First appearance: S4E14, Vythorn’s Return Part 1 · watch it on YouTube
Morir’s Cataclysm, also called the Testaments of Morir’s Cataclysm, is a tome that “notes power of all sorts. Chaos and time and luck.” It was the prize The Arbiter won on his long road back from death, and it is not the kind of book you read so much as the kind of book that reads itself onto you. Its words lift off the page and brand themselves into whoever holds it. Since then it has had a strange habit of turning up in the arena.
Description
The tome is leather-bound and described as “a leather bound tome of great power and destruction,” with its name inscribed upon it. Its pages record the unholy words of Morir, set down by Skreca, who served as Morir’s scribe. The text is unreadable. That hardly matters, because the book does the work itself.
When it is opened, it flips through its pages on its own and settles on a particular passage. The words light up, rise off the page, circle the reader and then wrap around their skin as glowing markings, burning into their very essence. Whoever receives them comes away stronger.
History
The book first came up in Vythorn’s Return Part 1. Vythorn, the Arbiter, was adrift in the in-between after his death when he met Fil, the God of Fate. She gave him one instruction: “Good. Now go find the Testaments of Morir’s Cataclysm.” Then she blew on him, and a gust of wind knocked him backwards into unconsciousness.
In Vythorn’s Return Part 2, Fil did not take him straight to the book. He had to walk “an hour, two hours” down a dangerous path to the ruins of the Giant’s Breath, and she made it clear she would not babysit him. Travelling with Ise and Biff, he eventually found Skreca and announced, “I seek the tome, Morir’s Cataclysm.” Skreca explained that the testaments belonged there, in “the homes of Morir,” and asked who they thought had written them. Ise guessed Morir. Skreca set the record straight:
Skreca: “No, it was me!”
What followed was less a reverent handover than a roasting. Ise needled Vythorn for not showing off his learning, Skreca observed that his hands had “clearly touched ink and not much else,” and Biff added, “He’s got baby hands.” Vythorn threatened that if the two of them kept talking they wouldn’t have hands at all, which did not frighten Ise in the slightest. Fil granted him the Testaments before his journey was over.
In Vythorn’s Return Part 3, the book finally showed what it could do. As the sun set and vicious chaos storms rolled closer, the tome floated before Vythorn, flipped open in a flurry of pages and landed on its chosen passage. The unreadable words lit up, circled him and embedded themselves in his flesh. Armed with that power, Vythorn defeated the Shadow King’s body, although the King’s soul escaped.
The book then appeared during the Season of Fate, a vision of the Arbiter’s rule as the Lord of Fate that only he lived through. Within that vision it came out of the Box of Chaos twice. In Eldritch Fangs, Ruby Rust drew it during the fight against Robbie Clark and the Hunger. The words flowed off the page and wrapped around Ruby’s leathery skin in glowing markings, and he grew stronger.
In BoneBound Brawl, King Bofus paid for it in his own way. He took off his pom-pom hat, which was Bone Daddy’s mother, winked at Bone Mummy and dropped it into the box. The shadowy figure inside put the hat on, found it “kinda cold,” and handed over Morir’s Cataclysm. The glowing words wrapped around Bofus’s skin and strengthened him too. The frog had been bracing for a different sort of test:
King Bofus: “I thought you were going to ask me to read, which I cannot do.”
Bone Daddy offered to read him a bedtime story sometime.
After the vision ended, the Arbiter carried on in the real timeline under the Grandmaster. He still holds Morir’s Cataclysm and keeps it stored in the Box of Chaos.