In-Universe Conspiracy Theories

[Mr. Crowbar]

I'd love help fleshing out a list of conspiracy theories for my new character, an ultra-prepared survivalist type, to spout off occasionally. Things that are out there but mostly harmless, more flat earth than letter-after-p. Conspiracies from other games would be fun to hear about, too!

For reference, this game is in a homebrew setting, but mostly seems to work on Forgotten Realms lore. We're on a desert & mountains continent with a good chunk of society being underground. Gonna be a focus on the underdark and mindflayers & other abberations. My character has a beef with mindflayers/illithids in particular.

What I got so far:

• Illithids control all the monarchies and are manipulating society to become the subservient basis of their new empire. Why bother raising humanoid fodder themselves when they can replace the brains of the highest ranking people?
• Rust monsters are an illithid plot to make humanoids helpless by making them reliant on metal weapons and equipment and then destroying them.
• There’s no way birds can be regular beasts. If they’re not monstrosities or some other creature they’re just a cover up for magic or psionic spy constructs.
• Metallic dragons are more likely to be evil than chromatics - they just use their polymorph abilities so it doesn’t get back to them. Case in point, the Silver Syndicate. It’s totally headed by an actual Silver dragon posing as a dragonborn.

[TyGuy]

Shape-shifting lizard people run the world -> shape shifting illithid, that shift into lizardfolk, run the world.

The world elite are intentionality and covertly dumbing down the masses to create a subservient people -> illithid are intentionality and covertly increasing the intelligence of the masses to create a better food source.

[NecessaryWeevil]

I'd love help fleshing out a list of conspiracy theories for my new character, an ultra-prepared survivalist type, to spout off occasionally. Things that are out there but mostly harmless, more flat earth than letter-after-p. Conspiracies from other games would be fun to hear about, too!

Halflings are just people who had themselves permanently Reduced to save on food, accommodation and clothing expenses.
Lizardfolk society is run by a secret cabal of polymorphed humans.

[Naanomi]

Demons live underground, beneath the Underdark; and Celestials live in castles on top of the highest clouds... people who talk about other Planes of Existence are insane

[Droppeddead]

• If you shave the head of an elf, they will die.
• Halflings have a hivemind and are secretely humanitarians (as in, eats humans).
• Dwarves have long bears to hide a third eye on the necks.
• Dragons are secretely in cahoots with the goldmining industry to keep gold scarce as to not devalue it.
• The rulers of the land could actually wipe out all evils of the land if they wanted it but they need to keep the plebs in check. That's why they allow monsters to roam the countryside and encourage crazy murder hobos to kill them. If you allow the lower classes to dream that one day you too can be a famous hero you won't mind your dreary life as much. And how come we never see those monsters attack the royal palace? Sure, a prince(ss) gets kidnapped every once in a while but somehow there is always a hero in shining armour with a plucky sidekick who rescues them- Coincidence? I think not!

[Wraith]

There is no such thing as a gnome - they're all just outcasts from halfling society, and the word "gnome" was made up to catch other species off guard and help them infiltrate their societies, which they promptly blow up with magical and technological "experiments".

Magic - ALL magic - is gifted to spellcasters by Patrons, whether they know it or not. All of magic is basically a pyramid scheme.

Healing Potions are addictive, but Big Alchemy covers it up by taking the antidote and coating it onto gold coins. You *could* get clean any time you wanted, but adventuring for coins means you need more healing potions, which means you need more gold coins, which means.....

There are at least 5 different Wizards calling themselves Elminster, but Volo is a fictional person invented to sell more fake treasure maps and mass-produced 'guides' to unsuspecting punters.

There is no such thing as a Paladin. Anyone who says they are, is just a Hexblade with a slightly different flavour and they're part of a conspiracy to spread the influence of the infernal dimensions.

Every Temple has a secret handshake or codeword that, if you know what it is, will get them to cast healing spells on you for free. The code changes every day so only the initiated can take advantage of it, but YOU have figured out the pattern and you just need to find the right Cleric to say it to.....

[Hand_of_Vecna]

Illithids are time travelers from the dying universe of the future (this was their canon lore in 3e). Theory; they evolved from the human elite classes the same elite classes they are now guiding to ensure their own existence and manipulating the world to keep in power.

The Wall of the Faithless is a lie the gods tell to keep mortals in line. Souls of worshipers are consumed as food. To some extent the Good dieties are just playing a role because a large portion of mortals couldn't be swayed to choose an evil dirty if those.were the only option, but between "good" and evil dieties the vast majority will buy in to the system.

All spells are either permanently destroying the native energies of the world (this will lead to a Dark Sun type setting) or is introducing alien energies to the world (leading towards an apocalypse of mutation and unpredictable physics).

[da newt]

The God's created the world for their entertainment only. We are all just game pieces in their grand royal rumble - they just sit up there and place bets on which of us will die next, and our fates are all determined by the roll of the dice.


Humans are the simplest / least evolved of all the humanoids - true sheeple.


If you bite a Mind Flayer you become a powerful were-flayer, and Mind Flayers can't resist a funky beat - you can put them in a trance with dance music.

[Naanomi]

The God's created the world for their entertainment only. We are all just game pieces in their grand royal rumble - they just sit up there and place bets on which of us will die next, and our fates are all determined by the roll of the dice.

Not the 'Gods', but that is pretty much the cannon lore of the ultimate creators of the Great Wheel Cosmology... all for the entertainment or to indulge in creative expression of powerful creators far removed from reality as we percieve it, a very 'lila/लीला' ultimate concept

[kenposan]

Gnomes are decedents of aliens from another world; that's why the are so good at tinkering.

[Naanomi]

Gnomes are decedents of aliens from another world; that's why the are so good at tinkering.

Also potentially true on some Prime worlds, Kyrnnish tinker gnomes are prolific spelljammers

[Imbalance]

There's no such thing as magic. It's all done with smoke and mirrors.

A beholder is, in fact, a lighter than air craft piloted remotely by fey.

The world is round, but not a spheroid. It's a repeating pattern of landmasses that are nearly identical, but if you travel long and far enough in a continuous direction you'll notice subtle differences in the pattern and become increasingly likely to run into a copy of yourself.

Dragons can't fly - their body mass is too great for their wings to support. The reason they hoard precious metals is to promote a sort of electrical field that holds them aloft in the magnetic layers high in the air.

It's not that there are so many giant beasts; it's that most of us are smaller than we realize.

I have it on good authority that a cyclops is really a nothic that got waterlogged. Or was a nothic a cyclops that shriveled up in the sun? Either way, it's true, I swear.

[Sigreid]

The goddess of love and beauty is actually manic-depressive and is also the goddess of torture and suffering. The goddess herself is not aware of this!

[Randel]

Leomund intentionally designed his Secret Chest spell in a way to con people out of their valuables. It's said that after 60 days there is a 5% chance each day that the spell fails and the chest becomes "irrevocably lost". Why would one of the greatest wizards ever publish a faulty spell like that when we have clear evidence of other extradimensional magical effects lasting thousands of years with no issue? Obviously, he made it that way as a trap to get people to hide their valuables in these chests, have them 'accidentally' get lost in the etherial plane when the spell fails, and then Leomund can get the valuables for himself! Obviously there's some hidden dungeon somewhere in the Etherial plane where all these missing chests end up.

The same happens for any items lost to a punctured bag of holding. Someone on the Etherial Plane gathers up all the supposedly lost loot for themselves.

[Segev]

• The Open Lord of Waterdeep is actually a Thayan Agent.
• The Seventh Layer of Mount Celestia is actually a trap; that's why nobody ever returns from there.
• There is a city of secret organizations that secretly run the world, hiding behind numerous hidden doors that magically take you there. Don't believe me? Try mentioning the name of their secret ruler in a few places with lots of movers and shakers, and watch how many people shiver at the mention of "the Lady of Pain."
• Check everyone carefully for signs of snake scales, eyes, forked tongues, or other features. Snake-people who worship couatl (who aren't as noble as they pretend to be) disguise themselves imperfectly as normal men and women to infiltrate demihuman society and manipulate them for their own nefarious purposes.
• Gold isn't actually rare; dwarves and dragons conspire to collect it to keep it artificially scarce so its value stays up.
• Humans are actually half-orc, half-elves.
• "Werewolves" and other lycanthropes aren't real; they're all just murderous druids faking it to get away with their crimes.
• Magic is a closely protected secret by jealous wizards. It's actually really easy to understand, but they hunt down anybody who shares it with people not sworn to secrecy and to pretending they need those complicated books full of gibberish.

[NecessaryWeevil]

The goddess of love and beauty is actually manic-depressive and is also the goddess of torture and suffering. The goddess herself is not aware of this!

I like this idea! I wonder what the consequences would be.

[Doug Lampert]

The Burning Hate.

[KorvinStarmast]

[*]"Werewolves" and other lycanthropes aren't real; they're all just murderous druids faking it to get away with their crimes.

Arrgh, Segev's on to me, time to leave town.

[Sigreid]

I like this idea! I wonder what the consequences would be.

I'm thinking a divine Fight Club could happen.

[Corran]

Did you know that it is extremelly easy to hypnotize spiders of the Underdark with music? Yes. Apparently all it takes is a few notes or a little singing, and the spider will do your bidding. That's why music is forbidden in the Underdark, and there's a chance you'll be cursed if you play songs or sing while in there. If the drow dont catch you first. It is said that they can hear singing from miles away.

The Underdark started out as a mining operation by dwarves. All these endless tunnels and caverns? None of it is natural. All carved by a dwarven pickaxe. Eventually the elves had to intervene, cause if the dwarves were allowed to dig any further, the intergrity of the world's surface would be compromised. And now elf, gnome and spider are trying to put it back together, to repair the place, keep it sturdy. And the monsters? All brought down there. To keep those damned dwarves away. But eventually the dwarves lost interest, the monsters got out of control, and that's the Underdark for you today. It's good though to know your history. And if you ever find yourself down there, just be careful not to break anything.

[Naanomi]

[*]"Werewolves" and other lycanthropes aren't real; they're all just murderous druids faking it to get away with their crimes.

You got it all wrong, man... there is no such thing as Druids, it is all lycanthropes trying to pass as harmless and helpful. Have you ever seen a druid on a full moon? Me neither man, me neither

[Segev]

Arrgh, Segev's on to me, time to leave town.

Waaaaiiiit. ::eyes your avatar:: I knew the "no metal armor" thing was a smokescreen!

You got it all wrong, man... there is no such thing as Druids, it is all lycanthropes trying to pass as harmless and helpful. Have you ever seen a druid on a full moon? Me neither man, me neither

That's what they WANT you to think, man!

[iTreeby]

The Burning Hate.

To elaborate, this was a conspiracy based on a 3.5 cleric of pelor stat block that had an evil spell in its spells list. Mechanically this could only happen if the character was evil and worshiped an evil God,

So the conspiracy is that pelore is secretly evil and people who believe this conspiracy call pelor "the burning hate".

[Naanomi]

To elaborate, this was a conspiracy based on a 3.5 cleric of pelor stat block that had an evil spell in its spells list. Mechanically this could only happen if the character was evil and worshiped an evil God,

So the conspiracy is that pelore is secretly evil and people who believe this conspiracy call pelor "the burning hate".

In universe and cannon is the Harlot's Coin Conspiracy along he same lines, yes?

[blackjack50]

I'd love help fleshing out a list of conspiracy theories for my new character, an ultra-prepared survivalist type, to spout off occasionally. Things that are out there but mostly harmless, more flat earth than letter-after-p. Conspiracies from other games would be fun to hear about, too!

For reference, this game is in a homebrew setting, but mostly seems to work on Forgotten Realms lore. We're on a desert & mountains continent with a good chunk of society being underground. Gonna be a focus on the underdark and mindflayers & other abberations. My character has a beef with mindflayers/illithids in particular.

What I got so far:

• Illithids control all the monarchies and are manipulating society to become the subservient basis of their new empire. Why bother raising humanoid fodder themselves when they can replace the brains of the highest ranking people?
• Rust monsters are an illithid plot to make humanoids helpless by making them reliant on metal weapons and equipment and then destroying them.
• There’s no way birds can be regular beasts. If they’re not monstrosities or some other creature they’re just a cover up for magic or psionic spy constructs.
• Metallic dragons are more likely to be evil than chromatics - they just use their polymorph abilities so it doesn’t get back to them. Case in point, the Silver Syndicate. It’s totally headed by an actual Silver dragon posing as a dragonborn.

The world is actually a figment of someone’s imagination or there is some lone individual pulling people’s strings and setting events in motion without anyone’s knowledge!!!

[Rater202]

All True dragonsa are infact part of a single massive superorganism united by a hivemind so complex that mere mortal minds instinctively block out all signs of it o n the rare occasion that they make psychic contact with the collective.

All conflict between various dragons, either on the individual scale or between factions and varieties, as well as all other aspects of dragon society, are 1 part deception to prevent people from realizing what's happening and track down the controlling intelligence, which is more vulnerable than most of the drones, one part a roleplay done to entertain itself, and one part attempt to weed out it's weakest drones to allow it's power to increase over recessive generations via Darwinism: Only the strongest dragons surviving to reproduce means each successive generation has slightly stronger average levels of power.

[noob]

Commoners still exists because monsters pretend to fight commoners but they never truly do by fear of chicken powered annihilation of the entire universe.
Due to monsters being really dangerous there is a non aggression pact that was signed between the commoners and the monsters: commoners pretends to die against monsters to keep hidden the dangerousness of commoners but the monsters do not have the right to kill a commoner but they can steal their property(in order to avoid excessive anger) and in return commoners do not use chicken based annihilation but they can still ask adventurers to kill monsters(although the adventurers would still kill the monsters so it does not changes much).
Nobles are completely unaware of commoners and monsters being under some sort of partial truce and then "mysteriously" they get replaced by monsters frequently: it is because monsters do not want a chicken powered war to happen against the nobles which would deal catastrophic damage to the entire world.

[Fable Wright]

Druids invented vampires and their whole anti-undead schtick is trying to cover up their crimes.

There's no such thing as Wizards. There are however deluded warlocks who think that their powers are gained from books, who have burned out the memory of their own patron in sheer horror.

The most powerful being in the multiverse is a council of six squirrels with a Ring of Levitation. They bear a robe and a mask, to make them appear almost human. If you touch their shadow, you will be flayed alive.

Asmodeus exists.

[Tanarii]

They're no such thing as gods, they're all just people who found a magical artifact that lets them channel magical power to followers. The reason they're so powerful and immortal is they get a slice of both the casters and any targets souls any time a "divine" spell is cast.

[Rater202]

Good and Evil, as well as Law and Choas, don't exist.

At least, not as cosmic forces.

The entire thing is a pyramid scheme by the forces of the outerplanes in order to feed on mortal belief and mortal souls for power, with even the weakest of beings getting a cut.

All these divine cosmic conflicts are staged.