Who is Torog?

[JeffB]

Darkness, entrapment, isolation, pain.

Yeah this is how I look at him.

Being god of the underdark sounds kinda silly to me, though - "I am the patron lord of a particular set of interconnected cavern systems!" uh... ok, Torog, whatever you say...

I took "god of the underdark" not so literally. e.g. I don't see Neptune as the god of salt water and plankton (or Spongebob or Patrick or Mr. Crabs), but rather the ruler of his environment- same thing with Torog- worshipped (feared) by those whom dwell in the deepest depths of the world, yadda yadda yadda.

 

[Wycen]

Is there a source for all the weird mish-mash of gods they stuck in the PHB? For example, Melora kinda sounds familiar, but I'm pretty sure she wasn't a member of the halfling pantheon. And what about the raven queen? Why is Ioun a god of magic, and not floating crystals?

 

[Crothian]

All Hail King Torog!!

 

[Hypersmurf]

All Hail King Torog!!

All Hail King Torog!

And damn it, I made that joke first!

-Hyp.

 

[Crothian]

Only after I implanted that idea in your brain!

 

[AFGNCAAP]

tHe maSTEr WoUld NoT ApPrOVe

Oh wait, my bad. That's Torgo.

Dang it—beat me to the punch.

Then again, Torgo could work as a priest of Torog...

 

[inkmonkeys]

Dang it—beat me to the punch.

Then again, Torgo could work as a priest of Torog...

He's an exarch.

 

[Nahat Anoj]

Is this evil god based on something from a previous edition? Is there any more information to be found on him? All the other gods have gobs and gobs of flavour to be found in previous editions. Servants, cults, what they look like. But I have no idea bout Torog here.

What sort of thing worships him? What do his cults do? What does he look like? What are his goals? What kind of niche does he fill in the story?

Torog is the god of jailers, torturers, and the "underdark." Basically, deep, dark places. He is a god of vermin and disgusting, crawling things. Slavers probably revere him. In a game I'm running, he's worshipped by a tribe of rat-themed goblin slavers. An idol of Squerrik, exarch of Torog, is the "leader" of the tribe (Squerrik is in the 2e Monster Mythology as a god of wererats). I believe it was in W&M or in one of the preview articles where it says that Torog prefers to live deep underground in the world as opposed to an astral dominion.

Little has been published on Torog so far. However, a couple of phrases of Thunderspire Labyrinth (which I don't have on me, alas) describe an avatar that must look much like a shoggoth from the Chthulhu mythos. This fact, coupled with the fact that he lives underground in close proximity to aboleths and other aberrations, suggests to me that he's got a lot of Far Realm stuff going on.

 

[Voadam]

I am Spartacus! Wait, what?

Is this evil god based on something from a previous edition? Is there any more information to be found on him? All the other gods have gobs and gobs of flavour to be found in previous editions. Servants, cults, what they look like. But I have no idea bout Torog here.

What sort of thing worships him? What do his cults do? What does he look like? What are his goals? What kind of niche does he fill in the story?

He sounds a little bit like Urdlen the Crawler from the old gnome pantheon, the cruel mole god of insanity and pain and underground tunnels IIRC.

A bunch of the 4e gods are new altogether, Ioun and the Raven Queen, that serpent one who was originally going to be Set, etc.

 

[Amadeus Windfall]

Is there a source for all the weird mish-mash of gods they stuck in the PHB? For example, Melora kinda sounds familiar, but I'm pretty sure she wasn't a member of the halfling pantheon. And what about the raven queen? Why is Ioun a god of magic, and not floating crystals?

I remember reading (I think in an article on the D&D site) that at first they were making an all-new set of gods, but then they thought "Hey, this guy's basically just Moradin. Why give him a new name?" etc., so some older deities got reused.