For a long time, it has been hinted that the almighty Tharizdun has found a way to escape his prison. Now, it's obvious that hasn't happened - but... what if? Tharizdun is always there in the background (at least in my campaigns) hovoring like an unseen menace. It took GODS to imprison him the first time. Lots of them iirc... could the current pantheons work to gether long enough to do this again? Should it fall to PC's? So, what I'm getting at is, what would the world be like if big "T" got free? Could the world survive? Just a thought... discuss! _________________ Michael Erin Sandar Bard of Midwood
From a 3E standpoint, pull out the Dragon Magazine article with Tharizdun's stats (or convert if it was a 2E article, I forget at the moment), Deities and Demigods, and play it out.
What powers did it take to entrap him? Why was he so powerful in the first place? Hmm...
As i remember it it took an effort off all gods together good,evil,lawful,and chaotic to bind him in his prison.
The thought of Charicters perhaps champions of their gods racing to find the proper icons and atufacts to rebind him would make a very interesting high level if not epic style campaign.
If I remember correctly Tharizdun could "unmake" the world perhaps even the cosmos, planes, everything including the Gods; which explains why they all agreed on this issue.
Tharizdun cultists; those who aren't simple nihilists believe that "he who slumbers" will remake the universe rewarding the faithful, ofcourse this is untested.
A popular theory, that I use, is that Tharizdun slumbers in a prision created and powered by tapping into his own energy, creating a self-sustained, self-perpetuating cell or cocoon that contains him, although not perfectly as these energies ebb and flow occassionally allowing tharzidun to increase or decrease contact with his followers.
As for Tharizdun's power; IIRC he is the primal force of decay, while the rest of the divine order splintered into law and chaos, good and evil, and every shade of grey. Tharzidun as the by-product of creation itself refused to allow himself or his power to be disfused into various creations.
I find it telling that it took all the various gods regardless of ethos to simply contain him and his possible release compells universial terror among the celestial and infernal courts.
Tharizdun isn't like other "evils" he doesn't seek to mold, oppress, distort, control or even kill life for power and pleasure rather Tharizdun is simply anti-creation, he desires obivilion even his own.
I find it telling that it took all the various gods regardless of ethos to simply contain him and his possible release compells universial terror among the celestial and infernal courts.
Tharizdun isn't like other "evils" he doesn't seek to mold, oppress, distort, control or even kill life for power and pleasure rather Tharizdun is simply anti-creation, he desires obivilion even his own.
Sleep well children...
What Crag said.
I find attempts to "diefy" Tharizdun attempts to make by categorization, and hence understanding, that which cannot be categorized, nor understood. Tharizdun is not "evil," as that is a moral term. Tharizdun is beyond moral concepts. Tharizdun is anti-life and opposed by life - good, evil and everything in between. IMC. _________________ GVD
Gygax's Gord novels work through this possibility, and could be a good source of inspiration. Another good source for ideas is HPL's "The Call of Cthulhu" short story---the many dreams, prophecies, insanities, etc. that are the psychic tremors and premonitions of Cthulhu's release would be great fodder for Tharizdun too. _________________ Allan Grohe (grodog@gmail.com)
http://www.greyhawkonline.com/grodog/greyhawk.html
Gygax's Gord novels work through this possibility, and could be a good source of inspiration. Another good source for ideas is HPL's "The Call of Cthulhu" short story---the many dreams, prophecies, insanities, etc. that are the psychic tremors and premonitions of Cthulhu's release would be great fodder for Tharizdun too.
I'm a huge HPL fan and I like me Cthulthu-Hawk. I am increasingly leery about it, however. Tharizdun. The Far Realms. Cthulthu. It seems almost too pat. My present thought (which may change) is to keep all three separate. If the PCs confuse matters, all the better. _________________ GVD
Well said. The message big T sends (to me) is that of raw chaos and destructive power. Not for any real purpose, but simply because he "is". Now, his cultists may believe differently, but I think they are in for a big surprise.
As far as deify-ing Tharizdun... I say no.
He should simply be an all-consuming entity.[/quote] _________________ Michael Erin Sandar Bard of Midwood
I've seen mentioned somewhere to a link between Tharizdun and the Elder Elemental God....it seems a bit convenient to me but has anyone any thoughts on that?
The EEG intrigues me as something very Greyhawky as he has been referred to right from the early adventures.
SO far I've tentatively avoided Tharizdun IMC but I see him as an embodiment of a concept - how much is cognitive and how much is just instinctual to his behaviour I'm not sure but I tend towards the latter perhaps. However perhaps he is comparable in a way to Beory who is the embodiment of the Oerth... in the same way Tharizdun could be the embodiment of the primal soup of chaos that existed before anything was created. One could perhaps suggest the gods and powers are his 'children' somehow taking form from within the chaos and like the patricidal greek titans and then gods usurping the previous order (or lack of it) of things.
I've seen mentioned somewhere to a link between Tharizdun and the Elder Elemental God....it seems a bit convenient to me but has anyone any thoughts on that?
I am not sure what the origin of this notion is (one of the "Temple of Elemental Evil" sequels?), but it does seem now to be established in canon. The latest Living Greyhawk Deities document notes that the Elder Elemental Eye is actually an aspect of Tharizdun. Moreover, the excerpt about "Avatars of Elemental Evil" from "Monster Manual IV" that has just gone up at the Wizards site accepts this hypothesis: it says that the four Princes of Elemental Evil (Yan-C-Bin, Ogremoch et al.) have embraced the Elder Elemental Eye because they believe that it holds the power to make them proper deities and are too young, whipper-snappers that they are, to remember the primaeval conflict in which dread Tharizdun, the truth behind the object of their interest, was imprisoned.
RtToEE established this "canon," irrc. Gary Gygax explicitly refuted the idea and explained his imagination of them in his OJ interview with Paul Stormberg.
To paraphrase, the EEG is a primeval god of chaos and creativity. Tharizdun is an ancient force of entropy.
As I've mentioned in the past, I find Maldin's Life, the Multiverse and Everything essay excellent (and updated since I first read it). See http://www.melkot.com/mysteries/multiverse.html. In its terms, Tharizdun is the corruption of an ancient most powerful god of Goodness, Light, and Self Sacrifice that auto-sacrificed to contain a Shard of a Primordial Sentient and was in turn imprisoned by all the other gods extant at that moment. You have to read the essay to understand the point.
For purposes of this essay, however, the EEG is profoundly lesser to Tharizdun although it is relatively ancient compared to the many gods of humanity.
Also, IMC, I've associated Greg Vaughn's Malgoth (noted as an obyrith demon in Wizards' latest book) with an aspect of the EEG. While I've not worked out the details, the Malgoth and the EEG are probably related in a way similar to the Demonqueen Lolth and the lost elven goddess sometimes named Araushnee (or perhaps a couple elven goddesses). IN short, one ate the other and in so doing incorporated all into an evolved composite being.
The new MMIV has "used" the EEG and has a nice preview that answers many questions brought up on this thread.
"Long ago, both good and evil deities allied against Tharizdun, who seeks the annihilation of all reality, and sealed the god in a mighty prison."
"The Elemental Princes believe that the Elder Elemental Eye is their forebear, a mighty being who can elevate them to godhood and herald their domination of the Material Plane. However, this deity is trapped in a strange void between the planes from which the princes seek to free it. Unknown to them, the Elder Elemental Eye is actually a front for the malevolent god Tharizdun."
Also, IMC, I've associated Greg Vaughn's Malgoth (noted as an obyrith demon in Wizards' latest book)
Obyriths are defined as beings of primal Chaos, twisted with hatred at the newly created cosmos. In Maldin's terms they would probably be the descendents, fragments, or descendents of fragments of the early Sentients that existence became impossible for in the wake of the ordering of the Three. The Elder Elemental God might be a product of the same era.
As an aside, this era also represents the likely origin of the vaati, the race of the Wind Dukes of Aaqa. When Sentience first imposed order on the cosmos, they would have been created to maintain this order in the Elemental Planes - and the obyriths who formed in the Abyss immediately identified them as a target.
Fiendish Codex I, however, indicates that this primal chaos wasn't actually the original state. There were even older beings - the draedens, borrowed from the D&D Immortal Set - who lived in the raw void before the chaos of what would become the Outer Planes ever formed. It is to this state that Tharizdun wishes to return. To him even the obyriths are impudent young Turks who don't remember the good old days before Chaos.
Based on what I have read now, I amend my statement. Tharizdun's deity rank represents his power in its current imprisoned state. Sort of like what would happen if Vecna had completely won. That sounds better...
While all the simple cthonian explanations may make it seem to pat, that does not make the analysis inapproriate. I did not need to know all the detail work needed to post this message, such as plastics and manufacturing processes to make the keyboard to type out this message or the Internet,
Rip, how do you imagine the slaadi fit into the draeden, obyrith, vaati, tanari forcefield?
The Abyss is that part of primal Chaos that was strip-mined of everything the creators deemed to have value, leaving behind only hollowness, jealousy, and rage.
Limbo is that part of primal Chaos that remains more or less in its pristine state. Its inhabitants don't bear the rest of the multiverse a grudge like the obyriths do, though they'd still like to spread their creed (as all the Outer Planes wish to do).
[Fiendish Codex I, however, indicates that this primal chaos wasn't actually the original state. There were even older beings - the draedens, borrowed from the D&D Immortal Set - who lived in the raw void before the chaos of what would become the Outer Planes ever formed. It is to this state that Tharizdun wishes to return. To him even the obyriths are impudent young Turks who don't remember the good old days before Chaos.
Not disagreeing, there are also references to multiverses BEFORE the present one which were destroyed. Some beings, however, appear to have survived, e.g., leShay, Illithid (depending on which sources you read). If you go with this, you get -
1) Pre-Multiverse
2) Pre-Multiversal destruction
3) Post-Destruction "Void"
4) Pre-formation of present multiverse ie chaos, "Reign of Pure Chaos,"
5) Formation of present multiverse from chaos
6) Present multiverse
So where does BigT fit in? If you go with the entropy thought, I'd say Stage 3 "Void." Same result if the thought is "anti-life."
Interersting thought, however, that BigT might have been a survivor of the Pre-Multiverse, maybe even helped destroy it. Now, we are talking alien, even beyond the Far Realms.
BigT might even be a cosmological constant - the DESTROYER - all caps. The beginning and end of each cosmological cycle of formation and destruction.
The constant DESTROYER. I like that. A primordial force from Beyond - older even than our multiverse. Brings up thoughts of a 'secret society' type story - followers of T and an opposing force, struggling to help keep somthing that is (fated?) to happen from occuring... T's return. _________________ Michael Erin Sandar Bard of Midwood
What do folks think with equating the "Elder Elves" with the leShay? I've never read the Epic Level Handbook...
GVD, Maldin's GUT (Grand Unified Theory) can account for the idea of "multiverses BEFORE the present one which were destroyed" via the ProtoUniverse--existence before the meeting of the three Sentients that created the original D&D Universe that eventually evolved into the D&D Multiverse with which we're familiar.
Sages may speculate that many "multiverses" were created and destroyed before the current one because they have not grasped that in the ProtoUniverse "Time (as part of the Dimension Variable) was a constantly, unevenly changing element throughout the ProtoUniverse, so you couldn't measure it anyways. It was forever and it was no time at all."
If you've not read Maldin's GUT, I highly recommend it. Though a little long for online reading, I think you'll enjoy it and would like to hear your responses to it.
What do folks think with equating the "Elder Elves" with the leShay?
It's a possibility. Leshay are faerie folk rather than elves, but they're supposedly related. On the other hand, the elder elves could have simply been mortal elves.
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