Forgotten Coleopteran Deity

"Khepra Dark-Shell is the near-forgotten Beetle God of ancient Djarat, and only worshipped these days by obscure races such as the Droug or secretive cults of the Inland Sea region of Khul. Legend holds that Khepra was an armoured behemoth as big as a hill, with a toothed beak, insectoid limbs, and a forked red tongue, who thundered across the lands of Titan during the Deep Night of the Godtime. Along with other insect gods he is a lord of pestilence and decay, and his acolytes are armed with long dirks and wear crocodile-skin armour. The chosen colour of Khepra is dark green and his symbol is a beetle."

 Vade Mecum Infernum by Aughm Lightchaser (p. 44)

Temple of the Beetle God (#12/31, #285/365)

The almost-abandoned temple of Khepra Dark-Shell the Beetle God is a festering ruin hidden near the centre of Thagwar, screened by crumbling tenements, ramshackle hovels and forgotten shrines. The reasons for this decline are manifold and well-documented in the files of the T.U.P. offices, but largely boil down to the worship of Khepra being usurped over the centuries by more vibrant and popular insect deities including Hammurabi, Vurgothrax, and the inestimable Hmurresh. Still, the temple provides something of a refuge for the local slums, sheltering Insectoid Monks, Droug and Weevil Men. In addition, trained Giant Scarab Beetles form an excellent waste disposal system present on the temple precincts.

Inside the temple is the ubiquitous idol of Khepra in a standing pose, dismembering the unbelievers; the idol's tongue is said to be carved from a single ruby, but trapped, so those that attempt to pilfer it have their hand(s) amputated by the idol's stony jaws. The altar is strange though, a weird asymmetrical protuberance rising straight up as if bursting through the floor, and made from an unknown black horn-like substance. The Beetle Abbot, Lamprimus the Venerable (albino, hunched), knows the true secret, that the altar is in fact the tip of Khepra Dark-Shell's actual nose-horn, who lies buried in their entirety under this temple and a large part of central Thagwar!

The mysteries as to why the Beetle God slumbers beneath the city of Thagwar are lost to all save Lamprimus and the spore-library of the First Overlord, suffice to say, neither of them wish the leviathan coleopteran deity to awaken and destroy everything in its singular brutish fashion. Lamprimus is accompanied everywhere by a squad of Insectoid Monks armed with venomous-barbed spears and acid gourds, and also rides on a howdah atop a Giant Beetle for visiting the Grand Fungi Souq, or a rare trip to the T.U.P. to meet representatives of the First Overlord to assure them Khepra still sleeps quietly in the depths under the city's catacombs and sewers, prevented for now from running amok and causing havoc!