Worm of the Deep
The Worm of the Deep also known as the Corpse Worm is a fantastical creature that is the focus of several Corummese myths.
Mythos
The Worm of the Deep is said to be an ancient spirit of vengeance born in the years of Chin the Great's conquests. Upon arriving at the walls of Qara Tepe, Chin sent his ambassadors to reason with the city's rulers. At first being received with smiles and promises of aid, the people of the city turned against them when they received Chin's demand of submission. The ambassadors were then murdered and their bodies flung from the city walls in full view of Chin. The enraged conqueror's army took the city within three days.
To punish the unfaithful people of Qara Tepe, Chin ordered that every man, woman and child have their deceitful faces cut off from their skulls before being thrown into a deep pit outside the city. On top of the dying, groaning people, Chin's soldiers discarded the bloody cut faces before sealing the whole pit with packed dirt. Entombed and unable to escape this new prison, the angry spirits of Qara Tepe fled back into their corpses and joined together into a single cyclopean heap of rotting flesh thousands of spans in length, with innumerable limbs and screaming faces. Many an unwary traveler has been lured in by a child's face crying in the dark or the pleas for help from a young lady. Only then does the Worm reveal itself, before devouring its tricked victim.
The fact that Qara Tepe was never resettled and remains an abandoned ruin in the modern era lends credence to the stories about the Worm of the Deep, with rumors of a complex of enormous cylindrical tunnels beneath the ruins and many disappearances in the area.