for deeds. The church filled the streets with feasts—meat steaming on platters, bread piled high—adorned with death motifs: skulls etched in stone, shrouds swaying in the breeze, offerings for greater meaning. Hunger’s swarm hovered at the crypt’s edge, a living emblem of rebirth through death, Skorn—now Mercy—freed toward life, a new ancestor bound, a cycle of redemption unfolding. The Proud People gathered, their chants rising, those who died and rose to serve, their faith rewarded in eternal purpose, strengthening the sacred cycle that fueled Nimbus.
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