D'rek

D'rek was an Ascendant goddess known as the Worm of Autumn. She was mentioned in Gothos' Folly as the Mistress of Decay and the Mistress of Worms. She sometimes took on the mantle of the Queen of Disease. Although D'rek was usually given female titles, D'rek was worshipped as either male or female.

The cult of the Worm was ancient and had withstood the passage of time. Banaschar called her "the face of inevitable decay" and mentioned that she was coiled around time itself.

Callows was home to the Thousand Sects of D'rek, each with its own religious dogma and icons. A D'rek Monastery stood on the southeastern coast of Malaz Island.

The Restiturge of Pall was a prayer to D'rek.

D'rek's symbol was a single wavy line.

In The Bonehunters

Banaschar, former priest of D'rek, rushed by ship to Kartool City. He roused the city guard to investigate the Grand Temple of Kartool where the worshippers of D'rek should have been celebrating Istral'fennidahn. Instead, the temple doors were locked and all twenty-two were found dead inside.

On Seven Cities, the group of Cutter, Heboric, Scillara, Felisin Younger, and Greyfrog travelled east across the desert from G'danisban. They stopped at a lonely temple of D'rek for supplies only to find everyone inside dead, their bodies seething with worms. Hood sent his Soldier of High House Death to the same location. The Soldier claimed the deaths made D'rek's position "clear as ice."

"She heard them. She heard them choose. The Crippled God. And the power they demanded was the power of blood. Well, she decided, if they so lusted for blood... she would give them all they wanted. All they wanted."

―Banaschar to Pearl

D'rek had slaughtered her worshippers in all her temples for stepping away from the path of righteous worship and choosing the Crippled God over her. Every priest and acolyte was slain, even in the Grand Temple of Kartool. Banaschar was the only survivor.

In Orb Sceptre Throne

Kiska and Tayschrenn visited the island of Kartool, that had a cave which served as a temple to D'rek. The two proceeded into the cave's processional way, Tayschrenn calling this visit to Kartool a long delayed reunion. D'rek had tried several times to capture and kill Tayschrenn, but Tayschrenn simply put it behind him as something in the past.

They reached a roughly circular cavern at the centre of which was a black jagged hole. Kiska screamed as Tayschrenn leaped into it, which brought out an old woman who stated that D'rek was down there. She described D'rek as the worm of Earth, worm of Energy; Fire and flame, molten rock and boiling metal.

Tayschrenn returned later, and confirmed that he had had a 'talk' with D'rek, though that "was not how we really communicated."

In Reaper's Gale

Her temple coffers, now in Banaschar's possession, served to pay the salaries of the Bonehunters.

In Blood and Bone

The Worm of Autumn attacked Spite from the sky, gobbling her up. However, Spite blasted her way through D'rek by her magery, only to be informed by Citravaghra that she was only 'the smallest of them'.

In The Crippled God

Banaschar was with the Bonehunters because "Holy Mother wants me here. I am her last priest."

Banaschar admitted that the Snake was a manifestation of D'rek: she had been lost due to betrayal and needed to find herself. He told the Adjunct that the Worm would guard Kaminsod even at the cost of her life.

At the barrow, where the Bonehunter marines and heavies made their stand, she protected the soldiers from the sorcery of the Forkrul Assail and later from the Otataral Dragon's power.

As the last surviving priest of the Worm, Banaschar assumed the role of Demidrek.

In Dancer's Lament

In the period before the formation of the Malazan Empire, the primary religious festival of Li Heng on Quon Tali was a procession honoring the city's patron goddess, Burn. The procession was comprised of heavy platforms mainly carrying effigies of the sleeping Burn, but also including icons and shrines dedicated to other entities. These deities shared with Burn aspects related to "fate, futurity and the struggle of life and death", and included: D'rek; Mowri; the Queen of Dreams; and Poliel.

In Deadhouse Landing

Before the foundation of the Malazan Empire, D'rek was the patron deity of Kartool Island and was dominate over the entire island and all of its inhabitants.

D'rek was described by a High Priest of D'rek as two giant snake-like entities, each as large in scale as the tower of a fortress. One bore the upper portions and features of a human male, the other those of a human female. It appeared that the two entities might, in fact, be the opposite ends of a single entity.

Notes and references

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