Gorellik the Loner

July 10, 2013

Gorellik was once the primary patron of gnolls and flinds, but as those races have turned to other gods, he has languished and lost power. I’ve always thought Gorellik was an under-appreciated deity in the game, and a pretty interesting individual. I’ve tried to embellish his history a bit with some additional speculation on his origins, and set him up to be a more useful deity to DMs who want to make more varied gnollish cultures. Enjoy! Read the rest of this entry »


Archomentals, ho!

July 1, 2013

So I noticed a brief line in the Planescape Monstrous Compendium Volume III this evening. Archomentals are able to grant spells up to 3rd level (4th in person, which I would interpret as being on the same plane, which holds for most other deity rankings). Guess I will have to create priesthoods for them at some point. Now to figure out where they best fit in…


Kostchtchie, the Demon Prince of Wrath

June 26, 2013

Kostchtchie is another tanar’ri prince who is a true success story. Once a mortal human, he has risen to the rank of Abyssal lord and beyond, to become a true divinity. He is a hateful power of violence who lives in a realm of harsh ice and snow. He has attracted worship from the most violent and power hungry amongst the frost giant race through promises of wizardly magic, power over dragons, and priestly magic. Enjoy!

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Skoraeus Stonebones, the Living Rock

June 16, 2013

Skoraeus is of the same generation as Thrym and Surtr, and like them, has become the patron of one of the breeds of giants. Unlike his brothers, he is not evil; but their evil has cause him to turn away from the wider world to focus solely on his followers. As a god of crafts and artistic creation, he is still venerated by the other giant breeds, however.

I’m trying something a bit different with this post. I’ve noticed that the PDFs come up on Google much more often than the blog posts, so I’m making the deity entries in-line so they come up instead. Feedback is appreciated. This will not be the end of the PDFs, but I need to think about how to make them easily available but not have Google searches end up on them rather than the blog itself. Enjoy!

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Refnara the Moon-Biter

May 10, 2013

Refnara is the old Gnoll goddess of fear, mentioned solely in the adventure “To Bite the Moon” in Dungeon #48. There was quite a bit in that adventure to extrapolate from, and I drew upon a bunch of ideas I had floating around to make quite an interesting deity, I think. Enjoy!

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Baphomet, Demon Lord of Minotaurs

April 10, 2013

Baphomet, like Yeenoghu, is a tanar’ri power who has gained enough power to become a full-fledged deity, adopting minotaurs as his followers. As he believes he is the master of all beasts, he spends a great deal of time creating and modifying new monsters; similarly, many wizards with a desire to do the same are drawn to his service. Enjoy!

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Undetailed Gods in Dungeon Magazine

April 6, 2013

This is the grand list of all the gods I could find in Dungeon magazine (through issue #81, plus a couple other products) who are, essentially, undetailed. Gods of Greyhawk, the Forgotten Realms, or the gods mentioned in Monster Mythology or Legends & Lore are not included. The first section lists the human gods, none of whom I plan to do write-ups for. The second category includes the non-human deities (as well as Abyssal lords and the like); many of these I am considering adding to my project. I may have missed some, to be honest; it was a lot easier reading every adventure when I was only getting one issue every two months!

Human Deities:

Major deities of the nation of Hurva, I13 Adventure Pack 1 (“To Kill a Kraken”)
Estereal (LN god of law, ceremony, truth)
Azkal (LN(E) god of war, fire, soldiers)
Jvelto (CN god of water, ocean, and sailing)
Wajen (N(G) goddess of fertility, druidism)
Torodin (N god of shadow, vision, dreams, theft)

Dungeon #62, “The Rat Trap”
Imbar the Watcher (god of Law and Justice)
Canetar (divine master of swords
Corenicor (patron of the arts and sciences)
Erathmor (the earth god)

Dungeon #72 “No Stone Unturned”
Telluri (LN god of trade, wealth, and fair dealing)
Onadar (Lord of the Dead, LE?)
Payanel (god of suffering and perseverence; mongrelman alias: K’ssan)

Aiburn Darkspawn (LE; I13 Adventure Pack 1, “The House of Long Knives”)
Neheod (dual-aspected god of all things, “A Paladin in Hell”)

Andromidus (Lesser Titan of Inspired Vision, Dungeon #2, “The Titan’s Dream”)
Taranis Firebrand (CN god of storms, Dungeon #2, “Caermor”)
Flora (nature/druidic goddess, Dungeon #5, “Lady of the Lake”)
Dreyneld (CE(?) god of foul deeds and disease, Dungeon #5, “THe Eyes of Evil”)
Siinkinara (CE goddess of bloodlust, marauding beasts, mayhem, Dungeon #8, “In Defense of the Law”)
Yen-Wang-Yeh (OA god of death, Dungeon #17, “The Waiting Room of Yen-Wang-Yeh”)
Bosatsu Jizo (LG OA god of children and education, Dungeon #18, “Crocodile Tears”)
Kazhak (very similar to Tezcatlipoca, possibly an alias, Dungeon #22, “The Leopard Men”)
Lady of the Woods (FR forest demigoddess, Dungeon #28, “Visitors from Above”)
Red Fox (CG GH/Rover god based on Coyote, Dungeon #32, “Ghost Dance”)
Yutow the Peacebringer (Ravenloft god, Dungeon #50, “Felkovic’s Cat”)
Turtur (old/forgotten human god with monastic order, Dungeon #50, “Back to the Beach”)
Charisis (goddess of healing and light, Dungeon #56, “Janx’s Jinx”)
The Warlord (African/Jungle Tribe deity, Dungeon #56, “The Land of Men with Tails”; adventure also mentions now-forgotten ape-like god)
Maalpherus (God of Disease, Dungeon #57, “To Cure a Kingdom”)
Oshalla (goddess of Magic, Dungeon #66, “Orange and Black”)
Doblos (sea god, Dungeon #70, “Maze of the Morkoth”)
Unnamed Volcano God (Dungeon #70, “Maze of the Morkoth”)
Splin’Deratha (dark forest god, Dungeon #79, “Bad Seeds”)
Aris and Selene (mother earth goddess/planet-as-a-goddess and her evil daughter-moon goddess, Dungeon #80, “The Scar”)
Ashtar (god of healing, Dungeon #81, “Ashtar’s Temple”)

Non-Human Deities:

Psionic “Mystic” (unknown ancient race) Pantheon, Dungeon #31, “Beyond the Glittering Veil”:
Rujsha (goddess of justice)
Gorn (LG god of knowledge)
Mintar (god of honor)

Cador (Evil (CE?) dwarven god of revenge, Dungeon #2, “Caermor”)
Shami-Amourae (CE demigoddess/Abyssal lady of debased eros, Dungeon #5, “Stolen Power”)
Ilsidahur (Abyssal lord/prince, Dungeon #10, “The Shrine of Ilsidahur”)
Anthraxus (Yugoloth/daemon lord of disease, Dungeon #11, “The Dark Conventicle”; included because this is the only discussion of his cult I know of)
Vilya (cloud giant god, Dungeon #16, “Palace in the Sky”; possibly alias of Memnor to keep up appearance as wise advisor)
Unguliustuk (evil earth archomental, Dungeon #28, “Sleepless”)
Siragle (Abyssal Lord of the 493rd layer, Dungeon #28, “Sleepless”)
Sheth (CE lesser power, Dungeon #28, “Sleepless”; possibly gnoll or human deity)
Sch’theraqpasst (yuan-ti god, Dungeon #37, “Serpents of the Sands”; possibly alias of Merrshaulk)
Refnara (gnoll goddess of fear, Dungeon #48, “To Bite the Moon”)
Great Crab and Mother Ocean (Crabman deities/concepts, Dungeon #50, “Back to the Beach”)
Great Tree Frog (grippli deity, Dungeon #78, “Trial of the Frog”)


Dinosaurs!

February 12, 2013

I’m taking a short break from gods to focus on something else for a bit: Dinosaurs! I’m working to revise the AD&D statistics for dinosaurs with modern facts and theories, as well as adding and interesting species. Stay tuned!


D&D Classics

February 1, 2013

I’m sure all of you are by now aware of the new offering of PDFs of prior editions of Dungeons & Dragons over at dndclassics.com. However, I’m not sure how many of you had an opportunity to take advantage of WotC’s last offering that ended around 2007. Personally, while I was generally disappointed by the scan quality of those older releases, they were priced properly at $5 each. This new offering doubles the price of most AD&D and OD&D releases at $10 (baring those that were cheaper when released, which is mostly adventures and of lesser interest to me); even if the scans are perfect and incredibly high resolution, they’re not worth that, when hard copies of many of the books are often only slightly more than that. I’m not even willing to purchase one to compare quality; I would have if they were $5, and I would be willing to replace a number of the PDFs I do have if the quality was significantly improved. Finally, two stores offered the PDFs during the last offering: Paizo and Drive-Thru RPG (called RPGNow back then, I believe). This time, the PDFs are only offered through dndclassics.com, which is run by Drive-Thru RPG. I have heard repeatedly that if someone bought a PDF years ago that is amongst the current offering, they can download the new version for free. So on top of gouging for PDFs now, they are also screwing over a significant number of people who just happened to buy from the other store. There is very little that I can imagine to prevent a credit being given to people who bought from Paizo, as Paizo almost certainly had to make sales information available to WotC, which I would think would include the ability to verify order numbers and the like. If they did not, then they could easily have been able to lie to WotC over how many PDFs were sold, thus pocketing all the profits on the sales. Therefore, WotC should have access to what  was ordered before, or have a way to verify what was ordered before, and issue credits. Not doing this means that either WotC doesn’t care about their customer base (a definite possibility) or Paizo is refusing to assist with the information to spite D&D, which is to a degree against their own interests, considering how many people might want to convert old D&D adventures and settings to Pathfinder for their own use.

Overall, I’m incredibly disappointed and not a little bit angry over how this has gone.


The Ferrous Dragons

January 31, 2013

In issue #170 of Dragon magazine, a new subgroup of dragons was presented, the ferrous dragons. Unlike the metallic, chromatic, or gem dragons, they did not share an alignment axis. To be honest, there’s always been something I felt was lacking about them; they aren’t unified enough, and the name is rather a misnomer, as ferrous should apply only to iron and iron alloy metals. The dragons presented were the Chromium (Chrome) Dragon, the Cobalt Dragon, the Iron Dragon, the Nickel Dragon, and the Tungsten Dragon. Knowledge of most of these metals is fairly recent and can’t easily be accessed or identified without fairly modern scientific methods; of course, wizardry could easily identify different metals and could be used to replace modern smelting and chemical processes. It also seems like being metals should put them squarely in the Metallic Dragon category, or at least being *almost* Metallic (as Steel, Mercury, and Electrum Dragons are). All that said, I decided to use them as test candidates for creating my own versions of the Monstrous Compendium sheets. These sheets are formatted for double-sided printing with a gutter to allow for binding or placing in a three ring binder, although I haven’t really checked to see if there was enough space for any of that.

The Ferrous Dragons