“The story so far:
In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad
move.”
― The Restaurant at
the End of the Universe
Few, if any, ever settled on a creation myth, or so
they’ve said. I’ve heard interviews where those who had a hand in developing
the setting expressed their desire to never actually nail down a creation myth,
believing that DMs would wish to write such themselves. Did they? Some probably
did; but I believe most never bothered, focusing instead on their own little
corner of the world and the adventures within it, not caring whence it came
from, knowing their players didn’t either.
Despite their claims, those very same designers pushed
the timeline back very far indeed, almost to the very hour, in some cases. Frank
Mentzer did. And some of his creations were slipped into the pages of the
sourcebooks that followed. Chris Pramas certainly started the clock very close
to what might be called a beginning.
What follows is a fairly esoteric collection TSR and WotC
passages that over the decades dealt with just that: where did the multiverse
come from? Were they successful in what they presented? I will leave that up to
you to judge.
What is presented here is by no means complete. Indeed, I
left a great many passages out, focussing only on those that predated Time, let
alone Space. I like some. I detest others. I’m sure you will feel the same way,
although I cannot imagine how. And would never deem to wonder why.
You can skip to the bottom, if you wish, and read my
conclusions, instead of wading through such erudite and likely never-to-be-used
material.
Still with me?
Are you sitting comfortably? Then we’ll begin.
The very closest that those writers of Greyhawk
sourcebooks ever came to a creation myth was when contemplating the Outer
Planes. Where did they come from? Did they predate the Prime Material Plane?
The closest they ever came was this tale about the Serpents of Law.
The mightiest of
Law’s champions were the Twin Serpents. These Cosmic Serpents expressed the
duality of Law, and were unstoppable when they worked together. Jazirian,
winged and feathered, dedicated herself to the cause of good, while Ahriman,
scaled and forked of tongue, embraced the darker side path of evil. [Guide
to Hell - 2]
That is very
much a creation myth, if I may say so. The only thing missing is the hand of God
to start it off. But why did Chris Pramas say that those Serpents were “the
mightiest of Law’s champions”? We would have been better served had the
serpents had coalesced from the swirling firmament, instead of chaos, and that
they were the embodiment of the fractals of possibility: to find form, and
eternal diversity.
Law and Chaos.
Good and Evil were not yet possibilities. Those require higher consciousness
than what had emerged.
No matter. This
creation is very similar to the biblical creation myth, isn’t it?
Let’s be clear
before anyone takes offence; I’m only comparing the myth above to the Christian
creation story in this discussion because I was raised in the Catholic faith
and it is the one with which I am most familiar.
Day 2 - God created an expanse to separate the waters and
called it "sky."
Day 3 - God created the dry ground and gathered the waters,
calling the dry ground "land," and the gathered waters
"seas." On day three, God also created vegetation (plants and trees).
Day 4 - God created the sun, moon, and the stars to give
light to the earth and to govern and separate the day and the night. These
would also serve as signs to mark seasons, days, and years.
Day 5 - God created every living creature of the seas and
every winged bird, blessing them to multiply and fill the waters and the sky
with life.
Day 6 - God created the animals to fill the earth. On day
six, God also created man and woman (Adam and Eve) in his own image to commune
with him. He blessed them and gave them every creature and the whole earth to
rule over, care for, and cultivate.
Day 7 - God had finished his work of creation and so he
rested on the seventh day, blessing it and making it holy.
 |
| O Lucifer, Son of the Morning! |
Of course, there had to be a Fall from Grace to explain
Humankind’s, as well:
"How you are follen from heaven,
O Lucifer, son of the morning!
How you are cut down to the ground,
You who weakened the nations!
For you have said in your heart:
'I will ascend into heaven,
I shall exalt my throne above the stars of God;
I will also sit on the mount of the congregation
On the farthest sides of the north;
I will ascend above the heights of the clouds;
I will be like the Most High.'
Yet you shall be brought down to Shoel,
To the lowest depths of the Pit.
[Isaiah 14: 12-15]
And with it, the beginnings of the struggel between Good and Evil:
And war broke out in heaven: Michael and his angels fought with the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought, but they did not prevail, nor was a place found for them in heaven any longer. So the great dragon was cast out, the serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who decieves the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast with him. Then I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, ' Now salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren, who accused them before our God day and night, has been cast down.
[Revelation 12: 7-10]
"How you are follen from heaven,
O Lucifer, son of the morning!
How you are cut down to the ground,
You who weakened the nations!
For you have said in your heart:
'I will ascend into heaven,
I shall exalt my throne above the stars of God;
I will also sit on the mount of the congregation
On the farthest sides of the north;
I will ascend above the heights of the clouds;
I will be like the Most High.'
Yet you shall be brought down to Shoel,
To the lowest depths of the Pit.
[Isaiah 14: 12-15]
And with it, the beginnings of the struggel between Good and Evil:
And war broke out in heaven: Michael and his angels fought with the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought, but they did not prevail, nor was a place found for them in heaven any longer. So the great dragon was cast out, the serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who decieves the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast with him. Then I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, ' Now salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren, who accused them before our God day and night, has been cast down.
[Revelation 12: 7-10]
Most, if not all, Western fantasy follows the Christian
creation template, I believe. I would be surprised if it didn’t. Take Tolkien,
for instance, his being the best example of a template for worldbuilding, if
there ever was one:
Account of the Valar and Maiar according to the lore
of the Eldar
In the beginning there was Eru, the One, who in the
Elvish tongue is named Ilúvatar, made the Ainur of his thought;
and they made a great Music before him. In this Music the World was begun; for
Ilúvatar
made visible the the song of the Ainur, and they beheld it as a light in the darkness.
And many among them became enamoured of its beauty, and of its history which
they say beginning and unfolding as in a vision. Therefore Ilúvatar
gave to their vision Being, and set it amid the Void, and the Secret Fire was
sent to burn at the heart of the World; and it was called Eä.
Then those of the Ainur who desired it arose and
entered into the World at the beginning of Time; and it was their task to
achieve it, and by their labours to fulfil the vision which they had seen. Long
they laboured in the regions of Eä, which are vast beyond the thought of
Elves and Men, until in the time appointed was made Arda, the Kingdom of Earth.
Then they put the raiment of Earth and descended into it, and dwelt therein. [The Silmarillion, 1979]
If that is not a rewording of the biblical account of
creation, I do not know what is.
Just as Lucifer
fell, so did Melkor. And just as Michael and Lucifer fought the first war, so
too the Ainur and Melkor.
It is told among
the wise that the First War began before Arda was full-shaped, and ere yet
there was any thing that grew or walked upon earth; and for long Melkor had the
upper hand. But in the midst of the war a spirit of great strength and
hardihood came to the aid of the Valar, hearing in the far heaven that there
was battle in the Little Kingdom; and Arda was filled with the sound of his
laughter. So came Tulkas the Strong, whose anger passes like a mighty wind,
scattering cloud and darkness before it; and Melkor fled before his wrath and
his laughter, and forsook Arda, and there was peace for a long age. And Tulkas
remained and became one of the Valar of the Kingdom of Arda; but Melkor brooded
in the outer darkness, and his hate was given to Tulkas for ever after.
In that time the Valar brought order to the seas and the lands and the mountains, and Yavanna planted at last the seeds that she had long devised. And since, when the fires were subdued or buried beneath the primeval hills, there was need of light, Aule at the prayer of Yavanna wrought two mighty lamps for the lighting of the Middle-earth which he had built amid the encircling seas. Then Varda filled the lamps and Manwe hallowed them, and the Valar set them upon high pillars, more lofty far than are any mountains of the later days. One lamp they raised near to the north of Middleearth, and it was named Illuin; and the other was raised in the south, and it was named Ormal; and the light of the Lamps of the Valar flowed out over the Earth, so that all was lit as it were in a changeless day. [The Silmarillion, 1979]
In that time the Valar brought order to the seas and the lands and the mountains, and Yavanna planted at last the seeds that she had long devised. And since, when the fires were subdued or buried beneath the primeval hills, there was need of light, Aule at the prayer of Yavanna wrought two mighty lamps for the lighting of the Middle-earth which he had built amid the encircling seas. Then Varda filled the lamps and Manwe hallowed them, and the Valar set them upon high pillars, more lofty far than are any mountains of the later days. One lamp they raised near to the north of Middleearth, and it was named Illuin; and the other was raised in the south, and it was named Ormal; and the light of the Lamps of the Valar flowed out over the Earth, so that all was lit as it were in a changeless day. [The Silmarillion, 1979]
Back to Greyhawk and D&D.
Although Guide to Hell may have been vague in how [through] some unknown process, forms
coalesced out of the chaos, including the planes themselves and those beings
later known as gods, leaving what
may have been up to the DM’s imagination, later tomes were not. They went much
further and named the spark of all creation once and for all: Atropus.
Behold the death of your world. There, cresting the
horizon. Yes, that faint body is he, and he comes for me . . . for us all.
Rejoice, for the end is near, and all life, all pain, all suffering shall be
silenced in the perfect eternity of undeath.” —Caira Xasten, mad astronomer
and ur-priest [Elder Evils - 16]
According to the writings, creation was the result of
a “prime mover.” This being’s identity varies with the particular story. Most
scholars agree this entity must be the force behind the gods springing forth
into existence from the primeval void. This force, idea, or being is called
Atropus. […]
Some theologians believe the appearance of these
divine agencies came with a dreadful price. In order for them to take shape,
there must have been a sacrifice: For life to exist, there must be death.
Atropus must have caused its own death and in that sense became the afterbirth
of creation, the wasted materials left over from the formation of the gods.
Furthermore, since the gods are living beings, and since life relies upon
energy gained from the Positive Energy Plane, Atropus must be their inversion:
death incarnate, drawing its own power, such as it is, from the Negative Energy
Plane. […]
Little remains of the prime mover that made the
supreme sacrifice, nothing more than a decaying, disembodied head, leaving in its
wake cast-off necromantic detritus that floats through the void. Perhaps
atropals—the stillborn gods […] take their shape from these cast-off bits.
Atropus is bound to unmake living things, to absorb their souls in an orgy of
violence. Its touch is terrifying to witness, as countless barren worlds
crawling with restless dead mutely testify. [Elder Evils - 16,17]
So, the spark of creation, much like dreaming Azathoth,
was unimaginably, unspeakably, Evil. I have thoughts on that, but I’ll keep
them to the end.
There is a gap in the Greyhawk myth. A very large gap in
which there were beings that were as gods, if not gods, for the gods had yet to
come into being.
This is where Frank Mentzer’s BECMI: Immortal Box Set, published
in 1986, sneaks into the Greyhawk mythos.
It was Frank who created the Draeden, and in my mind,
that is where they ought to remain, but others disagreed, including them and
other creatures like them in the Fiendish Codexis and Elder Evil supplements.
Why were they included? I suppose to give epic level PCs that ought to have
been retired something to fight.
[The] Fiendish Codex I mentions immense living creatures known as draedens who existed
before the planes existed, including one called Ulgurshek who fell asleep while
the Abyss formed around it. The draedens were first mentioned in the Dungeons & Dragons Immmortal Set,
which described the draedens as clusters of mouths and tentacles the size of
demiplanes who were descendants of beings who may have created the multiverse
long before the time of the Immortals. They despise elemental material, seeing
everything but perfect void as an unwelcome imposition in their domain. After a
period of war and strife ending at least 200 million years ago, the draedens
retired, deciding to outlast their enemies by waiting until the rest of
creation destroyed itself. [Grey Particle]
Here’s is how
Frank first described them:
Draedens are feared and respected by all who are aware
of their existence. A draeden's true but rarely-seen appearance is a cluster of
20 tubular strands, all symmetrically attached at a central node and fanning
out at both ends. Each strand has a mouth at each end, and contains a digestive
passage leading to the central node. The node is the equivalent of a stomach,
and contains several thousand boulders to aid digestion. These boulders range
in size from 1-20 feet, and are made of solid diamond, worn to perfect
smoothness by the acidic fluids. A draeden's intelligence resides throughout a
neural network that spans most of the form. [Imortals DMG - 38]
And here is how
they “evolved,” come 3rd edition:
The Ulgurshek
Orifice: A wheezing, spattering
orifice of tongue-red flesh fills a massive stone-walled chamber attached to a
main thoroughfare in the Demonweb. The undulating sphincter lazily devours
anything placed upon it, gently transporting the waste material to the bizarre
Abyssal layer known as Ulgurshek. The Fraternity of Order catalogues Ulgurshek
as the 92nd layer of the Abyss, designating it a “living layer” to account for
its apparent sentience. The layer appears to be composed of the innards of some
impossibly huge creature. Veins flow like rivers through vast tunnels of organic
matter. Fleshy organs the size of boulders hang like fruit from the distant
ceiling, secreting corrosive fluid onto living fields soaked in natural acids.
Nothing survives for long within Ulgurshek, and Lolth’s minions use the Orifice
as an efficient garbage sluice and prisoner disposal.
Only Lolth and a
handful of her most trusted servitors and progeny know the truth, that
Ulgurshek is not a part of the Abyss but is in fact an immense living creature
from the dawn of time called a draeden. The godlike being had already fallen
into torpor when the Outer Planes themselves took form. Ulgurshek wasn’t
captured by the Abyss—it grew around him as his dormant form drifted through
the raw creative matter of the multiverse. Confined by reality, Ulgurshek has no
hope of escape. Because its memory plumbs a time-lost era unknown even to the
obyriths, Lolth occasionally ventures into Ulgurshek to consult it on some
sagely matter, and perhaps probe it for tales of the strategy of its ruthless
now-lost brethren. In return, Lolth pledges to hunt out signs of Ulgurshek’s
race elsewhere in the Great Wheel.
[Fiendish Codex 1: Hordes of the Abyss - 126]
What does Ulgurshek remind me of? Azathoth. But
downgraded from that horror beyond all imagination that it is, the source from
which its dreams birth all existence, to a mere layer of the Abyss.
[O]utside the ordered universe [is] that amorphous
blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the center of
all infinity—the boundless daemon sultan Azathoth, whose name no lips dare
speak aloud, and who gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond
time and space amidst the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin
monotonous whine of accursed flutes. [The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath]
Draedens were not the only beings who resided in those
truly elder times. There were others as equally horrifying as Cthuhlu and
Yog-Soggoth, who I believe these creatures were modeled after.
Ragnorra, Mother of
Monsters, is a primeval source of life eternally corrupted. Bloated, hideous,
and filled with a terrible love for her children, this elder evil wanders the
planes searching for new worlds to remake in her image. [Elder Evils - 96]
Are they gods? Or are they something similar? Or are the
gods lesser beings to these horrors?
Today, few question the fact that a priest need not
worship a god to work divine magic—he needs only faith in an idea. Yet what of
the source of this discovery? Who was the first to draw upon divinity without
the guidance of a god? Who knows the truth of the first heretic, and of the
serpent who exposed a secret no god wished revealed?” —From the Demonomicon
of Iggwilv [Elder Evils - 112]
Ragnorra
 |
| Ragnorra |
Many creation myths
divide the world’s history into three distinct eras. The present, the time of
mortal races, was preceded by the time of the gods. Before the gods was the age
of primeval forces, both good and ill. The Mother of Monsters belongs to that
era.
Until recently,
knowledge of Ragnorra had been lost to mortals. Now, sketchy reports have begun
circulating in scholarly circles of runes in the silver sky of the Astral
Plane. Some claim these signs warn of the return of Ragnorra, and their stories
are now given more credence than ridicule.
Ancient tales refer
to the Mother of Monsters, a gigantic, unnatural creature that birthed horrors
that plagued the early worlds. The gods cast this awful thing into the space
between the planes. With the world rid of her creatures, they were free to
create the mortal races. Scholars have partially deciphered the runes that
summarize this history. Most claim they herald the return of Ragnorra.
A vocal minority of
planar scholars claim the runes tell not one tale, but many. Each rune has been
written atop a previous one, incorporating the earlier rune in its form. The
runes’ gigantic size suggests that the story of Ragnorra has been told many
times, rewritten each time she is to appear. Each of the prior tales ends in
the extinguishing of mortal races on a world and the corruption of all its
life.
Moving between the
planes, Ragnorra appears about once every 1,500 years on the Material Plane.
Her arrival takes the form of a fiery red comet. The astral runes are not a
warning so much as a “signpost” that points out Ragnorra’s path to the next
world. [Elder Evils - 96]
Ragnorra is a
twisted, irresistible force of creation. She exists to spawn life in her own
terrible image. Legends tell of her spores raining down upon worlds to fester.
The spores parasitize plants and animals, raising blisters that birth monsters,
killing the hosts. Even inanimate objects sprout hideous creatures. Some
unfortunate sentients infected by spores become aberrant hybrids.
Ragnorra is a vast
intelligence, but not a conscious one. She operates on intuition, dreaming
inexplicably deep plans. Destruction is not her purpose, but rather undoing the
“errors” of the gods and reshaping all life according to her own vision. That
this horrid new order is contradictory, destructive, and painful to her progeny
does not matter to her.
Ragnorra is no
longer content with merely seeding a world from above. She now prepares it by
crashing herself into the earth with enough force to raise a vast crater. The
collision hurls dust and debris into the air, altering the climate and
weakening existing life. Pieces of Ragnorra’s own body rain down from the sky,
spreading her awful fecundity around the world.
A group of
outsiders from several planes have formed a cultlike society, the Malshapers.
Rather than fearing Ragnorra, they revere her power and guide her plans. They
create a sort of trail through the multiverse, seeding it with life from a
chosen world to lead the Mother of Monsters to her next target. Evidence of
this trail manifests as runes in the Astral Plane. [Elder Evils - 96,97]
What came next? Aboleth?. Yuan-ti? Reptiles?
Question: What draconic creator deity emerged from the
First Void in the Age before Ages and shed blood in the Shadow Void to inspire
all creation? Answer: Io, the Ninefold Dragon. [Expedition to the Ruins of
Castle Greyhawk - 91]
What are we to make of this? I would hazard that ALL
species have their creation myths and that they are bound to overlap and
contradict one another.
The gods would have mortals believe that in the
beginning, they created the world. That they helped shape the world is not in
dispute, but they were far from the first to cast their influence across the
Material Plane. The aboleths lived in the primeval depths before the first
deity wrought life from primal clay. The elemental races established vast
multiplanar empires long before the first priest offered prayers from a crude
stone altar. And in the roiling deep of the Abyss, demons had already conquered
entire planes before the advent of intelligent life on the Material Plane. Most
powerful among these ancient demons were the obyrith lords.
Led by the Queen of Chaos, the obyriths waged murder
against the elemental Wind Dukes of Aaqa. Those who refused to join the Queen
were punished and imprisoned. Obox-ob, then the Prince of Demons, withstood her
call. In a great war, the Queen defeated Obox-ob and crowned her consort, Miska
the Wolf Spider, the new Prince of Demons. Yet when the Queen’s legions were
defeated on the Fields of Pesh, it was ironically the obyrith lords she had
cast out or imprisoned who survived. […] One such obyrith lord was Sertrous, a
minor demon lord associated at the time with parasites and crawling things.
Ever rebellious, Sertrous slew every demon that came to his Abyssal lair to
recruit him to the Queen’s cause. He had little defense against the Queen
herself, who quickly grew tired of his insubordination, destroyed his body, and
cast his essence into the gulf between planes as one might cast aside a
carcass. Yet this did not spell Sertrous’s doom. As his essence passed through
the Material Plane, Sertrous made a desperate grab at an anchor to prevent his
passage into the void beyond. All he found was a lowly serpent, wallowing in
the mire of a primeval fen. […]
For untold centuries, Sertrous lived as a serpent. At
first, he was confined to that serpent’s body. As he healed, his essence
transformed the serpent into a new physicality that took on the madness of his
previous demonic form. Yet he retained serpentine features—partially as a
disguise if agents of the Queen encounter him. Sertrous watched from his fen as
the mortal races grew civilized, established their own empires, and raised
temples to honor the gods. Sertrous grew jealous of their prosperity and
coveted the devotion mortals heaped upon the gods. And so he waged war on them,
plaguing these first nations with armies of serpents and monsters from the fen.
[…]
When the beleaguered mortals called upon one of their
deity’s most powerful minions, the solar Avamerin, Sertrous claimed his first
and greatest victory. Avamerin led a great army into the fen to destroy
Sertrous. The obyrith’s minions were evenly matched with the angel’s, and in
the end only the obyrith and the angel survived to face one another. The battle
was intense, but in the end the solar defeated the serpent. As Avamerin raised
his sword and prepared to strike the killing blow, Sertrous asked him a simple
question: “Why serve your lord when his playthings can gain the same strength
of power through their own will?” Avamerin struck then, slaying Sertrous. He
returned to civilization with the obyrith’s head as proof of his triumph and
spoke to the nation’s priests of the demon’s foolish words. […]
Yet in spreading these words, Avamerin unwittingly
released a great secret. Scholars and priests puzzled over Sertrous’s dying
words and made an incredible discovery: One need not worship a god to gain the
power of divine magic. Rather than worship a god, a cleric could worship an
ideal and gain the same reward. He could worship the mountains, or the sky, or
the act of war, or himself. He could even worship a slain obyrith lord.
Avamerin saw this plague of godless priests thrive and was powerless to stop
it. The solar realized his error, and when he confessed to his lord, he was
stripped of his rank and reduced to a planetar’s status.
Enraged, Avamerin cast aside his servitude and stole
Sertrous’s head, claiming that the dead demon was wiser than the gods. The gods
recoiled and took from Avamerin his beauty. If he would ascribe such value to a
serpent’s words, he would be one with them. The gods gave him the visage of a
snake and banished him from heaven. Yet the damage had been done. The angel
became the fi rst heretic, and he devoted the rest of his existence to serving
the one who had opened his eyes. In time, the devotion of Avamerin and those he
recruited to his Vanguard would be enough to restore Sertrous to life and prove
what the fallen angel had come to believe was the truth beyond the lies of
faith. [Elder Evils - 112,113]
There are other equally inexplicable horrors penned
throughout the editions. My favourite is Zargon from B4 The Lost City.
Who can stand against the might of Zargon the
Returner? Surely, no man is strong enough of courage and skill to face my
master in combat. No god would dare confront him, for he has brought low others
before. Nay, when Zargon awakens, all shall tremble as the world is born anew
in his foul image.” —Dorn, Ascendant of Zargon [Elder Evils - 144]
Sliding into a large, slime-covered chamber, you find
that the floor is littered with bones. Suddenly, you hear a rustling noise from
the north wall. There, a huge humanoid figure rises from the slime, standing
15' tall. Its head is that of a giant lizard. A black, 2'-long horn curves
upward above its single red eye, and sharp teeth fill its mouth. Instead of
arms, the creature has six tentacles, three on each side of its body. These end
in razor-sharp talons. Instead of legs, the creature slithers toward you on six
more powerful tentacles. [B4 - 23]
Although Zargon is ancient, it is no god. It is a
cunning creature that discovered its "godhood" makes it easier to get
victims. Zargon was worshipped by primitive peoples in early times, but
retreated underground when the primitives were wiped out by the ancestors of
the Cynidiceans. Zargon remained in a strange hibernation for many years. By
chance, the Cynidiceans built the pyramid on the spot where Zargon's original
shrine stood, and the later digging of the Cynidicean slaves awakened the
creature. [B4 - 23]
Why do I like it? Because it is eternal, yet small,
local, and only potentially unbeatable should be brave enough to face it.
Aside from Cynidicea, where else might one find clues to
those mysteries of the Age Before Ages?
You could look to the ocean depths, to the Sinking Isle
of the Solnor, and the Pinnacles of Azor-Alq in the Dramidj Sea. Look to the
icy Burning Cliffs to the north and the Twisted Forest and the Pits of Azak-Zil
to the south. For surely there are answers to those riddles there.
I would look to the ancient glyphs etched into the stones
of temples choked by the jungles of Hepmonoland, drowned beneath the Sea of
Dust, and lost high in the sky at Skrellingshald.
But do not attempt to decipher them. Madness awaits you
there. Instead, put an end to those you find there, for if they awaken those
who sleep, we should all wish they had left those mysteries alone.
What do I have to say about all this?
Keep it or throw it all out, as you will.
That might seem a cop out, considering how much work was
put into all this creation, but as I inferred, I gather it was all written to
give epic level characters something to battle and defeat.
Let’s simplify, shall we? Order and Entropy emerged from
the void at the spark of creation. What caused that spark is anyone’s guess.
What immerged was infinite possibility. Two aspects of the same thing; indeed,
two sides of the same coin.
Order created the possibility of infinite form, of which
Life is but a small part, marching towards inevitable perfection. Entropy
abhors stagnation, preferring a state of eternal infinite possibility. Neither
is good or evil; such considerations require thought, and the initial spark was
not conscious, as yet. When consciousness did arise, those earlier states of being
would have no notion of what either might mean.
The Green God emerged from Order, giving the multiverse
form for which infinite possibility of form arises. We might call it Beory,
Obad-Hai, and then later, the gods of light and creation, what we in our
limited scope imagine it might be. Each in turn were given form by our
imagining, shards, fragments of that inexplicable whole.
The Elder Evils emerged from Entropy, and from that
emerged the Elder Elemental God and the Elder Eye; Tharizdun, Azathoth, however
you wish to name them/it. They are unimaginable, in explicable; unnameable
horrors, as H.P. Lovecraft would have described them, and should remain as
such. If you want to fight eldritch horrors, crack the pages of the original
Deities and Demigods with the “Cthulhu Mythos” within and have at it. Or better
yet, buy Sandy Petersen’s Cthulhu Mythos, published in Pathfinder and 5e
editions.
I’ll look at these in more detail in upcoming posts.
Creation should be mysterious. It ought to baffle
mortals’ minds. Was there a time before Beginning? Is that even possible? That
ought to not matter, because no mortal should be able to understand, let along defeat
a god, however young it may be.
“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the
inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid
island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of the infinity, and it was not
meant that we should voyage far.”
― The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories
― The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories
One must always give credit where credit is due. This History is made possible primarily by the Imaginings of Gary Gygax and his Old Guard, Lenard Lakofka among them, and the new old guards, Carl Sargant, James Ward, Roger E. Moore. And Erik Mona, Gary Holian, Sean Reynolds, Frederick Weining. The list is interminable. Thanks to Steven Wilson for his GREYCHRONDEX and to Keith Horsfield for his “Chronological History of Eastern Oerik.”
Special thanks to Jason Zavoda for his compiled index, “Greyhawkania,” an invaluable research tool.
The Art:
The Serpents of Law, by Hannibal King, Guide to Hell, 1999
Draeden, by Jeff Easley, Immortal Box Set, 1986
Ragnorra detail, by Daarkefrom Elder Evils, 2007
Aspect of Sertrous, by James Zang, Elder Evils, 2007
Zargon detail, from Elder Evils, 2007
Sources:
1015 World of Greyhawk Boxed
Set, 1983
1068 Greyhawk Wars Boxed
Set, 1991
2011A Dungeon Masters Guide,
1st Ed., 1979
9025 World of Greyhawk Folio, 1980
9049 B4 The Lost City, 1982
2023 Greyhawk Adventures,
1988
11431 Guide to Hell, 1999
Fiendish Codex 1: Hordes of
the Abyss, 2006
Fiendish Codex 2: Tyrants of
the Nine Hells, 2006
Elder Evils, 2007
Sandy Petersen’s Cthulhu
Mythos, 2018
Dragon
Magazine
Daaaaaang! That's some heavy duty ancient research there David! I feel you may have lost d100 sanity points in the process (wrong game). If that's part 1 I can't wait to see part two, cause there I know you've barely scratched the surface of D&D lore.
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