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.