A Tournament of Cosmic Propotions! (Immortal's Handbook Rules)
- Thread starter Neoiceshroom
- Start date
Neo, slight change of plans.
I'm not really going to be able to focus on this until after the 9th (when school gets out), I just have too much going on at the moment and I'm already overstressed. I can still give input on things and such, just can't really do stats and writeups at the moment.
Sorry about that.
I'm not really going to be able to focus on this until after the 9th (when school gets out), I just have too much going on at the moment and I'm already overstressed. I can still give input on things and such, just can't really do stats and writeups at the moment.
Sorry about that.
Why oh why did you have to choose Pelor? -sigh- this is gonna be a long retort.
Back when I was still a lurker on the Dicefreaks boards (long time ago, when they were under a different domain) one of the community members made an interesting post. The following italicized text was not written by me, it was written by a dicefreak whose name is unfortunately unavailable to me. I really wish I knew who it was so I could give credit to them but unfortunately I cannot.
On the evil of Pelor
Pelor is commonly thought to be the near embodiment of Neutral Good. As a sun god, he is thought to be the enemy of the undead and the author of life through his gifts. He is also a god of Strength, for he advocates that the weak must be protected by those capable.
However, recent revelations have given rise to a sect of thought (some label it an outright heresy) that Pelor may not be what he claims to be. A passage in the Book of Exalted Deeds states that Pelor refused to send his paladin a sunfly swarm to destroy a vampire that had murdered his family, while the paladin was out doing Pelor’s work. In the same section, a CG god named Kord visited a plague upon his worshipper who was defeated on the battlefield. Speculations abound as to why Pelor refused his faithful paladin and range from defending the god (Pelor couldn’t allow himself to stoop to the mortal’s level of hate) to accusing the god (Pelor wanted to see his paladin suffer). No concrete answer could be found, but for those who thought it was a poor choice on Pelor’s part, it led to a path of horrific discovery after discovery.
Further investigation revealed that the Lord High Priest of Pelor denounced her deity and the faith. It also said that the secret texts of a prominent religion, recently discovered, call into question the church’s real goal, its actual origin and the agenda of its god.
Moving on the path of the malconvoker was introduced. This path requires a non-evil alignment and deals in the summoning of demons. A quote from the iconic malconvoker: “Take him my slaves! Drag his soul back to your dark masters!” - Argyll Te’Shea, servant of Pelor and malconvoker. The summoning of demons has always been one of the vilest acts. The Book of Vile Darkness states that Consorting with Fiends is evil. “Allowing a fiend to exist, let alone summoning one or helping one is clearly evil”. More minor sections deal with ‘casting evil spells’ and ‘damning or harming souls’, both of which are clearly present within the Pelor-sponsored malconvoker. One could very well suspect this path to be nothing more than a thinly disguised trap for the unwary and their souls.
The grey guard, which some may note “hey, that’s just a slightly lighter version of the blackguard!” has also arisen in this day and age. Indeed. Another step into the Lower Planes, this one is aimed at paladins rather than wizards and clerics. While loremasters have been unable to tie the grey guard directly to Pelor as of yet, it seems that the taint caused by his masquerade is growing to touch even the sincere good aligned gods.
Looking at the relics that Pelor sponsors shows another side of this dark story. The dawnstar, if sundered or broken, deals massive damage to all other creatures (aside from the wielder) within a 30 foot radius. Clearly, this power was inserted with no thought given to the cost for the wielder’s allies. The original dawnstars were given to 4 solars who rescued one of Pelor’s paladins from Baator (Known as Perdition in some texts). A question arises then: what exactly was the paladin doing in Hell? If he had died and went to Hell, that suggests some oddity concerning his faith and alignment. If he ended in Hell due to his own dealings with the devils (which are endorsed by the Church of Pelor, don’t forget), then it seems that Pelor was flouting the Pact Primeval, an ancient law enacted before Pelor’s time. It seems that there are only a few possible answers. One, Pelor is truly of Hell, and his worshipper ended there because of his faith. Two, the paladin ended up in Hell of his own actions and Pelor gave no thought to the stability of the cosmos in order to bring him back. (Probably out of fear for what information torture would bring to the paladin’s tongue.) Three, Pelor sponsors LE paladins, known as paladins of tyranny (in a complete twisting of the term paladin) because he is a vile god of evil.
The Inquisitor Bracers are another magic item sponsored by Pelor. These bracers justify the use of force on innocent people in order to sort them out from undead. You can’t use the power of the bracers with a touch attack (to see if the positive energy perhaps burns the undead). You must swing your weapon with all force at the target, and hope that the positive energy undoes any mistake you might make. What a sick idea. A paladin on a different world once had a similar idea for dealing with undead. His name was Prince Arthas.
Pelor’s final relic is a sun shard, which is fairly simple, it fires searing light at two targets. This isn’t damning in and of itself, but consider that while other good gods (Elonna and Yondalla for example) offered relics that aided mortals, Pelor’s are all intended to destroy. This is of course, not a huge point against Pelor, but when added onto the mountain of evidence, seems to be just one more confirmation.
One adventuring group, headed by a tough talking thug named Dyson, followed the path against Pelor when they discovered something amiss within his church. Connections were drawn between Pelor and Baal. It should be noted however, that they began following this path of discovery prior to the lore found in the Book of Exalted Deeds. They were the first to see the truth and were shunned for it at the time. Those of us who have had our eyes opened to the light of the Burning Hate owe them a debt of gratitude.
Another adventuring group, this one composed of angels, were betrayed by their god into the hands of Lixer, Prince of Hell. They were broken, one by one. One was twisted into a demon, one lost faith in the path of the Celestial Compact, one was blasted from existence and the last was petrified and stands still in the Court of a Lord of Hell. The god was not named, but he was a god of the sun. Again, this story predates the discovery in the Book of Exalted Deeds.
One final loremaster has added information. Alratan was the first sage to bring up evil uses for positive energy and good uses for negative energy. While his study does not accuse Pelor of anything (or indeed, deal with Pelor at all), it does point to an alternate path of positive energy, with which Pelor is definitely associated. (Positive energy, not the alternate path) This is important because many dubious (and some slack jawed) people have pointed towards Pelor’s association with the sun and positive energy as proof of his inherent goodness.
It must be noted that nothing is proven. Pelor still sits in Elysium. No good aligned gods have moved against him, nor have they chilled alliances with the Sun God. It may be this is a smear campaign engineered by fiends, or simply the overactive imaginations of mortals. However, the above presented are facts, not fiction. Draw your own conclusions, but think twice before you choose the True Believer feat in Pelor’s name.
Naturally as one might expect on a board like Dicefreaks this single post sparked HUGE controversy. Many of the Dicefreaks chose to simply ignore this mountain of evidence outright and continued to run Pelor as a truly Neutral Good god of the Sun. That's their choice and an understandable one which I completely respect. I on the other hand, being the open-minded individual that I am, decided to accept the evidence presented above and turned it into an adventure. The Character I have statted out on the previous page, Andrew Sendant, was originally Paladin of Pelor before he chose to worship Bahumat. Andrew Sendant and his Wife Amastacia Sendant were the ones who actually forced Pelor out of Elysium and revealed the sun-god for what he truly was (in my universe at least).
To explain how Andrew played a part in all of this is an even longer story than this post. If you truly want to understand why I cannot allow you to stat Pelor as a Neutral Good double sun portfolio greater deity you'd have to read the attached file labeled ASRD, which stands for Andrew Sendant Reference Document. It's basically his biography and it explains why Pelor is where he is right now and why Andrew more or less ended up replacing Pelor in my version of the Greyhawk pantheon.
I warn you now, some of the character mentioned in his biography are not names you will recognize. Spardus was a homebrewed Demigod made by an ex-friend of mine with whom I no longer associate, but has nonetheless left his mark on my D&D world. Darius Cell, Zoidberg (not futurama, just taken for the namesake as kind of a joke, but actually ended up becoming a serious character), and Ashyria Ilthintar ended up playing vital roles in the fall of Heironeous the Invincible (he's dead in my campaign setting, along with his half-brother Hextor, though their deaths were unrelated). They were all homebrewed immortals made by an old gaming group of mine which no longer meets, but their history is too real to be ignored. The Lizardfolk druid Razor is played by a good friend of mine with whom I do actually still associate and play D&D, so he may well be making an appearance in this tournament as well.
If you want to stat Pelor as a Neutral Evil Sun god who wants revenge on Andrew for ruining his gig, that's another story
Aside from Heironeous, Tiamat (though she has been reincarnated as her Dragonlance persona Takhisis, but has not yet regained her full power as far as anyone knows), Malglubiyet, & Hextor all of the other Greyhawk gods are still alive as far as I know.
/rant
So since it appears that the immortal challengers have to be in tune with thestoryline,here my question....
I intent to stat Raistlin from the Alternate future when he managed to destroy all the gods on Krynn and absorbed their power......
I would stat him as a greater god of Magic but I does this goes against the storyline or not?
I intent to stat Raistlin from the Alternate future when he managed to destroy all the gods on Krynn and absorbed their power......
I would stat him as a greater god of Magic but I does this goes against the storyline or not?
Hmm, well that all depends. Did he manage to destory all the Sidereals (Azmodeus, Lady of Pain, Life, Death, etc.) as well? If so then the answer is no way because he would have become a Time Lord which requires a minimum ECL of 2000.
Even if he did manage to destroy all the other gods he would have acquired enough quintessence to ascend to elder god status many times over which would place his ECL way over the limit.
Now if you want to stat him out as a greater deity who wiped out the rest of his own individual pantheon in the future that would certainly be in the realm of possibility.
Actually in Krynn there only 18 deities and not all of them are greater......
While Raistlin killed all of them I don't think that it was enough for him to become a sidereal,his power should be in match with greater gods.....
After all,even after he killed all the deities and he absorbed their power he was unable to create new life and he was destined to be forever alone in the destroyed world.....
This is also the reason that he will participate in the tournament....
He hopes that he will find the power to create life,and increase even more his power....
Yes but Remember in my campaign Krynn is nothing more than a single continent on an enormous material plane. Considering the sheer size of it it, the planet is probably at least four times as Large as planet Earth.
I'm cool with you statting him out as an entity from an alternate future. Go ahead and post up his stat-block and I'll let you know if you need to make any changes.
I'm cool with you statting him out as an entity from an alternate future. Go ahead and post up his stat-block and I'll let you know if you need to make any changes.
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