Character Classes | Creatures
Deities: Real-World Deities (A to F | G to Z ) | Literary Deities | Non-human Pantheons (Demihuman Deities | Giant Deities | Goblinoid Deities | Scalykind Deities | Underdark Deities) | Elder Evils
Playable Races
Campaign Settings: Dragonlance | Eberron | Forgotten Realms | Greyhawk | Ravenloft | Spelljammer
The gods of the reptilian creatures of the worlds include a powerful central group who, in myth, stand outside the rest of creation. These deities are seen as ancient to the point of timeless, primeval powers. They are not associated with the gods of other races, they do not create worlds or modify them much; they simply have their being unto themselves. This tends to make them more aloof from their cold-blooded worshipers than most gods, and they are usually slow to react to changes, even across decades and centuries. One consequence of this is that their races are often in a process of slow but remorseless decline.
These deities are usually regarded as being very wise, especially in their knowledge of very ancient and buried magic. They are often intensely magical in nature themselves, but they conceal their secrets and remain silent.
Draconic Pantheon
The dragon deities are all children of Io, the Ninefold Dragon who encompasses all the opposites and extremes of dragonkind. The pantheon is collectively known as Io's Children. Io is seen by dragons as the great creator of all things, including themselves. Dragons are very touchy about this. Just as mortal dragons consider that they have invented and devised just about anything and everything of any value or significance, so they hold Io to have created all of the multiverse and to have had the grace to permit "less important beings" (other greater gods) to play with and modify his creation subsequently. Dragons should not be argued with on this point.Dragons of any variety worship deities only reluctantly, and they do so in a much different spirit from that of devout humanoids. Instead of humbling themselves before the deities, they strike bargains, seeing divine beings as strong allies and examples worth emulating. Dragons have little patience for pious rituals and behavioral restrictions. They tolerate such limitations only if it helps their pursuit of divine knowledge and righteous power.
5th Edition cuts back on the draconic pantheon significantly. In it, there are only three true dragon gods — Bahamut, Tiamat, and Sardior, who were born of the First World that preceded the modern Material Plane and are thus qualitatively different entities from the gods that arose directly from the Outer Planes. The other dragon gods are retconned into being greatwyrms of immense age and power, who often combined many dimensional echoes of themselves into a single being, and whom humanoids often mistake for gods.
Central Gods
Io is the Ninefold Dragon, known as such because he embodies all alignments within his outlook. Io is regarded as the creator of dragons, subtly manipulating the destinies of all dragons by operating out in the open where nobody suspects his involvement. Io is concerned solely with the affairs of dragons and dragonkind, interfering in their lives only when he deems it absolutely necessary.
Io cares only for his "children", the dragons, and their continued existence in the worlds. In some cases, this means taking the side of the dragons against other races. In other situations, Io might help nondragons fight against a dragon who would otherwise jeopardize the survivability of the race as a whole.
He prefers to remain out of conflicts between dragons, though if such a conflict threatens to escalate, he might step in (either personally or by dispatching Aasterinian or some other servitor).
Io may, very rarely, manifest part of his being by communicating with an exceptionally wise or intelligent mortal being by drawing the astral body to fly with Io in the Astral Plane. This is recalled by the being as a wondrous inspirational dream, and Io's symbol may appear to mark the event on some hidden part of the body, the crown of the head, below hair, below a fingernail, or some similarly subtle place.
- Divided Deity: In Fourth Edition, Io was cut in two by the King of Terror, Erek-Hus. The two halves then rose up as a pair of new deities, Bahamut and Tiamat, who then killed Erek-Hus. All of Io's evil qualities, his hubris, arrogance, and envy, were embodied in Tiamat, while his good qualities, his desire to protect and his sense of equality, were embodied in Bahamut. Both gods inherited Io's preference for working alone, and became bitter enemies after the battle. In other editions, Bahamut and Tiamat are instead Io's children.
- Fertile Blood: Io is believed to have created the multiverse by willingly shedding his blood. Sometime after the creation of dragonkind, Io looked down to see what had become of his children. Seeing them at war, he cried, "If blood need be shed, let that which is shed be mine!" Cutting his belly with one claw, divine blood fell upon the waters, creating an island chain known today as the Io's Blood Isles. He urged his followers in visions to go there and form a harmonious society.
- God Is Dead: During the Dawn War, Io faced a terrible primordial called Erek-Hus, the King of Terror, on a blasted worldly continent half shattered from a century of conflict. With a primordial-wrought axe of adamantine the size of a mountain, the King of Terror split Io from head to tail, neatly cleaving the deity into two pieces. Then, from Io's shattered body, two new gods arose: Bahamut, the Platinum Dragon, and Tiamat, the Chromatic Dragon, who together fought and killed the King of Terror. This is applicable to his incarnation in the Nentir Vale campaign setting, as his current status in others is left unsaid. The Dragonborn of Abeir-Toril do have allusions to this event in their creation myths, but it is one of three mentioned in the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide, and the only one where he is explicitly dead.
- God Is Neutral: Io is of pure Neutral alignment and also of all alignments transcended by pure neutrality. His avatars appear in all alignments, and exceptional and wise dragons of all alignments revere him in the appropriate aspect. Io counts no faiths among his enemies, knowing the value of neutrality in one's outlook.
- Godzilla Threshold: Io only manifests on the Prime Material Plane when affairs absolutely crucial to the survival of part of dragonkind, or a great globe-spanning conflict, are involved. Such an appearance could change the world irrevocably. In a conflict situation, few creatures could possibly hope even to flee for survival from his avatar, let alone offer it any kind of opposition save for a great army or a very high-powered group of truly powerful magic.
- I Have Many Names: On Toril, he is more commonly known as Asgorath, with only the Dragonborn race referring to him as Io.
- In Mysterious Ways: Io's followers are tasked with seemingly random quests, such as "Decrease the hoard of [a specific silver dragon] by one-quarter" or "Fortify [a particular green dragon's] influence over its region". Io rarely offers an explanation for his assignments, but expects every follower to trust his impartiality.
- The Maker: Io is worshiped as the creator of the multiverse and of dragonkind. Dragon-sages believe that Io originally lived in the First Void, the hidden domain of pre-creation, in which only he existed. Io created the Shadow Void, which is the known multiverse, by willingly shedding his blood, which created the potential for existence and creation to come into being. During the days of creation, the gods forged countless mortal vessels, giving rise to all the races, beasts, and plants that would populate the world. But the deity Io chose to bend his will toward creating mortal vessels that would not only live in the world of elements, but would give life and soul to the elements themselves. To contain the awesome power of elements given life, Io had to shape mortal vessels of tremendous strength and hardiness. And so he created the most powerful of all mortal creatures: the dragons. Learned metallic dragons believe that each time Io created new dragons, he was in a different mood. The god's demeanor laid the seeds that determined what those dragons would eventually become. When Io was filled with compassion and the desire to help others, he created dragons that transformed into metallics after his death. When Io spawned dragons to sate his avaricious or destructive impulses, the god's dark emotions eventually warped those dragons into the first chromatic and catastrophic dragons. In the ages following Io's death, these seeds altered dragon kind into its various kindreds.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In the final period of the Days of Thunder, Asgorath was released from his imprisonment, along with the rest of his kin, by the Batrachi in order to fight against Annam and the Giant deities. However, Asgorath would prove to be the downfall of his liberator's entire civilization when he hurled an ice moon down to the surface of Abeir-Toril in an event known as the Tearfall, wiping out the Batrachi and creating the Sea of Fallen Stars. It was this action that finally spurred Ao to clone the planet, giving the original world, Toril, to the gods, and the new one, Abeir, to the primordials.
- Not Quite Dead: Even though Io was clearly killed and divided into smaller chunks in his battle with Erek-Hus, Io is still the patron of the Draconic Pantheon in perpetuity, and continues to still grant spells and prayers to his clerics.
- Psychopomp: The dragons of Oerth believe that when they pass on to the next world, Io himself arrives to escort them into the afterlife. Io presents them with a test to determine if they have gained sufficient wisdom in their many lives. If they pass, they become one with Io's divine essence. If they fail, they are reincarnated to begin the whole process again.
- Retcon: The 5th Edition sourcebook, Fizban's Treasury of Dragons, claims Bahamut and Tiamat alone created dragonkind during the First World, and Io is only mentioned as being a possible creator of dragonkind in the Greyhawk setting of Oerth.
- Sinister Scimitar: His favored weapon is a scimitar.
- Top God: Io is the father of the other dragon deities and is worshiped by all species of dragons and dragonkin. Io has even fewer clerics or shrines than most of the other draconic deities, since his outlook is so broad and all-encompassing. Still, even the most devoted cleric of Bahamut, Tiamat, or any other dragon deity pays at least a modicum of homage to the Ninefold Dragon. Even those of greatly varying alignment can find common cause under the banner of the Ninefold Dragon.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: He can (and does) appear as any dragon type, from the smallest pseudodragon to the largest great wyrm.
Bahamut (pronounced Ba-HA-mut, BA-ha-mut or Bah-hahm-ut) is the protector of all good dragons and a fierce opponent of evil. He believes in the sanctity of life, and won't willingly kill another creature unless he has no other choice. By dragon standards, he is sharing and selfless, and all good wyrms look to him for guidance and wisdom. Bahamut is revered in many locales. Though all good dragons pay homage to Bahamut, gold, silver, and brass dragons hold him in particularly high regard. Even evil dragons (except his Arch-Enemy and sister Tiamat), respect Bahamut for his wisdom and power.
In his natural form, Bahamut is a long, sinuous dragon covered in silver-white scales that sparkle and gleam even in the dimmest light. Bahamut's catlike eyes are deep blue, as azure as a midsummer sky, some say. Others insist that Bahamut's eyes are a frosty indigo, like the heart of a glacier. Perhaps the two merely reflect the Platinum Dragon's shifting moods.
Bahamut is stern and very disapproving of evil. He brooks no excuses for evil acts. In spite of this stance, he is among the most compassionate beings in the multiverse. He has limitless empathy for the downtrodden, the dispossessed, and the helpless. He urges his followers to promote the cause of good, but prefers to let beings fight their own battles when they can. To Bahamut, it is better to offer information, healing, or a (temporary) safe refuge rather than to take others' burdens upon oneself.
An equally important aspect to Bahamut is his constant conflict with his sister, Tiamat. He continually stands in opposition to her world-dominating schemes. Most recently, she has begun a campaign to heavily populate the world with her spawn. Bahamut has answered this outbreak of evil by recruiting stalwart heroes to his side, the dragonborn. In addition to the dragonborn, Bahamut is served by seven great gold wyrms that often accompany him when he visits the Material Plane.
Bahamut holds court in a shining palace, filled with the things he's accumulated over the years, which is located on the slopes of Mount Mertion, one of the seven mystic mountains of Mount Celestia. This grand structure is more than just a palace, it's also Bahamut's hoard. The walls, inlaid with copper and ivory on the inside and platinum on the outside, reflect the eternal light of Celestia and make the castle appear like a beacon on the horizon. The walls are made of mithral tiles, and the windows of gemstones set in silver and gold. Bahamut viciously pursues (usually byproxy) anyone who attempts to steal from his great castle. He might be a good god, but he's also dedicated to justice and is a dragon. It's best not to mess with his hoard. What's more, the case supposedly holds portals to the Astral and Elemental Planes. It's a real popular place, but it doesn't always attract the right kind of attention. Some powerful paladins and clerics make pilgrimages there in hopes of receiving a powerful blessing from the Platinum Dragon.
- Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: Fizban's Treasury of Dragon from 5th edition significantly lightens his opinion on Tiamat. While they are still antagonistic, Bahamut's commentary (in his guise as the wizard Fizban) makes it obvious that he still loves his sister and misses the time they created dragonkind together.
- Angel Unaware: Bahamut enjoys walking the world as an old man or a young human monk, accompanied by seven trained canaries. If someone tries Mugging the Monster, they'll find that the canaries are actually shapeshifted gold dragons.
- Arch-Enemy: Bahamut despises his sister Tiamat, and the two have been in opposition for centuries. The conflict is known as the Dragonfall War to the people of the mortal realms. Since Bahamut is the good of all dragons and Tiamat is the evil of all dragons, the siblings can't stand one another, constantly trying to interfere with the other's plans. The Tyranny of Dragons module has Tiamat as the Big Bad, with suggestions that Bahamut is somehow involved. In fact, the only times that Bahamut is said to interfere with the mortal world directly is whenever his sister is involved.
- Beware the Silly Ones: Bahamut's human disguise, Fizban, is a kooky old man who's constantly doing wacky things like throwing parties for people he's never met or getting into heated arguments with smug-looking statues. Naturally, this is all a smokescreen to hide just how dangerous and cunning he really is.
- Big Good: Bahamut champions virtue and justice, and is the god of all metallic dragons. He urges mortals to embrace their noble natures and to better themselves and the world around them. His holy texts teach them to reject the base destructive emotions undermining order's harmony. For the Platinum Dragon, virtue and order are one and the same; essentially, different aspects of the same ideal. For this reason, good dragons revere Bahamut, as well as anyone in the mortal realms who wants to worship a God of Good.
- …But He Sounds Handsome: In Fizban's Treasury of Dragons, under his guise as the wizard Fizban, he states that Bahamut has objectively made the best decisions of any dragon. Also, he's the most handsome dragon ever and has the biggest hoard of any dragon. The book isn't even trying to be subtle in "hinting" that Fizban is Bahamut.Objectively speaking, of all the dragons, Bahamut has made all the best decisions. He is also the most handsome. And his hoard is the gigantic-est.'
- Cain and Abel: The titanic struggle between Bahamut and his sister Tiamat is legendary. Throughout history, the two gods have clashed, their armies mustering and throwing themselves against each other repeatedly as the two deities struggle for dominance. No matter the other interests guiding them or their involvement in the natural world, their longstanding animosity inevitably comes to the fore. Many champions fighting for the Platinum Dragon identify this endless conflict and come to see Tiamat as evil's author in the world. Those who do might take the battle to Tiamat's followers, committing themselves to rooting out and destroying her dragons and other servants.
- Came Back Strong: His avatar was killed in battle with Tiamat's during the Orcgate Wars, causing him to lose his divinity for a while. However, he was able to regain a piece of divinity after a group of adventures were able to destroy the Wand of Orcus, which restored some of the faith that powered him. It was after assisting Torm in stopping a demon assault that he was inducted into the pantheon, and was even stronger than before.
- Church Militant: The Platinum Talons is a militant order dedicated to Bahamut. They use force to further their cause, scouring the countryside for wicked servants dedicated to dark powers. However, although the Talons commit themselves to fighting evil, their single-minded efforts can and have blinded them to the unintended suffering that results from their crusades. Wherever the Talons go, they leave behind shattered lives and ruined communities. The Talons make no apology for their actions, because they believe their ends justify whatever means they use.
- Deity Identity Confusion:
- At least one source conflates Bahamut with Xymor, the draconic god of enlightened justice. However, the two have also on at least one occasion been listed separately.
- At least one source claims that Bahamut is the same deity as Marduk, the Untheric god of cities, wind, thunder, storms, and rain, who also always opposed the schemes of Tiamat until the two killed each other during the Orcgate Wars.
- Dragon Hoard: Unlike many dragons, Bahamut doesn't truly care for hoarding possessions as he prefers traveling the world and meeting people. That being said, he does have a hoard in his palace, and viciously pursues anyone who attempts to steal from it. The palace is said to contain fine marble, mythril, silver, gold, and (naturally) platinum. One can argue that anyone can sleep on a pile of treasure, but it takes a real badass to sleep in a pile of treasure.
- Enemy Mine: According to one myth, Bahamut and Tiamat joined forces right after they were created in order to defeat and kill the primordial Erek-Hus, but then started fighting each other immediately afterwards. In this case, it's the one and only time they've ever worked together.
- The Gods Must Be Lazy: Bahamut doesn't interfere directly in the mortal world all that much, preferring to offer council or wisdom and little else. Even though metallic dragons worship him, he asks for very little from them, and gives very little in return. If Bahamut goes to the mortal world at all, it will be in the guise of a helpless old man to see if good people really are as good as they say they are. One of the few things that can spur Bahamut to interfere directly is the appearance of his sister, Tiamat.
- God of Good: Bahamut stands at the forefront among those gods who champion good. Communities founded on principles of justice, equality, and virtue include the Platinum Dragon in their prayers.
- God Was My Copilot: When he's not holding court in his shining castle, Bahamut walks the natural world in the most unassuming of disguises: an elderly man accompanied by seven trained canaries. This old man, variously called a sage or a hermit in folklore, travels from place to place with no apparent purpose. He's quick to offer advice, information, or assistance to other travelers.
- Good Is Not Soft: Bahamut, and those who follow him, are instructed to do whats right and help those in need. They also are firmly against tyranny and are trained to fight against any evil. Bahamut himself prefers resolving conflict without fighting, but when he has to fight, he does not hesitate at all to do what must be done.
- I Have Many Names: In the Realms, he is often known as Xymor, although that might actually be a different dragon deity. On Krynn, he is called Paladine, and if the myth of the First World holds true, at least one world calls him Eberron.
- Living Mood Ring: Bahamut has catlike eyes which are either deep blue, as azure as a midsummer sky, or a frosty indigo, like the heart of a glacier, depending on his shifting moods.
- Multiple-Choice Past: There are several conflicting origins about how Bahamut came into being. In the more commonly accepted traditions, he is the son of Io and brother of Tiamat and Null; while in the traditions of gold dragon society, he was believed to be the son of Lendys and Tamara. Myths from the dragonborn of Abeir claim instead that Bahamut and Tiamat were born from the sundered corpse of Io when he was killed in the Dawn War. The First World creation myth introduced in 5th edition claims that Bahamut and Tiamat were never born at all, but were the first beings.
- Not So Above It All: In Fizban's Treasury, he remarks that green dragons, sadistic greedy manipulators, are in many ways the most dragon of all dragons, indicating that even Bahamut has some of the traits that are normally associated with "evil" dragons, and considers them admirable.
- Sweet Tooth: Fizban's Treasury of Dragons portrays him as such, mentioning that he spends his time walking the world in a mortal disguise collecting and perfecting dessert recipes. When he eats a pie he thought was especially good, he even places the now-empty tin in his hoard.
- We Used to Be Friends: In the First World creation myth, Bahamut and Tiamat were once close as can be. Together, they created the First World and the first gem dragon, Sardior. Eventually, usurper deities came from beyond, defeating Bahamut and imprisoning Tiamat. Bahamut decided to go the diplomatic route, ingratiating himself with the gods in the hopes that they might free his sister one day, but Tiamat was filled only with fury at her brother's perceived betrayal, and destroyed the First World in her wrath, unintentionally killing Sardior in the process. They have been bitter enemies ever since.
Tiamat (pronounced TEE-a-mat, TEE-ah-mat, or TEE-a-maht) is the dragon goddess of wealth, greed, and envy. She is the patron god of chromatic dragons and those whose lust for wealth overrides any other goal or concern. All evil dragons pay homage to Tiamat; green and blue dragons acknowledge her sovereignty the most readily. Good dragons have a healthy respect for Tiamat, though they usually avoid mentioning her or even thinking about her.
In her natural form, Tiamat is a thick-bodied dragon with five heads and a wyvern's tail. Each head is a different color: white, black, green, blue, and red. Her massive body is striped in those colors. Tiamat has many consorts, and include great wyrm dragons of the white, black, green, blue, and red types.
Tiamat concerns herself with spreading evil, defeating good, and propagating evil dragons. She enjoys razing the occasional village, city, or country, but only as a diversion from her subtle, world-spanning plots. She is the villain who lurks in the shadows. Her presence is felt but seldom seen.
Tiamat constantly seeks to extend the power and dominion of evil dragons over the land, particularly when her subjects find themselves embroiled in territorial disputes with good dragons. Tiamat also unfailingly demands reverence, homage, and tribute from her subjects.
For eons, Tiamat has struggled against her brother Bahamut, the King of Good Dragons, in a conflict called the Dragonfall War. Most people believed that this battle would last for millennia to come, and the two deities regularly employ the help of mortals in their conflict.
Whether or not Tiamat is truly the creator of evil dragons is a subtle question. As Io contains all alignments, evil is born from within him, and in this sense Tiamat is not a prime creator. However, she may have been in some sense a midwife of the coming of evil dragons into the world, as Bahamut is often seen as the force who drew good dragons from Io's being. She keeps an active and eager watch over evil dragonkind and ever stirs them to further avarice, pride, and wickedness. She herself is hateful, spiteful, never forgetting any kind of slight, and she enjoys such wretched pastimes as torture, bickering, and fighting among her consorts, as well as destroying valuables and treasures which her avatars bring to her, sometimes as offerings from mortal evil dragons.
Tiamat's realm, known as the Cave of Greed, lies deep underground, at the dark bottom of Dragon Eyrie. Many chromatic dragon petitioners choose to make their lairs near hers (but not too near), and deep dragon and shadow dragon petitioners tend to favor this subterranean region as well.
Another realm, hidden in the hills of Avernus, is a sprawling cave complex guarded by her offspring and her lovers. Treasure lies scattered about the floor, but it's not for the taking. Woe to the ones who think they can get out with even a copper piece.
Tiamat guards the access between Avernus and Dis, the second layer of Baator, near the Pillar of Skulls. She won't let anyone through the gate without a hefty sacrifice, but she usually stirs forth only to counter demonic incursions. Her lair sits atop a towering mountain, with flights of dragons wheeling through the skies to discourage any demonic incursions. For their part, the demons avoid this place. The hordes of the Abyss have learned the hard way that Tiamat and her court prefer to be left alone. She appears disinterested in becoming involved in the Blood War.
Tiamat was once rumored to be one of the Lords of the Nine, the high-ups who watch over the nine layers of the plane. Truth is, she's good friends with some of the lords (at least insofar as evil of that magnitude can be friendly), but she's not one of them. Still, she has powerful forces at her command; the baatezu constantly offer her gifts, bribes, and servants for the loan of some of her dragons. Tiamat's not sealed any bargains yet, but she's weakening to the fiends' persuasion.
- Adaptational Nice Guy: A minor case. While still a villain and evil deity, 5th edition makes her slightly more likeable. In Descent into Avernus, the heroes can gain her favor with no fear of betrayal as she will gladly keep her end of the bargain, and in Fizban's Treasury, Bahamut-as-Fizban expresses fond memories of their youth together, even if they are enemies now. Said book also provides an origin story in which their rivalry is based less in Tiamat being evil and Bahamut good, and more in a perceived betrayal on Bahamut's end; When the early gods imprisoned Tiamat, Bahamut tried to ally with them in the hopes of convincing them to free his sister, which to Tiamat just looked like her brother ditching her at the first chance.
- The Almighty Dollar: Tiamat is the patron of those whose lust for wealth overrides any other goal or concern. She commands her followers to hoard wealth, acquiring much and spending little, and take what they desire from others who can't defend their possessions, as wealth is its own reward.
- Always a Bigger Fish: She is the biggest in Avernus, and one of the biggest in all of Baator. Neither the archdevil Zariel, nor the demon lords that occasionally drop by dare to challenge her, and all the nine hells, only Asmodeus can claim to be her equal or greater.
- Anti-Magic: If Tiamat is fought in 5th Edition, she can negate any level 6 spell or lower used against her.
- Arch-Enemy: Tiamat despises her brother Bahamut, and the two have been in opposition for centuries. The conflict is known as the Dragonfall War to the people of the mortal realms. Since Bahamut is the good of all dragons and Tiamat is the evil of all dragons, the siblings can't stand one another, constantly trying to interfere with the other's plans. The Tyranny of Dragons module has her as the Big Bad, with suggestions that Bahamut is somehow involved. In fact, the only times that Bahamut is said to interfere with the mortal world directly is whenever his sister is involved.
- Back from the Dead:
- The adventure The Throne of Bloodstone depicts Tiamat being slain by Gareth Dragonsbane and his party on the instructions of Bahamut, as her heart was needed to destroy the Wand of Orcus. However, Tiamat managed to survive this, as the party had merely slain one of her avatars.
- During the Time of Troubles, Tiamat was slain by Gilgeam. Even so, her divine essence was somehow divided into three and came to inhabit Tchazzar, Gestaniius and Skuthosiin, three powerful chromatic dragons. Tchazzar devoured the other two, combining the three essences and ushering in the reappearance of Tiamat.
- Big Bad: Tiamat has served as a key villain in D&D since the mid-1970s. In Fifth edition, she's the main villain of the Tyranny of Dragons module, in which her cultists are working on releasing her from Avernus.
- Breath Weapon: Like all Dragons, Tiamat can breath elemental power as an attack. Thanks to her power and multiple heads though, she can use five different breaths at the same time.
- Cain and Abel: The conflict between Tiamat and her brother Bahamut has raged for centuries. Those who know of this conflict refer to it as the Dragonfall War. Tiamat requires that her followers keep a vigilant eye out for adherents of Bahamut, whether those adherents are dragon or not, and stamp them out at any cost.
- Church Of Evil: The church of Tiamat is regimented by a strict hierarchy of ranks and titles. Her clerics are occupied by the twin tasks of acquiring an ever-increasing hoard of wealth for the faith and sabotaging the faiths of other deities. As a result, they occupy most of their time with an unending series of thefts, assassinations, acts of vandalism, and arson.
- Crossover Cosmology: Tiamat was also worshiped as a member of the Untheric Pantheon, manifesting as a three-headed dragon. Her purpose in the Untheric pantheon was to balance the "order" represented by the other Untheric gods with her "chaos". Tiamat had a reputation amongst the people of the state of Unther for battling with the other members of their pantheon (especially with Marduk) and was blamed for every one of the many setbacks Unther experienced.
- Divine Date: Of all the deities, Tiamat takes the most mortal consorts, always dragons. The dragons she chooses are usually chromatics, but she might court dragons of other families if they prove themselves to her.
- Dragon Hoard: The hoard of Tiamat, hidden deep in her cavern, is said to equal the treasuries of a hundred worlds. The trouble is actually getting to this treasure, letting alone getting out with anything, is a tall order. Besides dealing with all of Tiamat's guards, her lovers, and the Queen herself, she's said to meticulously keep track of everything in her hoard down to the last copper piece.
- Dragons Are Demonic: Tiamat is perhaps the Trope Codifier for this. She's evil, vain, and power hungry. She's also a literal example of this trope, as she is officially classified as both a Devil and a Dragon at various points in the settings lifespan.
- Dragons Are Divine: While some sources are a bit vague on it at times, Tiamat has almost always been linked to godhood, and has become an official god by the time of 5th Edition.
- The Dreaded:
- In the Tyranny of Dragons campaign, the very idea of Tiamat entering the Material Plane is enough to make multiple factions of the Forgotten Realms — many of whom hate each other's guts — to put aside their differences until Tiamat's resurrection is stopped. This includes the likes of Lawful Good paladins and Chaotic Evil Red Wizards of Thay. As much as these groups hate each other, they know that as bad as their enemies winning would be, letting Tiamat come back would be even worse.
- Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus explains that Zariel, an archdevil, is terrified of Tiamat. If Tiamat is convinced to aid the players, Zariel's only response strategy is to kill the adventurers and hope that Tiamat leaves.
- Enemy Mine: According to one myth, the one and only time both Bahamut and Tiamat have ever worked together was right after they were created, as rather than let the primordial Erek-Hus rule the land, they joined forces and defeated him.
- Enemy Summoner: The main gimmick of Tiamat's card
in Magic: The Gathering is that, when played (for the steep cost of all colors plus two generic) it lets you pick five dragon cards from your library and put them in your hand, a massive advantage in a game where playing the right card is vital. - Evil Is Not a Toy: The Cult of the Dragon hopes to get power out of serving Tiamat and helps the attempt to summon her into the world in Tyranny of Dragons. If Tiamat wins, she kills them all. Tiamat only offers rewards for the Chromatic Dragons. All other beings are nothing but food and slaves to her.
- Evil Twin: Is this to Bahamut. Regardless of if they are simply siblings or two sides of the same being via Half the Man He Used to Be, the two hate each other.
- Express Delivery: She bears litters of 1-4 dragonets (or "mewlings": very young dragons born conscious and in control of their feeble powers) after an average gestation period of only six days.
- Faux Affably Evil: Tiamat can be charming and fey when necessary, but her self-serving, evil, reptilian nature is readily apparent to those who look.
- I Gave My Word: If Tiamat is convinced to help the adventurers in Descent Into Avernus, she assists with no backstabs or asking for anything in return besides them bearing witness to her power. Of course, the adventurers succeeding in their goals would create an Evil Power Vacuum in Avernus that her servant Arkhan could fill.
- God of Evil: Tiamat is the destroyer of life and the matron of evil dragons. She is a greedy, vain, and arrogant goddess who never ceases in her efforts to cause mischief and destruction. She urges her followers, mostly other dragons, but some humanoid cults, to conquer as much as they can, gathering the spoils of war in rich hoards. No cruelty is beyond her desire for plunder and victory in battle.
- Greed: Said to be her defining trait. Since chromatic dragons are naturally greedy creatures, Tiamat is the worst. The acclimation of wealth is said to be her goal above all else, and she will abandon any sort of plan if it means getting even more of it. Her Dragon Hoard is said to be the treasures of a hundred worlds of the multiverse, despite the fact that she has nothing to use all that treasure for. Tiamat just wants more because it's more; that's the beginning and end of it. And just as an exclamation point, Tiamat's lair is known as "the Cave of Greed".
- I Have Many Names: Like all draconic deities, she has as many names as there are worlds in the multiverse. On Krynn, she is called Takhisis, and, if the First World myth holds true, her name on Eberron is Khyber.
- Horrifying the Horror: Descent Into Avernus goes into detail about how the devils of Avernus are afraid of Zariel and none of them would openly oppose her. But even Zariel is afraid of Tiamat.
- Meaningful Name: Named after the primordial dragon goddess from Mesopotamian Mythology.
- Monster Progenitor: Tiamat creates all sorts of dragonlike beings to manifest her power in the world, breeding warped creatures from her eggs. Tiamat's ultimate ambition is to fill the multiverse with her evil spawn. She creates increasing numbers of vile offspring, creatures of great power and malevolence. These depraved entities, having no compunction about destroying or killing, beget only mayhem and devastation. Left unchecked, they would eventually send the planes to their ruination. Every spawn of Tiamat has some vestige of the power of the Queen of Evil Dragons in its blood. Many, though, are born not directly to her but to individual evil dragons throughout the world. Whether chosen by Tiamat herself or only by fickle chance, some chromatic dragon eggs hatch into the spawn of Tiamat. Evil dragons recognize the birth of a spawn of Tiamat as a fortunate omen, a sign of their creator's favor.
- Multiple-Choice Past: Her origins are highly conflicting, as there are many accounts about how she came into being. In the more commonly accepted traditions, she is the daughter of Io and sister of Bahamut and Null; while in the myths of the dragonborn of Abeir, Bahamut and Tiamat were born from the sundered corpse of Io instead, when Io was killed in the Dawn War.
- Multiple Head Case: Tiamat appears as a gigantic five-headed dragon with one head of each of the chromatic (evil) dragon types. While the mass of huge heads seem to move and operate entirely independently from each other like a group of writhing snakes, they are directed by one intelligence lodged deeply inside the dragon's massive body.
- Offing the Offspring: Unintentionally. In the First World creation myth, she destroyed the first world in anger over having been imprisoned and betrayed by her brother, unintentionally killing her and Bahamut's first creation, Sardior.
- Remote Body: Tiamat generally keeps her "real" body safe and hidden in Avernus, and uses Azharul, a draconic deity whose body she had taken over after mentally destroying him, as her "battle body" or fighting body.
- Royal Harem: Tiamat has five consorts, powerful male great wyrms of red, black, green, blue, and white varieties, who attend to her at all times in her lair. She is constantly guarded by these consorts, and when not plotting, feeding, enjoying cruel sport or facing danger, Tiamat will be found mating with one of them within a protective ring formed by the other four.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: As of the 5th edition, Tiamat has been imprisoned in Avernus for some time, unable to leave the plane of her own will. She must be called forth, but only the mightiest rituals can draw her back into the world. The most prevalent theory as to why she is imprisoned holds that her confinement is related to the end of the long war between the dragons and giants, that she was sequestered here by means of a mighty curse levied by a forgotten god of the giants she slew. The curse brought an end to the war but also drew the curtain on the time of the dragons and giants on the Material Plane, clearing the way for the rise of humans, ogres, dwarves, elves, and other folk. If Tiamat were to return to the material world, that event could trigger, or be a signal of, the resumption of the war between giants and dragons.
- Sibling Murder: According to one myth, Tiamat killed her older brother Vorel, Io's first creation, and tried to frame Bahamut for the deed. However, Io realized the truth that she was truly to blame, though, and banished Tiamat from his presence.
- The Usurper: Tiamat mind controlled mages who were members of the Twisted Rune and compelled them to assist her in "relocating" her to Dragon Eyrie by assisting her in mentally destroying and subsuming the draconic deity Azharul in his realm. She took over his body and rulership, completely unbeknownst to anyone but herself.
- Villain of Another Story: Her role in Descent Into Avernus. Tiamat has a presence in Avernus and is the master of Arkhan, who has ambitions of ruling Avernus. However, she takes no direct action in the campaign unless, ironically, she is convinced to help the adventurers.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: Tiamat can appear as a human sorceress, known as the Dark Lady, of Mulan ancestry with long, dark hair and dark robes. She has a fey beauty, a seductive smile, and totally black eyes. She can also appear as an undead, multiheaded dracolich, known as the Undying Queen.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: If the Cult of the Dragon successfully brings Tiamat into the material plane during The Rise of Tiamat, she will "thank" her loyal cultists by eating them alive and swallowing them while laughing maniacally.
Sardior (SAR-dee-or) is known in a few small circles. Even though he is the Master of the Gem Dragons, in reality he does not require much from his followers, and he does not try to guide their decisions. The gem dragons, in return, look upon him as the ideal and strive to be more like him.
In his natural form, Sardior is a long sinewy dragon covered with deep ruby red scales. At a distance, he might be mistaken for an ancient red wyrm, but the playful expression seen in his eyes makes him very much unlike the reds. He is also known to be a great conversationalist, and the unguarded had best be prepared for his sharp wit.
Sardior keeps a court of 5 thanes, one each of the various breeds of neutral dragons. All of Sardior's thanes are huge, ancient dragons. It must be remembered, of course, that Sardior and company are a stay-at-home lot, not given much to interfering with others' businesses. Sardior once had a sixth thane: Seradess, a female advanced obsidian dragon, but he destroyed her and banished the obsidian dragons from his court. Even his own clergy argue the reason behind this decision. All the Neutral dragons honor Sardior, but being what they are, his sovereignty does not much affect their daily lives of treasure-mongering. All are agreed, however, that Sardior is the most brilliant conversationalist and raconteur of all dragons.
He makes his home in a huge floating castle, called the Ruby Palace, which orbits the world, high up in the atmosphere, and stays forever in the shadows from the sun. On the nights it can be seen, viewers mistake it for a red star in an unusual place among the constellations or a small red moon. Periodically, Sardior moves his palace on a journey through the multiverse, visiting places such as the djinni Citadel of Ice and Steel, and Uroboros, the realm of the couatl god Jazirian.
5th Edition rewrites almost all of Sardior's backstory. He was the first creation of Bahamut and Tiamat when they dwelled in the First World, a primordial location that preceded the Material Plane — his making was one of the few times they ever truly cooperated — and helped them fashion the metallic and chromatic dragons. He is long dead now, having been shattered into countless pieces alongside the First World when the gods of the humanoid races came to claim it as they own, but continues to live on through the gem dragons, who first came into being from Sardior's scattered remains.
- Church Militant: A small group of his clergy, known as the ruby disciples, train to be a martial arm of the church, serving not only as a defense but also as a show of force.
- Everything's Sparkly with Jewelry: He has a fondness for gems of all kinds, especially rubies.
- God Is Neutral: Sardior is the Prince of Neutral Dragons and is honored by all of them. However, being what they are, his sovereignty does not much affect their daily lives of treasure-mongering.
- I Have Many Names: Like his parents, Sardior is known by many different names on different worlds. If the myth of the First World holds true, he is sometimes known as Siberys.
- Pieces of God: In 5th Edition, Sardior was broken into countless fragments during the struggle between the draconic and humanoid gods. His pieces were scattered across the cosmos when the First World shattered into the worlds of the Material Plane, and became the first gem dragons. The gem dragons are thus considered to be the surviving form of Sardior's consciousness, and some of their number believe that they should try to bring Sardior together into a single whole again.
- Posthumous Character: In 5th Edition, he perished many ages before the present day.
- Seeker Archetype: Sardior just wants to learn more. The more you know, the better off you will be, but just learning for learning's sake is not what Sardior stresses. No, gaining knowledge should not just be reading from books. The trick for Sardior is to get someone else to read the book, then tell him all about it.
Minor Gods
Aasterinian is a cheeky, deeply chaotic deity who enjoys learning through play, invention, and pleasure. She is determinedly Chaotic Neutral, with tendencies to good. She is a huge brass dragon who enjoys disturbing the status quo, being shocking and innovative, jolting the staid into action. She is Io's messenger for lesser communications with dragons, but is definitely distractable. Chaotic (especially brass and copper) dragons revere her.
Aasterinian is flighty and quick-witted. She encourages her followers to think for themselves, rather than relying on the word of others. The worst crime, in Aasterinian's eyes, is not trusting in yourself and your own devices. She loves all who enjoy innovation and whimsy and is accepting of all dragonblood creatures. Spellscales prove exceptionally amusing to her. She enjoys their changeable natures.
Her avatar often travels as a messenger to Great Wyrms from Io, or is off hunting some arcane knowledge she seeks for herself. She is playful, stubborn, and vain. She may mock or taunt very lawful creatures, using spells to embarass them.
Between trips to the Prime, Aasterinian lives in a small realm called Brassberg deep within Nidavellir, a set of caverns just large enough to contain her hoard. Trespassers are devoured unless they are amusing; some members of the Society of Sensation have survived a visit to her realm. Aasterinian does enjoy the inventions of the Norse dwarves, and sometimes her avatar walks among them in dwarven guise.
In 5th Edition, instead of a true deity, Aasterinian is a brass greatwyrm of immense age and power that humanoid cultures have often mistaken for a god.
- Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: She is flighty and distractable.
- Blithe Spirit: Aasterinian enjoys disturbing the status quo and all dragons applaud her stance that they should think for themselves and rely on their own devices.
- Deity Identity Confusion: Several sources have conflated Aasterian with Hlal, the dragon goddess of humor and inventiveness. However, the two have also been listed separately on several occasions.
- It's the Journey That Counts: Almost all of her quests involve travel and new experiences. The quests upon which she sends a supplicant tend to focus more on the journey than the destination.
- Sinister Scimitar: Her favored weapon is a scimitar.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: She sometimes disguises herself as a dwarf in order to walk among them.
Astilabor (pronounced As-TIL-uh-bore) is revered by dragons of every species, since she is, in a way, an archetype of dragonkind. Astilabor represents the desire to acquire and hold wealth, greed, if viewed in an evil sense, but also the desire to gain status by acquiring wealth. Dragons that worship Astilabor sometimes promise the deity a share of their gains if she'll help them in an upcoming venture, but then they never sacrifice what they promised her (how, after all, could the Hoardmistress respect them if they gave up their wealth so easily).
Astilabor manifests as a huge dragon that shimmers with all the chromatic and metallic colors of dragonkind. She is reputed to have a hoard, hidden somewhere in the plane of Limbo, that contains more wealth than that found on all the planets of the universe. She sometimes (very rarely) grants boons from this staggering hoard to followers who have pleased her.
In 5th Edition, instead of a true deity, Astilabor is a topaz greatwyrm of immense age and power that humanoid cultures have often mistaken for a god.
- The Almighty Dollar: Astilabor represents the natural draconic desire to acquire treasure and power, tempered by the knowledge that naked greed can bring doom to a hoard. Astilabor values wealth and power, but without any stigma of greed. She instills in dragonkind the innate need for collecting and protecting the hoard. She claims that she cannot abide theft of any kind from her worshipers, but often turns a blind eye if such acts are performed in the name of building one's hoard.
- Dragon Hoard: Astilabor is reputed to have a hidden hoard that contains more wealth than can be found on all the planets of the universe. Very rarely, she has been known to grant boons from this staggering wealth to followers who have particularly pleased her.
His realm, the Dragonspawn Pits of Azharul, is located in the lowest reaches of the Dragon Eyrie, far underground beneath the slopes of the mountain. It is a gigantic and labyrinthine cavern lair. After Tiamat took it over, she renamed his lair as the Cave of Greed (others in Dragon Eyrie, as well as priests and sages, merely assumed old Azharul had hit upon a new name for his home).
- The Archmage: He was described as having a mighty mastery of magic.
- God Is Dead: Azharul was killed and subsumed by Tiamat with the assistance of Twisted Rune mages whom she managed to mentally dominate.
- People Puppets: Following his death, Tiamat took control of his body. After Dragon Eyrie disintegrated during the Spellplague, a stunned and half-crushed Azharul ("physically torn open like a fowl spatchcocked or butterflied for the grill", as described by one who saw his violent arrival in the Barrens) was hurled violently into Banehold, where an opportunistic Bane pounced on the dazed and physically ruined draconic deity to enslave it, and discovered Tiamat's presence. And immediately sought to compel and rule her. After spending some time as Bane's servant, Tiamat struck ruthlessly, not only freeing herself from Bane's tyranny and snatching her Azharul body out of Banehold and into Avernus, she drained much of Bane's power to do so, passing all that she didn't need to mend the Azharul body and fully link it with her own, so that in Avernus, she has her "true" body, an aspect guarding the Way To Dis, and a "battle body" or fighting body (Azharul) she uses to meet with all others, keeping her true self safe and hidden.
- Puppet King: After taking over Azharul's body, Tiamat continued ruling his realm with no one being aware that it was actually her.
- The Rival: He had a rivalry with Tiamat.
-
Word of God: Most of the information on Azharul was provided by Ed Greenwood in this entry of the Candlekeep Forum.
Chronepsis is neutral, silent, unconcerned, and dispassionate. He is the draconic deity of fate, death, and judgment. His form is colorless and without luster, marking him as an outsider to the struggles of the chromatic and metallic dragons. Chronepsis knows the future amd the fate of all of creation at the end of time.
Chronepsis is a passionless observer of the world. He passes judgment on all dragons when they die, deciding where their souls go in the afterlife. Unlike Lendys, Chronepsis is uninterested in justice: he merely observes what is and is not. He is also singularly uninvolved in the activities of the living, and strives to remain so. It is said that only a cataclysm of world-shaking proportions could rouse Chronepsis from his disinterest.
Chronepsis' avatar will attent at the death of a truly exceptional Great Wyrm, greeting the spirit into the afterlife and sending it on to its Outer Plane journey, following it as it goes. The avatar may also periodically watch over the great graveyards present on some worlds, where dragons go to die, attacking any intruders or looters with his full and terrifying range of lethal attacks.
The Mausoleum of Chronepsis is located in the Outlands. This realm is a compact one, as it's got no petitioners and only one inhabitant, Chronepsis himself. His realm is a great cavern in the mountains near the Dwarven Mountain. Here he rests, surrounded by an infinite number of hourglasses that slowly dribble out the sands of life for every dragon and dragon-kin of the multiverse.
In 5th Edition, instead of a true deity, Chronepsis is a black greatwyrm of immense age and power who has consumed and fused with many of his dimensional echoes and has since retired to a solitary life in the Outlands, and who is often mistaken for a god by lesser beings.
- Don't Fear the Reaper: Most dragons respect him, but few revere him or serve him as clerics because of his neutral alignment.
- God of the Dead: He's one of the two aspects of the draconic death god, presiding over death as a natural, dispassionate force and watching over the souls of deceased dragons as they move into the afterlife.
- Judgement of the Dead: Dragons that revere Chronepsis see him as a passionless judge in fate and death, a disinterested observer of the world. When dragons die, their souls might well pass under his scrutiny. He does not dispense punishment or seek to right perceived wrongs. He merely shuttles souls toward their fates.
- Literal Split Personality: Chronepsis is an aspect of Null, the draconic god of death and the dead. He is Null's neutral aspect, known as the Guardian of the Lost, and is the guardian of the dead and the shepherd of dragon spirits to the afterlife.
- Psychopomp: Chronepsis occasionally accompanies the souls of exceptional dragons as they journey into the afterlife.
- Sinister Scythe: His favored weapon is a scythe.
- Soul Eating: For those souls that prove troublesome by lingering when they should move beyond, Chronepsis demonstrates an ability to consume the forms of dead and undead alike.
- The Stoic: Chronepsis is silent, unconcerned, and dispassionate.
Falazure, the terrifying Night Dragon, is the lord of energy draining, undeath, decay, and exhaustion. Some claim he has a decaying skeletal form, but others believe that he looks like a decrepit black dragon whose flesh is pulled tight over his bones. Falazure is a wretched, creeping thing no longer able to fly, but he has a terrible beauty nonetheless. He hates Bahamut and Tiamat equally, and hates and fears Chronepsis.
Falazure teaches that even a dragon's long life span need not be the limit to a dragon's existence. Beyond the world of the living is another realm, one of undeath eternal. It is generally accepted that Falazure created (or had a hand in the creation of) the first undead dragons, such as dracoliches, vampiric dragons, and ghostly dragons.
Falazure's avatars stalk some worlds seeking powerful, wise, or exceptional beings to energy drain. He steals corpses for ghastly necromantic experiments in Carceri. All dragons fear him save shadows dragons, who revere him.
Falazure's realm is the Mausoleum of Pain, which is located in Minethys, the third layer of Carceri. The Night Dragon picks at the wasteland of bones about his burrow, his mindless juju zombie servants slaying any creature foolish enough to approach.
- God of the Dead: He is one of two aspects of the draconic death god, representing death as a destructive and entropic force and ruling over draconic undead.
- Literal Split Personality: Falazure is an aspect of Null, the draconic deity of death and the dead. He is Null's evil aspect, known as Reaver.
- Necromancer: Falazure teaches that a multitude of secrets can extend a dragon's long life even longer. Many of those secrets involve necromancy and vampiric regeneration, but not all of them do. Many necromancers of all races revere the Night Dragon, as well as intelligent undead such as liches and especially dracoliches.
- Nothing but Skin and Bones: Falazure appears as a gaunt black dragon sometimes so emaciated he seems more akin to a dracolich.
- Spell My Name With An S: His name is sometimes spelled as "Faluzure".
- Vampiric Draining: Falazure is known for his vampirelike breath of life-draining miasma.
Garyx (pronounced GAIR-iks) the All-Destroyer symbolizes the sheer power and destructive force of dragonkind. Some argue that Garyx is actually insane, as a result of his long residence on the Windswept Depths of Pandemonium. He appears much like a great wyrm red dragon.
Garyx teaches by example, periodically traveling to the Material Plane to wreak unholy swaths of destruction across the landscape. Those who revere him follow this example, using their power to bring ruin and devastation.
Garyx pays little or no attention to his clerics and worshipers, but they care not. They believe that he grants them the power to perform acts of destruction, and that is enough. Perhaps curiously, some druids also revere the renewal aspect of Garyx, knowing that some devastation is always necessary for rejuvenation to occur. Some within the Cult of Ashardalon believe that the great wyrm is actually an avatar of the god Garyx.
Few temples to Garyx are known to exist, though his worshipers often carve his symbol near their handiwork. Garyx shares traits in common with Kord and Erythnul, but has no interest in alliances.
Aside from the Windswept Depths of Pandemonium, Garyx is also reputed to have a lair in the Abyss.
- Destroyer Deity: His destroyer aspect is associated with large-scale destruction. In his aspect as the All-Destroyer, he is worshiped by red dragons.
- Druidic Sickle: His favored weapon is a sickle.
- Fire Purifies: His renewal aspect is associated with devastation that leads to rejuvination. As the Cleanser of Worlds, some rogue gold dragons, who have come to the dark conclusion that the only way to rid the world of evil is to sterilize it and start again, revere him.
- Playing with Fire: Garyx represents the destructive, or, perhaps, the cleansing, influence of flame.
- Shout-Out: He's named after someone you probably know.
Hlal (pronounced Huh-LAL) is a sleek, copper-colored dragon with a ready grin and a happy glint in her eye. Of the dragon gods, she is the most friendly to nondragons (even Aasterinian enjoys a reputation of playful danger).
Hlal enjoys sharing stories and songs with those who appreciate such things, regardless of the listener's race or background. She has little use for tyrants, even well-meaning ones, and even less patience for cruelty or bullying. She teaches that one must be free of restraint, whether real or psychological, in order to freely express one's opinions.
Hlal's clerics are often multiclass cleric/bards, using music, poetry, and tall tales to spread the faith. Places of worship to Hlal are usually simple shrines, which can be packed up and moved to the next town or dragon lair at a moment's notice.
The followers of Hlal share much in common with those of Olidammara, and many characters pay homage to both deities simultaneously. Both Hextor and Vecna are among her chief enemies, because of their portfolios.
Hlal's realm is located in the lower reaches of Dragon Eyrie's great slope. Brass and copper dragon petitioners tend to congregate near this realm. These lower slopes are warm and dry, at least near Hlal's domain, so they attract blue dragon petitioners as well, though the blues try to stay far away from the brasses and coppers. Other, wetter areas of the lower reaches are favored by green and black petitioners.
Hlal also has a realm in Arborea, but its exact location is unknown.
- Cool Sword: Her favored weapon is a sword short.
- Crossover Cosmology: Among the elves, Hlal is worshiped as a male deity called Avachel (pronounced AH-vah-chel). Avachel is venerated by the Fair Folk as the boon companion of Erevan Ilesere. Although Quicksilver, as Avachel is commonly titled, is in some respects an interloper deity of the elven pantheon, he is more commonly and correctly seen as an ally of the Seldarine. In some elven myths, Avachel is said to have been a great mercury wyrm who underwent apotheosis after sacrificing himself to defeat an invasion by evil humans who threatened a band a green elves. Other legends speak of an avatar of Hlal in the guise of a mortal mercury dragon who joins with the Trickster in a similar series of events. Regardless of the truth behind his ascension, Avachel is nearly Erevan's equal in his ability to get into trouble, but her us a tireless defender of the Fair Folk, particularly green elves. Quicksilver is a good-natured, impulsive deity, with a fondness of avatars to Evermeet and the other woodlands of Toril in the guise of a silver or green elf armed only with an enchanted staff that causes all who are hit by it to fall asleep, or in the guise of a great mercury wyrm, with all the attendant powers thereof.
- Deity Identity Confusion: Several sources have conflated Hlal with Aasterinian, the dragon goddess of learning and pleasure. However, the two have also been listed separately on several occasions.
- Gender Bender: She has a male aspect called Avachel, who is venerated by the elves as the boon companion of Erevan Ilesere.
- The Prankster: She can't resist the opportunity to play a prank on an unsuspecting victim; the more seriously that victim takes themself, the better. Myth has it that Hlal played a particularly elaborate practical joke on Null, and is now hard-pressed to stay one jump ahead of the angry Deathwyrm.
- The Smart Gal: Hlal epitomizes draconic wit and delights in sophisticated wordplay and the more dignified forms of humor.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: Hlal appears in whatever form best suits her (doubtless humorous) purposes at the moment. If she's not actually in the process of playing a trick on someone, she usually chooses the form of a faerie dragon that glows with a yellow-gold aura.
Kalzareinad was the draconic demigod of dragon magic, in particular the selfish, uncaring, or evil application of it. His worship and portfolio were entirely subsumed by Kereska during the Time of Troubles, and he passed quietly into deific death shortly thereafter in the Astral Plane.
His realm was located in the Gray Waste.
- The Archmage: Kalzareinad was the draconic god of dragon magic, specifically its selfish, uncaring, or evil application.
- God Is Dead: Kalzareinad died when the dragon goddess Kereska subsumed the entirety of his portfolio and worshipers, his corpse appeared on the Astral Plane shortly thereafter.
- Magic Is Evil: He specifically embodies the selfish, uncaring, and evil use of magic.
- Necromancer: Kalzareinad is said to have aided the human mage Sammaster in creating the first dracolich. Null, the draconic god of death, may have been gifted with the secrets of creating dracoliches after Kalzareinad's passing.
- Villainous Friendship: Before his death, Kalzareinad was on somewhat friendly terms with Null. The loss of this ally has led scholars to speculate that Null may soon seek others to replace him.
Kereska (pronounced Kuh-RES-kah) is, according to legend, the one who first taught dragonkind how to wield the powers of magic. As such, she is still revered by dragons of all species (more so by the more magically adept, of course). Kereska is able to cast any known spell as many times per day as she likes, and, since she is the font of magical creativity, she can create any new spell-like power on an instant's notice.
Dragons researching new spells often invoke the name of Kereska before beginning. Kereska has the ability to imbue any dracoform with whatever level of spellcasting ability she wishes, and she can bestow new spells and spell-like powers upon any dragon that sufficiently pleases her.
Her realm is located in Limbo.
- The Archmage: Kereska is the dragon goddess of magic, specifically dragon magic and magical creativity. Kereska is reputed to have the ability to cast spells as many times per day as she wanted to, and as she is the font of magical creativity, she is able to create any new spell-like power with a moment's effort.
- Phosphor-Essence: She is always surrounded by a pulsating aura of magical power.
- Super-Empowering: Kereska also has the ability to empower any draconic creature with whatever level of spellcasting ability she wishes, and often bestows her followers with the ability to cast new spells and spell-like abilities if they have pleased her.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: Although she always appears as a dragon, the other details of her appearance (size, color, etc.) change from manifestation to manifestation.
Lendys (pronounced LEN-dis) is justice personified. He represents the principle that every action has a reaction, that the universe is like a bookkeeper's journal, and that everything must balance at the end. It is Lendys who ensures that those who do evil receive evil, that those who do good receive good, and that those who live by the sword die by the sword. Lendys has no mercy in his soul, nor forgiveness, and he gives no second chances. He is worshiped by the lawful dragons, but they usually try to balance his implacability with mercy of their own (if mercy to a criminal be considered a crime, so be it). He is the consort of Tamara.
Unlike Chronepsis, who judges the life of a dragon only after its death, Lendys metes out justice during a dragon's life. His scales are a tarnished silver, some say because he cares more about judging others than tending to himself.
Lendys is the arbiter of dragonkind, serving as judge, jury, and executioner alike. When a dragon has committed an injustice against dragonkind, Lendys (or one of his trio of great wyrm silver dragons) is dispatched to deal out appropriate justice. Punishments are severe, and appeals unheard of.
His realm is located in Mechanus.
As of 5th Edition and Fizban's Treasury of Dragons he has been recast as a silver greatwrym.
- Glowing Eyes: His eyes give forth beams of brilliant light from which no one can hide.
- Hanging Judge: Lendys is a merciless and unforgiving judge, never giving second chances. Lawful dragons who worship him usually try to balance his implacability with mercy of their own.
- Holier Than Thou: Some say that he cares more about judging others than himself.
- Judge, Jury, and Executioner: Lendys serves as the arbiter of dragonkind. When a dragon commits an injustice against all dragons, Lendys or one of his great wyrm followers are dispatched to serve appropriate justice. Punishments are severe and no one has heard of anyone successfully appealing to his mercy.
- Retcon: In previous editions, Lendys and his mate Tamara were described as Platinum Dragon gods and sometimes listed as the father of Bahamut, 5th Edition has recast them as silver greatwyrms that lesser mortals mistake for gods.
Null (pronounced NUL) is the draconic god of death in all its myriad aspects. He is venerated by dragons of all alignments to some degree in his role as Guardian of the Lost. Many dragons of evil alignment, particularly shadow dragons and dracoliches, venerate Null in his aspect as Reaver, the Death Wyrm.
Null's faith has been slowly dwindling for centuries, and, as of the Fall of the Gods, he had but a handful of devoted adherents (some of whom were undead). Since the Time of Troubles, Null has begun to make inroads among the Sacred Ones of the Cult of the Dragon. Null's motivation is in part due to a desire to staunch his gradual loss of power and in part to counter Tiamat's recent attempts to incorporate the Followers of the Scaly Way into her own faith. A few ill-regarded members of Sembian Cult cell have begun to whisper that Null is "the Dead Dragon who shall rule the world entire" with the Sacred Ones as his worldly vassals, but it is unknown if Null has made any such claim himself.
Null is said to speak with the dusty croak of the undead. He is arrogant, fatalistic, proud, and totally lacking in any sense of humor. The Night Dragon does not anger easily, but instead slowly nurtures grudges that eventually blossom into undying hatreds for slights and attacks (imagined or otherwise).
Null has a long-standing hatred of both Tiamat and Bahamut, who are said to be his siblings. While Null and Tiamat were once allied, some rift in the prehistory of the Realms has driven them into everlasting enmity. Null nurtures a deep grudge against Hlal as a result of an elaborate practical joke that robbed the Death Wyrm of his dignity centuries ago. While the Night Dragon has little patience for most of the other surviving draconic gods, he bitterly resents Tamara's attempts to interfere with the inevitability of death and darkness and hates her with a special passion.
Null's domain is located at the summit of Dragon Eyrie. White and silver dragon petitioners are attracted to the cold of his realm, and in a way these two kinds of dragons represent the two very different views of this mysterious deity. The crude and bestial white dragons admire Null's role as a taker of life and revere him as a force of violence and power. The silvers, on the other hand, worship him as the guardian of dead spirits, the one who brings draconic souls to their rest in the Dragon Eyrie and, ideally, leads them toward perfection once they have arrived.
Null's residences, both mausoleums, are said to coexist in part on the Negative Material Plane and the Demiplane of Shadows; in fact, the two death houses may in reality be one structure that exists both in the Outlands and Carceri.
- Deity Identity Confusion: Null is known in some obscure texts as Chronepsis or Falazure, who are generally believed to be his aspects as the Guardian of the Lost and the Reaver respectively. However, it's also been suggested that those aliases may simply be the names of draconic deities of other worlds or his names in other crystal spheres.
- Divided Deity: Null is worshiped as a two-aspected dragon deity in the Torilian crystal sphere. His two aspects are known as Falazure (the Reaver aspect, who regarded as neutral evil) and Chronepsis (the Guardian of the Lost aspect, who is regarded as neutral).
- Draconic Abomination: Null appears as a region of impenetrable blackness in the shape of a huge dragon. He is surrounded by an aura of numbing cold, and it is said that to touch Null is instant death.
- God of the Dead: Null is the draconic god of death and the dead, and is worshiped in two seemingly contradictory aspects. As Reaver, god of death, he is Lawful Evil and is worshiped by many evil dragons. In this aspect, Null enjoys the taking of life, and he blesses others who serve him in this capacity. Null works according to a plan and a schedule, however, which has been set before him by Fate, and so he is not his own master. As Guardian of the Lost, Null is the Lawful Neutral guardian of the dead. As such, he shepherds the animae (souls) of dragons to their respective planes when they die, and he ensures they are no longer troubled by enemies they may have had while alive. In this aspect, Null is worshiped by dragons of all alignments; individuals who've just lost someone close to them will sometimes make offerings to Null to speed the dearly departed's animae to its final resting place.
- Psychopomp: As Guardian of the Lost, Null acts as the guardian of the dead and shepherds the animae (souls) of dragons to their rest in the Dragon Eyrie and, ideally, leads them toward perfection once they have arrived.
- Villainous Friendship: The one deity Null was on somewhat friendly terms with is the deceased Kalzareinad, a demigod of draconic magic who was said to have aided Sammaster's creation of the first dracolich, and the loss of this ally has led scholars to speculate that he may soon seek others to replace him.
Rais (pronounced Rye-EES) is a draconic deity, with Numbers, Thought, and Time as her major spheres of influence. When she manifests herself on the Prime Material Plane, she resembles a silver dragon of surpassing beauty and grace. She possesses all the powers common to lesser deities.
Rais is worshiped by the silver dragons of Edill, but by no other creatures in Greyspace. The silver dragons worship their deity in their hearts and minds, eschewing organized services and structures likes churches or shrines. Certain sages from Oerth believe that Rais is capable of bestowing clerical spells upon certain dragons who request them. It is not in the nature of the Edill silvers to ever make such requests, however, and so this is a moot point. These sages believe that, were such spells to be bestowed, the dragon priests would be able to use them throughout Greyspace without any diminishing of their powers, but would lose their spells and be unable to regain them should they leave the crystal sphere.
- The Smart Gal: Rais is the draconic goddess of intellect and can grant clerical spells from the Thought domain.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: She has only appeared in the Greyspace accessory for the Spelljammer Campaign Setting and hasn't appeared or been mentioned since.
Tamara (pronounced Tuh-MAH-ruh) is the kindest and most benevolent of the draconic deities. Some mistake this quality for weakness, though such beings don't make the same error twice. She appears as a huge, wingless, luminously beautiful silver dragon, her eyes shining with the brightness of the sun itself.
Tamara believes in mercy, both in life and in death. Not only does she heal the sick and tend the injured, she delivers a merciful end to those dragons nearing the end of their natural lives. She fiercely detests those who artificially prolong the life of a dragon, particularly when it is against that dragon's will.
Tamara is the consort of Lendys. She strives ever to temper his hard-edged justice with a sense of forgiveness. The preservation of life and happiness is all to Tamara, and if justice must be somewhat bent to achieve that goal, so be it. Some of the Lawful Good dragons (golds, silvers, and brasses) still worship both Lendys and Tamara, while some brasses and coppers worship Tamara alone.
Tamara's realm is located in Elysium.
In 5th Edition, instead of a true deity, Tamara is a silver greatwyrm of immense age and power that humanoid cultures have often mistaken for a god.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Those who mistake her kindness for weakness don't survive to make that error twice.
- Healer Goddess: She heals the sick and tends the injured.
- Light Is Good: Tamara is the draconic goddess of light and is also the kindest and most benevolent of the draconic deities.
- Mercy Kill: She delivers a merciful end to those dragons nearing the end of their natural lives. She detests fiercely those who artificially prolong the life of a dragon, even more when it is against the dragon's will.
- Retcon: In previous editions, Tamara and her mate Lendys were described as Platinum Dragon gods and sometimes listed as the mother of Bahamut, 5th Edition has recast them as silver greatwyrms that lesser mortals mistake for gods.
Task (pronounced TASK) is undeniably the deity of greed, contrasting Astilabor, who is the deity of acquisition (with no stigma of evil attached). Task wants it all, no matter how he has to get it, no matter the cost to whoever currently owns what he wants. His followers share his attitudes. Task reveres greed and selfishness, and he sometimes rewards followers who show these characteristics in good measure (such rewards are never material, of course, since Task wouldn't give up anything that he owns).
Task appears as a huge dragon whose hide is so studded with gems that it's impossible to tell what color he was originally. Task is worshiped by the evil dragons, reds most of all, and even by some brasses.
Task's realm lies in the middle reaches of Dragon Eyrie, in a region known as the Furnace because of its volcanic activity. Task dwells in a rocky cave filled with a vast treasure hoard. Red, gold, and bronze dragon petitioners live in this area, attracted to its hot springs and flowing lava.
Myths claim that Task also has a lair in the plane of Pandemonium, which hides the largest and richest hoard in the universe (followers of Astilabor dispute this).
- The Almighty Dollar: Task represents the selfish and greedy qualities of dragons who hoard wealth. Task desires to acquire everything at any cost, regardless of having to hurt others in the process. Hoarder Dragons (spirits of deceased dragons who haunt the site of their hoard) usually worshiped Task in life, and scholars suggest that he rewards them for their service by transforming them into hoarders when they die.
- Dragon Hoard: Task dwells in a rocky cave filled with a massive hoard. He is also said to have the largest and richest hoard in the universe hidden in a lair in Pandemonium.
- Greed: Task is the draconic god of greed and grants gifts to his most avaricious followers.
Tchazzar (pronounced cha-zar) has been synonymous with Chessenta since the time of the nation's founding. He was a great warlord who led the cities of Chessenta in rebellion against Unther more than four hundred years ago. After establishing Chessenta as an independent land and ruling it for many years, the mighty hero-king disappeared from the realm without a trace. Though Tchazzar was known as a war hero and Overking, learned folk suspected he was in fact a dragon in disguise. Most did not care because they were happy to have a strong leader who brought strength and prosperity to their country.
In truth, Tchazzar was a great red dragon who had hoped to achieve godhood by founding a temple and establishing a heroic myth to attract worshipers. To that end, he used shapechanging magic to take human form, become a hero in the eyes of Chessentans, and then disappear mysteriously so that the people would worship him as a god. He was right. Some time after he achieved his goal of attaining divinity, Tchazzar was devoured by Tiamat, but many Chessentans still revered the memory of the legendary warlord.
Eventually, the Father of Chessenta was brought back to life by the Dragon Queen and returned to the land. It was only a matter of time before all of Chessenta, Threskel, and Unther acknowledged the rule of the new Sceptenar of Cimbar. Priests of Tchazzar are known as wyrmlairds; the most powerful of them can breathe fire and command red dragons.
Despite his many years, Tchazzar has the vigor of a powerful male red dragon in the prime of life. Unlike a typical great wyrm red dragon, his scales are the bright, glossy scarlet of a wyrmling, except along his wings where they are the color of obsidian. Tchazzar's eyes are pitch black orbs, and his horns are jet black with sharp, serrated edges.
As the newly crowned Sceptenar of Cimbar, Tchazzar has reclaimed the Great Palace of Cimbar as his lair. The alabaster citadel sits atop a low hill in Old Cimbar in the shadow of the now-abandoned Great Temple of Gilgeam. Tchazzar had the Great Palace built to his specifications when he last ruled Chessenta, and its sprawling galleries easily accommodate the great wyrm's tremendous bulk.
- A Hero to His Hometown: The people of Chessenta admire Tchazzar as a war hero and Overking, and even started worshiping him as a god following his disappearance. Even most of those who suspected his true nature as a dragon were willing to ignore it due to his strong leadership bringing strength and prosperity to their country.
- Back from the Dead: During the Time of Troubles, Tchazzar received a third of Tiamat's divine essence following her death, which compelled him to seek out the other two pieces of her divinity. With his new deific powers, Tchazzar easily found and slew the other two dragons, Gestaniius and Skuthosiin "the Venomous", successfully rebirthing Tiamat. An avatar of Tiamat promptly formed and ate Tchazzar before she left to continue her war with Gilgeam. However, during the last days of the Rage of Dragons, Tchazzar was resurrected by Tiamat and he materialized over the bay of Chessenta in the midst of a naval battle between the cities of Cimbar and Soorenar.
- The Berserker: On the rare occasions when he is physically threatened, Tchazzar's rage is unmatched, for he feels that his foes are undermining his hard-earned divine status. Such fights bring out his basest nature, and he wades into melee, using his physical weapons and breath weapon without thought of the cost to allies.
- The Champion: Following his resurrection, Tchazzar serves as Tiamat's champion in Faerûn, unleashing his fearsome wrath on whoever draws her ire. However, Tchazzar also keeps the Dragon Queen's church at arm's length, for he is not interested in calling attention to the fact that he operates at Tiamat's whim.
- Cool Sword: His favored weapon is a longsword.
- Deity of Dragon Origin: After he was crowned king, Tchazzar set up a temple to himself in an effort to achieve his ultimate goal of divinity. Eventually, he rode alone to battle with raiding Sahuagin but his body was never found. Tchazzar had actually retaken his true form, slain the Sahuagin and sent visions of himself standing atop a pile of their corpses to the throne and council chambers of all Chessentan cities, telling his subjects that he'd "won his greatest victory". This inspired Chessentans into greater religious fervor for him, ensuring that the church of Tchazzar remained intact, even while his empire fractured without his leadership over the next decade. As a result, Tchazzar successfully managed to achieve godhood.
- Founder of the Kingdom: Tchazzar founded Chessenta and was crowned as its king after leading an alliance of several Chessentan cities and seceding from Unther.
- Immortal Ruler: After returning to Toril in the last days of the Rage of Dragons, Tchazzar flew to the city of Cimbar, quickly installed himself in the Palace of the Sceptenar and set about solidifying his rule by slaughtering all remaining opposition within the city. Having achieved godhood and immortality, as well as securing his rule of Cimbar, Tchazzar plots to rebuild his kingdom, claiming all the lands of Chessenta, Threskel and Unther.
- Mad God: Ever since his return to Chessenta, Tchazzar has behaved extremely erratically. It's unknown whether his madness was caused by his imprisonment in the Shadowfell or if his participation in Xorvintaal was responsible. At times he is gracious to his subjects but he often brutally punishes subordinates for real or imagined transgressions. He once asked the high priest of Amaunator to hold the sun in the sky twenty-four hours of the day and when the priest balked he threw him from the top of the palace.
- Never Found the Body: After Tchazzar supposedly died in battle against raiding sahuagin, his body was never found, causing his people to assume that he had ascended to godhood. In reality, Tchazzar had retaken his true draconic form, slain the sahuagin, and faked his death.
- Orcus on His Throne: Convinced of his innate superiority over all living things, Tchazzar has no fear, but he sees physical conflict as beneath his godlike self. The Sceptenar of Cimbar surrounds himself with powerful minions he can dispatch to destroy any threat.
- The Rival: Tchazzar seeks the destruction of his ancient rival, Alasklerbanbastos, despite the latter's recent alliance with the Church of Tiamat in Unther.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: Tchazzar took on human form when he originally founded Chessenta in order to win the people's trust.
Xymor (pronounced ZIE-more) is the offspring of Lendys and Tamara. Xymor combines Lendys's sense of justice with Tamara's love of mercy. Xymor is thus the perfect enlightened Justicemaker, who knows when to temper justice with mercy and punishment with forgiveness. As such, he is worshiped mainly by golds, silvers, and bronzes, although a few brasses and coppers also pay him homage.
He appears as a huge dragon wrapped in a scintillating aura of light so brilliant that it is impossible to tell his color.
While the consort deities Lendys and Tamara date back as far as mythological records reach, their offspring Xymor, in comparison, is a recent addition to the pantheon.
As the precepts and principles of Xymor became more widely known within gold dragon culture, many of the younger golds turned away from the worship of Lendys and Tamara. These younger dragons had never been totally satisfied with the theoretically adversarial relationship between the two deities. Xymor's consistent approach to justice and mercy made more sense to them, and they tried to win other golds over to their belief.
Hard-headed worshipers of Lendys and Tamara saw this as foolishness, not understanding how so recent a god could be as powerful as The Balancer and Her Mercy, but also as a threat to their own beliefs. Although this conflict of beliefs never degenerated into violence, religious intolerance became quite widespread throughout the ranks of gold dragons, something unknown before or since.
Xymor's realm is located in Mount Celestia.
- Deity Identity Confusion: At least one source states that Xymor is simply another name of Bahamut, the draconic god of justice and wisdom, in the Realms. However, the two have also on at least one occasion been listed separately.
- Phosphor-Essence: Xymor is wrapped in a scintillating aura of light so brilliant that it is impossible to tell his color.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Xymor is the draconic god of enlightened justice and combined his father's sense of justice with his mother's love of mercy. His more consistent approach to justice and mercy has made him popular among the younger gold dragons.
Zorquan (pronounced ZORE-kwon) is often described as the deity of dragonkind, although he is really the deity of dragonness. As Corellon Larethian represents the central ideals of elvenkind, so does Zorquan represent the central ideals of dragonkind. He represents power, pride, which all dragons, even golds, have in abundance, and, most importantly, status. Although he is generally classed as neutral, Zorquan's alignment would more properly be described as "any".
Zorquan is totally unconcerned with creatures other than dragons, except when their behavior affects dragonkind. He is the implacable enemy of any who would harm dragonkind, not, you will note, individual dragons. Adventurers who slay the occasional black or blue dragon will never feel Zorquan's wrath. Members of all dragon species worship Zorquan.
He can manifest himself as a perfectly-formed version of any species of dragon. Whatever his form, his eyes crackle with sparks, sometimes spitting lightning bolts that flash and crack around his body. Zorquan is said to live somewhere on the Prime Material Plane. Many legends tell of dragons with the temerity to visit his halls, but none give details on how to get there. However, he is also known to have realm located in the Outlands.
- Protectorate: Zorquan is the protector of dragonkind and the implacable enemy of those who would harm them. However, he doesn't care about individuals. As such, he doesn't bother to punish adventurers for killing the occasional chromatic dragon.
- Shock and Awe: His eyes crackle with sparks, sometimes spitting lightning bolts that flash and crack around his body.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: Zorquan can take the form of a perfect specimen of whatever species of dragonkind he wishes to appear as.
Yuan-ti Pantheon
At the time the yuan-ti were created, the sarrukh empires were monotheistic societies that worshiped the World Serpent. All other gods were viewed as inferior blasphemies, and the sarrukh believed that those who worshiped them should be either turned to the veneration of the Great Scaled One or destroyed.After the Mhairshaulk Empire fell, many yuan-ti sought different fragments of the World Serpent to lead them to the truth, hoping to leave behind the dark decadence of their former masters. Most of these gods were forgotten long ago, but the worship of Sseth took root and became the foundation of modern-day yuan-ti religion. Today, the majority of yuan-ti worship Sseth with a strength and fervor that astonishes other beings.
Sseth the Great Snake is the malevolent god of yuan-ti, ophidians, a few spirit nagas who have turned from the worship of Shekinester, and various human snake cults. On Toril, he is venerated by small pockets of worshipers throughout the Realms, but his faith is centered in the Chultan peninsula between Halruaa and the Peaks of Flame.
Around the time of Netheril's collapse, when civil war threatened to destroyed the ranks of his remaining worshipers, the long-somnolent Merrshaulk responded by dispatching Sseth, his winged avatar, through one of the portals beneath the Peaks of Flame in the Year of Erupting Crypts. When the charismatic Sseth emerged, he proclaimed himself to be the avatar of Merrshaulk. Serpentes, a great Yuan-ti kingdom, was forged under the rule of this new leader and enslaved most of the emerging human cultures in between. The yuan-ti and the few remaining sarrukh began to worship him as the new incarnation of Merrshaulk. Ultimately, Sseth too sank into a long slumber, which eventually caused the sarrukh of Okoth to transfer their allegiance to the Mulhorandi deity Set.
For most yuan-ti, there is Sseth and only Sseth. The other serpentine deities that some vrael olo (meaning "favored ones") have worshiped over the years have all been either masks worn by Sseth or false faces of the fell deities venerated by Scaleless Ones. These latter beings seek always to subvert yuan-ti from the truth of Sseth and lead them into decadent indolence, loss of power, and ultimate betrayal and destruction.
Sseth whispers in dreams, speaks directly through his priests, and on rare occasions even appears to his faithful. More often, however, the Slitherer Supreme leaves signs in the smoke of his temples after suitable sacrifices of life have been made on his altars.
Sseth guides in mysterious ways, leading his faithful toward ever-greater power and eventual supremacy over the world. The path to dominance that he reveals, however, is invariably a winding, veiled, and subtle one rather than the destructive and brutal route of conquest embraced by humanoids.
Sseth's realm is known as the Viper Pit, and is located in Smaragd, the 74th layer of the Abyss. Sseth also has a realm in the Towers of Night, a dominion in the Astral Sea. Within the Slithering Jungle, the principal forest in the dominion, Sseth's City of Serpents rises, centered on a black pyramid.
- Captured Super-Entity: During the Time of Troubles, a mighty sarrukh priest named Pil'it'ith bound Sseth in his slumber and turned to the worship of the interloper Mulhorandi deity Set. The sarrukh and yuan-ti of other regions, especially Chult, began to search for a way to awaken Sseth. During the Spellplague, large numbers of serpentfolk attacked Okoth in a secret war. They put down Pil'it'ith, his loyal followers, and his heresy. Sseth reawakened soon after, and Set faded from Faerûn. Dark whispers suggest it might have all been a test, and that Sseth arose as a mightier deity after this power struggle.
- Cool Sword: Sseth employs two long swords in battle that he can envenom by licking them, causing identical acid damage as a bite from his flying snake form.
- Deity Identity Confusion: Aside from Merrshaulk, Sseth also subsumed Varae, the god of snakes. In the Time of Troubles, while asleep in his lair, Sseth was magically bound into a deeper captivity by the Mulhorandi god Set, working through minions such as the Okothian sarrukh. Set subsequently "became" Sseth, usurping his place as lord of the yuan-ti and the source of their divine magic. However, Sseth's followers eventually managed to reawaken him, and he managed to take back his position, causing Set to fade from Faerûn.
- The Dreaded: Few beings in the Realms are aware of Sseth's existence, but those who are tremble at the thought of the legions of serpents slithering through the southern jungles in a sibilant chorus chanting the Great Snake's name.
- Evil Takes a Nap: Sseth is generally perceived as a lethargic deity who has begun to decline into slumber, spending years at a time barely conscious within his snake-infested Abyssal pit. Recent events indicate that he may, at least temporarily, be rising from his torpor to reinvigorate his faithful and plot against the other deities.
- God-Emperor: Under the guidance of Sseth, the yuan-ti forged the empire of Serpentes on the ruins of Mhairshaulk. Because the Lapal states had been severely weakened by the Empire Plague, the yuan-ti tribes had no trouble conquering all the lands from the Lhairg hal to the Peaks of Flame by the Year of Sunned Serpents. Sseth's reign as emperor of Serpentes abruptly ended in the Year of Dreams, when he vanished beneath the Peaks of Flame. Some say that his disappearance resulted from a failed attempt to unleash Dendar the Night Serpent and thus end the world; others say he withdrew deliberately to undergo apotheosis. Whatever the reason for his departure, the clergy of Sseth began to venerate their vanished emperor as Merrshaulk reborn. The once-allied tribes of yuan-ti began to feud over who should succeed their one and only emperor while the empire collapsed around them.
- I Have Many Names: Among the Tabaxi of Chult, Sseth is known as the Sibilant Death and is said to haunt the uncharted depths of the jungle enticing the weak and the young into his lair with fork-tongued promises. In Samarach and Thindol, he is known as Squamata the Black, the embodiment of the ever-encroaching jungle which swallows up anyone who dares its dark depths. In the Tashalar and in Lapaliiya, he is known as Amphisbaena the World Serpent who has wrapped the world in his coils and is slowly crushing it into pulp as he devours himself.
- Jerkass God: Sseth is patronizing to all except reptilian and draconic races, yet rarely raises his voice above a low, hissing tone. He brooks no disagreement or argument with his pronouncements and tolerates little other than complete success. He is prone to becoming distracted by his involved internal mental processes and plans and so may break off contact suddenly or prove hard to reach by even his most faithful servants at inconvenient moments. He is also inordinately vain about his appearance.
- Sinister Scimitar: His favored weapon is a scimitar.
- Snakes Are Sinister: Sseth embodies slippery, serpentine, insidious evil that poisons and corrupts all that he comes into contact with. In many lands of the Chultan Peninsula, ophiophobia, the unreasoning fear and hatred of all things serpentine, is common among the human populace, although few realize how pervasive the serpent peoples are through their societies. Those that attempt to uncover or reveal the truth are condemned as madmen and quickly dispatched by yuan-ti agents.
- Top God: Sseth became the chief deity of the yuan-ti after usurping Merrshaulk. The other yuan-ti gods have been either mostly forgotten or subsumed by him, and worship of Sseth has become the foundation of modern day yuan-ti religion. The majority of yuan-ti are dedicated to the god's creed, the Sacred Way of Sseth, which promotes subtle manipulation, secrecy, and subterfuge over open confrontation.
- The Usurper: When Merrshaulk, the original chief god of the yuan-ti, inexplicably sank into a deep slumber that lasted for thousands of years, Sseth emerged, forged a nation of serpents (whose name is translated as "Serpentes"), and was worshiped as the reincarnated avatar of Merrshaulk, causing Merrshaulk himself to become an aspect of Sseth.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: Sseth appears most often as a giant winged snake of green and bronze coloration with yellow slitted eyes flecked with greenish specks. He sports the gargantuan wings of a flying snake, a variation never seen before or since, which have pale tan webbing. As "Merrshaulk", Sseth appeared as a vast yuan-ti abomination with a male human head and stubby forearms with a green and yellow scale pattern and rumors hold that he has been seen in that form once since the Time of Troubles.
Merrshaulk is the original chief god of the yuan-ti. His interests and influence conform with those of the yuan-ti he created: reptiles, traps, poison, and murder. Upon the fragmentation of their primary deity, the World Serpent, the sarrukh chose to venerate the darker aspect embodied by Merrshaulk. This cruel and despotic deity set the sarrukh on the path toward absolute evil. Merrshaulk cared little for the plight of the serpent races, as long as they continued to worship him.
As the sarrukh of Okoth increasingly embraced their darker natures, a few dissenters, despairing of their kindred's push toward evil, broke off from the main group. They entreated Jazirian, another fragment of the World Serpent, for succor, and it responded by transforming them into couatls. A bitter war ensued, but the couatls held their own against the more numerous Okothian sarrukh until Merrshaulk finally slew Jazirian. Afterwards, Merrshaulk inexplicably sank into a deep slumber that lasted for thousands of years.
After the fall of Okoth, Pil'it'ith, the last emperor of Okoth, had the audacity to seek out Merrshaulk to ask for his guidance. When he arrived at Merrshaulk's home plane, the god was deep in slumber, and his serpent guards refused to admit the sarrukh to his stronghold. Pil'it'ith, however, defied the guards and stirred the god from his slumber.
Merrshaulk would have destroyed most mortals for disturbing him, but he recognized Pil'it'ith and granted him an audience. He thanked the sarrukh for overseeing the creation of the serpent races of Faerûn that had come to worship him. He then commanded the albino to lead the remaining sarrukh to a place where they could establish a homeland. Once they were settled, the god promised to watch over them and help them to rebuild.
Pil'it'ith, having grown old after his nearly eight hundred years of life, begged Merrshaulk for one additional favor. In return for his active promotion of the god's interests, he asked to be raised to the status of a Chosen. Merrshaulk had never taken a Chosen before because such an act required the expenditure of a great deal of divine power. Nevertheless, recognizing the benefit of having such a strong follower, he granted Pil'it'ith's request.
When civil war threatened to destroyed the ranks of his remaining worshipers, the long-somnolent Merrshaulk responded by dispatching a winged avatar named Sseth through one of the portals beneath the Peaks of Flame in the Year of Erupting Crypts. After Sseth forged the empire of Serpentes and reigned as emperor for several centuries, he vanished beneath the Peaks of Flame and his clergy began to venerate their vanished emperor as Merrshaulk reborn.
Although Merrshaulk has become an aspect of Sseth, he is still often venerated by outcast or wandering yuan-ti, particularly those who restlessly travel Faerûn's wild places and glory in hunting dangerous beasts. The asabis of Oreme, in service to the same sarrukh liches that once controlled the Isstosseffifil Empire, also still cling to the ancient traditions and worship of Merrshaulk. They are willing to worship the deity of their creators simply out of loyalty to that race.
Merrshaulk's realm is Smaragd, the 74th layer of the Abyss. It is a realm of ever-shifting colors, moist jungles, acid rain, and fermenting poisons. There may be no jungle floor at all, just layer after layer of darker and dimmer forest canopies. Merrshaulk slumbers in a vast set of snake-infested pits and caverns, and is uninterested in being roused from his slumber by anything less than a direct threat. Most who intrude on his caverns are simply devoured; the rest survive only because of the god's all-consuming sloth.
- Animalistic Abomination: Merrshaulk appears as a vast yuan-ti abomination with a male human head and stubby forearms with the green and yellow coloration of a cobra. Yuan-ti abominations are considered inherently holy because their physical forms most closely resemble that of Merrshaulk himself.
- Deity Identity Confusion: Merrshaulk was ultimately supplanted by his avatar Sseth as the chief deity of the yuan-ti, with Sseth being venerated as Merrshaulk's reincarnation. When the Mulhorandi god Set imprisoned and supplanted Sseth, he similarly took on the guise of Merrshaulk. However, the majority of yuan-ti still believe that Merrshaulk is a separate entity from Sseth, and some yuan-ti believe that by worshiping Merrshaulk, they are shedding the decadence of their own culture and bypassing the "inevitable failure" of following the ways of Sseth.
- The End of the World as We Know It: The yuan-ti believe that on the day of his awakening, Merrshaulk will shake loose the constrictions of his dead, confining skin and writhe free, clad in new and dazzling scales, to devour the world and feast on its denizens. Then the yuan-ti will finally realize their destinies, as the natural rulers of all that walks. However, although they imagine themselves dominating a future world remade by Merrshaulk, even their own myths imply that there will be very little left to rule by the time the Snake God is finished. According to the sibilant liturgies of the Shan-Pachan priests, every act of gratuitous cruelty or destruction committed in Merrshaulk's name brings the deity closer to awakening.
- Evil Takes a Nap: Merrshaulk has begun to decline into slumber, spending years at a time barely conscious within his snake-infested Abyssal pit. Couatl mythology paints him as an inferior aspect of the World Serpent, one which is undergoing a long process of separation from the core creative principle of the universe. Thus, he and his race must remorselessly decline. However, his followers pursue the goal of returning him to consciousness, after which they believe that he will devour the world, feast on its denizens, and finally allow the yuan-ti to realize their destinies as the natural rulers of all that walks.
- How the Mighty Have Fallen: Merrshaulk went from being the primary deity of the yuan-ti to only being worshiped by the outcasts and wanderers of that species.
- Kill the God: During a war between the Okothian sarrukh and the couatls, Merrshaulk managed to kill Jazirian, the couatl god, forcing the couatls to flee to Abeir-Toril. However, Jazirian apparently managed to come back to life some time after.
- The Maker: According to one myth, Merrshaulk and a cabal of evil sorcerers performed a host of fiendish experiments that eventually culminated in the creation of the yuan-ti race. Not all of their attempts were successful, and it is thought that some of the creatures produced by the failed experiments survived to mate with humans. This fact might explain why, as preposterous as it sounds, a few humans have traces of reptile blood coursing through their veins.
- Master Poisoner: In ancient times, Merrshaulk taugh his first minions how to make various magical powders designed to protect his people and further his schemes. The descendants of these first yuan-ti zealously guard the recipes for Merrshaulk's preparations. Many a brave (and reckless) alchemist has died in pursuit of these secrets.
- Top God: Merrshaulk is the original chief god of the yuan-ti and wildly misleading yuan-ti sources portray him as being all-powerful. However, after he sank into a deep slumber, he was supplanted by his avatar Sseth, whom the yuan-ti venerate as Merrshaulk reborn.
Sss'thasine'ss was another aspect of the World Serpent and an evil deity once worshiped by yuan-ti, dark nagas, and a few other Scaled Ones. He appeared to his followers as a writhing swarm of coiled serpents in a crude humanoid shape and typically communicated through the heads of countless smaller snakes. Sss'thasine'ss was ultimately destroyed by one of the elf gods around the time that the Vyshaantaar rose to power in Aryvandaar. Talona has since assumed his aspect.
- Deity Identity Confusion: After his death, Sss'thasine'ss became a minor aspect of Talona, the Lady of Poison, who subsequently backed the beast cult that worshiped him. The cult built a minor sarrukh temple of Sss'thasine'ss, and the catacombs beneath Adderposts still hold several dark relics of that evil god. After the fall of Myth Drannor, a chance discovery of the long-buried sarrukh ruins led to the open establishment of a temple of Sss'thasine'ss in which the long-forgotten deity was venerated as a totem of venomous creatures, including scorpions, snakes, spiders, and the like.
- God Is Dead: Sss'thasine'ss was ultimately destroyed by one of the elf gods around the time that the Vyshaantaar rose to power in Aryvandaar.
- Poisonous Person: Sss'thasine'ss was the yuan-ti god of venomous creatures and was worshiped as the Lord of Venom.
- The Worm That Walks: Sss'thasine'ss appeared as a writhing swarm of coiled serpents in a crude humanoid shape and typically communicated through the heads of countless smaller snakes.
Varae was the god of snakes who was originally worshiped by a nomadic beast cult made up of humans in the Shining Plains during the Fifth Age of Calimshan. This obscure snake cult is popular in northern (rural) Calimshan and the Vilhon Reach. The creed of the priesthood demands that no snake be harmed, that anyone harming a snake be maimed, and that anyone killing a snake be slain.
A group of pureblood yuan-ti from the Chultan Peninsula infiltrated the cult and spread its influence across Faerûn. One group of cultists migrated north in search of Ss'thar'tiss'ssun, only to be transformed en masse into ophidians when they unleashed an artifact created by House Orogoth and left behind by the yuan-ti.
Like many demideities, Varae was severely weakened during the Time of Troubles, and during that period he was slain by Sseth, the yuan-ti god whose worship is centered in Chult. Since that time, Sseth has assumed Varae's power and portfolio, and has begun granting Varae's clergy expanded powers through this new aspect.
- Deity Identity Confusion: After his death, Varae became an aspect of Sseth. When the Mulhorandi god Set imprisoned and supplanted Sseth, he similarly took on the guise of Varae. However, the majority of yuan-ti still believe that Varae is a separate entity from Sseth. Varae is secretly worshiped by many pureblood yuan-ti who dwell in and under human cities and have come to prefer the bustle and color of such settings to their own realms.
- God Is Dead: Varae was slain by Sseth during the Time of Troubles, who then seized his power in an attempt to extend his influence.
- I Have Many Names: Varae is believed to have been worshiped in the North centuries ago as Repra, a beast cult totem. Signs of the snake totem's worship are still found in the area of the Farsea Marshes and the Vast Swamp.
- Sinister Scimitar: His favored weapon was a scimitar.
- Spell My Name With An S: At least one source spells his name as "Vaerae".
Zehir is an interloper deity who came to Toril around the time of the Spellplague. Snakes are his favored creation, and the yuan-ti revere him, offering sacrifice to him in pits full of writhing serpents.
The Dragonborn of Abeir believe that Zehir had part in Io's death during the Dawn War. Those who believe that myth, say that Zehir envied Io his mighty children and wanted to control the Dragon domain that was Io's portfolio, and betrayed him to the primordial Erek-Hus in order to obtain it. His plan failed when the gods Bahamut and Tiamat rose up from the dragon god's corpse, and claimed Io's power over dragonkind.
During the War of Winter, Zehir joined forces with his consort Khala, the goddess of winter, her son Kord, as well as Gruumsh and Tiamat, and attacked the dominions of the strongest gods most likely to object to Khala's vision of a winter-bound world of savagery and darkness, those gods being Pelor, Erathis, Moradin, Amoth, and Bahamut.
However, Kord came to regret the harm he had done and turned against Khala. Pelor and the assembled gods who stood with him destroyed Khala and drove off the forces of winter, including Zehir.
Secret societies of assassins dedicated to Zehir all wield influence in the cities and larger towns of the world. Some yuan-ti in Najara, disillusioned with their god Sseth, turned to the worship of Zehir. Despite a ban on such devotion, the cult of Zehir has become a real, if hidden, force within Najara.
Zehir's dark domain is Tytherion, also called the Endless Night, which is located in the Towers of Night. Zehir shares the domain with Tiamat. No light can pierce its darkest depths, and both serpents and dragons haunt its otherworldly wilderness. Zehir occupies a many-tunneled escarpment protruding from the Sea of Poison.
- Dark Is Evil: Zehir sees darkness in a broader scope. He delights in the darkness of ignorance and fear as well as the death of the light. Zehir's worshipers know they can stave off their patron's wrath by killing in darkness and by driving others to turn toward evil.
- Deity Identity Confusion: According to the 5th edition's Dungeon Master's Guide, Zehir is actually the Egyptian/Mulhorandi god Set, who has adopted a different name. However, certain myths portray Zehir as having been around since the prehistorical Dawn War, whereas Set, along with the rest of the Mulhorandi Pantheon, didn't arrive until the Age of Humanity.
- Master Poisoner: Zehir blesses the poisons of his favored creatures and people, specifically snakes and yuan-ti. He also makes his presence known in the poison of deceitful words. Zehir's words are venom, and his teachings poison minds wherever his priests' hisses can be heard. His followers value all kinds of poison: the toxins that debilitate or kill the body as well as the venomous ideas that ruin the mind and sap the spirit. The followers of other gods might use poison, but for Zehir, poison itself is worthy of honor. His faithful pay homage to venomous creatures and often say prayers while applying poison to their objects or administering it for ingestion.
- The Night That Never Ends: Zehir desires to create perpetual darkness, and originally contested with Pelor over mastery of the sky, for the sun banished darkness. At last Avandra parlayed between the two factions. To settle the argument between Pelor and Zehir, she offered day and night. Pelor abides faithfully by his agreement with Zehir, but from time to time Zehir seeks to shadow the sun during daytime with an eclipse.
- Offing the Offspring: After Nusemnee betrayed him (by turning good), he had her assassinated with a god-killing poison made from his own blood.
- The Rival: Zehir and Sseth regularly come into jealous conflict, since each wants to control all the serpent folk and to tear the power over darkness from the other god's grasp.
- Unholy Matrimony: Zehir used to be the consort of Khala, the evil goddess of winter, and the two both opposed Pelor due to the sun banishing Zehir's darkness and melting Khala's icy mists and snows. The two also fought together during the War of Winter, in which Khala aimed to establish supremacy over the world and over the gods who had survived the nearly completed war with the primordials. However, the war ultimately ended with Khala's death.
Naga Pantheon
When the sarrukh created the naga race, Mhairshaulk was a monotheistic society that acknowledged and venerated only the World Serpent. All other claimants to the mantle of divinity were viewed as blasphemous heretics. However, the many facets of the World Serpent, and even other gods, intrigued many nagas, since they were by nature more curious than their creators. Some theologians now claim it was the endless questioning of the World Serpent by the naga race that caused the Great Scaled One to fragment into a host of lesser deities, while others insist that the nagas were simply the first to recognize the World Serpent's impending fragmentation. Whatever the cause, sages agree that the breakup of the World Serpent enabled the resulting deities to better address the myriad, contradictory demands of its worshipers.Of all the emergent aspects of the Great Scaled One, two deities in particular attracted the worship of most nagas: Ssharstrune and Shekinester. The former embodied the principles of curiosity, destruction, and possessiveness that had precipitated the World Serpent's fragmentation. The latter, known as the Naga Queen, became the keeper of the knowledge and wisdom originally held by the World Serpent, preserved within the eternal flame that she guarded.
After the Naga Queen chose the couatl god Jazirian as her consort over Ssharstrune, an enraged Ssharstrune attacked her, and she was forced to swallow him, causing her to acquire five guises. Upon giving birth to Parrafaire, the Naga Prince, Shekinester expelled Ssharstrune's remains and instructed her offspring to hide away the destructive force that the corpse embodied forever, so that her fivefold aspect could not actually divide her into five separate goddesses. Parrafaire complied with her wishes, and now both he and his mother are venerated as guardians of the naga race.
Shekinester is the extremely complex and powerful goddess of nagas and a being of great wisdom. She is a pragmatic goddess with five aspects, appearing as the Weaver, the Empowerer, the Preserver, the Acquirer, and the Seeker. Each aspect is represented and venerated as a separate goddess, yet each is part of the overarching intelligence that is Shekinester herself. An individual naga who worships Shekinester typically embraces one aspect of the goddess wholly but gives homage to all her other guises as well.
The first aspect is that of the Weaver, a crone-faced naga who destroys so that creation might come of it. She also weaves understanding among the unenlightened. The second aspect is that of the Empowerer, a bestower of wisdom and asker of riddles in her role as guardian of the young and uninitiated. She is kindly and merciful, but she may force the unwilling into initiations and knowledge which can cause "growing pains". The third aspect is that of the Preserver, the keeper of light and knowledge, as well as the recorder of the dead spirits that pass her way. The fourth aspect is that of the Acquirer, who represents the urge to control and possess. She is often represented as a harsh-faced, shrewish female naga clinging desperately to her failing youth. As the Acquirer, the Five-Faced Queen seeks to hoard knowledge and wisdom that is in danger of being lost or forgotten. The fifth aspect is that of the Seeker, who is often represented as a childlike naga who is filled with curiosity. This aspect of Shekinester drives the need to explore and study.
Shekinester is such a complex and all-embracing deity that, in different worlds, she can have a myriad number of inter-relations with other gods. She may cooperate with a god in one world while opposing them in another since she is highly pragmatic in nature. She represents an elemental force of the process of "magical life" and transcendence, and cultures which accept reincarnation often revere her as a guardian, initiator, and protector.
Shekinester's realm, the Court of Light, located in the Outlands and is divided into three concentric circles. Shekinester broods within her realm, testing and guiding the fates of her children. The goddess doesn't go courting strangers, planar or not. Any person going here had better have good reason, because Shekinester'll put every visitor through one of her tests. The outermost ring is called the Loom of the Weaver, a maze of thorns that all visitors must find their way through. A person who makes it stumbles into the Hall of Tests, where Shekinester is said to keep her palace. Finally, the palace itself holds the innermost circle where a person finds the Arching Flame, a fire that supposedly fuels the workings of the entire multiverse. Whether it's true or not is anyone's guess, but no one, not even Shekinester herself, can quench the Arching Flame.
- Control Freak: As the Acquirer, the goddess represents the urge to control and possess.
- Destroyer Deity: As the Weaver, she is the principle of active destruction, the crone-face of the goddess who destroys in order to create room for new existence. As the Weaver, Shekinester seeks to destroy anyone who enters the lost and decaying places she guards.
- The Hecate Sisters: Three of her aspects are represented like this. The Empowerer is a kindly, merciful, and beautiful young Maiden, the Preserver is a sublimely featured, middle-aged Mother, and the Weaver is a destructive Crone. Adding still further complexity to this triplicity is the fact that the Empowerer is capable of being bi-aspected; as a beautiful young maiden she is an initiator and granter of safe passage, but she also has an aspect as an ugly messenger, one who draws the attention of the young, naive, or uninitiated to the presence of an opportunity for growth and learning.
- Interspecies Romance: The Naga Queen is romantically involved with Jazirian, the couatl god, and has a son by him named Parrafaire.
- Love Triangle: Shekinester was once courted by both Ssharstrune, her fellow naga god, and Jazirian, the couatl god. Shekinester ultimately chose the latter and eventually bore his child, Parrafaire. Raging with jealousy, Ssharstrune attacked the Naga Queen himself, forcing her to swallow him whole.
- The Maker: Shekinester is the creator of the nagas and her acquiring her five guises was accompanied by a fivefold division in the naga race, forming the five major subraces now known as dark nagas, guardian nagas, iridescent nagas, spirit nagas, and water nagas.
- Misery Builds Character: As the Empowerer, Shekinester actively seeks opportunities to grant wisdom to those who have not even realized they have need of such. This aspect of her nature can also make her an unwelcome messenger who forces followers into initiations and pushes them into the truth whether they like it or not, although she also helps them to accept the changes.
- Psychopomp: As the Preserver, she has jurisdiction over the spirits of the dead, greeting them with water, fruit, and bread. The Preserver also protects the souls of the dead from harm, especially those of her own nagas, but sometimes others as allowed by other gods.
- Split-Personality Makeover: Each of Shekinester's aspects has their own appearance. The Weaver appears as a spirit naga Crone, the Empowerer as a water nage Maiden (and can vary her form further as an ugly young female-faced water naga with pitted skin and lank, greasy hair), the Preserver as a guardian naga Mother, the Acquirer as a harsh-faced, shrewish naga clinging desperately to her failing youth, and the Seeker as a curious childlike naga.
- Top Goddess: Shekinester is the primary deity of the nagas, who venerate her as the keeper of the knowledge and wisdom originally held by the World Serpent, preserved within the eternal flame that she guards.
- You Kill It, You Bought It: When Shekinester swallowed Ssharstrune in self-defense, the Naga Queen took into herself the same destructive element that had fragmented the World Serpent in the first place. As a result, she acquired five guises.
Parrafaire is a guardian of magical secrets and hidden places usually far below the ground. He serves more than one god in this way, both his own mother Shekinester and a very diverse assortment of other gods, including even such unlikely candidates as Dumathoin of the dwarves.
Parrafaire's role is not to prevent access to such secrets and magic entirely, though. Rather, he tests the wisdom and resourcefulness of those who come seeking. He places (non-lethal) traps, decoys, diversions, mazes, cryptic clues, and the like to challenge the adventurous, and will himself present riddles and puzzles which demand an answer if he is to permit questers to pass by him. He is unconcerned with morality or ethics, simply caring for mental resourcefulness and skill.
Although Parrafaire is a demigod, his mother's ability governs his avatars so far as planar travel, number, and replacement times are concerned. Parrafaire has just one weakness: flattery which focuses on the smartness of his riddling and expressed admiration for his skills. A comment such as a heartfelt "that was sneaky, we had a lot of trouble dealing with that" will gain some mileage with the wise but slightly vain Parrafaire. Attempts to deceive or trick him do not go down well unless they are spectacularly well-planned and executed.
Parrafaire's realm, Trickster's Delight, is located in Minethys, the third layer of Carceri. The other deities there hate the trickster because he doesn't really belong there. Unlike them, he can come and go as he likes.
- Beware the Silly Ones: Despite his lightness and levity, meetings with him can be dangerous.
- Delighting in Riddles: Parrafaire delights in the subtlety of mazes and riddles. His religious teachings are presented in the form of riddles and puzzles to be deciphered by the worshiper.
- MacGuffin Guardian: The Naga Prince is the guardian of magical secrets and hidden places far below the ground. His goal is not to prevent access to such secrets, but to test the wisdom and resourcefulness of those who come seeking them. Parrafaire delights in creating clever traps, decoys, diversions, and mazes, and in offering cryptic clues.
- Nonhuman Humanoid Hybrid: He is the son of Shekinester, the naga goddess, and Jazirian, the cuatl god. As a result, he appears as a water naga with feathered ears and wings.
Ssharstrune was another fragment of the World Serpent and a serpent god worshiped primarily by evil nagas. Ssharstrune embodied the acquisitive, power-hungry natures of some nagas.
After the fall of Mhairshaulk, both Ssharstrune and Jazirian, another fragment of the World Serpent, began to court Shekinester. The Naga Queen eventually chose Jazirian and became pregnant by him. Enraged by this decision, Ssharstrune attacked Shekinester, forcing her to ultimately swallow him. In so doing, the Naga Queen took into herself the same destructive element that had fragmented the World Serpent in the first place, inadvertently causing her to assume five aspects.
Upon giving birth to Parrafaire, the Naga Prince, Shekinester expelled Ssharstrune's remains and instructed her offspring to hide away the destructive force that the corpse embodied forever, so that her fivefold aspect could not actually divide her into five separate goddesses. Parrafaire complied with her wishes and his Ssharstrune's body.
- Deity Identity Confusion: After his death, Ssharstrune became an aspect of Shekinester. In Myth Drannor, the human lich Druth Daern posed as Ssharstrune by making a wraith-like apparition of the god appear above a certain altar, directing the local nagara in fighting the local phaerimm.
- God Is Dead: Ssharstrune was killed by Shekinester when she swallowed him whole in self-defense. After giving birth to her son Parrafaire, Shekinester expelled Ssharstrune's remains and ordered her son to hide his body somewhere where it could never be found. Ss'thar'tiss'ssun, originally built as a temple-city by the cult of Ssharstrune, was abandoned after the death of the god and left for eons to the guardianship of the bone ha-naga Terpenzi.
- Might Makes Right: Ssharstrune embodied the principles of curiosity, destruction, and possessiveness that had precipitated the World Serpent's fragmentation.
- Not Good with Rejection: When Shekinester chose Jazirian as her mate over him, Ssharstrune was enraged by her decision and attacked her, forcing Shekinester to swallow him.
- Swallowed Whole: He was swallowed by Shekinester when he attacked her.
Lizardfolk Pantheon
Lizardfolk don't really see the need for the vast and bewildering variety of deities worshipped by other races. They're unemotional and pragmatic, focusing solely on survival, and as such, they have only two gods, Semuanya and Kecuala. Of these two, Semuanya is the only one directly worshipped.Semuanya is considered to be a god-beast, the embodiment of simple, primal survivalism. It has three aspects, the Breeder, who bears children, the Survivor, who hunts for food, and the Watcher, who defends its territory. Lizardfolk focus more on different aspects depending on their current circumstances- during times of peace and plenty, they worship the Breeder, while they call on the Watcher during hardships. Semuanya is hermaphroditic, being considered female as the Breeder and male as the Watcher.
Kecuala was once Semuanya's mate, but unlike the bestial Semuanya, Kecuala was a thinking creature. Kecuala's indecision eventually created the lizardfolk race when it split itself in half to properly act upon its thoughts. Lizardfolk believe that if they can truly cast off the burdens of thought as a race, then Kecuala can rise again. But at the moment, his mate is the one watching over their progeny.
From time to time, however, a lizardfolk tribe produces a powerful figure touched not by Semuanya but by Sess'inek, a reptilian demon lord who seeks to corrupt and control the lizardfolk. Lizardfolk born in Sess'inek's image are larger and more cunning than other lizardfolk, and are thoroughly evil. These lizard kings and queens dominate lizardfolk tribes, usurping a shaman's authority and inspiring uncharacteristic aggression among their subjects.
Semuanya (pronounced Se-moo-ÆN-ya) is an amoral and unfeeling deity whose only consideration and purpose is survival and propagation. Any action aiding survival is acceptable; any action which has no bearing on this is an irrelevance and not to be bothered with. Unsurprisingly, the god has no allies, and his only enemy is the demon lord Sess'innek, who seeks to corrupt and control the lizardfolk.
Semuanya dismisses the majority of the struggles that take place in the multiverse, including the plight of his followers, as completely irrelevant. The deity will an avatar to deal with any major event that threatens lizardfolk communities on the grand scale (climate change, major incursions of predators, etc.), but very rarely otherwise. He does not send omens to his shamans.
Semuanya inhabits a great swampy region outside the circle of portals in the Outlands. This swamp borders on the great sea that is home to Eadro of the locathah and merfolk.
- Almighty Idiot: Semuanya has divine power, but is still essentially an animal in nature. The lizardfolk consider this state holy, and believe that Kecuala fell from grace because he did think and thinking too much tore him apart.
- Big Good: Semuanya watches over the lizardfolk and guards their progeny.
- Carry a Big Stick: Semuanya wields a club with many embedded razor-sharp shells.
- Crazy Survivalist: Semuanya promotes only survival and teaches that any action taken in the pursuit of that goal is acceptable. This almost meaningless state of being is considered to be responsible for the decline of the lizardfolk race.
- The Gods Must Be Lazy: Semuanya exists merely to survive, and generally does not care about anything that might be happening to its followers. Semuanya doesn't even prevent the Demon Prince Sess'innek from corrupting Lizardfolk eggs into Lizard Kings.
- Loincloth: Only wears a loincloth.
- The Maker: Semuanya is viewed as the creator and breeder of all lizardfolk. According to one myth, he originally had a mate called Kecuala, who eventually split in half due to being unable to conquer its indecisiveness. One half waved its sharp claws in the air, growling its desire to fight and hunt. The other half hid behind its partner, hissing its will to stay home and breed, and to cover its clutch with earth to keep it warm and safe. Semuanya in its wisdom called the aggressive Kecuala "male" and the passive Kecuala "female" and helped them to build a place to live and breed.
- Nature Hero: Semuanya works hand in hand with nature, which helps to explain the great number of lizardfolk druids about. Those who grow up worshiping Semuanya find it easy to make the leap to worshiping nature itself.
- Nigh-Invulnerability: Semuanya's scaly skin makes him immune to nonmagical blunt weapons, and he suffers only half damage from magical blunt weapons.
- Sex Shifter: Semuanya is a dualistic deity who embodies the chief facets of lizardfolk life: hunting and breeding. During times of peace and plenty they speak of Semuanya as "she" and worship her as the Breeder. During times of strife and hardship they speak of Semuanya as "he" and offer sacrifices to him as the Watcher or the Seeker.
- The Stoic: Semuanya is an aloof, cold, and uncaring creature who never speaks unless talk is necessary. Lizardfolk shamans emulate Semuanya's taciturnity.
- Top God: Semuanya is the primary god of the lizardfolk, having displaced the worship of Essyllis about two thousand years after the fall of sarrukh-ruled Mhairshaulk. Similarly, the rise of his warlike cult within an ancient lizardfolk empire that honored his mate Kecuala ultimately resulted in the way of Kecuala and the empire itself being largely forgotten when the shamans of Semuanya were left in charge, as the cult of Semuanya forbade all reference to it in their oral traditions.
Kecuala was the mate of Semuanya in ancient times. The two lived in harmony together, neither one dominant, in the great Bog of Semuanya. Each of them was a Watcher who prowled the primordial jungles, seeking out their enemies, a Survivor who plucked edible things from the ground and slew wild beasts for their flesh, and a Breeder who bore clutches of soft eggs and buried them in the ground to keep them warm and safe.
While Semuanya settled contentedly into its life, Kecuala did not. Over time, Kecuala became more and more distracted by abstract and cerebral matters, until ultimately the god split into two entities: male and female. These two were the first mortal lizardfolk. And while most modern tellings of the story will end it there, with Semuanya watching over the lizardfolk until they cast off the burden of thought and become Kecuala once more, that's not really the whole story.
In fact, the death of Kecuala was deemed a Heroic Sacrifice by the early lizardfolk, and they decided to honor it by thinking even more. A great empire of the lizardfolk arose, one dedicated to matters of the intellect, knowledge, and abstract philosophy. This empire covered vast territory, and the temple on Blood Anchor Island was just one of its many centers of worship and learning.
Eventually, the golden age of the lizardfolk empire came to an end. The ruling class had become removed from the common lizardfolk and were failing to deal with their concerns. A rival philosophy became more powerful, that of the more warlike cult of Semuanya. The ways of Kecuala proved too abstract to deal with the practical concerns of fighting battles, and eventually they were abandoned, leaving shamans of Semuanya in charge. The way of Kecuala was forgotten.
The lizardfolk empire is a largely forgotten piece of history. The rise of the cult of Semuanya forbade all reference to it in their oral traditions, and memory of it has faded. The ruins on Blood Anchor Island are one of the few remnants of this ancient civilization's achievements.
- Death by Origin Story: Its death was the origin story for the lizardfolk.
- God Is Dead: Kecuala's increasing distraction with abstract and cerebral matters (interpreted by later lizardfolk as an inability to conquer its indecisiveness) eventually caused the deity to split into two distinct entities: the first male and female lizardfolk. It is believed that Semuanya watches over the lizardfolk and their progeny in the hope that one day Kecuala will stop thinking so much and join its halves together again so it can watch and hunt and breed with Semuanya once more.
- How the Mighty Have Fallen: Kecuala was originally honored by an advanced lizardfolk empire dedicated to matters of the intellect, knowledge, and abstract philosophy. However, the empire came to an end due to the ruling class failing to address the concerns of the common lizardfolk, causing the rival philosophy of the warlike cult of Semuanya to become more powerful and eventually suppress all knowledge of the way of Kecuala and the lizardfolk empire. As a result, lizardfolk have since portrayed Kecuala as an indecisive deity who "worked its soft, gray brain with pointless questions" and spent much its time squatting and thinking while life went on around it, ultimately causing it to split in half into the first male and female lizardfolk.
- Inspirational Martyr: In the Nentir Vale setting, early Lizardfolk once worshiped Kecuala for the god's sacrifice creating the Lizardfolk and blessing them with knowledge. They raised a highly advanced civilization dedicated to academia and intellect in honor of Kecuala, but the cult of Semuanya lead an uprising that destroyed their empire and demonized intelligence.
- Literal Split Personality: Split itself into two distinct entities which became the first of the lizardfolk.
- Spell My Name With An S: Captain Slygo's Treasure in Dungeon #208 spelled its name as Kekuala.
- Unperson: Not Kecuala itself, but any knowledge of the philosophy they inspired and the vast lizard empire that honored them was suppressed by the cult of Semuanya, who forbade all reference to it in their oral traditions.
Essyllis was an aspect of the World Serpent created in the image of lizardfolk in order to give these simple creatures a deity they could call their own, lest they be distracted by the plethora of other deities. The worship of Essylliss lasted two thousand years after the fall of sarrukh-ruled Mhairshaulk. Ultimately, however, the splintered factions of the lizardfolk began worshiping Semuanya. Today Essylliss is worshiped by a handful of lizardfolk, and barely a trace of him remains.
- Carry a Big Stick: His favored weapon is a club.
- How the Mighty Have Fallen: Essyllis has been reduced from being the primary god of the lizardfolk to only being worshiped by a handful of them.
Sarrukh Pantheon
According to sarrukh mythology, the World Serpent came to the sarrukh when they were still savages, offering to teach them the secrets of magic, civilization, and power. All that he demanded in return was that they worship him and offer sacrifices to him. The sarrukh agreed to his terms and were rewarded for their loyalty with great knowledge and power.During the heyday of their empires, all sarrukh worshiped the World Serpent. As they expanded outward, they forced the populations they conquered into the worship of the World Serpent as well. This practice made enemies not only of the dominated races, but also of their gods.
The World Serpent was ancient, enigmatic deity worshiped by the sarrukh, teaching them the secrets of magic, civilization, and power and rewarding them with great knowledge and power in return for their worship and sacrifices to him. During the height of the sarrukh empires, the World Serpent was universally worshiped among the sarrukh, as well as forced upon their servitor and enslaved races.
However, the World Serpent eventually literally fragmented into an entire pantheon, each deity of which was a different aspect of himself. Sages agree that this event was precipitated by the conflicting needs and demands of an ever more diverse base of worshipers.
Following the fall of the sarrukh empires, the worship of the World Serpent almost completely vanished, although he continued to supply spells to the creatures that still worshiped deities embodying portions of his essence.
Most common folk have little reason to call on the World Serpent unless they live in regions prone to earthquakes, or from where they can see the scaly ridges of his shed skin, shaken loose as mountain ranges at the dawn of time. In contrast, primal heroes of all types are drawn to the World Serpent's power.
- A Form You Are Comfortable With: The World Serpent does not go by only one name or use a single universal symbol to represent itself. One tribe might depict the World Serpent as a snake swallowing its own tail, and another might show the World Serpent twining around and through a tree symbolizing the mortal realm. Yet another group might think of the World Serpent as a snake-skinned goliath whose serpentine lower body disappears into the earth. The World Serpent does not care how it is depicted, as long as it and the world it protects are shown respect.
- Human Sacrifice: Sacrifice was an important aspect of the World Serpent's dogma. The World Serpent was especially demanding on the subject of suitable sacrifices, insisting that the victim be not only intelligent but also an actual sarrukh. In most cases, religious zealots readily gave their lives for their god, so only rarely was the sacrifice a criminal or a social derelict. Eventually, Scaleless Ones were deemed suitable sacrifices for the World Serpent, thereby freeing the sarrukh from the need to choose sacrifices from among citizens of supposedly equal rank. Though the World Serpent did not object to the decision, it did violate his original agreement with the sarrukh. To maintain the letter of the agreement while accommodating the changing needs and demands of his worshipers, the World Serpent split off an aspect of himself that was called M'daess, whose task was to purify the souls of unclean sacrifices and make them equivalent to sarrukh. The number of sarrukh sacrifices dropped drastically in the aftermath of the empire because of both the lack of available sacrifices and the sarrukhs' lengthy hibernations.
- Nature Spirit: The World Serpent is considered to be a primal spirit and one of the great elders, and is believed to be one of the mightiest incarnations of nature's power. The disciple of the World Serpent paragon path allows a shaman to become the ultimate protector of the balance of the natural order, following in the path of this elder spirit.
- Pieces of God: At the height of the sarrukh empires, the World Serpent fragmented into a host of deities in order to better address the myriad, contradictory demands of its worshipers. It is believed that Io, the dragon god, Shekinester, the naga goddess, and Jazirian, the couatl god, each represent the theme of the multiplicity of being, of which the World Serpent was the archetype. Other known aspects include the lizardfolk gods Essylliss and Semuanya, M'daess, whose task was to purify the souls of unclean sacrifices and make them equivalent to sarrukh, the yuan-ti gods Merrshaulk and Sss'thasine'ss, and Ssharstrune, the naga god who embodied the principles of curiosity, destruction, and possessiveness that had precipitated the World Serpent's fragmentation. Additionally, the demiplane in which the World Serpent Inn is located is similarly believed to be a somnolent deity and fragment of the World Serpent whose dreams manifest in the form of intermittent portals to worlds to which its consciousness is drifting, but the truth of such conjecture is unknown.
- The Theocracy: The sarrukh empires were monotheistic societies that worshiped only the World Serpent. All other gods were viewed as inferior blasphemies, and the sarrukh believed that those who worshiped them should be either turned to the veneration of the Great Scaled One or destroyed.
- Time Abyss: The World Serpent is believed to have led the Elder Gods in the Dawn War in climactic battles against the primordials.
M'daess is an aspect of the World Serpent, and was created by him to resolve the issue of nonsarrukh sacrifices, which was the first major point of division for the World Serpent. When the sarrukh made the decision that members of their own race were too important to sacrifice to their god, they violated one of the earliest and most fundamental doctrines of their religion. Though the World Serpent agreed in principle that Scaleless Ones made acceptable sacrifices, he couldn't reconcile changing the agreement with the sarrukh. Rather than back down from his demands or force them to hold to the original agreement (and thereby risk their defection to another deity), the World Serpent created M'daess, the snake-mother, whose task was to purify the souls of the unclean who were sacrificed in the World Serpent's name, thus making them equivalent to sarrukh souls in the eyes of their god.
- The Grim Reaper: Her task is to purify nonsarrukh souls sacrificed to the World Serpent in order to make them equivalent to sarrukh souls.
- Sinister Scythe: Her favored weapon is a scythe.
Miscellaneous Scalykind Deities
Jazirian is the immensely powerful and wise deity of the couatl. Couatl theology is very subtle indeed, and it considers Jazirian to be perfect spiritual manifestation of the World Serpent archetype. Other World Serpent fragments are seen as immature or imperfect manifestations of this archetype, and, if evil, their evil is attributed due to ignorace, fear, or immaturity. Jazirian is held by couatls to be perfection, and the sight of the deity flying the airs and ethers of Mount Celestia is longed for by every couatl elder when it comes to the end of its days.
Jazirian is supremely wise above all. (S)He (the deity is simultaneously sexless and hermaphroditic) is reflective, contemplative, a listening and attentive creature. Jazirian has no priests or shamans, having granted couatls great magical powers and wisdom within their own natures.
Jazirian sends visions and "bright omens" (floral, insect, and bird behavior changes and the like) to elder couatls as warnings, apprehensions, or simply for information. Jazirian is believed to take all pain from a dying couatl at the end of its life by extending some of his/her power to soothe the couatl's mind. Very rarely, perhaps once per 1,000 years, Jazirian may manifest as a spiritual presence at the birth of a couatl destined to develop great magical and/or prophetic skills. The avatar never appears without other lawful good greater gods being consulted, and only does so at times of extreme peril for lawful good or major elements of creation.
Above the pinnacle of Solania, the fourth layer of Mount Celestia, lies the realm of Uroboros, also called the Gates of Wisdom, the clouds and misty vapors of complete submission to a higher power. Creatures unable to fly can enter the realm simply by falling into the void when they step off the fourth peak; those that can fly must beat their wings ever higher until they are exhausted and fall to reach Uroboros. The realm is an entirely airy place, with no obvious support. Some describe it as not so much a place of sights and sounds as a place within: sensations of lightness, exhaustion, and relief, accompanied by complete bliss.
- Back from the Dead: During a war between the Okothian sarrukh and the couatls, Jazirian was killed by Merrshaulk, the yuan-ti god, forcing the couatls to flee to Abeir-Toril. However, Jazirian is depicted in other sources as being alive, suggesting that (s)he apparently managed to come back to life some time after.
- Arch-Enemy: Jazirian strongly opposes Asmodeus, the lord of the Nine Hells, and has spread out his/her children, the couatl, among the planes to gather intelligence on Asmodeus and send it back to Jazirian. From this information and his/her own efforts, Jazirian is trying to figure out what Asmodeus is up to. According to one myth, the two were once the mightiest of Law's champions and were responsible for creating the multiverse. Their enmity stems from when they disagreed about where the center of the multiverse would be, Jazirian pushed for Mount Celestia, while Ahriman (as Asmodeus was called at the time) agitated for the inverted mountain of Baator. The two serpents ultimately tore themselves apart, with Jazirian flying up to Mount Celestia while Ahriman, lacking wings, fell to the lowest level of the Pit. Jazirian is the only one who knows the true nature of Asmodeus. Although worried about what Asmodeus might do, (s)he hopes that there is enough law within him still to prevent him from instigating Armageddon. Should that day ever come, however, (s)he is ready to summon all his/her children from all the planes to confront his/her former consort.
- Big Good: Jazirian is a wise, intelligent, and contemplative being, whom the couatl think of in very subtle terms as a perfection of the World Serpent archetype. (S)He believes that the laws of the universe must be upheld, not recast to suit the needs of the powerful.
- Deity Identity Confusion: After Jazirian was killed Merrshaulk and the couatls were forced to flee to Abeir-Toril, they eventually settled in Maztica and the god Qotal embraced them as his divine minions, which resulted in them starting to acknowledge him as Jazirian reborn.
- Feathered Serpent: Jazirian appears as a vast rainbow-colored couatl, sinuously winding his/her way through the air or rotating as a great snake with its tail in its mouth.
- Fertile Blood: According to one myth, when the Twin Serpents separated, Jazirian's tail, its tip bitten off by his/her rival, scattered blood among the Upper Planes. Where each drop landed, a couatl sprang up fully formed.
- Interspecies Romance: Jazirian is romantically involved with Shekinester, the naga goddess, and has a son by her named Parrafaire.
- The Maker: Jazirian is revered by the couatls as their creator and, in some myths, as one of the creators of the multiverse. According to one myth, Jazirian and her consort Ahriman were the mightiest of Law's champions and were known as the Twin Serpents. In the beginning they were intimately intertwined with one another, Jazirian's tail in Ahriman's mouth and vice versa. Together they established the fundamental principles of the planes: the Unity of Rings, the Rule of Threes, and the Center of All, creating the ring-shape of the cosmos, the triads that dominated it, and the plane of neutrality called the Concordant Opposition or the Outlands. It is believed that the couatls either sprang up fully formed his/her blood when Jazirian separated from Ahriman, or that Jazirian had transformed a dissenter faction of the sarrukh of Okoth into the couatls, as they had broken off from the main group due to their kindred's push into evil and had entreated themselves to Jazirian for succor.
- Otherworldly and Sexually Ambiguous: Jazirian is regarded by couatls as being simultaneously both sexless and hermaphroditic. However, this is not represented in naga mythology, in which Jazirian is depicted as male.
Laogzed (pronounced Lay-AG-zed) is a disgusting creature whose function among the fullness of creation is very questionable. Its only apparent desire and purpose is to eat any thing it comes across, although it has an instinctual evil that leads it to prefer organic matter, preferably with plenty of juices (blood) and still wriggling, which gives it pleasurable sensations as it chews and swallows its food. Its origins are always mythologically ascribed to the coupling of an evil god with a reptilian tanar'ri female; sometimes Panzuriel is considered to be this monster's father, else a demented deity of darkness such as the Elder Elemental God. Other gods tolerate it as a necessary evil scavenger with some kind of cleansing role.
Laogzed eats things, including any troglodytes stupid or unlucky enough to be around when its avatar appears. No rationale other than eating affects its presence. Laogzed does not send omens to troglodyte shamans and its only interest in them is how edible they are.
Laogzed's realm, the Rotting Plain, is located on the 181st layer of the Abyss. It is a vast cavern dotted with putrid lakes that are fed by the River of Blood. A million tunnels of various sizes empty into this cavern, carrying the refuse of the planes for the troglodyte god to devour. A virtually mindless creature, Laogzed eats anything and everything he finds, living, dead, or inorganic. Many denizens of the planes have discovered that they can easily get rid of an item that should never be found by leaving it on the Rotting Plain.
- Body Horror: Its oozing skin is covered with loose patches of dead flesh.
- Carry a Big Stick: One of his favored weapons is the great club.
- Destroyer Deity: Laogzed is a deity of wanton destruction, who will eat anything it encounters and only cares about his next meal, whatever that may be.
- Eaten Alive: Laogzed prefers to swallow his food alive, so that he can feel it move as he digests it.
- The Gods Must Be Lazy: Other than feasting, the deity requires little from his worshipers. Unlike many of the evil deities, Laogzed does not require sacrifices, although he does not reject them either. With the low standards for worship Laogzed imposes on his followers, the troglodytes find it remarkably easy to be "religious".
- Javelin Thrower: One of his favored weapons is the javelin.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: Laogzed appears as a disgusting toad/lizard cross, more reptilian than amphibian.
- Poisonous Person: The slimy ooze on Laogzed's skin is an acidic poison; any creature touching it suffers acid damage and risks being slain. Weapons (or other objects) striking or touching the skin similarly risks being destroyed.
- Villainous Glutton: Laogzed exists solely to consume food, namely, anything made of flesh and blood that can be ingested. The love of food pervades the worship of Laogzed, and every occasion is cause for a feast. After a victory, the troglodytes feast upon the corpses of their enemies. In order to hold great feasts as often as possible, they often overhunt the creatures in the surrounding areas, thus depleting their regular sources of food. Troglodytes believe that every time they eat, they are sending the consumed food to Laogzed, who enjoys it again. By this dogma, the very act of eating is a religious ritual. Laogzed grants them spells in return for their worship and the constant feasts they provide for him.
