Realm
Tiamat's realm, known as the Dragonspawn Pits of Azharul or simply as Tiamat's lair, sprawls in a cluster of tall hills and mountains near a pillar made from the tormented heads of liars and a pit of maggots from which lemures emerge. One must fly (or, heavens forbid, swim) across the maggot pit to reach Tiamat's caves. Tiamat's lair contains the main gate to the second of the Nine Hells, Dis. To reach it, one must pass a chamber known as the Cave of Greed, which is filled with cursed treasure that compels the weak-willed to try to steal it. Tiamat has her own chamber within the complex, as do each of her five consorts, but it is possible to travel to Dis without disturbing her.
In the 4th edition cosmology, Tiamat shares the Astral Dominion of Tytherion, the Endless Night, with Zehir. Zehir was the original ruler, but Tiamat invaded intending to take the entire realm for herself. She successfully drove Zehir and his forces out of the caverns they loved, but she misjudged the strength and determination of the Midnight Serpent. The result is the bizarre allocation of Tytherion today: Tiamat rules the caves of Tytherion far beneath the skies and mountains she prefers, while Zehir rules the mountains above, far above the caverns and trenches his followers prefer. Although both would prefer to exchange their realms, they are too proud to actually do anything about it. In the Forgotten Realms, Tiamat's realm is still located in the Nine Hells.
Read more about this topic: Tiamat (Dungeons & Dragons)
Famous quotes containing the word realm:
“The things of this world reveal their essential absurdity when they are put in the Venetian context. In the unreal realm of the canals, as in a Swiftian Lilliput, the real world, with its contrivances, appears as a vast folly.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“When we try in good faith to believe in materialism, in the exclusive reality of the physical, we are asking our selves to step aside; we are disavowing the very realm where we exist and where all things precious are kept—the realm of emotion and conscience, of memory and intention and sensation.”
—John Updike (b. 1932)
“Without being bound to the fulfillment of promises, we would never be able to keep our identities; we would be condemned to wander helplessly and without direction in the darkness of each man’s lonely heart, caught in its contradictions and equivocalities—a darkness which only the light shed over the public realm through the presence of others, who confirm the identity between the one who promises and the one who fulfills, can dispel.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)