There are acres upon acres of fields and pastures, orchards and stocked lakes. As you draw nearer, you pass bakeries and confectionaries, breweries and factories. The hall itself is set upon a hill. Once there was a pleasant garden here, but that is long gone. In its place is a sprawling compound. The back is given to vast kitchens and stockyards. Smoke and steam rise unremittingly from a forest of chimneys. The front of the structure is shaped like the head of some gargantuan boar, with the entrance lying in its open maw. A red carpet leads up to it. From within issues a smell like a thousand dive bar dumpsters.
The Cult of the Tongue hold their debauch incessantly, with a fervor that eclipses most saner faiths. Each member trades years of promise for days of indulgence, in a vain attempt to infinitise the ephemeral. To be sure, you may leave if you will. But the wills of most here have swiftly atrophied.
Newcomers to the cult earn their place within the first hall, Edacity. Its red walls and Corinthian columns glow dully under a wan sun. Stripped like athletes for the course, the neophytes rowdily begin. Some sample as many different varieties as they can; others gorge themselves on the same thing repeatedly. Troughs for vomiting stand against the walls. These beginners must still purge their stomachs occasionally to continue the meal. Once they no longer require this step, they are ready to move on to the next hall, Gulosity.
Gulosity is more sedate, if only because those who make it here have begun to lose the use of their legs. Solomonic pillars hold up the vaulted ceiling. Two long tables hold the course. Wax of a thousand scented candles pools on the pea-green tablecloth, catching crumbs and other fragments. Servants are quick to whisk away empty trays and replace them with fresh viands. Some is organic, birthed from the earth and blessed by the sun. Some is sludge churned from a machine. All is defiled by Gluttony's touch.
The marble floor is slick with spilt drinks, vomit and worse things. There are privies and washrooms nearby but most cannot bear (mentally or in some cases bodily) to leave the table for so long, and have brought chamber pots with them to do their necessary business in. Pages stand in the shadows, ready to empty them when filled.
In side chambers are sunken dens for consumers of hashish, opium, and other drugs. The Halls cater to those who seek nothing beyond the present. The Dens are for those who reject even that gift. Here intoxicants and narcotics of all kinds are to be found-- anything that dulls or distorts the senses. All is for the asking, in extreme overabundance. The mind is destroyed some time before the flesh finally gives out. Bodies are regularly carted out from here and dumped in the fishpond or the pigs' feeding grounds.
Looking around, one sees evidence of bodily corruption. Tumors, immense folds of fat, skin stretched near to the bursting point. But it is the souls that are the most debased. It is not unheard of for one guest, craving something new, to attempt to devour his neighbor.
When one of Gluttony's elites can truly eat no more, they are congratulated and ushered down a long stairway. Far below the overburdened foundations of the house lies a vast cavern, hollowed out by eons' worth of grease and refuse. The Lord of Excess reclines in a great pit in the center. Gluttony on his throne resembles nothing so much as a corpulent maggot feasting on humanity. Here his Perfected are brought before him, having fattened to the ultimate limit. One by one they are lowered into his ever-gaping jaws, too bloated to even think, much less scream.
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