The Sleepless

Tens of thousands of years ago a great civilisation was split in a civil war over a disagreement between those worshipping their old gods and those that had decided to worship their great new god that had present himself and seduced a large section of the population convincing them to worship him instead.

A bloody war raged on for a long time, every death a sacrifice to the people's new god who grew more powerful and physically larger every day in his underground fortress fed by the vile acts committed in his name, seducing ever more followers with his sweet hypnotic childlike voice despite his foul continence, to the point where the followers of the old gods were so outnumbered it was impossible to fight on, demoralised they fled into exile where the true believers made pleas for assistance and promises to the head of their pantheon of gods, the hangers on left and went into the wilderness.

Numbered now only in the hundreds the true believers years of prayers were answered all at once, a radiant being seemly constructed entirely from gold and light just like the grand statue that once stood in the capital but much more beautiful, an avatar of their god manifested himself to lead the tiny army and collect on the pledge not to rest until the false god was wiped from the face of the earth, he granted his troops magical powers to combat the evils they were about to face, made them physically faster and stronger, changed their skin to a more golden radiant hue like a pale imitation of the avatar and made it to they would have no need to rest until their job was done.

The exiled true believers marched the twenty days to the once capital of their grand civilisation without stopping to rest or eat, totally unopposed, the place was now in ruins, what hadn't been destroyed in the fighting years past had since been destroyed and pillaged by the followers of the false god. They made their way to the entrance of the underground fortress to slay a god.

The underground labyrinth was now enormous, it seems all the worshippers had moved underground at some point to be with their god and had extended building all sorts of living quarters and fortifications in a fairly hap hazard manner, the route to the original fortress was likely to be very long and circuitous through these new areas.

The place stank and was guarded by groups of strange hairy naked sub human creatures, the walls in these newer areas were painted with murals of sick and disgusting acts involving the tentacled abomination and these strange sub human creatures.

The further in they travelled into older areas of expansion the art on the murals whilst looking older became more sophisticated and the creatures more human looking, until it became sickeningly apparent that the strange creatures had in fact rapidly devolved from the remnants of the true believer's former civilisation

Eventually the army breached the inner sanctum to face down the false god that had destroyed their civilisation. The amorphous blob of a god was not exactly as the remembered it however, the last time any of them say it its body was about 50ft across and it was mobile, now it was much bigger and had basically fused with its surroundings, the entire inner part of the fortress was the god now, the walls moved as if breathing and had their own pseudopods that lashed out at the army.

The god tried to seduce them with positions of power and offered them vast sums of coin, after all it had great power and did have all the money ever minted by their civilisation as its disposal, but as well as giving them magical abilities their god's avatar had also made them immune to the urgings of the false god, they chose instead to do their duty and destroy the false god.

The fighting was fierce, the false god constantly taunting them they they would topple like the great statue of the supposed god that was helping them, that they were wasting their time they could not prevail. Many of the army members were killed in the fighting as was the avatar, but with magical fire and enchanted steel 50 warriors stood victorious hoping it was time to rest..

However the 50 remaining warriors did not feel tired, the avatar gasped, not quite as dead as the army had though to be the case, with laboured words the avatar managed to say “no rest... all traces” then sighed and faded.

They levelled the fortress obliterating all traces, this still was not enough, and though it pained them obliterated all traces of their civilisation, still not enough, perhaps they thought it was the coins, the false god seemed very fond of them, they spilt up into small groups and headed out in different directions to find coins that may have been traded over the years with other civilisations, their golden skin confused those they met so took to smearing soot and grease over their skin to just look like dirty travellers

Hundreds of years of tracking the coins passed, eventually one group discovered an underground lair filled with the same subhuman creatures that were in the god's lair all worshipping a creature very much like the god they killed all those years ago, this one was smaller more like the reports of what the god was like when it first appeared, this creature tried to seduce the group with promises of great wealth and power, the group played along a bit to get information out of the creature before killing it and destroying all evidence of its existance. There was a large stash of the coins destroyed here and many more newer identical replicas

It turned out that at the time the small army was in exile praying and making pledges the original creature had impregnated four of the high priestesses with its pseudopod and sent them with attendants in opposite directions with a large stash of triangular coins to build new lairs and gain new followers and make more sacred coins before the followers regressed and lost the required skills.

So the sleepless golden warriors continued searching for coins and following them to their source occasionally finding “gods” of differing ages and sizes, some had given themselves names some had not, with every kill or every coin they melted down hoping to finally feel the urge to sleep.

And so it was that these warriors of good realised they had been accidentally cursed to spend an eternity trying to complete their mission to rid the world of a foul taint.