Typhonian Reach
Introduction
Know, O Prince, that between the fall of the elder world and the coming of the great glaciers, there was an age undreamed of. An age of wonder and terror, when a newborn species of weak, ignorant, yet clever and ambitious apes gazed with fear... and avarice... upon the ruins of the world they had inherited by chance.
For uncounted epochs, monsters had crawled over the primeval earth, their wars and magics twisting land, sea, and sky. Yet all things end. Elder race warred with elder race, to their mutual downfall. Senescent species made horrible pacts with strange Powers to avoid decline. As elder things clung to life and power beyond their time, their wombs and cultures withered. The lands moved upon the waters, and monsters who had ruled over jungle and swamp shivered as the ice came. The life of monsters is as the life of stars, but even stars die. And finally the ancient world collapsed.
Continents broke; seas boiled as fangs of fire erupted from the deep; the stars of heaven lurched into new constellations. The elder masters' towers fell, their leviathan-gods retreated to nurse their wounds. From the heights of power and erudition, the elder lords were cast into savagery. And in the wreckage, the lowliest slaves... sequestered from the worst of the ruin as fodder for their masters' magics and military experiments... cast off their chains, went forth, and multiplied.
In only a handful of generations, mankind rose far: mastering fire and bronze, building cities in imitation of the prehumans', developing systems of writing and mathematics... and delving into the same dark sorceries that brought down their predecessors. Power fostered arrogance; wealth nurtured greed; the city walls that sheltered from the wilderness allowed vice to fester in their midst. And in their dark dens and hidden places, the surviving monsters of the elder world grinned in anticipation and stretched out their talons to goad man against his brother, that the world might be theirs once more.
Yet something happened unforeseen by man and monster alike. From among humans of all stations... from the mightiest hero-lugal to the merest slave... a divine spark alit in mortal clay. Human in form yet wielding the cosmic and elemental power of leviathans, these demigods went among the nations to work wonders and receive the awe of their fellows.
Did they defend their newborn species as guardians? Uplift and teach it as culture heroes? Oppress it as immortal tyrants? Fleece it as tricksters? Or betray their birth-kind to go among the elder races, not as slaves but as masters over a second age of monsters?
That tale remains to be told.
Player Characters
Ama (Jeremy Kopczynski) (Command, Fertility, Sun): The sun rises upon the Yayoi, and impurity withers in its light.
Anka (Marikir) (Death, Fertility, Health): From the dry lands the green breath blows.
Illuminous the Arcane (lordmcdeath): (Knowledge, Sorcery, Time): The shape of things to come is unknown... yet He knows more than you.
Pars (EngmaticOne) (Artifice, Earth, Endurance): All things of worth were forged in fire. As was my hammer.
Tarrlak Varr (CowboyEnergy) (Alacrity, Health, Sword): The mountain stands. And so do we.
Factions
Gath (EnigmaticOne) (Power 2 Cohesion 2 Action Die 1d8) The people of Gath reside in the north of the archipelago known as Typhon’s Wake, built into the foothills of the Zakros mountain range. Three different volcanoes exist within the chain, known in order of greatest to least size as: the King-Peak of Fire, the Lady-Peak of Fire, and the Child-Peak of Fire. The brooding volcanoes offer peril but also bounty: Copper ore and obsidian practically spill forth from the slopes to anoint the people of Gath, while the rich ash-nurtured soil gifts Gath’s farmers with abundance, including lush grapes for the making of amaranth wines treasured throughout the region.
Despite the fire of its mountains and the fire of its wines, what blazes brightest in Gath is the genius of Pars, its demigod prodigy-smith. Pars’ craftsmanship and inventive mind are inspiring a similar interest in Gath’s population.
Tolundria (CowboyEnergy) (Power 2, Cohesion 2, Action Die 1d8) In the mountains to the south of the great alluvial deltas stands a great peak of jagged granite, gazing contemptuously over the soft lowlands at its horizon. The farmers below make obeisance to the mountain, calling it Tolu-Gal, the Rock of Kings. And atop this peak dwell a people as hard as the rock of their home, as fierce as the gyre-hawks and gryphons of the surrounding range. Under the tutelage of the warmaster Tarlaak Vaar, these proud fighters test themselves against the unforgiving mountain, to become as stone, to break or be broken.
This is Tolundria, stranger. For your sake, may you come in peace.
Yayoi (Jeremy Kopcynski) (Power 2, Cohesion 2, Action Die 1d8) The island-dwelling Yayoi are a people in transition. Formerly foragers, they have recently discovered the arts of farming and bronze working. Besides the cultivated fields fishing is a major source of nutrition and also of superstitions as they brave the dangerous seas.
They are organized into several matrilineal clans and have recently begun to develop an elaborate social hierarchy based on personal honor and achievement. Politically Yayoi is a chiefdom and has recently elevated the high priestess-turned-demigoddess Ama to lead them.
In matters of religion they are led by priestesses and shamans who attempt to serve as intercessors between the people and anything viewed as supernatural. Until very recently, sacrifices of the high priestess was common.
Ashada, City of the Bitumen Kings (Power 2, Cohesion 2, Action Die 1d8) Amid the Bone Sinks, where not even vultures go, the barren ground cracks like the face of a hierodule past their prime. The remains of monstrous beasts litter the desolation, participants in or victims of some elder war. Yet from the wounds that gouge the earth bubbles up the stinking black tar that has so enriched those with the fortitude to make the Bone Sinks their own. Bitumen: In the hands of skilled engineer-savants it serves purposes ranging from construction to fiery war.
The fractious oligarchs that jointly rule Ashada were no more than junior merchants, speculators, or less savory things before their rise, but their wealth has made them forget their station, and so they style themselves as Kings. There is little majestic about the trade in slaves bought as needed and sent to work the pits. They grow encrusted and befouled with the stuff, and they sicken and die within 18 moons, but that is the lot of slaves. And after all, it is only right that the pits be fed with those who work them, in payment to the bitumen-spirits for the extraction.
So, while Ashada is black and ugly and reeks of the underworld, within its asphalt walls are many beautiful things come to satisfy the urges and pleasures of the Kings.
The Locust Tribes (Power 2, Cohesion 2, Action Die 1d8) Angels of desolation, the merciless, insatiable Locust Tribes ravage the east. Where the Locust Tribes overrun, nothing is left: that which is not taken is ritually destroyed, those who are not slain are left to face starvation.
Formerly a cluster of marginalized nomads, escaped slaves, and failed brigands forced into the unforgiving alkali barrens of Gepesh, the desperate pariahs of a hundred settlements have coalesced under Zum-Zum the Glutton, prophet of the ancient insect-god Girtab: Father-Mother of locusts, mantids, scorpions, and all stinging rapacious things.
The Tribes' raids are spearheaded by the cult’s most fanatical marauders. Giving themselves the ancient epithet of “thri-kreen,” or “hunger swarm,” these braves intoxicate themselves on blue mantis flesh and scorpion venom before launching their cannibalistic atrocities.
NPCs of Note
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Monsters
Ogres
Savage, degenerate, superstitious, and primitive, ogres lurk in small bands in the wilderness. They retain their ancestors' height (9-10') and strength, but the devil-kings' beauty has become ugliness and their intellect devolved to bestial rage. Prone to bouts of madness, killing and eating one another as readily as anything else, ogres are congenitally incapable of large-scale organization or planning; this gives smaller, weaker humans a fighting chance against the brutes. Despite their reduced mental state, they dimly remember what they once were... and what humanity was. And they hate. Woe to the human who falls into their clutches.
HD 4, AC 6 (hides + tough skin), Attack +6 (strong), Damage 1d8 +2 (strong), Morale 9 (savage but superstitious), Save 14+ (accursed - worse than normal), Move 30' run, Effort 1
Ogres commonly form Mobs; they are strong and ferocious enough to threaten even demigods and so have the Overwhelm ability.
Anakim (Ogre Magi)
Ancestors of the ogres, anakim were the first anthropoids to arise and challenge the monsters of the Elder World... though they were little less monstrous. In form they were near perfect: towering ur-hominids of sinister, satanic beauty, muscular and graceful (Araki's Pillar Men from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure mixed with Milton's Satan gives an idea). Combining unholy strength, magical might, and devious cunning, they beat back the declining elder prehumans, bound many lesser demons to service, made pacts with many leviathans, and carved out great holdings across the ancient world. Basically Moorcock's Melnibone or Howard's Acheron.
Yet in character they were cruel, decadent, arrogant, sadistic. Trusting their own kind but little (with good reason), engaging in vicious feuds and rivalries, they preferred to keep apart, each small cabal of devil-kings building its holdings on the backs of lesser primates raised as slaves. Practicing sorcery, breeding bizarre hybrid beasts, and trafficking with demons and leviathans, anakim sought ever greater power and knowledge: over their fellows, over the elder beast-gods, and most of all over life and death. Lacking the greater leviathans' divinity and immortality, they craved these things, and their laboratories echoed with the screams of their lesser kindred on whom they performed experiment after unholy experiment.
Their society destroyed itself in the Collapse; whatever they unleashed twisted the entire species, devolving them physically and mentally into the race of ogres. Only 1 in 100 ogre births produces a new anak. Intelligent enough to know the numbers no longer favor them, anakim lord over their brutish descendants as god-kings or, cloaked in illusion, walk among humans, undermining the new dominant species from within.
Common Anak: HD 8, AC 4 (medium armor, skill), Attack +10 x2 attacks, Damage 1d12, Morale 10, Save 11+, Move 30' run/45' flight, Effort 3. They have the powers attributed to AD&D ogre mages, but these are low-magic effects of limited use against a demigod.
Devil-King/Queen: An anak whose soul is sufficiently mighty to bear a spark of divinity. While they lack the sheer capability of human demigods (few have more than two Words, and they gain no benefit from cults except a boost to their overweening egos), they make up for it with power and malice. Each is built differently, but at a minimum you're looking at a splice of the Twisted Ogre (p. 151) and Greater Eldritch (p. 148) templates: 20+ HD, flight, 1d12 straight-damage melee and magic attacks, and usually some Sorcery and Deception Gifts plus a mystic Corona of Fury attack.
The Spawn of Yoji-Pang
Many leviathans cast their seed upon or took into themselves what they would, but none were so… energetic… as Yoji-Pang, the Abundant Lingam. A colossal, towering… (take an AD&D roper, splice it in whatever ways you care, or don’t care, to imagine with Revenge of the Overfiend, give it the Fertility Word, and grow it to 60’ tall)… Yoji-Pang was surprisingly popular among certain anak cliques of especial decadence. What transpired is best left unwritten.
What cannot be unmentioned is the fact that, while Yoji-Pang is little known in the current epoch, His spawn were of sufficient number and variety to plague the latter world.
Spawn of Yoji-Pang: I’m using Carcosa’s Spawn of Shub-Niggurath tables, which repurpose to Godbound with little effort.
Lesser Lingams (especially favored Spawn): AD&D ropers massaged to work for Godbound.
