Lore:Ashpit

Ashpit
Type	Plane
Realm	Oblivion
Appears in	Lord of Souls

Ashpit is a realm of Oblivion created and ruled over by Malacath, the Daedric Prince of Outcasts. It is unknown if the realm existed before Trinimac was transformed into Malacath. Orcish spellwrights call for boons from the Ashpit and rarely any other realms. That included conjuring Flame Atronachs. The Ashpit is hard to access, as the pathways to his domain take on a characteristic level of concealment to protect the disenfranchised and cast out.

Geography

The realm mostly consists only of dust, palaces of smoke, and vaporous creatures; anguish, betrayal, and broken promises like ash fill the bitter air. Few mortals manage to reach the realm, where levitation and magical breathing are necessary to survive. The Mages Guild have been known to bottle this thick, roiling vapor.

The Spine of Ashpit is a surprisingly light skeletal spine found in the realm. It is made from a grey dust, and fragments of bone have been known to be taken from it and brought to Tamriel. Sheogorath claims that the spine is the metaphorical "backbone" of the realm, which he looks down upon.

However, some areas of the realm are safe for mortals. In 4E 48, Malacath chose to bring Sul and Prince Attrebus Mede to the Ashpit, where they found a garden of slender trees, and "vines festooned with lilylike flowers" wound about the trunks; a "multitude of spheres moved, deep in the colorless sky, as distant and pale as moons". This garden seems to have some emotional significance to Malacath, who describes it as a "shadow of a garden", and an "echo of something that once was".

Culture

The Ashen Forge sits at the center of Malacath's own stronghold in the Ashpit. For the Orcs that revere Malacath, the afterlife promises rewards of immortality, abundant food and drink, and constant battle deep within the Ashen Forge. It is also said that, as the ultimate expression of the Orc stronghold, the Ashpit bastion stretches endlessly across the planes, extending even behind the stars to Aetherius, granting access to every worthy Orc who crosses from this life into the next. In Malacath's stronghold, every Orc is a chief, every chief has a thousand wives, and every wife has a thousand slaves to cater to their every need. The stronghold's walls rise one hundred feet into the smoky sky, constructed of polished steel and worked iron. Inside the walls, stone keeps, iron towers, and massive longhouses surround the central square that houses the Ashen Forge.

The endless space within Malacath's smithy is filled by the Ashen Forge, a massive hearth which burns with a fire hotter than the Sun, said to be kept alive by the adherence of the Orcs to the Code of Malacath. The heat powering the forge comes from white hot coals said to be the very manifestation of the Code of Malacath, it is described as a flame of emptiness, betrayal, and broken promises, which imbues each newly forged orc with a foundation of resentment that will take them far in the mortal world.

Orcs that pass onto the afterlife are "thrust into Malacath's coals", honed, tempered and made whole in the cleansing fires of Malacath through a process called the ritual of tempering, which all Orcish souls bound for the Ashpit must undergo when entering the realm. The grudges and fury of these Orcs are heated and melted within the flames, and are eventually forged into the next generation of mortal Orcs. With their grudges returned to the living world, the immortal Orcs of the Ashpit are thus freed to create new grudges. Some of the most memorable of these new grievances are folded and hardened on the Anvil of Ash to create weapons and armor of legendary stature. There is said to be no place for a gentle soul in the Ashen Forge, such souls are instead believed to be given to Trinimac, who watches over all those who have fallen and guides them to their final reward. Orcish spirit-legions can be found in the Ashpit. Dremora of the Doomdriven Clan serve in these spirit-legions as marshals and commanders. The Doomdriven also serve as emissaries to Malacath's mortal followers on Nirn.

"By the Ashpit" is an expression among Orcs.

History and Mythology

In a story from Dunmer theology, Boethiah transported Malacath and their followers to a deadened realm of smoke and ash within Oblivion. Boethiah struck Malacath with her sword, and he was cloven unto the ashen wastes of this dead realm, his blood mingled with the ash and his very bones formed a new foundation, making the realm his. Boethiah then formed a mighty sign with her hands, one she would never make again, and Malacath and all of his followers were balled up into a singular sphere and cast all the way from the "ashen pit" back onto the Wrothgarian Mountains of Nirn, where they emerged as Mauloch and the great Orcs, who would from then on build their strength through adversity.

In 4E 48, Malacath brought Sul and Prince Attrebus Mede to the Ashpit and spoke to them.

Gallery

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  A vial of Ashpit air

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  A bone fragment from the Ashpit's spine

Notes

Orcish wall-mounted masks

• There were early attempts to differentiate Orsimer from the Orcs of Middle-earth and move away from the noble savage trope, with the Samurai-style Orcish armor from Daggerfall inspiring an idea to explore Orsinium being a conduit to an extraplanar dimension containing an advanced Atlantis-type "Orc Prime" (similar to the backstory of the Goblins), where the "Teat Shoguns" gave mystical orders and wore strangely-sculpted Trinimasks. While this idea did not have much movement behind it, it did have some influence in other parts of the series, such as masks being a commonplace Orcish decoration (some enchanted to have magical powers) and certain mythological stories describing Orcs originating as a race while enduring the metamorphosis in the Ashpit.

See Also

Books

• On Orcs and the Afterlife by Erisa Moorcroft, Scholar, Comparative Religious Studies — A treatise on the Orcish afterlife and the Ashen Forge
• From Exile to Exodus by Tarvyn Aram — A Dunmeri myth about Boethiah, Trinimac, Malacath, and the origin of the Orcs

References

Note: The following references are considered to be unofficial sources. They are included to round off this article and may not be authoritative or conclusive.