Krimm_Blackleaf
2008-06-27, 12:25 AM
The Kin of the Old Ones
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y265/Nny2/Runes.jpg
A Nation of the Dead (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=38868) campaign setting supplement
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y265/Nny2/Cthulhu.jpg
The first things that were, were creatures of chaos so pure and volatile that the greatest of which could exist in ways imperceivable by mortals and even many gods. Yog-Sothoth, Nyarlathotep and Great Cthulhu are but a few of these old gods of the depth and of realities beyond reality. Their influence has been due to many things, creatures sprouting from them by pure chance, creatures to dwell in their dark depths and creatures to corrupt the living of the land.
Aboleths, Quori, the Illithid race and the mighty practitioners of madness; the Daelkyr are all directly spawned of the will of the Old Gods and most have at least a vestigial knowledge of their masters. Some of these creatures have spawned their own creations of madness and twisted chaos, the daelkyr race being among the most 'creative' of the races of the Old Gods.
Beholders, chuuls, chaos beasts, and most creatures of the sea with a tentacle or alien shape were originally the creations of the Daelkyr, quori or illithids. Not many a mortal will be able to look upon a common octopus on the coast and know that it may have once been in a boiling pot of a Daelkyr's mind...
In Nation of the Dead, the aberrant races of raw madness have some differences in comparison to those in other settings and books. The biggest overall difference is that most of these creatures are usually chaotic, finding little order in their warped minds and twisted biology. Another similarity many have is the ability to thrive in salty water, like their dark lords in the depths of the Material Plane.
Daelkyr
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/MotP/Far_Realm_Entity.jpg
Heironeous and Aeomon have their angels, Orcus and Levakross have their demons, the Old Gods have their imprecious Daelkyr. In the very loose 'hierarchy' of the Old Gods, the Daelkyrs act as angels of entropy and madness, some defending this cause and some simply making the world a slightly more maddening place. Most Daelkyr live in places such as Limbo, and other planes of chaos, though very rarely chaotic good planes. It is said that an endless brood of Daelkyr larva exist in the Far Realm, but none have ever chosen to figure if this is myth of fact.
There exist many Daelkyr corruptors on the Material Plane, on each continent and many islands that surround them. On Tanzen, there are 'angels of madness' existing in secret places, some even speculate there is at least one of which under the city of Dawn of Glory. Most that are known live in mountains and underground structures, booby-trapped for anyone wishing to maintain a balanced psyche. On Arcnus Mortis there are a rare few undead daelkyr, and the only Daelkyrs known to exist there live exclusively on Mertion under the dominion of the insane alhoon lord that rules over the land. On Shello there are a few daelkyr, which exist there to go through with twisted, horrible experiments in silence and away from the annoying spearheads and smiting spells of humans and the like.
In the Nation of the Dead setting, there are a few mechanical differences compared to the daelkyr of the Eberron campaign setting. The Daelkyr are as normal except as follows;
Medium Outsider (Chaos, Extraplanar)
Environment: Any chaotic plane or the material plane
Alignment: Usually chaotic evil
Additionally, the Daelkyr as just as varied as one might imagine, so there are daelkyr that look barely human, and many with very different symbionts and magical items and most of the most powerful Daelkyr have class levels. Daelkyr's favored classes are ones that help them create new, imaginative items and creatures, such as wizard and artificer. Many Daelkyr that don't wish to live a solitary existence will have a cadre of abominations at their beck and call, and an infamous few have made themselves out to be gods to cults made up of insane humans and illithids.
Quori
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/moe_gallery/91472.jpg
Demons, devils, fiends of all sorts and a good deal of mortal ghosts all have one thing in common; a power and lust to take control of the bodies of mortals, both living and dead. What these creatures don't know is that this ability to take someone's body as their own when they have no place doing so was the invention of the mad race of the Quori. While the Daelkyr have a varied ability to corrupt and warp people, and even do other things if they wish, the Quori have almost a sole purpose; to take control and spread madness in the bodies of mortals. They enjoy being able to walk through a human hamlet unknown before poisoning a well, freeing mental patience or convincing children to do corrupt, craven things but this is impossible to do in their normal bodies; it's hard to hide a Quori in a human village. Many Quori do roam in their own bodies across the material plane, occasionally warping the minds of people through fear instead of their normal corruption.
A vast majority of Quori inhabiting mortal bodies exist on Tanzen, seeing as there are few lives still on Shello that aren't being warped by the nation itself, and the undead of Arcnus Mortis are already terrible abominations against creations already: a job well done.
The most common type of Quori are the Tsucora Quori, and are mechanically differing from those found in the Eberron campaign setting book. The differences are as follows;
Medium Outsider (Chaos, Evil, Extraplanar, Psionic, Quori)
Environment: The Far Realm and Tanzen
Alignment: Usually neutral evil
Aboleths
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y265/Nny2/Aboleth.jpg
Some earthly scholars say that life as we know it originated from the sea, that near mindless fish and bacteria were the original mortals. What they don't know is that they were more intelligent than they thought...
The original race of creatures were those created by the oldest of the Old Gods before even the gods of mortals even began to exist. This race was known as the Aboleths. Swimming in the eternal dark sea aside their old masters, and thought to be the dominators of existence, until after a millenia of evolution was wasted when the mortal gods created the land, the sky and the mortal races that dwelt above the sea.
The Aboleths, having only centuries earlier gotten minds strong enough to rival those of humanity, were endlessly bitter and angry about this development and thought it their one duty to undo the bastardizations of life known as humans, elves, dwarves and the rest of their humanoid kin; creatures too alien in the Aboleth's eyes to have a right to exist.
Aboleths still dwell in the deepest parts of the oceans and occasionally swim to shores of mortal societies to wreak havoc and do away with as many horrible abominations as possible before slinking back away to the darkness of their master's sea.
The only difference between these Aboleths and the ones in the Monster Manual is the alignment entry, which is now 'usually chaotic evil'. Many Aboleths will take levels in psionic or arcane casting classes to improve upon their already alien powers and make themselves better weapons against humanity.
Many Aboleths are just as embittered over the existence of the Illithids, who were given the ability to walk among the living on legs as well as swim in the depths with their masters. These Aboleths are rare, and most see Illithids as a third side of a non-euclidean coin to which they do not share, but it's the same warped coin all the same.
Illithids
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/lom_gallery/88146.jpg
The Aboleths were created as the original race, created before walking on land was even imaginable, and once the gods created the land-walking mortal races there was little they could do to do away with them... The Illithid race was the solution to do away with the horrible sapients.
The Illithids were first spawned as amphibious parasites which would wriggle onto the land and wait for humanoids to walk nearby, where they could be mentally stunned and taken over to become fully mobile Illithids. It wasn't long before these full Illithids could create and take these illithidspawn larvae and implant them into humanoids.
As they were, they were engines of destruction, walking across the land and destroying and consuming mortal minds. The utter will and determination of mankind was not to be laughed at, though, as due to their primative nature they fought the Illithids against all odds and by chance they won and drove the Illithids to near extinction. The Illithids now exist as raving cultists of their old masters and as dwindling executioners of mortal races.
Spawn of Madness
Among the races most tied to the creatures of madness, there are those created by those spawned directly from the old gods beyond the sea. Creatures such as beholders, symbionts, mimics, chokers and gibbering mouthers are all the twisted experiments of daelkyrs, illithids or aboleths countless eons ago. Other creatures are vicious beasts that did nothing more than spring forth from the flesh of ancient daelkyr and aboleths in their dying state. These creatures include chuuls, ethereal filchers, ethereal marauders, and delvers.
What few people know is that what humanity considers as normal creatures are the long-devolved experiments of daelkyrkind. Octopi, crabs, and almost every creature from the darkest depths of the ocean are the side projects and throw-away experiments of these mad creators. Few believe that the creatures they eat at sea-side restaurants are actually terrible creatures of madness.
Beholders
http://i.imgur.com/UYGHDUn.png
Tyrant aberrations of the farthest reaches of the Underdark. Beholders are one of the prize experiments of daelkyrkind, with flesh taken from the flesh of some unknown elder god and twisted into an aberrant madspawn.
Chaos Beasts
http://wizards.com/dnd/images/ca_gallery/85429.jpg
The first great civilization to arise on the World was that of the Azif, a race of sorcerers and mystics who flourished before any of the lesser mortal races had begun building their own primitive shelters. Their empire was built among the clouds, great islands of crystals wrought by magic and set in flight above the dull earth. The Azif had great knowledge of both arcana and occultism, possessing spells of power unmatched by any modern magic, but still they hungered for more power.
And so it came to pass that the Sorcerer-King of the Azif called up the Great Old One known as the Crawling Chaos, Nyarlathotep. The King bartered with Nyarlathotep, promising him living sacrifices and artifacts of great power if the Great Old One would use his almighty command of chaos to meddle with the laws of magic, releasing the Azif mages from the rules and limitations of arcana. The Old One gladly agreed to the pact, teaching the entire Azif empire the secrets of chaos magic.
And so the Azif became as living gods. With Nyarlathotep’s chaos magic, they could bend all of nature to their will, meddle with the fabric of time, create new forms of life to serve them. But, as with all wishes granted by the Crawling Chaos, the magic of the Azif had its price. Chaos magic warped those who invoked it, slowly twisting their flesh and shattering their minds. The Azif, over decades, become depraved and degenerate, and soon their empire had fallen to ruin. An arcane civil war broke out, and shapeshifting assassins killed the Sorcerer-King by transforming themselves into a panoply of cancers, and infesting his flesh. The crystal islands of the Azif were shattered, their remnants raining upon the ground. The crystals, tainted with chaos magic, seeped into the ground, from the craters of their impact grew forth the Kadashim, the largest mountain range of Tanzen.
The Azif, however, did not die in this apocalypse. By the time their empire fell, the had become too mutated and warped to die. Their flesh had become unstable and ever-mutable, like a constantly-evolving cancer; their magic sublimated into powering their apotheosis into exemplars of raw chaos. Some remain amid the Kadashim mountains, making their lairs deep underground; others wandered through (or were abducted into) portals into Limbo and the Far Realms gouged into reality by the uncontrolled release of chaos magic. Mortals still whisper legends of the Azif, though they call them by a different name: chaos beasts, shapeshifting horrors and the spawn of Nyarlathotep.
Chuuls
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/MM35_gallery/MM35_PG35b.jpg
Even great elder things have parasites that dwell within them, and chuuls are what used to be those very parasites. Countless eons ago, creatures that resembled great and terrible chuuls that fed off the energies of the elder gods that ignored the physics and sciences imposed upon the world by the gods of mortals. They drew on this power for an unknown time, for a time that was not time as we know it... they were nothing compared to the gods, but they were beings of incredible power still. With more power they drew, the greater they became. They swelled with entropic powers in the depths of limitless ocean, and soon their parasitic bodies spawned lesser creatures, lesser parasites, and even many of the creatures we know today, including shrimp and scorpions.
They fed on their flesh and power, until the elder gods fell from the earth into unknown territories and managed to leave most of their chuul parasites behind, left in the harsh physical reality of the world's sea. Most of these vicious beasts survived, but harsh exposure to real-world physics and strict concepts devolved them into creatures similar to the normal animals of the sea. You are hard-pressed to find a chuul that does not resent this fact, forced to live as a normal beast instead of a state of physical chaos as they once lived partially as.
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y265/Nny2/Runes.jpg
A Nation of the Dead (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=38868) campaign setting supplement
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y265/Nny2/Cthulhu.jpg
The first things that were, were creatures of chaos so pure and volatile that the greatest of which could exist in ways imperceivable by mortals and even many gods. Yog-Sothoth, Nyarlathotep and Great Cthulhu are but a few of these old gods of the depth and of realities beyond reality. Their influence has been due to many things, creatures sprouting from them by pure chance, creatures to dwell in their dark depths and creatures to corrupt the living of the land.
Aboleths, Quori, the Illithid race and the mighty practitioners of madness; the Daelkyr are all directly spawned of the will of the Old Gods and most have at least a vestigial knowledge of their masters. Some of these creatures have spawned their own creations of madness and twisted chaos, the daelkyr race being among the most 'creative' of the races of the Old Gods.
Beholders, chuuls, chaos beasts, and most creatures of the sea with a tentacle or alien shape were originally the creations of the Daelkyr, quori or illithids. Not many a mortal will be able to look upon a common octopus on the coast and know that it may have once been in a boiling pot of a Daelkyr's mind...
In Nation of the Dead, the aberrant races of raw madness have some differences in comparison to those in other settings and books. The biggest overall difference is that most of these creatures are usually chaotic, finding little order in their warped minds and twisted biology. Another similarity many have is the ability to thrive in salty water, like their dark lords in the depths of the Material Plane.
Daelkyr
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/MotP/Far_Realm_Entity.jpg
Heironeous and Aeomon have their angels, Orcus and Levakross have their demons, the Old Gods have their imprecious Daelkyr. In the very loose 'hierarchy' of the Old Gods, the Daelkyrs act as angels of entropy and madness, some defending this cause and some simply making the world a slightly more maddening place. Most Daelkyr live in places such as Limbo, and other planes of chaos, though very rarely chaotic good planes. It is said that an endless brood of Daelkyr larva exist in the Far Realm, but none have ever chosen to figure if this is myth of fact.
There exist many Daelkyr corruptors on the Material Plane, on each continent and many islands that surround them. On Tanzen, there are 'angels of madness' existing in secret places, some even speculate there is at least one of which under the city of Dawn of Glory. Most that are known live in mountains and underground structures, booby-trapped for anyone wishing to maintain a balanced psyche. On Arcnus Mortis there are a rare few undead daelkyr, and the only Daelkyrs known to exist there live exclusively on Mertion under the dominion of the insane alhoon lord that rules over the land. On Shello there are a few daelkyr, which exist there to go through with twisted, horrible experiments in silence and away from the annoying spearheads and smiting spells of humans and the like.
In the Nation of the Dead setting, there are a few mechanical differences compared to the daelkyr of the Eberron campaign setting. The Daelkyr are as normal except as follows;
Medium Outsider (Chaos, Extraplanar)
Environment: Any chaotic plane or the material plane
Alignment: Usually chaotic evil
Additionally, the Daelkyr as just as varied as one might imagine, so there are daelkyr that look barely human, and many with very different symbionts and magical items and most of the most powerful Daelkyr have class levels. Daelkyr's favored classes are ones that help them create new, imaginative items and creatures, such as wizard and artificer. Many Daelkyr that don't wish to live a solitary existence will have a cadre of abominations at their beck and call, and an infamous few have made themselves out to be gods to cults made up of insane humans and illithids.
Quori
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/moe_gallery/91472.jpg
Demons, devils, fiends of all sorts and a good deal of mortal ghosts all have one thing in common; a power and lust to take control of the bodies of mortals, both living and dead. What these creatures don't know is that this ability to take someone's body as their own when they have no place doing so was the invention of the mad race of the Quori. While the Daelkyr have a varied ability to corrupt and warp people, and even do other things if they wish, the Quori have almost a sole purpose; to take control and spread madness in the bodies of mortals. They enjoy being able to walk through a human hamlet unknown before poisoning a well, freeing mental patience or convincing children to do corrupt, craven things but this is impossible to do in their normal bodies; it's hard to hide a Quori in a human village. Many Quori do roam in their own bodies across the material plane, occasionally warping the minds of people through fear instead of their normal corruption.
A vast majority of Quori inhabiting mortal bodies exist on Tanzen, seeing as there are few lives still on Shello that aren't being warped by the nation itself, and the undead of Arcnus Mortis are already terrible abominations against creations already: a job well done.
The most common type of Quori are the Tsucora Quori, and are mechanically differing from those found in the Eberron campaign setting book. The differences are as follows;
Medium Outsider (Chaos, Evil, Extraplanar, Psionic, Quori)
Environment: The Far Realm and Tanzen
Alignment: Usually neutral evil
Aboleths
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y265/Nny2/Aboleth.jpg
Some earthly scholars say that life as we know it originated from the sea, that near mindless fish and bacteria were the original mortals. What they don't know is that they were more intelligent than they thought...
The original race of creatures were those created by the oldest of the Old Gods before even the gods of mortals even began to exist. This race was known as the Aboleths. Swimming in the eternal dark sea aside their old masters, and thought to be the dominators of existence, until after a millenia of evolution was wasted when the mortal gods created the land, the sky and the mortal races that dwelt above the sea.
The Aboleths, having only centuries earlier gotten minds strong enough to rival those of humanity, were endlessly bitter and angry about this development and thought it their one duty to undo the bastardizations of life known as humans, elves, dwarves and the rest of their humanoid kin; creatures too alien in the Aboleth's eyes to have a right to exist.
Aboleths still dwell in the deepest parts of the oceans and occasionally swim to shores of mortal societies to wreak havoc and do away with as many horrible abominations as possible before slinking back away to the darkness of their master's sea.
The only difference between these Aboleths and the ones in the Monster Manual is the alignment entry, which is now 'usually chaotic evil'. Many Aboleths will take levels in psionic or arcane casting classes to improve upon their already alien powers and make themselves better weapons against humanity.
Many Aboleths are just as embittered over the existence of the Illithids, who were given the ability to walk among the living on legs as well as swim in the depths with their masters. These Aboleths are rare, and most see Illithids as a third side of a non-euclidean coin to which they do not share, but it's the same warped coin all the same.
Illithids
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/lom_gallery/88146.jpg
The Aboleths were created as the original race, created before walking on land was even imaginable, and once the gods created the land-walking mortal races there was little they could do to do away with them... The Illithid race was the solution to do away with the horrible sapients.
The Illithids were first spawned as amphibious parasites which would wriggle onto the land and wait for humanoids to walk nearby, where they could be mentally stunned and taken over to become fully mobile Illithids. It wasn't long before these full Illithids could create and take these illithidspawn larvae and implant them into humanoids.
As they were, they were engines of destruction, walking across the land and destroying and consuming mortal minds. The utter will and determination of mankind was not to be laughed at, though, as due to their primative nature they fought the Illithids against all odds and by chance they won and drove the Illithids to near extinction. The Illithids now exist as raving cultists of their old masters and as dwindling executioners of mortal races.
Spawn of Madness
Among the races most tied to the creatures of madness, there are those created by those spawned directly from the old gods beyond the sea. Creatures such as beholders, symbionts, mimics, chokers and gibbering mouthers are all the twisted experiments of daelkyrs, illithids or aboleths countless eons ago. Other creatures are vicious beasts that did nothing more than spring forth from the flesh of ancient daelkyr and aboleths in their dying state. These creatures include chuuls, ethereal filchers, ethereal marauders, and delvers.
What few people know is that what humanity considers as normal creatures are the long-devolved experiments of daelkyrkind. Octopi, crabs, and almost every creature from the darkest depths of the ocean are the side projects and throw-away experiments of these mad creators. Few believe that the creatures they eat at sea-side restaurants are actually terrible creatures of madness.
Beholders
http://i.imgur.com/UYGHDUn.png
Tyrant aberrations of the farthest reaches of the Underdark. Beholders are one of the prize experiments of daelkyrkind, with flesh taken from the flesh of some unknown elder god and twisted into an aberrant madspawn.
Chaos Beasts
http://wizards.com/dnd/images/ca_gallery/85429.jpg
The first great civilization to arise on the World was that of the Azif, a race of sorcerers and mystics who flourished before any of the lesser mortal races had begun building their own primitive shelters. Their empire was built among the clouds, great islands of crystals wrought by magic and set in flight above the dull earth. The Azif had great knowledge of both arcana and occultism, possessing spells of power unmatched by any modern magic, but still they hungered for more power.
And so it came to pass that the Sorcerer-King of the Azif called up the Great Old One known as the Crawling Chaos, Nyarlathotep. The King bartered with Nyarlathotep, promising him living sacrifices and artifacts of great power if the Great Old One would use his almighty command of chaos to meddle with the laws of magic, releasing the Azif mages from the rules and limitations of arcana. The Old One gladly agreed to the pact, teaching the entire Azif empire the secrets of chaos magic.
And so the Azif became as living gods. With Nyarlathotep’s chaos magic, they could bend all of nature to their will, meddle with the fabric of time, create new forms of life to serve them. But, as with all wishes granted by the Crawling Chaos, the magic of the Azif had its price. Chaos magic warped those who invoked it, slowly twisting their flesh and shattering their minds. The Azif, over decades, become depraved and degenerate, and soon their empire had fallen to ruin. An arcane civil war broke out, and shapeshifting assassins killed the Sorcerer-King by transforming themselves into a panoply of cancers, and infesting his flesh. The crystal islands of the Azif were shattered, their remnants raining upon the ground. The crystals, tainted with chaos magic, seeped into the ground, from the craters of their impact grew forth the Kadashim, the largest mountain range of Tanzen.
The Azif, however, did not die in this apocalypse. By the time their empire fell, the had become too mutated and warped to die. Their flesh had become unstable and ever-mutable, like a constantly-evolving cancer; their magic sublimated into powering their apotheosis into exemplars of raw chaos. Some remain amid the Kadashim mountains, making their lairs deep underground; others wandered through (or were abducted into) portals into Limbo and the Far Realms gouged into reality by the uncontrolled release of chaos magic. Mortals still whisper legends of the Azif, though they call them by a different name: chaos beasts, shapeshifting horrors and the spawn of Nyarlathotep.
Chuuls
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/MM35_gallery/MM35_PG35b.jpg
Even great elder things have parasites that dwell within them, and chuuls are what used to be those very parasites. Countless eons ago, creatures that resembled great and terrible chuuls that fed off the energies of the elder gods that ignored the physics and sciences imposed upon the world by the gods of mortals. They drew on this power for an unknown time, for a time that was not time as we know it... they were nothing compared to the gods, but they were beings of incredible power still. With more power they drew, the greater they became. They swelled with entropic powers in the depths of limitless ocean, and soon their parasitic bodies spawned lesser creatures, lesser parasites, and even many of the creatures we know today, including shrimp and scorpions.
They fed on their flesh and power, until the elder gods fell from the earth into unknown territories and managed to leave most of their chuul parasites behind, left in the harsh physical reality of the world's sea. Most of these vicious beasts survived, but harsh exposure to real-world physics and strict concepts devolved them into creatures similar to the normal animals of the sea. You are hard-pressed to find a chuul that does not resent this fact, forced to live as a normal beast instead of a state of physical chaos as they once lived partially as.