Elder Evils and the Planes [Archive] - Wizards Community

Elder Evils and the Planes [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
sciborg3
12-19-07, 06:44 PM First things first, Zargon the Returner is apparently a lord among the ancient baatorians. Asmodeus cannot kill him because he cannot destroy the being's horn that allows him to come back over and over again. And so Asmodeus sends Zargon to a world on the Prime, and even saves that world by stopping Zargon from ravaging it. Apparently Zargon has decided that he doesn't need to rule Hell if he can rule this world, implying the book is going with the idea of 4e and Hell being the size of a prime world.

Sertruous is an obyrith lord who is described as the first heretic - the one who made people realize that clerics can get spells without following any gods. Apparently, according to the introduction, this is now common knowledge. Personally I think the number of souls who can manage this should be exceedingly rare, though I would like the idea of tying Sertruous to the Athar in some way.

Atropus is the original maker of the Prime, and now seeks to undo his mistakes. He's apparently a moon with a face that reduces worlds to nothingness, along with the comet monster Ragnorra who instead makes the world a mass of abominations. Both of these beings are interesting in that they are essentially godlike beings wandering the Prime, though personally I wouldn't use Atropus as the original god but I like confronting the idea of the Prime Mover regretting its decision. Atropus's servant - a bodak with an entire Abyssal army at his disposal - is another nice touch.

Father Llymic is the requisite Far Realms entity, seeking to encase the world in cold and madness, corrupting those around his prison. Pandorym has an interesting ally - a kolyarut who believes this being was unlawfully imprisoned. I am curious as to the place where Pandorym comes from, lying beyond the sphere of annihilation that serves as its body in this multiverse...this living sphere of annhilaton is played out imo. Maybe the same place as the hulks of
Zoretha who are really a form of terraforming technology.

Leviathan is the World Serpent, whose body supports the formation of the world. Its aspect is, at first glance, the only that has the malefic property of true death.

And finally Kyuss, a god who needs no introduction I'm sure.

All that said, is this book useful for planar campaigns? For the pure planarists, the answer is likely the same as any of the other non-planar books out there made by WotC. These beings can be adjusted to be planar lords or gods (barring their relatively low CRs) but the apocalyptical appeal is of course not exactly there. Some planars might not even worry about Prime worlds being destroyed if they think there are an infinite number of them. And does Kyuss becoming a greater god heralding the age of worms even matter compared to the nightmarish predations of the fiends? Unless he begins to spread his Age either across the worlds or into the planes...

On the other hand, Pandorym could conceivably start killing whole pantheons. Looking at Leviathan, I recall Attanasio idea that there is a dragon inside every world, connected together by their song stretching across the Void. That song is the true, one Dragon. Taking Attanasio's idea into D&D, the dragons believe Io's blood allowed the other gods to begin creating. Is Io's blood the chaos-matter the gods used to make the worlds, and is the proof of this to be found by inspecting the Leviathans? Or perhaps even if the gods created things ex nihilo, Io's blood supplied the possibilities they would tap into? But waking a leviathan means the entire planet dissolves...would planar scholars risk whole worlds to find the truth about the Ninefold Dragon?
Taeldrin Laesrash
12-19-07, 06:55 PM There's a lot of ancient snake entities. LE Asmodeus (Maybe), LG Jazirian, CE Mersshaulk, N Shekinister, and now Leviathan. Maybe the aligned beings are aspects of Leviathan, a being of pure death, or maybe they're all part of an even bigger snake.

Sertuous could be interesting in a Sigil campaign. You have an Athar faction who's trying to free the 'True Lost' or something, or find that the Factol has connections to many Abyssal powers...
sciborg3
12-19-07, 07:13 PM One more detail - Ragnorra is a being of corrupted positive energy. In fact, her sign and I think at least one other deals with the dangers of positive energy which I think gets overlooked. It also lends credence to the possibility that only with the aid of gods (or at least faith) can positive energy be used for healing.
vlad43210
12-19-07, 08:34 PM Looking at Leviathan, I recall Attanasio idea that there is a dragon inside every world, connected together by their song stretching across the Void. That song is the true, one Dragon. Taking Attanasio's idea into D&D, the dragons believe Io's blood allowed the other gods to begin creating. Is Io's blood the chaos-matter the gods used to make the worlds, and is the proof of this to be found by inspecting the Leviathans? Or perhaps even if the gods created things ex nihilo, Io's blood supplied the possibilities they would tap into? But waking a leviathan means the entire planet dissolves...would planar scholars risk whole worlds to find the truth about the Ninefold Dragon?

This sounds like an *Awesome* Epic campaign idea. If I didn't know that my players cringed at the very thought of lvl 30 characters' sheets (and all the relevant bonuses, etc.), I'd LOVE to run this campaign. Start with some Pandorym stuff as a prelude, and as a foil: the players think the campaign is going to be about stopping Pandorym, but really the stuff will be there just to get them thinking about planes, dimensions, and worlds. There may be an epic confrontation with one of Pandorym's halves (just the mind, say). No shards or aspects here - I'm going to guess and say the mind is roughly CR 54-60. The players get to participate in an epic combat when they're about 25-27 and most of the rest of the participants are 45-50. They will be the "I need you guys to go over there and press the button whilst we battle The Big Guy." Maybe it'll seem a little frustrating, but it'll just be the conclusion of the prelude.

Main Campaign: 30-40 (ish)
Then the main action starts up. Perhaps Pandorym's appearance opened gateways to new worlds, or destabilized the Prime's Leviathan. The PC's must stop the Prime from exploding... but in the course of this mission they find out about the multiple Leviathans, Io's blood, and world creation. Unfortunately, the very act of their finding out shakes the Multiverse (you change what you observe, that sort of thing) and subtly shifts the True Dragon, upsetting the entire order of the cosmos. Gods start dying without reason, mortals grow forty feet tall, the laws of magic begin to change. The PCs must travel to other worlds and figure out how to fix what they broke. This will inevitably involve the destruction of at least one world, with all the consequences (what will the PCs do? Go the evil route and just blow it up? Evacuate a world's worth of refugees? Something else?).

I probably wouldn't run this with just the main ruleset. I'd use DiceFreaks / some of the other epic stuff out there to make things more interesting than "and I take Improved Spell Capacity *yet again*, yawn".
trolloc
12-20-07, 03:06 AM Pandorym is the Elder Evil that Gods and Deities would worry about. Hailing from part unknowns of "perpendicular to the Great Wheel". Which i believe it is different from the Far Realms.

I like the new Obyrith race, the Golothoma.
ripvanwormer
12-20-07, 04:25 AM Leviathan is the World Serpent, whose body supports the formation of the world. Its aspect is, at first glance, the only that has the malefic property of true death.

The Leviathan first appeared in Return to White Plume Mountain. The concept is very, very similar to the Deep Dragons that sleep in the cores of some worlds mentioned in Io's entry in Monster Mythology.
Kain_Darkwind
12-20-07, 04:53 AM First time an Ancient Baatorian is statted and everyone wants to talk about the demon. Sheesh. :)
The Serge7
12-20-07, 09:04 AM My question is whether or not this is worth the purchase... The last time there was an edition change, most of the stuff that came out wasn't all that bad, but IIRC they were adventures that sort of progressed the transition... This time, it seems that we're dealing mostly with accessories.
Taeldrin Laesrash
12-20-07, 09:44 AM My question is whether or not this is worth the purchase... The last time there was an edition change, most of the stuff that came out wasn't all that bad, but IIRC they were adventures that sort of progressed the transition... This time, it seems that we're dealing mostly with accessories.

From what I've heard, the novels may be covering this change (In FR at least). Also, maybe Elder Evils is one of those books that the D&D Insider is talking about: Register it online and pay the monkeys a little more to get the extra content, which may include conversions.
Kain_Darkwind
12-20-07, 12:53 PM My question is whether or not this is worth the purchase... The last time there was an edition change, most of the stuff that came out wasn't all that bad, but IIRC they were adventures that sort of progressed the transition... This time, it seems that we're dealing mostly with accessories.

Merc felt ripped off for 30, I felt it a solid purchase at 19. Get it on Amazon with free shipping and you'll be ok. Or at a book store if you can muster up 30% or better of a discount.
sciborg3
12-20-07, 12:54 PM hmmmm, i'd say that it has a lot of good fluff - lots of creativity here...but you can get that from the summaries. But as to the question of crunch I think a lot of this books usefulness depends on how quickly it gets converted to 4e. I mean how many end game scenarios can you run from here to June?

For campaigns level 16 to 20-something, some of these could be epic adventures. In this case, planar campaigns are perhaps more conceivably likely to "save the world" several times over. The idea that one world has 9 global ending threats secreted away is a little weird...unless your campaign is based on Steve Erickson novels. Then you need about 10 more of them. ;)
sciborg3
12-20-07, 04:10 PM I was thinking of Atropus and the connection he had to atropals. Yet Atropus is said to be the first father, the prajapati, of creation. And atropals are the stillborn of the next generation of gods. So perhaps Atropus is not the alpha of the D&D cosmology but rather the omega. He is supposed to represent a being that would change the very nature of the multiverse, but like the titans of yore the current pantheons were jealous and afraid so they killed him in the womb.

This leaves the question - which gods feared him and which would fight for his (or her) new vision? And who, among all the infinite dead gods in the Astral, is Atropus's mother? Perhaps if we wish to make the book useful for a single epic campaign, the jealous gods poisoned his mother and drove her mad, and this mother of the multiversal messiah is now none other than Ragnorra who has had her divinity twisted by the divine ravages that mutated her woman as well as her own *misplaced* sense of shame and failure.

The PCs may not be able to kill the mother goddess rampaging across the Prime(s) but can they heal her mind? Is the mind of a goddess enough like the mind of a mortal that someone who made peace with their miscarriage can enter Ragnorra's crucible and heal her?

And can a healed Ragnorra take in the dead fetus of her son and rebirth him to forever change the multiverse and usher in the 4th great age?
Shemeska the Marauder
12-20-07, 06:48 PM FWIW, Pandorym first appeared in Cordell's FR novel Darkvision. It was a being that was bound into service by the Imaskari as a doomsday weapon of sorts to use to either destroy the Egyptian/Mulhorandi and Babylonian/Untheric pantheons, or to force them into a MAD style stalemate. They never used Pandorym, but it remained bound and over time its wards began to fail and its influence outside of its prison grew bit by bit.

It was a really cool creature, and the book was IMO a massive step up from his previous novel 'Lady of Poison' which I can say very little positive about at all. And while Cordell seems to oftentimes fall into a cliche of Far Realms everywhere and under every rock, it's pretty well inferred that Pandorym while not from the known planes, isn't from the Far Realms either. So lump the bad boy in with the Keepers in the not from around here but not covered in slime and random tentacles camp.
ripvanwormer
12-21-07, 08:40 PM The Leviathan first appeared in Return to White Plume Mountain. The concept is very, very similar to the Deep Dragons that sleep in the cores of some worlds mentioned in Io's entry in Monster Mythology.

Actually I was wrong. From Sciborg's description, they sounded the same, but the Elder Evils Leviathan lives in the ocean, while the Return to White Plume Mountain Leviathan swam in the mantle beneath the world's crust.
sciborg3
12-22-07, 03:28 AM Rip - the Levithan is the mantle of the world so I suspect that either it does originate from White Plume or at least both are drawing on similar ideas.

This sounds like an *Awesome* Epic campaign idea.

Thanks - I like the idea of comprehension of what Io's blood is causes massive changes in reality. This makes sense to me though I might build up to the really crazy/random things. Which makes one wonder if the forces of chaos would try to stop the PCs from fixing anything. Slaad Lords vs. Dragon gods...
Lord Karsus
12-22-07, 03:51 AM Pandorym has an interesting ally - a kolyarut who believes this being was unlawfully imprisoned. I am curious as to the place where Pandorym comes from, lying beyond the sphere of annihilation that serves as its body in this multiverse...this living sphere of annhilaton is played out imo...

-What else does it say of Pandorym? Because, Pandorym was introduced about a year or two in the Forgotten Realms novel Darkvision, as a pseudivine entity that was created by the Imaskari (An empire of Mage-Artificers) to do combat with deities. I wonder if it's just a simply reuse of the name, or the same creature...

-EDIT: Nevermind. Shemmy said exactly what I did. Should've looked.
awaken_D_M_golem
12-22-07, 03:27 PM You're gonna pout
You're gonna cry
You're gonna shout
I'm telling you why

Elder Evils is coming to town

You read it at Barnes + Noble
With Christmassy Pop music blaring
Cthulhu senses tingling
Cherubs being good for shoppings sake

I love Elder Evils.
And that store is lucky I wasn't in costume ... :smirk:
Urithair
12-23-07, 08:57 PM I liked Pandorym enough to make him a major shaker in my campaign. The Athar free him to kill the gods, promted by Vecna. Vecna is interested in eliminating threats to his eventual multiversal domination. He considers the Mind Flayers, Yugoloths, and the Destroyer god to be major threats.

So Vecna frees Pandorym and convinces the other gods to stall for time by throwing the destroyer god at him. Pandorym fights the destroyer god, eventually destroying him. In that time Vecna cooperates with the other dieties of magic to cast a truly epic spell that will cause the multiverse to temporarily shift ever so slightly, eliminating Pandoryms body (which is described as a gateway to his home universe). Without the body, and in a shifted universe hostile to him, Pandorym dies. But not without killing many of of the non-magic dieties first.

The Ather try their best to spread their agenda, but only have limited success. Most primers either don't know about their gods dying or don't believe it. After all, they still have faith in their gods and so still get spells. So the popular pantheons and dieties are believed right back into existence almost overnight. However, many lesser/unpopular/obscure dieties die for good. It is almost like a forest fire, the larger trees survive while the scrubs are swept away. Vecna makes sure that as many people know about his role in creating the epic spell as possible, which helps cement his role as an diety of magic and raises his divine rank to intermediate.

Most people (or dieties, for that matter) are unaware of Vecna's role in creating the disaster. The few beings who know are unsure of how to handle the situation. Vecna is dangerous, but also a threat to the Mind Flayers. The Mind Flayer domination of the future is something that many would like to see stopped, including the Yugoloths. Some think that Vecna is simply a pawn for the Yugoloths plans, while others think that the upstart has deeper designs. After all, the Yugoloths believe in evil. Vecna only believes in himself, and might be a better exemplar of NE than they are. He doesn't want Evil to win, he wants himself to win. In the end both parties are too secretive for anyone to know.
sciborg3
12-23-07, 10:22 PM Vecna manipulating the 'loths faith? Now that's interesting, though one might say he's playing a very, very dangerous game. Still, the 'loths want Evil to triumph, and perhaps would be willing to sacrifice their whole race to give Vecna what he wants...dying to fulfill greed? The many dying for the one not to save him but to damn everyone else? Hmm, the 'loths would be inverse-messiahs in that case.

But would they do that for Vecna? Well, he was incredibly evil in mortal life. He - in theory - almost conquered Sigil if you believe Die Vecna Die, and he was trapped in Ravenloft by the Dark Powers yet escaped with perhaps new understanding about evil's nature and role in the planes.

I can see Vecna coming to Khin Oin and all 'loths across the multiverse sacrificing themselves to empower Vecna's conquest of the planes...or maybe they'll just add a new spine tower in Hades which would be funny because you have the eye, the hand, and then spine is a 'loth highrise. "Come to drab Hades and vacation in the Spine of Vecna resort for a low price of 300 larvae per night. Take advantage of our free daycare services...please.:angelhide "

The outcome of course all depends on the DM. ;)
sciborg3
12-23-07, 10:31 PM The new obyriths are definite cool - mouthless serpentine-worms that eat through their shadows? Just the right mix of Lovecraftian and Abyssal that the obyrith are.
Urithair
12-23-07, 10:37 PM Oh, his game is about as dangerous as it gets, but he is a very skilled player. The question is, to what extent does Vecna know the Loths secrets, and vice versa?

I do buy into the whole Sigil/Ravenloft thing, as the god of secrets Vecna should be able to do things that are 'impossible'. As someone else said, if anyone would open up the console to the universe and type /cheat, it would be Vecna :devil:

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
sciborg3 12-19-07, 06:44 PM	First things first, Zargon the Returner is apparently a lord among the ancient baatorians. Asmodeus cannot kill him because he cannot destroy the being's horn that allows him to come back over and over again. And so Asmodeus sends Zargon to a world on the Prime, and even saves that world by stopping Zargon from ravaging it. Apparently Zargon has decided that he doesn't need to rule Hell if he can rule this world, implying the book is going with the idea of 4e and Hell being the size of a prime world. Sertruous is an obyrith lord who is described as the first heretic - the one who made people realize that clerics can get spells without following any gods. Apparently, according to the introduction, this is now common knowledge. Personally I think the number of souls who can manage this should be exceedingly rare, though I would like the idea of tying Sertruous to the Athar in some way. Atropus is the original maker of the Prime, and now seeks to undo his mistakes. He's apparently a moon with a face that reduces worlds to nothingness, along with the comet monster Ragnorra who instead makes the world a mass of abominations. Both of these beings are interesting in that they are essentially godlike beings wandering the Prime, though personally I wouldn't use Atropus as the original god but I like confronting the idea of the Prime Mover regretting its decision. Atropus's servant - a bodak with an entire Abyssal army at his disposal - is another nice touch. Father Llymic is the requisite Far Realms entity, seeking to encase the world in cold and madness, corrupting those around his prison. Pandorym has an interesting ally - a kolyarut who believes this being was unlawfully imprisoned. I am curious as to the place where Pandorym comes from, lying beyond the sphere of annihilation that serves as its body in this multiverse...this living sphere of annhilaton is played out imo. Maybe the same place as the hulks of Zoretha who are really a form of terraforming technology. Leviathan is the World Serpent, whose body supports the formation of the world. Its aspect is, at first glance, the only that has the malefic property of true death. And finally Kyuss, a god who needs no introduction I'm sure. All that said, is this book useful for planar campaigns? For the pure planarists, the answer is likely the same as any of the other non-planar books out there made by WotC. These beings can be adjusted to be planar lords or gods (barring their relatively low CRs) but the apocalyptical appeal is of course not exactly there. Some planars might not even worry about Prime worlds being destroyed if they think there are an infinite number of them. And does Kyuss becoming a greater god heralding the age of worms even matter compared to the nightmarish predations of the fiends? Unless he begins to spread his Age either across the worlds or into the planes... On the other hand, Pandorym could conceivably start killing whole pantheons. Looking at Leviathan, I recall Attanasio idea that there is a dragon inside every world, connected together by their song stretching across the Void. That song is the true, one Dragon. Taking Attanasio's idea into D&D, the dragons believe Io's blood allowed the other gods to begin creating. Is Io's blood the chaos-matter the gods used to make the worlds, and is the proof of this to be found by inspecting the Leviathans? Or perhaps even if the gods created things ex nihilo, Io's blood supplied the possibilities they would tap into? But waking a leviathan means the entire planet dissolves...would planar scholars risk whole worlds to find the truth about the Ninefold Dragon?
Taeldrin Laesrash 12-19-07, 06:55 PM	There's a lot of ancient snake entities. LE Asmodeus (Maybe), LG Jazirian, CE Mersshaulk, N Shekinister, and now Leviathan. Maybe the aligned beings are aspects of Leviathan, a being of pure death, or maybe they're all part of an even bigger snake. Sertuous could be interesting in a Sigil campaign. You have an Athar faction who's trying to free the 'True Lost' or something, or find that the Factol has connections to many Abyssal powers...
sciborg3 12-19-07, 07:13 PM	One more detail - Ragnorra is a being of corrupted positive energy. In fact, her sign and I think at least one other deals with the dangers of positive energy which I think gets overlooked. It also lends credence to the possibility that only with the aid of gods (or at least faith) can positive energy be used for healing.
vlad43210 12-19-07, 08:34 PM	Looking at Leviathan, I recall Attanasio idea that there is a dragon inside every world, connected together by their song stretching across the Void. That song is the true, one Dragon. Taking Attanasio's idea into D&D, the dragons believe Io's blood allowed the other gods to begin creating. Is Io's blood the chaos-matter the gods used to make the worlds, and is the proof of this to be found by inspecting the Leviathans? Or perhaps even if the gods created things ex nihilo, Io's blood supplied the possibilities they would tap into? But waking a leviathan means the entire planet dissolves...would planar scholars risk whole worlds to find the truth about the Ninefold Dragon? This sounds like an Awesome Epic campaign idea. If I didn't know that my players cringed at the very thought of lvl 30 characters' sheets (and all the relevant bonuses, etc.), I'd LOVE to run this campaign. Start with some Pandorym stuff as a prelude, and as a foil: the players think the campaign is going to be about stopping Pandorym, but really the stuff will be there just to get them thinking about planes, dimensions, and worlds. There may be an epic confrontation with one of Pandorym's halves (just the mind, say). No shards or aspects here - I'm going to guess and say the mind is roughly CR 54-60. The players get to participate in an epic combat when they're about 25-27 and most of the rest of the participants are 45-50. They will be the "I need you guys to go over there and press the button whilst we battle The Big Guy." Maybe it'll seem a little frustrating, but it'll just be the conclusion of the prelude. Main Campaign: 30-40 (ish) Then the main action starts up. Perhaps Pandorym's appearance opened gateways to new worlds, or destabilized the Prime's Leviathan. The PC's must stop the Prime from exploding... but in the course of this mission they find out about the multiple Leviathans, Io's blood, and world creation. Unfortunately, the very act of their finding out shakes the Multiverse (you change what you observe, that sort of thing) and subtly shifts the True Dragon, upsetting the entire order of the cosmos. Gods start dying without reason, mortals grow forty feet tall, the laws of magic begin to change. The PCs must travel to other worlds and figure out how to fix what they broke. This will inevitably involve the destruction of at least one world, with all the consequences (what will the PCs do? Go the evil route and just blow it up? Evacuate a world's worth of refugees? Something else?). I probably wouldn't run this with just the main ruleset. I'd use DiceFreaks / some of the other epic stuff out there to make things more interesting than "and I take Improved Spell Capacity yet again, yawn".
trolloc 12-20-07, 03:06 AM	Pandorym is the Elder Evil that Gods and Deities would worry about. Hailing from part unknowns of "perpendicular to the Great Wheel". Which i believe it is different from the Far Realms. I like the new Obyrith race, the Golothoma.
ripvanwormer 12-20-07, 04:25 AM	Leviathan is the World Serpent, whose body supports the formation of the world. Its aspect is, at first glance, the only that has the malefic property of true death. The Leviathan first appeared in Return to White Plume Mountain. The concept is very, very similar to the Deep Dragons that sleep in the cores of some worlds mentioned in Io's entry in Monster Mythology.
Kain_Darkwind 12-20-07, 04:53 AM	First time an Ancient Baatorian is statted and everyone wants to talk about the demon. Sheesh. :)
The Serge7 12-20-07, 09:04 AM	My question is whether or not this is worth the purchase... The last time there was an edition change, most of the stuff that came out wasn't all that bad, but IIRC they were adventures that sort of progressed the transition... This time, it seems that we're dealing mostly with accessories.
Taeldrin Laesrash 12-20-07, 09:44 AM	My question is whether or not this is worth the purchase... The last time there was an edition change, most of the stuff that came out wasn't all that bad, but IIRC they were adventures that sort of progressed the transition... This time, it seems that we're dealing mostly with accessories. From what I've heard, the novels may be covering this change (In FR at least). Also, maybe Elder Evils is one of those books that the D&D Insider is talking about: Register it online and pay the monkeys a little more to get the extra content, which may include conversions.
Kain_Darkwind 12-20-07, 12:53 PM	My question is whether or not this is worth the purchase... The last time there was an edition change, most of the stuff that came out wasn't all that bad, but IIRC they were adventures that sort of progressed the transition... This time, it seems that we're dealing mostly with accessories. Merc felt ripped off for 30, I felt it a solid purchase at 19. Get it on Amazon with free shipping and you'll be ok. Or at a book store if you can muster up 30% or better of a discount.
sciborg3 12-20-07, 12:54 PM	hmmmm, i'd say that it has a lot of good fluff - lots of creativity here...but you can get that from the summaries. But as to the question of crunch I think a lot of this books usefulness depends on how quickly it gets converted to 4e. I mean how many end game scenarios can you run from here to June? For campaigns level 16 to 20-something, some of these could be epic adventures. In this case, planar campaigns are perhaps more conceivably likely to "save the world" several times over. The idea that one world has 9 global ending threats secreted away is a little weird...unless your campaign is based on Steve Erickson novels. Then you need about 10 more of them. ;)
sciborg3 12-20-07, 04:10 PM	I was thinking of Atropus and the connection he had to atropals. Yet Atropus is said to be the first father, the prajapati, of creation. And atropals are the stillborn of the next generation of gods. So perhaps Atropus is not the alpha of the D&D cosmology but rather the omega. He is supposed to represent a being that would change the very nature of the multiverse, but like the titans of yore the current pantheons were jealous and afraid so they killed him in the womb. This leaves the question - which gods feared him and which would fight for his (or her) new vision? And who, among all the infinite dead gods in the Astral, is Atropus's mother? Perhaps if we wish to make the book useful for a single epic campaign, the jealous gods poisoned his mother and drove her mad, and this mother of the multiversal messiah is now none other than Ragnorra who has had her divinity twisted by the divine ravages that mutated her woman as well as her own misplaced sense of shame and failure. The PCs may not be able to kill the mother goddess rampaging across the Prime(s) but can they heal her mind? Is the mind of a goddess enough like the mind of a mortal that someone who made peace with their miscarriage can enter Ragnorra's crucible and heal her? And can a healed Ragnorra take in the dead fetus of her son and rebirth him to forever change the multiverse and usher in the 4th great age?
Shemeska the Marauder 12-20-07, 06:48 PM	FWIW, Pandorym first appeared in Cordell's FR novel Darkvision. It was a being that was bound into service by the Imaskari as a doomsday weapon of sorts to use to either destroy the Egyptian/Mulhorandi and Babylonian/Untheric pantheons, or to force them into a MAD style stalemate. They never used Pandorym, but it remained bound and over time its wards began to fail and its influence outside of its prison grew bit by bit. It was a really cool creature, and the book was IMO a massive step up from his previous novel 'Lady of Poison' which I can say very little positive about at all. And while Cordell seems to oftentimes fall into a cliche of Far Realms everywhere and under every rock, it's pretty well inferred that Pandorym while not from the known planes, isn't from the Far Realms either. So lump the bad boy in with the Keepers in the not from around here but not covered in slime and random tentacles camp.
ripvanwormer 12-21-07, 08:40 PM	The Leviathan first appeared in Return to White Plume Mountain. The concept is very, very similar to the Deep Dragons that sleep in the cores of some worlds mentioned in Io's entry in Monster Mythology. Actually I was wrong. From Sciborg's description, they sounded the same, but the Elder Evils Leviathan lives in the ocean, while the Return to White Plume Mountain Leviathan swam in the mantle beneath the world's crust.
sciborg3 12-22-07, 03:28 AM	Rip - the Levithan is the mantle of the world so I suspect that either it does originate from White Plume or at least both are drawing on similar ideas. This sounds like an Awesome Epic campaign idea. Thanks - I like the idea of comprehension of what Io's blood is causes massive changes in reality. This makes sense to me though I might build up to the really crazy/random things. Which makes one wonder if the forces of chaos would try to stop the PCs from fixing anything. Slaad Lords vs. Dragon gods...
Lord Karsus 12-22-07, 03:51 AM	Pandorym has an interesting ally - a kolyarut who believes this being was unlawfully imprisoned. I am curious as to the place where Pandorym comes from, lying beyond the sphere of annihilation that serves as its body in this multiverse...this living sphere of annhilaton is played out imo... -What else does it say of Pandorym? Because, Pandorym was introduced about a year or two in the Forgotten Realms novel Darkvision, as a pseudivine entity that was created by the Imaskari (An empire of Mage-Artificers) to do combat with deities. I wonder if it's just a simply reuse of the name, or the same creature... -EDIT: Nevermind. Shemmy said exactly what I did. Should've looked.
awaken_D_M_golem 12-22-07, 03:27 PM	You're gonna pout You're gonna cry You're gonna shout I'm telling you why Elder Evils is coming to town You read it at Barnes + Noble With Christmassy Pop music blaring Cthulhu senses tingling Cherubs being good for shoppings sake I love Elder Evils. And that store is lucky I wasn't in costume ... :smirk:
Urithair 12-23-07, 08:57 PM	I liked Pandorym enough to make him a major shaker in my campaign. The Athar free him to kill the gods, promted by Vecna. Vecna is interested in eliminating threats to his eventual multiversal domination. He considers the Mind Flayers, Yugoloths, and the Destroyer god to be major threats. So Vecna frees Pandorym and convinces the other gods to stall for time by throwing the destroyer god at him. Pandorym fights the destroyer god, eventually destroying him. In that time Vecna cooperates with the other dieties of magic to cast a truly epic spell that will cause the multiverse to temporarily shift ever so slightly, eliminating Pandoryms body (which is described as a gateway to his home universe). Without the body, and in a shifted universe hostile to him, Pandorym dies. But not without killing many of of the non-magic dieties first. The Ather try their best to spread their agenda, but only have limited success. Most primers either don't know about their gods dying or don't believe it. After all, they still have faith in their gods and so still get spells. So the popular pantheons and dieties are believed right back into existence almost overnight. However, many lesser/unpopular/obscure dieties die for good. It is almost like a forest fire, the larger trees survive while the scrubs are swept away. Vecna makes sure that as many people know about his role in creating the epic spell as possible, which helps cement his role as an diety of magic and raises his divine rank to intermediate. Most people (or dieties, for that matter) are unaware of Vecna's role in creating the disaster. The few beings who know are unsure of how to handle the situation. Vecna is dangerous, but also a threat to the Mind Flayers. The Mind Flayer domination of the future is something that many would like to see stopped, including the Yugoloths. Some think that Vecna is simply a pawn for the Yugoloths plans, while others think that the upstart has deeper designs. After all, the Yugoloths believe in evil. Vecna only believes in himself, and might be a better exemplar of NE than they are. He doesn't want Evil to win, he wants himself to win. In the end both parties are too secretive for anyone to know.
sciborg3 12-23-07, 10:22 PM	Vecna manipulating the 'loths faith? Now that's interesting, though one might say he's playing a very, very dangerous game. Still, the 'loths want Evil to triumph, and perhaps would be willing to sacrifice their whole race to give Vecna what he wants...dying to fulfill greed? The many dying for the one not to save him but to damn everyone else? Hmm, the 'loths would be inverse-messiahs in that case. But would they do that for Vecna? Well, he was incredibly evil in mortal life. He - in theory - almost conquered Sigil if you believe Die Vecna Die, and he was trapped in Ravenloft by the Dark Powers yet escaped with perhaps new understanding about evil's nature and role in the planes. I can see Vecna coming to Khin Oin and all 'loths across the multiverse sacrificing themselves to empower Vecna's conquest of the planes...or maybe they'll just add a new spine tower in Hades which would be funny because you have the eye, the hand, and then spine is a 'loth highrise. "Come to drab Hades and vacation in the Spine of Vecna resort for a low price of 300 larvae per night. Take advantage of our free daycare services...please.:angelhide " The outcome of course all depends on the DM. ;)
sciborg3 12-23-07, 10:31 PM	The new obyriths are definite cool - mouthless serpentine-worms that eat through their shadows? Just the right mix of Lovecraftian and Abyssal that the obyrith are.
Urithair 12-23-07, 10:37 PM	Oh, his game is about as dangerous as it gets, but he is a very skilled player. The question is, to what extent does Vecna know the Loths secrets, and vice versa? I do buy into the whole Sigil/Ravenloft thing, as the god of secrets Vecna should be able to do things that are 'impossible'. As someone else said, if anyone would open up the console to the universe and type /cheat, it would be Vecna :devil: