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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8783824" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 121: July 1996part 2/5Forgotten Deities: Time to get a little De<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f910.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":censored:" title="Censored    :censored:"  data-smilie="14"data-shortname=":censored:" />ish, as we look at Gargauth, the Lord Who Watches. Your stereotypical Lawful Evil deal offerer who delights in sticking to the letter of the deal but twisting the words around to screw you over and trap you in a bad contract. He was kicked out of the nine hells for political reasons and now wanders the planes as a freelance dealbroker. This has actually turned out to be a better position than staying a cog in the bureaucratic infernal machine waiting to be summoned and he's grifted his way up to demigod status. Ultimately he'd like to turn the whole Realms into his personal fiefdom, then drag it across the planes to become the 10th layer of Baator and supplant As<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f910.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":censored:" title="Censored    :censored:"  data-smilie="14"data-shortname=":censored:" /> as supreme boss, but when you're immortal, you can take your time on the extremely large ambitions. His priests get a reasonable but not overpowered set of spheres & granted powers, focussing mostly on mind-control and mobility effects. Not a huge amount of nuance to his characterisation here, but another solid bad guy for your players to foil the schemes of, with a powerset that makes it easy for his followers to escape when exposed and become recurring antagonists. Have fun ruining their days and be very careful not to sign anything without reading the small print all the way through, because once you're on their radar who knows what kind of disguises and dirty tricks they'll employ to get revenge and bring you down to their level.Jungle Tales: This is less comical than previous instalments, telling the legend of how the Malatran aarakocra came to be. Once upon a time there was a man who really wanted to be a bird. He learnt all sorts of magic to get into the air, but it always felt fake and temporary. Eventually, he found an artifact called the Blue Heron, which the ancient speaking tree said held the key. He spent the rest of his life trying and failing to unlock it's powers. Eventually, nearing death, he decided to jump off the top of a mountain holding it and trust to fate. This turned out to have been the right move all along and he turned into an aarakocra, but unfortunately his heart was too weak to sustain flight and he died after just one brief soar, but not before telling his grandchildren, who got to make the choice to follow his lead and enjoy their new lives as birdmen. Basically a mashup of Moses & Icarus, showing the tragedy of a pioneer working hard and not getting to enjoy the rewards of their labors, but paving the way for others to enjoy undreamt of advancements. There are definitely plenty of real examples of that such as Marie Curie and Alan Turing. It might or might not actually be true in setting, but it's a decent enough bit of mythmaking that has some pathos in it while not being an obvious aesop, so this gets my approval.</blockquote>

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