The Wyzard Setting Essays

Here are some setting essays for my OD&D game.

Known Gods

There are many, many beings of sufficient power to arguably merit worship. This can be construed as a matter of scale. A demonic imp with delusions of grandeur might eventually teach a troupe of small monkeys to bow down and give it offerings; the relation of a demon price to its human cultists is not different in kind.

Clerics may serve some particular god or another, but they need not. Their magic is a different path from the arcane, but it is equally self-sufficient for game purposes. Because of the great many deities in the world (which might range from a gigantic alligator of ancient and inhuman intelligence worshipped by a tribe of goblins, to an actual extraplanar being with plenary powers over the material world), there will never be a comprehensive list of them. If a player invokes or worships some given being, I'm inclined to assume that being exists, in some sense, if it can be fitted into the setting in any sensible way.

Still, for purposes of versimilitude, I will list a few deities and describe them, so that players can gain a sense of the setting as it exists in my head.

The Hungry Man

The world's psychopomp and most widely recognized deity of death. He appears as a huge but emaciated gnoll, with spidery limbs and a big sack over one shoulder. When a being dies, and the corpse is not properly disposed of, their soul is collected by the Hungry Man and taken away to the Empty Lands, a featureless gray wasteland of infinite size. He curses the dead with his own endless and insatiable hunger, so that they spend eternity tearing at each other's substanceless flesh in an attempt to fill the utter emptiness within. It is occasionally possible for unusually clever and determined souls to somehow find their way back to the world from the lands of the dead. However, their hunger follows them, thus resulting in the strong tendency of the undead to desire the flesh, blood, or life energy of the living.

He Who Waits Behind the Walls

A curious but deeply sinister being, or potential being. Venerated largely by corrupt scholars, He Who Waits Behind the Walls is said not to exist in this universe yet, but may be brought into it if his history is completed. That history consists of fragmentary tales of horrific events, which seem to be either fictional, or fictionalized versions of real events. There are also philosophical concepts and alternate moralities that are considered to be component's of his corpus. His cult's major activities consist of hunting down pieces of his history and ideology (they either have some method of separating random textual detritus from authentic fragment's of His History, or perhaps they are delusional) and tricking the world into accepting them. This is the process by which they believe they can help Him into the world. If the content of his corpus is indicative of anything, his cult's success in this endeavor would be a very bad thing.

That Which is Concealed Beneath the Surface

A Lizardman deity of great antiquity, this being is venerated as an icon of strength and fertility. It is usually pictured as a great crocodile or alligator submerged underwater. While worship of That Which is Concealed likely dates back to the Lizardmen's civilizations before the dawn of human history, it is still actively propitiated both by the degenerate Lizardmen of the modern era, and often by humans who live in hot, swampy, or jungle-like environments. The ritual veneration of That Which is Concealed is generally a barbaric affair, with great bonfires in the humid night, and secret, orgiastic rites.

The Rime-limned Queen

A being of vast and ineffable knowledge, the Queen came to the world from the stars, and is now said to float in the heavens amongst the Moons. Rites to her are conducted at night on high plateaus, and often involve strange lights in the sky and consorting with otherworldly beings. Her clerics often display strange scars and disfigurements. The Queen is taken quite seriously by demons and devils, as she has demonstrated the ability to interdict them from passage between their realms and the earth.

The Guardian of the Eighth Spiral

Usually depicted as a huge mass of serpents, heads and bodies extending from a sphere made up of all their tails melded together. A kind of protector-spirit which is set on places which are to be absolutely forbidden. There are very few clerics devoted solely to this deity; they tend to convert to its special service after already achieving great power through a prior path. This deity is also sometimes invoked in proceedings to deliver horrific curses on one who has committed a major transgression. For example, a host who killed his guest in violation of Hospitality might have his body permanently infested with small, flesh-devouring worms in this deity's name. No one knows precisely what the Eighth Spiral is, nor what happened to the previous seven.

The Cult of Forst the Sexton

Forst began his mission a century ago, burying the dead to deny the Hungry Man. His disciples spread his practices, and roam the world, attempting to properly set the dead to rest. Preferably by burying, but entombment or cremation if neccessary, even exposure or in extremis symbolic anthropaphagy. Anything is preferrable to a soul being condemned to the Hungry Man's hell.

They frown upon the practice of internment with grave goods. "A Rich Grave is a robbed grave" is one of Forst's maxims. "you can't take it with you" and "Life's for the Living" being two of his other proverbs.

Astronomy

Demons, arcane magic, and many other dangerous phenomena originate among the outer darkness where the stars wheel and laugh. Across the indigo gulf of time and space, horrors and unnatural power come to visit the world of men. Beware the ice-rimed creatures who descend from the sky, for their journeys have been long and their places of origin strange beyond reckoning. Who knows what ends they may pursue, so far away from their natural place in the cosmos?

The Moons

There are three moons orbiting the world, spaced evenly around a single orbital period. Thus, at almost any time, there is at least one moon in the sky, and many nights there are two. One bears a reddish cast, the other a bluish one, and the last is a dark slate gray. They are considered to be the primary sources of magical power in the world, and also rich with demonic and other entities who may be summoned by some means or another. It is thought that there are likely entire civilizations dotted about their surface, perhaps of incredible antiquity.

History

The Amaranthan Empire

One of the more historically "recent" Great Civilizations, the Amaranthan's were unparalleled masters of sorcery. Their ways were debased and vile, but they crushed kingdoms as a dragon might smite a bugbear. A heavily chaotic race, the Amaranthans eventually rebelled against those beings claiming the status of deityhood. It galled them that any being should arrogate to themselves a higher station than what their Emperor appointed. Thus began the dreadful God-War of the Amaranthan Empire. It raged on for centuries, and the Amaranthans did in fact manage to subjugate the four major elements - to this day the great elementals are unusually susceptible to the antique sorceries to which the Amaranthans bound them. The war did not end, however, and each new year brought more powerful beings into conflict with the unbelievable might of the Amaranthans. The great houses were eventually tempted to rebel against the endless war, and the Empire self-destructed in a decade of blood and fire. The ruins and deep fastnesses of the Amaranthans are still considered to be some of the most valuable and dangerous sites for adventuring; they had vast wealth and had created innumerable artifacts.

It is said that there is somewhere a desert wasteland, at the center of which is a huge black obelisk engraved with the names of all those deities slain during the God-War.