klofft said:
Really, I was just looking for a way to get some desired "Lovecraftian" elements into the Great Wheel, without needing the Far Realm to do it, and I was wondering if obyriths might be the way to go.
'Lovecraftian' tends to have madness, ancient evil and the threat of its return and its hidden but lingering influence, and of course tentacles or other alien biology, etc. So without using the Far Realm at all, but going for Lovecraftian elements there are a number of things I'd look at:
1) Obyriths in their madness inducing glory
2) Ancient Baatorians - tentacled beings of primal LE, some of them remain in hibernation in the most remote corners of Baator, some locked within the glaciers of Cania (along with bizarre, alien structured cities). The Baatezu have to kill and forcibly reform their least kind, Nupperibos, into lemures or risk them returning to power (since the ancient baatorians form spontaneously from Baator while the Baatezu as a much younger race of fiends almost exclusively use mortal derived petitioners to make more of themselves).
3) Baernaloths - the original source of neutral evil, the architects of the lower planes. Most of them departed from the multiverse, potentially abandoning their children the yugoloths, while others descended into apathetic madness and live in seclusion as mythical, god-like hermits. Mostly they're known by their creations and lingering influence on them, and the bizarre monoliths of unknown function on the Waste known as the Loadstones of Misery. Some of them, collectively known as The Demented, remain as the hidden yet omnipresent puppetmasters of the yugoloth elite.
4) Primal Slaadi / Pre-Spawning Stone Slaadi - before Ssendam and Ygorl placed their restrictions on their own race, the Slaadi had no singular form, and their chaotic diversity of form was staggering. Some of these beings still exist, sheltered from the Spawning Stone and kept alive, but shackled and imprisoned (potentially by the Slaad Lords themselves, perhaps unknown others).
5) Pandemonium - the whispering songs of the Howlers [just read their entry in the relevant Planescape book... it's creepy as hell]. Add in things like Howlers Crag and The Harmonica (the latter of which I linked to the Far Realm, or at least an ability to travel beyond the known planes, in a story of mine)
6) The Ordial Plane - an idea from Mimir.net, it was a hypothetical 3rd transitive that bridged the gap between outer and inner planes [whereas the astral thematically linked the prime and outer, and the ethereal thematically linked the prime and inner]. It's existance was speculated upon, but never proven at all. It might be a source of lovecraftian horrors if it was never meant to be breached.
7) The unknown reality of the Keepers - in the PSMC II, or the 3e FF. These guys exude a flavor that's suitibly lovecraftian (though I'd link them in my campaigns to a reality different from the Great Wheel or the Far Realm entirely).
8) The depths of the deep ethereal might swim with forgotten, half formed, abortive creations. While dreamscapes spawn upon the edge of the near and deep ethereal, nightmares might occasionally survive this transcience and merge with ethereal protomatter, surviving and thriving in the deep, growing fat on the terrors and dreams of mortals. Not evil, not chaotic, but incarnations of fears.
i wouldn't necessarily say that their origins, and that of the Spawning Stone, have anything to do with the Far Realm, but then i wouldn't say that they don't, either...
