Craziest D&D Lore

[Avonar]

I've recently been looking through some bits of D&D lord and some of them seem pretty out there. The one that stuck with me is Ashardalon, the ancient red dragon, where after a fight with a powerful druid ends up replacing his heart with an entire Balor. However it turns out that using a Balor as a heart was a bad idea so Ashardalon ends up going to the Bastion of Unborn Souls, surviving only by sitting in what is basically a fountain of the souls of people who would be born. Subsequently, babies are born without souls.

So that struck me as kind of bonkers.

What other bits of D&D lore do you guys know that are just...weird?

[Unoriginal]

The in-universe reason for the changes between AD&D and the 3rd edition is that Vecna showed up in Sigil, became a god there, and wrecked so much of the setting it needed a fresh start. The name of the module was "Die, Vecna, Die".

[Falcon X]

Nuts. I read the title and was going to say Ashardelon.

Well, since we are going with the final events/modules of each edition....
The Time of Troubles was Pretty crazy. Lord AO rallies the Faurun gods to them, beats on them a little, then takes away their immortality and forces them to walk the Realms as mortals. Good times.

As for obscure knowledge:
Idk. I always laughed at how Thor and Loki are always trying to hit on Selune.
I actually planned a plot arc if my players ever made it to Ysgard that they get missions from the two doing things to impress her.

[Wilb]

Giant space hamsters and the crazier bits of Greyhawk lore, such as the Doomgrinder, the Mighty servant of Leuk-o, the Machine of Lum the Mad, the Egg of Coot and subduing dragons.

[ZorroGames]

Nuts. I read the title and was going to say Ashardelon.

Well, since we are going with the final events/modules of each edition....
The Time of Troubles was Pretty crazy. Lord AO rallies the Faurun gods to them, beats on them a little, then takes away their immortality and forces them to walk the Realms as mortals. Good times.

As for obscure knowledge:
Idk. I always laughed at how Thor and Loki are always trying to hit on Selune.
I actually planned a plot arc if my players ever made it to Ysgard that they get missions from the two doing things to impress her.

I always wanted to run a game where Selune has the hots for some other goddess and commands the PCs to convince Thor and Loki to stop bothering her without revealing her secret to them. Never ran that which is probably a good idea.

[ZorroGames]

Giant space hamsters and the crazier bits of Greyhawk lore, such as the Doomgrinder, the Mighty servant of Leuk-o, the Machine of Lum the Mad, the Egg of Coot and subduing dragons.

The idea of Giant Space Hamsters brought a really big grin to my face. So much potential!

[Regitnui]

Does this topic only cover published 5e lore from the approved settings or are other settings allowed? I'm not familiar enough with the current setting to find anything particularly weird.

[NecroDancer]

The craziest lore that I know about mostly comes from Planescape. Such as....

1. Orcus becomes the new lord of Modrons for a while.

2. The Lady of Pain has a shadow that devoures creativity and chaotically alligned planes.

3. Most NPC back stories from Uncaged: Faces of Sigil.

However one of the craziest bits of lore I know comes from Eberron. The warforged (sentient magical golems) are busy building their own God out in a radioactive wasteland.

[KorvinStarmast]

their no friends of mine They're no friends of mine
I typed that while not wearing a hat. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjPau5QYtYs)

Later in the song, about 1:40, the lyric becomes
because your friends aren't dead, and if they aren't dead, well they're no friends of mine

I saw the sig, and I noted the rhythm, but it took a while to dig into memory to come up with a match. And I grinned.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane. :smallbiggrin:

[Regitnui]

However one of the craziest bits of lore I know comes from Eberron. The warforged (sentient magical golems) are busy building their own God out in a radioactive wasteland.

in other words:

They're building a GOD! IN A CAVE! WITH A BOX OF SCRAPS!

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ff/9e/2a/ff9e2a2efeedd6e7295f58b93bdc9880.jpg

[mgshamster]

. Subsequently, babies are born without souls.

So that's where elves come from.

[Naanomi]

The craziest lore that I know about mostly comes from Planescape. Such as....

1. Orcus becomes the new lord of Modrons for a while.
Technically that was not Orcus it was his undead shadow alter-ego Tenebrous

The lore that I find the weirdest...

There was a time in the early days of the Planes where the Inner Planes were constricted differently, and instead of Earth/Air; Fire/Water you had Hot/Cold; Dry/Moist

(Ignoring 4E weirdness) there has only been three times in history where the Blood War has stopped since it began

Before the Great Wheel existed there was another reality ‘there’ that had been destroyed. There are a handful of creatures left over from the ‘old existence’ here and there

There are like... three generations of mortal races come and find from the Prime Material Plane that predate the Elves/Dwarves/Orcs/etc we are familiar with. Humans are implied to be the offspring of two of them from the previous ‘generation’

The Universe depowers Gods who try to involve themselves in alignment issues too much, most prominently if they get too involved in the Blood War

Osiris isn’t a God anymore, he was ‘elevated’ by the powers beyond Gods to protect the bodies of dead Gods in the Astral Plane. You can piss him off in a few adventures.

[Pronounceable]

Every time some bull**** that utterly wrecks a setting is made up to explain rule differences in an edition change by a mouth breather.

Those being followed by further bull**** that restores the previous status quo for the next edition change by a mouthier breather.

The fact that this has happened more than once.


Orcus getting killed by Kiaransalee, followed by his ghost becoming a death god, followed by him resurrecting himself as a demon prince after pretending to be Primus, followed by his dead death god remains becoming a vestige.

Fenmarel and his banging of both of Corellon's wives in a singleminded pursuit of cuckolding him.

Humans somehow managing to reproduce with piles of animated inanimate matter to spawn various genasi before they were retconned into half genies.

The completely stupid Game of Thrones bull**** going down in Nine Hells (the Reckoning) among the supposedly "lawful" devil nobles and Big A's ludicrous just as planned grandstanding after the fact.

Naming the battle for supremacy among the ancient succubi queens the War of Ripe Flesh.

The Elemental Evil cults being a front for the Demon Queen of Fungi.

Yeenoghu beating up two gods and taking their ****, yet somehow being a second stringer among demon lords.

Usurper god of FR's yuan-ti getting usurped by some loser human snake god after falling asleep in the exact same manner as the original yuan-ti god.

[Envyus]

The in-universe reason for the changes between AD&D and the 3rd edition is that Vecna showed up in Sigil, became a god there, and wrecked so much of the setting it needed a fresh start. The name of the module was "Die, Vecna, Die".

During which he can't actually die. As Vecna ends the module better off then he was no matter what.


Does this topic only cover published 5e lore from the approved settings or are other settings allowed? I'm not familiar enough with the current setting to find anything particularly weird.

Don't try and start another fight here.

[Naanomi]

Humans somehow managing to reproduce with piles of animated inanimate matter to spawn various genasi before they were retconned into half genies.

The Elemental Evil cults being a front for the Demon Queen of Fungi.

Yeenoghu beating up two gods and taking their ****, yet somehow being a second stringer among demon lords.
Gensai have always been primarily descended from genie and other more ‘fleshy’ Elementals

The demons involved in the Elemental cults are themselves just proxies and servants of the Elder Elemental Eye, the banished yet still powerful Tharzidun

Gods are not particularly unstoppable in single combat, lots of planar powers (including many demon lords) could trounce them in straight fights. None of the Gods Yeenoghu targeted were very impressive in their own right

[Tanarii]

Mast of spelljammer. But especially
- Crystal Spheres, and the Phlogiston connecting all the Prime worlds together
- the Elven Armada patrolling space and keeping the rulers of all the landborn hippie-elves in contact
- Giff
- Mindflayers! In space!

[the_brazenburn]

Personally, I find the fact that Limbo was originally an outpost for githzeri the weirdest lore.

Of course, I've barely played 3.5 at all, none of the other editions, and most of the lore I know is from 5e.

By the way, Naaomi, I just had to laugh when I heard "fleshy elementals".

[Naanomi]

By the way, Naaomi, I just had to laugh when I heard "fleshy elementals".
Well, people think first of pure Elementals, but there are a lot more organic-ish lifeforms in the inner planes... many of which (including Genies and maybe Mephits) were likely shaped into such forms by Vaati in their initial Lawful conquering of the Inner Planes

[Unoriginal]

The completely stupid Game of Thrones bull**** going down in Nine Hells (the Reckoning) among the supposedly "lawful" devil nobles and Big A's ludicrous just as planned

"Lawful" doesn't mean "won't betray you, ever".

[Tanarii]

"Lawful" doesn't mean "won't betray you, ever".
For Lawful Evil, especially Fiendish LE, it usually seems to mean will betray you, just as soon as they can figure out a way to do it within their code.

[Naanomi]

"Lawful" doesn't mean "won't betray you, ever".
Yeah it is carefully calculated and long-planned betrayals; unlike the impulsive random ‘seize the opportunity’ betrayals in the Abyss

[Sol]

There's a canonical demigod named Wastri, the Hopping Prophet, who is the god of Bigotry, self-delusion, and amphibians.

He's a human that wanders (read: hops) the universe spreading his racist opinion that humans are the one true master race, but that really they should be amphibious. Most of his followers are bullywugs or grung, which he's not particularly fond of because they're not human, but he allows it because they are amphibious. It's heavily implied that he experiments on his followers trying to make them closer to his amphibious human ideal.

[Regitnui]

For me, probably the xvarts. They're little mortal decoys left behind by a cowardly god, but they still revere him and he occasionally shows up to steal stuff from them. First creature in years I've looked at and had absolutely no purpose for, no idea of how I could ever use them.

[Envyus]

Personally, I find the fact that Limbo was originally an outpost for githzeri the weirdest lore.


The Githzerai still live in Limbo. It's their home. They seem to take a decent amount of pride in making order out of chaos and using their mental fortitude to build civilization out of Limbo's chaos stuff. They also view it as a test to their disciplined selves.

[Scots Dragon]

Dungeonland, in which a mad wizard recreated the scenarios and environments from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland... and turned it into a lethal-as-hell dungeon crawl.

[Falcon X]

The craziest lore that I know about mostly comes from Planescape. Such as....

1. Orcus becomes the new lord of Modrons for a while.

2. The Lady of Pain has a shadow that devoures creativity and chaotically alligned planes.

3. Most NPC back stories from Uncaged: Faces of Sigil.

However one of the craziest bits of lore I know comes from Eberron. The warforged (sentient magical golems) are busy building their own God out in a radioactive wasteland.
Ooooh. Where did you find that bit on the Lady of Pain?
Also, those NPC backstories in Uncaged are beautifully written. We just don’t get writers like Monte Cook and Bruce Cordell anymore.

Inspired by the war forged, here is another one:
Golmoids: From Dragon Magazine. They were robots made by gnomes. The Artificial Intelligence eventually became so sophisticated with each new version that the achieved near-sentience.
So, a golmoid finally asked for Life. The gnomes were fascinated and said yes, and Glittergold made them fully functioning, living, breeding, etc.
The great thing is: They love gnomes and think of themselves as gnomes.
They are basically hulking robots that tinker and play pranks and joke. Problem is that they aren’t good at any of that stuff.

[Tanarii]

In BECMI's the Known World (aka Mystara), humanoid races (Orcs, Goblins, etc) are the reincarnated souls of evil people of other races. The harsh life these races live is their punishment.

Shadow Elves' children are often born mutated by the Radiance, magical radiation from a magical nuclear reactor from the Blackmoor era, near their underground homes. They abandon these children in their upper caves for the humanoids of the Broken Lands to find. The children grow up thinking they are humanoids, although often unusually intelligent or wise. They often become Shaman or Wicca in their tribes.

[bc56]

For me, probably the xvarts. They're little mortal decoys left behind by a cowardly god, but they still revere him and he occasionally shows up to steal stuff from them. First creature in years I've looked at and had absolutely no purpose for, no idea of how I could ever use them.

Really? I love Xvarts. I think they're a fun alternative to Kobolds and Goblins, especially since they aren't a playable race in 5e. They're like smart vermin that practice demon worship: the perfect combination of the two best low-level enemies.

[Regitnui]

Really? I love Xvarts. I think they're a fun alternative to Kobolds and Goblins, especially since they aren't a playable race in 5e. They're like smart vermin that practice demon worship: the perfect combination of the two best low-level enemies.

They look too much like minion-shaped smurfs for me to take them seriously.

[bc56]

They look too much like minion-shaped smurfs for me to take them seriously.

I can understand that.

[Sigreid]

Dungeonland, in which a mad wizard recreated the scenarios and environments from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland... and turned it into a lethal-as-hell dungeon crawl.

Don't forget that said mad wizard Zagyag had a house there with electric lights and appliances powered by a lightning elemental.

A lot of the monsters in the original Monster Manual were expressly stated to be created by insane wizard experiments, including owlbears.

Boggles first appeared in a module as creations of a female elf wizard who was trying to create a perfect elf. One of the opponents was a Male elf warrior created with a variation of the clone spell.