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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 973359" data-attributes="member: 2067"> THE GREAT MOTHER The Optical QueenAlignment: Chaotic EvilWorshipers: Beholders, CultistsDomains: Chaos, Death, Evil, StrengthFavored Weapon: BiteHome Plane/Domain: The Abyss/The Eye HivePantheon: BeholderDivine Rank: 17 (Greater)Classes: Cleric, WizardPortfolio: Magic, Fertility, Tyranny, Vision, Death, BirthSalient Abilities: (22) Alter Size, Annihilating Strike, Avatar, Call Creature (beholders), Clearsight, Control Creatures (beholders), Divine Blast, Divine Storm, Energy Storm (cold), Extra Domain (Death), Frightful Presence, Hand of Death, Increased Damage Reduction, Increased Energy Resistance (cold), Increased Spell Resistance, Indomitable Strength, Life and Death, Life Drain, Mass Divine Blast, Mass Life and Death, Rejuvenation, See Magic. Special Possessions: NoneAlternate Domains: Community, Creation, Destruction, MagicSymbol: An egg with an eye in its centerDESCRIPTIONFrom Defenders of the Faith: "Her areas of influence include magic, fertility, and tyranny, while she is also interested in the defense of behodlers -- particularly against drow enemies."The Great Mother appears as a collossal beholder covered in eyes and tentacles, with a horrible maw descending from it. She drips constantly with a fluid like tears, each of her horridly red eyes oozing. From behind her jaw, and immense tube of chitinous flesh runs, out of which a constant supply of beholder eggs are disgorged, in varying sizes, shapes, and colors, producing creatures of every beholder type.DOGMAThe Great Mother is hardly consistant in what she demands of her worshipers. Though she wishes to protect beholders, she will occasionally let populations nearly die out in some lands, while being upset at one death in another. Though she wishes magical might, she may destroy great libraries in a hungry rampage. Though she produces millions of offspring, she sics them on each other, watching them fight and argue in an attempt to prove their superiority.One may say that this is, in fact, her entire dogma. The Great Mother wishes to reproduce, and to have what she has created kill, slaughter, and maim each other all for her affections. Of course, she also reviles each of her offspring, but perhaps that is part of the belief that only hatred and loathing can produce anythign that is a true representation of survivable power. Only under the harshest of conditions can true might flourish. And true mgiht is what the Great Mother desires above all else.CLERGY AND TEMPLESThose who worship the Great Mother are a special kind of insane. They believe that they can exact her will, though she loathes them as passionately as she loathes anything else. The beholders who worshiper her use that as a tool to emulate their superiority, and the Great Mother may grant them spells in the hope that they kill off as many of their deformed brethren as possible, but it is hardly a sign of affection. The beholders who worship her are on shaky ground as well, because they are easier to dispose of should she grow displeased with them, for failing to kill or failing not to kill, or just because she's in a bad temperment this day. She is still worshiped as the originator, and some beholders respect her for that. Others view her as an archaic throwback that is obviously a lesser version, a precursor for the true power (them).She also keeps a contingent of human cultists, insane individuals spouting off a doctrine of vision, destruction, mortality, and birth. They see the Great Mother as something of an originator of all life, and see the Beholders as her divine agents, testing and destroying those unworthy to continue. The human cults rarely get dangerous, unless they start to adopt the behaviors of the beholders themselves, and so the Great Mother has been known to give them spells once in a while.Temples to the Great Mother are few. Beholders rarely spend the time and effort, as they need no structure or building to live in. The cultists are generally cleverly hidden, as their faith is usually quite unwelcome in civilized lands. Even if they could build temples, they would be disinclined to: the weather is another of the Great Mother's tests.RITES AND RITUALSPriests dedicated to the Great Mother, if they are beholders, will often adorn themselves with religious trappings stolen from other races. Cloaks, rings, neclaces, phylateries, various types of jewelry and other adornment decorate the stalks and the orb itself, often bearing the symbols of other religions, sometimes amalgamated in a haphazard fashion that would probably revile clerics of those respective faiths. To a beholder, it doesn't matter, it is all in hornor of the Great Mother, and is subsumed in to the superiority of the Beholder faith. There are few mass rituals for Beholders, as, almost inevitably, whenever two or more beholders meet they tear each other to threads until only one is left.Human cults are slightly better organized, specializing in wearing crowns, helms, and other headgear adorned with eye motifs, spots, or tentacles. They often keep crystal balls as divinitory objects, calling them the Eyes of the Great Mother. They are also capable of greater rituals, but still rarely partake in them. The birth of a new beholder species, or driving a beholder to rulership are the things that they revel in.MYTHOGRAPHYThe interesting thing about Beholder religion is that they seem to be the one great success case of the trend of worshipping Abyssal lords. The Great Mother, and, indeed, the entire beholder race, was merely another demon in the abyss when conceptualized and written into creation. The Great Mother came first, able to mate with anything and produce a beholder creature bearing that creature's charactaristics. Then, her offspring, varied and snarling, hatched into being, worshipping her as a goddess. The great Hive Mothers were born, and the Beholder races spread to a multitude of worlds and lands, casting their wicked shadow over all, growing more numerous, and at least paying lip service to the creature that birthed them, still sitting in the abyss. In this way, the Great Mother became a greater deity, and her offspring became nativized onto the material plane (along with others, of course). An additional unique element is that Beholders are remarkably hostile toward each other, and yet manage to form a cohesive religion. Many of the more open-minded scholars have taken a cue from that to mean that even highly devisive and wicked beings (as the beholders are) can come together underneath one deity. Of course, many of these scholars ignore the fact that the beholders and the Great Mother share such hostile and violent dispositions that it certainly isn't the compassionate love that most mortal creatures and their deities show, but a mutual hatred, built out of their own chaos, with loathes everything about everything except themselves.LEGENDSThe most populous legends of the Great Mother tell of her many consorts, and the wicked spawn born from them. Gehreleth or Tanar'ri lords have been the victims of her amorous advances, producing unique beholders representative of evil to an extreme. She was even said to once mate with a Yugoloth, giving birth to the only other beholder god that exists, Gzenmid. Human cultists are slightly more creative, but no less emphatic about the xenophobia. They tell stories of great Beholder-kings and royalty that existed in bygone days, vassals of the original creator of all, the Great Mother. Of course, this is almost 100% concocted in their own heads, as the beholders are too fractuous to ever form kingdoms that last for more than few months before the peasants are devoured or they are overthrown.ETCPrC's· Broodguard: A beholder that bears eggs, and has powers to protect them and use them to her advantage.· Eye Master: A beholder that grows new eye-stalks with new abilites.Plot Hooks· The Unwilling King: A beholder cult has succeeded in placing a beholder at the throne of their kingdom. The only problem is that the Eye Tyrant doesn't want to be there. He was perfectly happy eating drow in the underdark, and now he's forced to rule a kingdom. Are the PC's willing to help him escape? Particularly after it's revealed that since he has stopped attacking the drow, the dark elves are growin in power and prepared to launch an assault?· Hatchlings: Far beneath the earth, a clutch of several thousand beholder eggs has just hatched, releasing a wave of the eye tyrants accross the city. And these odd beasts seem more concerned with killing mortals then with killing their own kind. The numbers are overwhelming -- can the PC's find a way to thwart the rampage without having to hack apart each one? Perhaps they can use the xenophobia of the beholders to their advantage, and turn them against each other?</blockquote>

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