Why did the era of primordial evil end?

[Ripzerai]

So the humanoid races that were made by the aboleths - I guess they weren't humans, elves, and dwarves, right? Don't both yuan-ti (in some form) and dragons predate humans in the core mythology?

According to the Forgotten Realms stuff, the amphibians were created by an amphibian race called the Batrachi, and the snake and lizard races (not dragons) were created by a serpentine race called the Sarrukh.

I credit the amphibians, fish, and oozes as aboleth creations. Like this:

FC2 seems to imply that the ancestors of the baatezu - called "angels" there - fought the obyriths alongside the Wind Dukes in the Time Before Time, incidently. Dragon #341 mentions an angelic race called aphanacts who ruled Mechanus and sought to conquer other planes in the name of Law - that sounds a lot like the race Asmodeus led into battle against the primordial demons.

It's possible (at least some of) the Elder Evils revered by the aboleths are the same as the draedens mentioned briefly in the FC1. If that's the case, they predate the gods and many of the planes but don't predate the multiverse itself. The multiverse was originally a primal void, a place where nothing, not even chaos, existed, and this was disturbed by the creation of the worlds, the elements, and the alignments (in whichever order you prefer).

Tharizdun, I think, was originally either a being of that primal void or a reaction against the void's pollution by the stuff of creation. Either way, he has nothing to do with the later Law and Chaos war, which was a dispute between two different flavors of creation rather than the earlier dispute between creation and nothingness.

 

[Shemeska]

try a different approach. sometimes, that works. in fact, try a few different approaches and see which one, if any, they like.

I might rework it and send it in again, but at the same time I don't want to cheese anyone off by repitching an idea they either just don't like or won't have a use for in the magazine in the foreseeable future. Still, it would be cool to get something in print that fleshed out the bits about the ancient baatorians that we have (modified perhaps by some bits of FC:I and FC:II).

 

[Kestrel]

The illithids-from-the-future thing is from Lords of Madness also.

Which reminds me of The Shadow Out of Time

 

[ssampier]

Ah, yeah, well, whenever you notice something like that, a wizard did it.

Spam was invented.
It all went downhill from there.

The lunchmeat or the unsolicted mail?

 

[Slife]

Spam was invented.
It all went downuphill from there.

fixed it for you

since, of course, nothing's worse than spam

 

[DungeonMaester]

I remember a cartoon in the 80's that depicted mind flayer like creatures taking something to the effect of 30,000 humans from Earth to be their slaves, killing off the rest of the humans. After thousands of years of being slaves they rebelled against the slavers using the power of faith.

This being a time where humans where in the med evil times and the slavers where in there "Star Wars" Era of space travel.

It would be awesome to make this into a campaign..But it would be more like Rifts then D&D =<

---Rusty

 

[The Grumpy Celt]

I remember a cartoon in the 80's that depicted mind flayer like creatures taking something...

For some reason, that rings a bell with me too. Otta be a list of Cool 70s and 80s 'toons. Hrpm.

Most of the primordial chaos stuff was retconned as new editions and books came out. I don't know that it was always part of the plan.

And I still think my Yoko joke was funny.

 

[Ry]

Wee Jas is SO Yoko.

 

[Ry]

Giving this some more thought, I ended up using a kind of quasi-Ptolus approach. The era of primordial evil ended because a powerful but an overgod trapped them behind a seal. In Ptolus, the seal is the world. I have a similar thing going on - but instead of a heavy-handed overgod I've got something called the Runegod that isn't really personified - it's more of a force of goodness - that managed to trap the elder evils when a world was created.

The process of creating a world is called Planar Catalysis.

However, this did not end the story of the primordial period - the aboleths found the world that had trapped their old masters, but were in no hurry to release the elder evils. However, divination told the aboleths that their titanic empire would one day end, and to escape this coming cataclysm, they engineered another Planar Catalysis. Ironically, it was this event that destroyed the Aboleth empire, but it was not entirely a failure. A world was created, but only a small number of Aboleths survived to enter that realm. This new world, with far fewer aboleths, had grown a life-force of its own, and this force, wounded by the Aboleths' attempt at Catalysis, awakened. Plants, animals, and other forms of modern life began to flourish across the world.

Meanwhile, The Aboleths' new world advanced through its timeline far more quickly than its neighbour planes, and the aboleths found themselves unable to contact other planes. Eons passed, and life rose on the Aboleth world. The Aboleths dominated this life, but mourned - if an aberration can be said to mourn - the loss of so many memories with their lost kin. New methods of preservation were discovered, and eventually these Aboleths created the first Elder Brains. Meanwhile, the aboleths nurtured life on their world to the point of sentience, and in time found themselves awash in new breeds of slaves. With slaves that finally possessed minds of their own, aboleths rejoiced, and began to work strange magics to bend and warp these slaves into different forms.

As the aboleths' perverse mutations were perfected, they began to turn their powers on themselves. In time, the race fractured, one species occasionally rising in dominance over the others - but largely leaving a core of sea-bound Aboleths beneath the waves, while more freakish monsters were driven onto the land.

But the world was flawed, and after many ages, despite the Aboleths' greatest efforts, it began to die. Some of the few freakish aboleths - now calling themselves Mind Flayers, for their life cycles now were dominated by the unspeakable ceremorphosis forced on their slaves - discovered a method of escape. They brought their slaves (the giths) with them and crossed the barrier of worlds.

 

[Mark Chance]

What happened that screwed up all that great primordial chaos, anyway?

A growing lack of confidence in great primordial chaos led to a recall election, and the Elder Gods lost by a wide margin to so-called progressive deities.