Dragon #349

[sckeener]

They are the demonic race that predates the tanar'ri. Notable members include Dagon, Pazuzu, Pale Night, Obox-ob, and the Queen of Chaos.

FC1 details the subtype and several varieties, and this month's Dragon reprints the subtype and details a new type, the uzollru.

They are more Lovecraftian and alien than tanar'ri.

I love the obyrith, but I hate having alignment mixed into my Lovecraft. I wonder what Lovecraft type creatures exist in the other alignment realms such as Limbo or Gladsheim or Olympus or the Happy Hunting Grounds....etc...

I must admit I would find it hard to imagine them in Nirvana.

Still...I love the Obyrith and I will be using them heavily in my future games. They are just too cool not to use. I'll keep them rare though since I want the tanari'ri to be the standard....don't want the Obyrith to become ho-hum.

 

[Shade]

I love the obyrith, but I hate having alignment mixed into my Lovecraft. I wonder what Lovecraft type creatures exist in the other alignment realms such as Limbo or Gladsheim or Olympus or the Happy Hunting Grounds....etc...

No worries. The Far Realm has a wealth of NE critters, the mind flayers and aboleths are usually LE, the chaos beasts, chaoswyrds, and teratomorphs are CN, the gibbering mouthers are N, and the pseudonatural creature templates don't alter the base creature's alignment, so many options exist.

 

[sckeener]

No worries. The Far Realm has a wealth of NE critters, the mind flayers and aboleths are usually LE, the chaos beasts, chaoswyrds, and teratomorphs are CN, the gibbering mouthers are N, and the pseudonatural creature templates don't alter the base creature's alignment, so many options exist.

Egads! <the image of a pseudonatural modorn (Hexton) popping into my head> My mind!!

Shade you are such a lore master on monsters!

One thing about those monsters though that is different than obyriths. Obyrith cause insanity by assaulting all the senses with their unnaturalness. To give those other creatures a lovecraft feel, I'd want them to do the same. How much would that bump the CR?

 

[James Jacobs]

There's an awful lot of Lovecraft in D&D beyond the obyriths. The short list would include aboleths (who I Lovecrafted up even more in Lords of Madness), the creator races from the Forgotten realms (who are similar in theme to the Old Ones beyond the Mountains of Madness), evil books like the Book of Vile Darkness or the Demonomicon, the Far Realm and all the critters from there, ghouls & ghasts (especially ghasts), mind flayers, fish-men like the sahuagin and kuo-toa, serpent folk like the yuan-ti, and of course, the Underdark (which is very similar to the underworld below Earth's Dreamlands from The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath).

I think it's probably best to keep the "go insane upon seeing them" trick to the obyriths, though, since giving this ability to other things kind of dilutes the main thing that makes obyriths unique. Of course, if you're using something like the Sanity rules from Call of Cthulhu (adapted to D&D in the d20 version of that game and in Unearthed Arcana), that's a different story.

Personally... I see the Lovecraftian stuff as more embodying chaos than it does evil. Aboleths, obyriths, and the far realm monsters have been around longer than good and evil have been around, in any case...

 

[Shemeska]

I love the obyrith, but I hate having alignment mixed into my Lovecraft. I wonder what Lovecraft type creatures exist in the other alignment realms such as Limbo or Gladsheim or Olympus or the Happy Hunting Grounds....etc...

The Obyriths thing with driving mortals mad might have to do with the fact that they represent Chaotic Evil as it existed before the influence of mortal belief. They're raw, primal CE that mortals with their own limited conceptions simply can't fathom and so it ends up damaging them by the exposure.

Given that, I think it's entirely plausible to extend something similar to the other proto-fiends that predate mortal life: the lawful counterpart of the Obyriths, the Ancient Baatorians, and the makers of both of them, the Baernaloths. And given that many of the still extant Baernaloths have since slipped into their own unique brand of insanity, they seem capable of something similar if you wanted to go with that angle on things.

I'd make the insanity given off by such proto-fiends to be distinctly unrelated to that of beings from the Far Realms though. We can't conceive of such abject purity of CE, NE, LE and so it drives mortals mad; things from the Far Realms drive us mad because we can't tolerate exposure to well, whatever it is that makes them up. Obyriths et al cause madness by overexposure to absolutes, the Far Realms causes it by exposure to alien things antithetical to our own reality, and their exposure to our reality likely does the same thing to them. In fact Far Realms creatures encountered in the Great Wheel are likely mad with pain and delusion from the exposure.

Of course, for better or for worse, insanity has always been linked more towards the Chaotic side of the Great Wheel [with Pandemonium being the posterchild].

 

[sckeener]

Thanks James and Shemeska.

The Obyriths thing with driving mortals mad might have to do with the fact that they represent Chaotic Evil as it existed before the influence of mortal belief. They're raw, primal CE that mortals with their own limited conceptions simply can't fathom and so it ends up damaging them by the exposure.

I like your adaptation to the obyriths. The idea of proto alignment beings assaulting the mortal senses. There are so many manias and some could be 'good' or 'lawful'. I'd think all the obyriths and other proto-fiends should have caustic manias, but I can also imagine proto-good outsiders causing similar manias...such as fear to cause harm or giving way all material possessions

(argh...hope I explained that ok....leaving for the day.)

 

[Shemeska]

Thanks James and Shemeska.

I like your adaptation to the obyriths. The idea of proto alignment beings assaulting the mortal senses. There are so many manias and some could be 'good' or 'lawful'. I'd think all the obyriths and other proto-fiends should have caustic manias, but I can also imagine proto-good outsiders causing similar manias...such as fear to cause harm or giving way all material possessions

With the ancient Baatorians, they've already had some Lovecraftian inspiration in their descriptions, what with the tentacles and all, and the bizarre and alien cities locked beneath the ice of Cania, etc. And then the Baernaloths have half slipped down the spiral of madness themselves, at least those that remain within the known multiverse.

Now for creatures beyond the fiends... while we don't necessarily know much about any primordial creatures of the other planes, I can easily see a being of primal law driving a person insane. Pure numbers and complex logic driving a person to seclusion and obsession, etc.

With primal pure Good, NG, a person might be driven to the heights of asceticism, total abandonment of the self... something along the lines of what the horror writer Jack Ketchum described as "...some terrible knowledge, some awful peace." in his story The Box. True peace, total bliss, a spark of that might drive you to despair once removed from it, or the knowledge that it even exists and waits for you even, it might destroy a person's life as rapidly or more so than the worse of the ravages of the Gray Waste. Mortals are not made to experience such.

With LG, well anyone seeking to enter Chronias gets incinerated if they're not themselves worthy of that level of Law and Good combined.

For CG, I've got less ideas, though I've toyed with the idea of a primal CG race that created the Eladrins and then created the Infinite Staircase as both an expression of themselves, and also an escape from the ramifications of their own well meaning sins (which obliterated Pelion/Mithardir). But that gets a bit more away from canonical stuff and my own extrapolations into upper planar prehistory (which'll work its way into my storyhour eventually).

 

[Alzrius]

With primal pure Good, NG, a person might be driven to the heights of asceticism, total abandonment of the self... something along the lines of what the horror writer Jack Ketchum described as "...some terrible knowledge, some awful peace." in his story The Box. True peace, total bliss, a spark of that might drive you to despair once removed from it, or the knowledge that it even exists and waits for you even, it might destroy a person's life as rapidly or more so than the worse of the ravages of the Gray Waste. Mortals are not made to experience such.

I liked the idea of the Luminas from Legends of Avadnu. They're creatures so purely good that, outside of their own realm, all of existence seems wholly, incorruptably, incomprehensibly evil to them, and they work to destroy all of it when they find themselves there.

 

[Kunimatyu]

There's an awful lot of Lovecraft in D&D beyond the obyriths. The short list would include aboleths (who I Lovecrafted up even more in Lords of Madness)

You did that? Please recieve my humble and profound thanks! I liked aboleths ever since I cracked upon the 3.0 Monster Manual and started reading it A to Z, but you kicked things up a notch.

 

[frankthedm]

I'd make the insanity given off by such proto-fiends to be distinctly unrelated to that of beings from the Far Realms though. We can't conceive of such abject purity of CE, NE, LE and so it drives mortals mad; things from the Far Realms drive us mad because we can't tolerate exposure to well, whatever it is that makes them up. Obyriths et al cause madness by overexposure to absolutes, the Far Realms causes it by exposure to alien things antithetical to our own reality, and their exposure to our reality likely does the same thing to them. In fact Far Realms creatures encountered in the Great Wheel are likely mad with pain and delusion from the exposure.

The thing is, a being of the far realm most likely would not even understand, let alone feel, pain. It might observe its tissue dissolving and scattering across the multiverse and might try and find a way to stop it, or it might not even care. There is even a chance it would remain semi coherant through it's scattered particles and make an effort to scatter them further.

Random thought: The idea of the Great Wheel as a gyroscope. It spins a delicate balance with Icy Law that would crystallize the multiverse on first contact and the Final Chaos of the Far Realm that would melt it down. Both Law and Chaos in D&D are sanitized extractions of their true concepts. Law holds the worlds together [rather than solidifying them], chaos greases the wheels [rather than continually dissolving and reforming them]. Good and evil have their squabbles as do the diluted minions of Law and Chaos and the Great wheel spins happily. Though sometimes something seeps through. Maybe it is an accident, maybe the multiverse lets a bit of far realm slip through to tip the balance prevent Everything from being Lost to the Final Law. But no matter the cause, that is when Chaos shows it’s real face.

Either way, once the cosmic balance goes, the far realm and Crystallizing law mix and bubble and brew until something cosmically strong enough has the desire to create another reality.