This time, Graz'zt was determined to take the Gaping Maw. He even disregarded his own safety, forcibly casting an enormous spell that blasted open the demon plane's planar barrier and tore a huge hole through it, allowing his army to enter. But the immense expenditure left Graz'zt drained, and he disappeared from among his troops. After all, this was Demogorgon's lair, cultivated over countless centuries. Its defenses ranked among the finest in the entire Abyss, and Graz'zt could not have breached them without paying a price.
Yet Graz'zt did not care about such things. He had only two real objectives: first, to test whether Demogorgon had been resurrected; second, to flatten the Gaping Maw!
If Demogorgon had truly returned, then given his just-resurrected state, Graz'zt believed that even in his incomplete condition, he should be able to handle him. As for the second objective, that had even less to do with him directly. It was work for his subordinates.
Demogorgon's lair—the eighty-eighth layer of the Abyss, the Brine Flats, the Gaping Maw. This place was a vast ocean. Flying demons roosted upon the occasional exposed reef, while enormous whirlpools drew in water from the River Styx and brought its foul stench with them. Aboleths, giant deep-sea squid, and other aquatic monsters fought here without end.
On this plane, land was scarce, consisting mostly of chains of islands. Their total area was roughly comparable to the Malaysian Archipelago in the real world. Long ago, these lands belonged to a barlgura demon lord named Ilsidahur. (Barlguras were a kind of demon that roughly resembled gorillas.)
This demon lord had once been one of Demogorgon's principal allies.
Ilsidahur had once helped Demogorgon reopen the Shining Vortex of Mesnar, a portal that had once connected the Morathkian Forest of the Abyss with the Wilds.