D&D 5E Is Paladine Bahamut? Is Takhisis Tiamat? Fizban's Treasury Might Reveal The Answer!

According to WotC's James Wyatt, Fizban's Treasury of Dragons introduces a new cosmology for dragon gods, where the same beings, including Fizban, echo across various D&D campaign settings with alternate versions of themselves (presumably like Paladine/Bahamut, or Takhisis/Tiamat). Also... the various version can merge into one single form.

Takhisis is the five-headed dragon god of evil from the Dragonlance setting. Paladine is the platinum dragon god of good (and also Fizban's alter-ego).

Additionally, the book will contain psychic gem dragons, with stats for all four age categories of the five varieties (traditionally there are Amethyst, Crystal, Emerald, Sapphire, and Topaz), plus Dragonborn characters based on metallic, chromatic, and gem dragons.

D&D 5E - Check out Fizban's Alternate Cover!

WotC's James Wyatt talked to Polygon about Fizban's Treasury of Dragons, which also revealed the alternate cover, which you can only get from hobby stores. https://www.enworld.org/threads/fizbans-treasury-the-dragon-book-now-has-a-description-and-a-feat.681399/

www.enworld.org

D&D 5E - Fizban's Treasury: The Dragon Book Now Has A Description... And A Feat

Courtesy of Amazon, we now have a description for Fizban's Treasury of Dragons, the October D&D hardcover. The book introduces gem dragons, dragon-themed player options, and plenty of draconic lore! This joins September's The Wild Beyond the Witchlight, and November's Strixhaven: Curriculum of...

www.enworld.org

 

[dave2008]

Marduk's rivalry with Tiamat is explicitly mentioned in On Hallowed Ground (where Marduk is presented as being a separate deity from Bahamut). Insofar as the Forgotten Realms goes, Powers & Pantheons put Marduk as one of the members of the Untheric pantheon whose manifestation was destroyed (severing his connection to Realmspace) during the Battle of the Gods (against the orc gods) in -1071 DR (P&P, p. 95).

Dragons of Faerûn (p. 8), on the other hand, says that Marduk was always an alias of Bahamut (at least in the Realms), citing his being reduced in power as a result of the Battle of the Gods.

Please note my use of affiliate links in this post.

Marduk's battles with Tiamat are also mentioned in the 1e Deities and Demigods

 

[SkidAce]

... present an alternate cosmology that combines all the worlds. No one in 2021 under the age of 50 is confused by AUs...

/cough cough

And neither are those over 58.

 

[dave2008]

Fun fact: according to page 134 of Powers & Pantheons, while Tiamat's draconic avatar always has five heads, she can have the colors of those heads be any combination of blue, red, green, black, white, brown, or yellow.

In 4e she is hinted at having many avatars -some with only 1 head! And of course a dark-haired female humanoid mage

 

[Alzrius]

In 4e she is hinted at having many avatars -some with only 1 head! And of course a dark-haired female humanoid mage

Only one head?! My hat of d02 4E know no limit!

 

[dave2008]

Exactly. If I had my way, the worlds of DnD would stay an actual multi-verse, rather than a shared universe that gets called a multiverse even though all the worlds you make characters in are on the same plane of existence. Dragonlance should be in it's own cosmology, as should FR, and Greyhawk, and Athas, and Eberron, and whatever they come up with next. Let Planescape and the like present an alternate cosmology that combines all the worlds. No one in 2021 under the age of 50 is confused by AUs.

I just thought I would point out that the traditional many of "Multiverse" is not the same as the now commonly accepted definition of "Multiverse." I am sure you know this, but I thought it was an important distinction.

D&D Multiverse: multiple planes of existing. Each plane being different from the other (sometimes vastly so), but also connected.
Pulp Multiverse: alternate realities, separate from each, but typically all bearing some resemblance to our reality

Personally I prefer the D&D method to the pseudo-science pulp definition. But everyone is different!

 

[AmerginLiath]

[Here Be Spoilers for War of Souls]

As the War of Souls and Weis’s Mina trilogy further depicted things, I’ve gotten the sense that Dragonlance gods are (as always shown) a bit weird in their divinity. There’s always the notion of High God and his “calling from beyond” of beings to grant divine power to, then their divine children (all of course a bit of Jeff Grubb’s old Neoplatonist “original Toril” campaign document given a bit of a Mormon metaphysical spin by Tracy Hickman. Moreso than even with other gods in D&D, where the being and the power can be separated, it feels more like hypostases.

Paladine is and is not Bahamut is as much as the being who is now Valthonis is complete and the echoing divinity Bahamut is complete. The incorporated Draco Paladin is both. Similarly, the being that was Takhisis and the continuing echoing divinity Tiamat incorporated into something combined but unique in Draco Cerebrint. (We all know that somehow Astinius is Gilean, but Astinius as he likely exists until the end of Krynn and the Book as Highgod creates it at the beginning of Krynn from a different eternal perspective are hypostases) Even the fact that Takhisis can “steal the world” from Krynnspace to ‘Dragonspace’ likely involves the strings of that echo shared between her and Universal Tiamat, like a user following a network along to a different terminal.

 

[Alzrius]

There’s always the notion of High God and his “calling from beyond” of beings to grant divine power to, then their divine children

I picked up a hardcopy of Dragons of a Vanished Moon recently despite having the softcover, because the hardcover was the only version that had the appendix describing how Chaos (from Dragons of Summer Flame) was actually "Ionthas," and wasn't really the equal of the High God (plus the extended explanation of how Takhisis stole the world from its timeline as well as through space).

 

[Demetrios1453]

(all of course a bit of Jeff Grubb’s old Neoplatonist “original Toril” campaign document

"It's all in Plato, all in Plato: Bless me, what do they teach them at these schools?" - Digory Kirke, The Last Battle by CS Lewis

 

[Disgruntled Hobbit]

There's multiple versions of Vecna, Nerull, the Raven Queen and other iconic gods and godlikes
Makes sense there's be multiple Bahaumats and Tiamats

Bahaumat and Paladine are both fingers of the same glove, different and separate yet one

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

There's multiple versions of Vecna

The right one and the god.

 

[Stormonu]

Also, isn’t Tiamat based in Hell (Guardian of the Gate of Avernus), and Takahisis trapped in the Abyss during the War of the Lance (with a primary plot point she was trying to get the door reopened back to the Mortal Plane)?

 

[Parmandur]

"It's all in Plato, all in Plato: Bless me, what do they teach them at these schools?" - Digory Kirke, The Last Battle by CS Lewis

I had no idea when I was 7 how continually applicable that quote would end up being.

 

[Seramus]

The people of Istar called her Tii'Mhut, and Paladine was called Bah’Mut.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

Also, isn’t Tiamat based in Hell (Guardian of the Gate of Avernus), and Takahisis trapped in the Abyss during the War of the Lance (with a primary plot point she was trying to get the door reopened back to the Mortal Plane)?

I recall reading somewhere that the idea Takhisis was trapped in the Abyss wasn't actually true and that the people of the Dragonlance setting are ignorant about the nature of the planes.

 

[Alzrius]

Also, isn’t Tiamat based in Hell (Guardian of the Gate of Avernus), and Takahisis trapped in the Abyss during the War of the Lance (with a primary plot point she was trying to get the door reopened back to the Mortal Plane)?

While the plane was consistently referred to as "The Abyss," virtually all of the game materials said it was The Nine Hells/Baator, e.g. page 116 of the "World Book of Ansalon" in the Tales of the Lance (affiliate link) boxed set.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

However, apparently Hickman and Weis themselves have been on record saying that they oppose the idea of Tiamat being Takhisis or the world of Krynn existing in the same multiverse as other D&D settings. WotC at least has been consistent in 5E that every setting is in the same multiverse, going back to the 2E conception (whereas 3E and 4E had different settings in their own multiverses whose planes could differ from those of other multiverses).

 

[Alzrius]

The people of Istar called her Tii'Mhut, and Paladine was called Bah’Mut.

And now we know the real reason that the gods chucked a meteor at the place; they were sick of being called by other deities' names!

 

[Sword of Spirit]

My approach has been that Paladine and Takhisis, as Greater Powers, are the core identities. Bahamut and Tiamat as Lesser Powers are essentially avatars of the greater that more or less took on a life of their own. The interesting implication with that approach is that the deities are for some reason most focused on Krynn (of the commonly known worlds) in their true forms, while the rest of the multiverse just gets their weaker aspects.

I’ll have to see if what they present in the book is something more interesting than that but that doesn’t contradict the way I’ve been doing it, or if its something completely new and contradictory (like the elven afterlife cycle in MToF, or the Faerunian cosmology in 3e), in which case my attitude is generally that some people believe it in character, but it‘s wrong.

 

[Bolares]

There's multiple versions of Vecna, Nerull, the Raven Queen and other iconic gods and godlikes
Makes sense there's be multiple Bahaumats and Tiamats

Bahaumat and Paladine are both fingers of the same glove, different and separate yet one

Yeah, in my Eberron the Daughter of Khyber is Tiamat, but not the same Tiamat that is trapped in avernus. An alternate version of the same primordial entity or something like it

 

[Henadic Theologian]

And still no one will include Saridor in any of their worlds.

Saridor is included in the Forgotten Realms and Planescape.