Dragonlance WotC Officially Confirms Takhisis and Tiamat Are The Same

It's been an issue in dispute for decades, over various editions of D&D, but WotC has officially confirmed that - at least in 5E - Dragonlance's Takhisis is, indeed, currently Tiamat. In previous editions, Tiamat has varied from being a big dragon to a minor goddess, while Takhisis has been a greater god on Krynn. At times they've been the same entity, and at others different entities. Today, WotC is putting its foot down and saying that Takhisis and Tiamat are, indeed, the same being.



Of course, this is not an opinion universally held. Dragonlance co-creator Margaret Weis emphatically stated that "TAKHISIS IS NOT TIAMAT, DAMN IT!"

Fizban's Treasuryof Dragons confirms that the beings echo across various settings.

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...

www.enworld.org

 

[Velderan]

All right, but apart from the lances, dragons, no orcs, kender, tinker gnomes, lunar-powered magic, civilized Minotaurs, the lack of pants and smoldering glances, and the clear division between Takhisis and Tiamat, what have Weis and Hickman ever done for Dragonlance?



ETA-

Spoiler

Yes, I know Margaret Weis complained, correctly, about the pants in the art.

Have you not seen the mustaches the knights had?

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Have you not seen the mustaches the knights had?

Breaking: Takhisis is NOT Tiamat. Takhisis is actually the Female Deity of Solamnic Mustaches.

Beware- cross the canon streams, and you're going to get burned.

 

[Velderan]

Breaking: Takhisis is NOT Tiamat. Takhisis is actually the Female Deity of Solamnic Mustaches.

Beware- cross the canon streams, and you're going to get burned.

All this thread needs is for someone to photoshop some nice Solamnic mustaches on to Tiam...er Takhisis and this thread will be complete.

 

[Gradine]

I haven't read the rest of this thread at all but I'll assume it's 13 pages long because of how many people think that this was a great and uncontroversial move on the part of Wizards.

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

All this thread needs is for someone to photoshop some nice Solamnic mustaches on to Tiam...er Takhisis and this thread will be complete.

 

[AnotherGuy]

I haven't read the rest of this thread at all but I'll assume it's 13 pages long because of how many people think that this was a great and uncontroversial move on the part of Wizards.

I can't believe you didn't use spoiler tags for this.

 

[Stormonu]

So in WotC lore, what happened to Bahamut and Tiamat in say Faerun when Raistlin killed them on Krynn?

When the Time of Troubles happened in Faerun did Paladine and Takhisis lose power to? Only if they were on Faerun? Why not planeshift over to Krynn and get your power back?

I know it doesnt matter because the only lore that matters is the 5 pages in the mostly adventure book.

Continuing my previous comment...

Having your Twitter account banned doesn't have an effect on your TikTok account. As a diety (according to old 2E lore), if you lose power in a realm, you double-down elsewhere. If you're lucky, you might have followers left and with an Epic quest or two, you can get back in a former realm. Like Bane did.

If you get kicked from them all, or someone hunts you down in your home plane and kills you - that's how you get Dead Gods in the Astral.

 

[jolt]

A big issue is that Dragonlance itself has shifted and changed a lot over the years from when Gary and Tracy first came up with the idea of a long running module series focusing on dragons. I still have my poster of a chained up Laurana with dragon-Takhisis behind her. And guess what? She looks exactly like Tiamat (Takhisis, not Laurana). At the time, everyone could see that it was the same character adapted for a different world. This was before Planescape and Spelljammer with the idea of cross-pollinating the universes would become official.

Just like with comics, where decades of story inconsistencies becomes so problematic that even the most casual reader starts picking up on them, rpg worlds change as well. I have no doubt that when Margaret was writing DL, she had ideas about Takhisis that had nothing to do with Tiamat. But those first stories were written over 35 years ago and all the D&D worlds have changed since then. And whatever ideas she had weren't a part of the original modules anyway. What was or wasn't the initial intent in the mid 80's isn't really relevant anymore.

If it was really important that Tiamat and Takhisis be different entities, then they should have made that clear from the beginning. And they certainly shouldn't have used Tiamat and Bahamut as the basis for Takhisis and Paladine. And they certainly shouldn't have made the art between the two interchangeable. Complaining about the company finally making a determination on the subject after almost 40 years comes across as sour grapes.

 

[Erdric Dragin]

This is such super old news. Like, it got to the point where anyone knowledgeable enough in D&D lore already accepted it as a proven theory that they are one and the same anyway. Even if WotC stated otherwise, many of us would continue to regard the two as the same being anyway, official or not, for the sake of simplicity.

After all, if they were different beings, this would mean Tiamat/Takhisis have some other kind of relationship since it's OFFICIAL that ALL the D&D worlds/cosmologies are connected, even in 5e. I highly doubt Tiamat would allow a copycat to run around freely even on another world. Having TWO five chromatic-headed dragon queen goddesses in the D&D lore requires a HUGE explanation, a lot bigger than the simple concept that gods can have multiple variations of itself in other worlds/cosmologies. It's seen all throughout D&D lore.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

After all, if they were different beings, this would mean Tiamat/Takhisis have some other kind of relationship since it's OFFICIAL that ALL the D&D worlds/cosmologies are connected, even in 5e. I highly doubt Tiamat would allow a copycat to run around freely even on another world. Having TWO five chromatic-headed dragon queen goddesses in the D&D lore requires a HUGE explanation, a lot bigger than the simple concept that gods can have multiple variations of itself in other worlds/cosmologies. It's seen all throughout D&D lore.

On the other hand, War of the Dragon Queens would be a hell of a cool high level adventure.

Two sociopathic dragon goddesses go to war, and the players have to get as many innocent bystanders (which could be whole continents or worlds) out of harm's way before deciding how to end the threat of the two once and for all.