Four Evil Powers: Bibeldoop | Cth | Dagon | Imar
Every campaign needs evil powers—ancient, primordial powers that vile despots and mad cultists worship. This week's Sunday Supplements presents four powers drawn from the last year of posts. Add them all to your pantheon today!
01: Bideldoop
Ashlar | Legendry | Demon
Only the mad and crazed worship Bibeldoop the Amorphous One. Implacable, uncaring and alien Bibeldoop exists only to consume.
An ancient slime-demon from the Time Before Time formed from the roiling chaos of creation, Bibeldoop is said to take the form of a gigantic, formless, mottled black, purple, and grey blob. Bibeldoop may be one of the oldest "living" things, and some sages believe it predates the gods themselves. It is the Great Enemy, the Elder Threat and the End of All.
Bibeldoop's malign hunger is insatiable, and its few worshippers believe it will soon emerge from the Abyss to consume the whole world, and they work to hasten that glorious day. When Bibeldoop emerges, it will spare only those who have given themselves wholly over to its worship. (Worshippers believe they will become one with Bibeldoop during the Great Consumption.)
Bibeldoop's deranged worshippers are wholly beyond redemption and are universally reviled. Bibeldoop has no known allies—even among the other demon lords—and is known to hold a particular enmity for Orcus.
Rituals and rites sacred to Bibeldoop are indescribably foul. They include consuming certain forbidden things and burning by fire or melting in acid the living sacrifices cast into great pits.
02: Cth
Ashlar | Legendry
This ancient and vast primordial being of god-like power is associated with the planet of the same name. It is older than humanity’s gods and more terrible, alien and implacable than any mere demon lord.
The Silver Tablets of Tragator, themselves unknowably old and bearing curious and archaic cuneiform writings of a most singular style, speak of Cth’s aeons-long slumber on a distant and frozen, night-drenched planet. Using potent sorceries and patient observations, the elves discovered—or more accurately—rediscovered this planet at the height of fallen Ilathyel’s glory. The elves named the planet Cth, after the supposed being that yet slumbers upon it. The Silver Tablets also name Cth as the “Ancient Enemy” and “the Destroyer” and speak in dread tones of it “swimming through the black seas of infinity between the stars”, and of “navigating the infinite blackness of the Beyond”.
In every generation, there are always those who feel the presence of Cth most keenly. Such rare individuals, normal sensitive artist types or coarse and degraded mongrels of the worst sort, are often driven mad by the mere revelation of Cth’s existence. They form cults and worship Cth by trying to retrieve and reunite the various eldritch items associated with the Primal Horror that is Cth. Chief amongst these is the Crown of Cth, the Sceptre of Power and the Oblivion Shards—all that remains of the Orb of Oblivion, shattered centuries ago by the arch-necromancer Väinö Tuiretuinen, who stumbled upon the cult while searching for the long-lost, sand-swallowed ruins of Tragator. The cultists believe that if these items are brought together and a mighty blood-sacrifice is made, mighty Cth will awaken and destroy the world, sparing only his most devoted disciples.
03: Dagon, Shadow in the Sea
Ashlar | Legendry | Demon
CE demon lord of deformity, the sea and sea monsters
Dagon is one of the oldest and foulest powers worshipped in the world. Dagon rules an Abyssal ocean dotted with strange and terrible islands and scarred by deep ocean trenches filled with impossible sunken cities groaning with impossible horrors. He and his followers are sometimes allied with an even more ancient and alien power—the Great Old One Cthulhu.
Dagon’s symbol is a disk inscribed with sinister runes around an open octopus eye. It is a hateful thing. His worshippers greatly prize ancient examples of his symbol—some are laden with terrible, elder power.
His worshippers primarily comprise heretical sahuagin, deep ones and degenerate or insane coastal dwellers of the foulest sort. Many of his worshippers are horribly misshapen, deformed individuals who interbreed with strange aquatic creatures. Others are warped by Dagon’s own foul influence or by the proximity to certain sites sacred to the Shadow in the Sea. Dagon’s worshippers follow no set doctrine. Dagon cares not exactly how his aberrant followers worship him as long as they worship him.
His deranged human worshippers often wear ragged, dirty and torn clothes of unwholesome hues. Priests wear strange golden crowns and torcs wrought into odd, fantastical shapes seemingly better suited to non-human heads. In battle above and below the waves, they wield tridents.
Dagon’s holy places are always in or near the sea. Therein, his worshippers engage in strange and abhorrent practices and often also venerate Cthulhu and the other Great Old Ones. No public temples dedicated to Dagon exist in Ashlar or its surrounds. However, some of the degenerate Takolen venerate this ancient, profane power in hidden and secret shrines buried deep in Languard’s noxious Wrecks district.
04: Imar, the Living Plague
Campaign Component | Deity
CE lesser god of sickness, decay and corruption
Imar, the Living Plague, lesser god of sickness, decay and corruption, is a minor power worshipped only rarely in Ashlar (and, indeed, all civilised nations.) Most offerings to the Living Plague are made in a desperate attempt to ward off and deflect his merciless, terrible attentions and not to glorify or venerate him.
Only the mad willingly hold Imar as their patron. His deranged cultists worship him by spreading disease and contagion. Some travel, bringing plague, disease and illness everywhere they visit. Other worshippers are more subtle and use their lord’s gifts to slowly and surely destroy a community from within.
Sacrifices to the Living Plague are gruesome and drawn out—victims are cast into sacrificial pits and repeatedly infected with multiple diseases over the course of weeks or, in rare cases, months. Death is slow, agonising and, eventually, a blessed relief.
Epithets: The Living Plague, the Unlooked For, the Unwanted, the Great Pestilence
Symbol: A rotting skull
Domains: Death
Favoured Weapon: Dagger
Raiment: Dirty grey robes smeared with burial soil
Worshippers: Deranged, mad folk
Teachings: All is corruption and corruption begets corruption; the souls of those succumbing to disease or pestilence serve Imar ever more in the Mottled Lands
Holy Text: The Living Plague’s faith holds no single book as sacred; the faith is not organised or numerous enough. Instead, each worshipper venerates Imar in their own (foul) way.
New Spells: lesser contagion (2nd-level necromantic cleric spell), greater contagion (5th level necromantic cleric spell)
Ashlarian (proper noun) of Ashlar; Campaign (noun) a connected series of adventures; Component (noun) a constituent part; Legendry (noun) a collection or body of legends; Lore (noun) knowledge and stories about a subject
Thank you for reading the Sunday Supplement; I hope some of this week’s Campaign Components make it into your game or sparks your creativity.
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