The Isle of Shadows (page 27-31) holds the "remains of a cult to the lost Dark God (known as Tharizdun in Oerth)."
Cheers!
D&D 5E (2014) I believe the Greyhawk Campaign setting was a missed opportunity for Wizards of the Coast.
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The Isle of Shadows (page 27-31) holds the "remains of a cult to the lost Dark God (known as Tharizdun in Oerth)."
Cheers!
I have run the campaign, but the last time I was reading it was a very long time ago so I can't remember if the name is there at all. He doesn't have any major role, even under any other name. The island you're probably thinking of is called the Isle of Shadows, where there is an ancient temple to a mysterious deity. This is a possible, extra adventure location in the campaign (it's huge, detailing the central story dungeons and what amounts to the countryside of the Underdark featured). The way the campaign is written, when they name an evil cleric they might say he is of a god devoted to death, and they recommend Cyric, Thanatos, or Nerull depending on the setting. I don't recall any name given for the deity of the Isle of Shadows, verbatim in the book, though I did a lot more with that place when I ran the campaign, so in my campaign I know which deity it is, etc. He is described as a god of the void, some ancient and forgotten power. He is evil, and the inhabitants of the temple are powerful.
FormerlyHemlock
Hero
New setting books would be nice, but the old Spelljammer books seem to work pretty well in 5E. Admittedly, my spelljamming campaign is still in its groundling phase so I haven't actually run any ship-to-ship battles yet, but it's easy to come up with plausible stats for neogi/bionoids/beholder hive queens/etc. when you need them. It's in the nature of good settings to be mostly ruleset-agnostic, and 5E and AD&D2 share enough rules to make Spelljammer apply to both.
I think the thing that annoys most older D&D players that know the history of the game is that Wizards ties up the Greyhawk setting by owning the rights to it, but then does nothing with those rights. We haven't seen a Greyhawk sourcebook for approaching 15 years now. Because it has been so long since we have seen a Greyhawk sourcebook, it would not surprise me if a new printing outsold any splatbook they have printed in the last 5 years. The older players would love to see new material on Greyhawk and younger players could be introduced to the world that the older players talk about. It also would be sort of a memorial to Gygax and what he did for the game they now manage. So, from a profit standpoint it makes sense and from the standpoint of giving new players a peak at the history of the game it makes sense. Why are they not doing this? It sounds like I have a seminar question for this year's Gencon.
I've argued for as much myself, but I've also discovered a very devoted online community of Greyhawk players and I am more than satisfied bouncing off ideas with them to continue my own campaign. Wizards of the Coast should still do a few things for it, though, like bring back Living Greyhawk and return the rights to Greyhawk back to the Gygax estate.
In one of the 2e splat books ("Monstrous Mythology," I think), Carl Sargent sort of snuck in Tharizdun as the "Dark God" and also mentioned the Elder Elemental Eye. This was in the period when Greyhawk was not officially supported, so it was pretty exciting to see. It seemed that calling Tharizdun the Dark God was a sort of tactic to "sneak" Greyhawk into the core line (where it belonged).
Later, Sargent wrote Night Below, and in the underground ocean section there's an island with a temple dedicated to the Dark God. I remember being pretty underwhelmed by the substance of the encounter in question, but we were so starved for proper Greyhawk support at the time we discussed it at length online, analyzing every aspect of what amounted to a couple of paragraphs.
So that's the Tharizdun/Night Below connection, as far as I can remember.
Nellisir
Hero
Ah, the good old days. Back in those days, we didn't have this here fancy broadband thing. No, we had DIAL-UP! With 14.4 kbps modems and a PHONE BILL. And debates about whether to put articles in .txt (minimal size) or .rtf (fancy!).
Iquander, are you feeling as old as I am?
aramis erak
Legend
Ah, the good old days. Back in those days, we didn't have this here fancy broadband thing. No, we had DIAL-UP! With 14.4 kbps modems and a PHONE BILL. And debates about whether to put articles in .txt (minimal size) or .rtf (fancy!).
Iquander, are you feeling as old as I am?
I remember using 300baud modems, local chat BBS's with single or double lines only, and email requiring the recipient be using the same BBS.
I remember the improvements that WWIVnet and Fidonet made, and being able to finally send emails across country. (It took 3 days to send email east from Alaska to Florida, and 5 days for it to get back to Alaska, simply due to transfer schedules.)
I remember also that, for the vast majority back then, if it wasn't in dead tree, it was just houserules.
First ebook I ever encountered was a lovingly transcribed ASCII pirate copy of D&D Basic Set...
Nellisir
Hero
Can I get you your cane?
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