Nation - Blackmoor Land of a Thousand Witches - Part 2

Nation - Blackmoor Land of a Thousand Witches - Part 2

Waymoinen and the Plateau  of Leng

The City of the Gods was a wondrous place, but it was of the moon Celene and not of Oerth and the ways of Oerthly magic were as of yet unknown among most Gods.  Mikko had learned of this magic in the darkness when captured by the Ancient Things in their citadel which became the city of Blackmoor, and Matar learned of this strange magic in the light of summer when she rescued him and broke the walls and towers and drove the Ancient Things beneath the foundation stones of the citadel and out beyond the edges of the light and the real. They gave Waymoinen a hunger for the knowledge of this new magic.

In the Land of Black Ice creatures lived, but many were strange and many were evil and many were not of this oerth. The new magic was strong in this desolate land but in no place was it stronger than the terrible Plateau which was all too close to the City.  The God Leng was an explorer and despite the evil which flowed down from the Plateau as if it was a colorless smoke that brought nightmares and panic and terror without reason he longed to set forth and place his feet atop the cliffs which were higher than the clouds. 

Now the Plateau was shrouded by clouds, and though the Gods had eyes that could see through stone, they could not see through these clouds and what was beyond them was a mystery. Waymoinen hungered for Oerthly magic and as of yet he knew no fear. When Leng set off to explore the Plateau many lesser Gods accompanied him but Matar and Mikko refused to let Waymoinen go. 

Among the lesser  Gods who served Ykko the Oldest was Ilmar the Builder. Ilmar was a great friend of Waymoinen and at first a teacher, though Waymoinen soon surpassed him in skill. Together they devised a plan for Waymoinen to leave the City of the Gods undetected and be carried with the servants of Leng on this great and dangerous expedition.  

It is said that if Waymoinen lost an arm another could be made, even if he lost his head, another could be found, and that only the Heart of Waymoinen could not be replaced. In this way Waymoinen and Ilmar planned for him to leave with Leng and yet stay within the City. Ilmar crafted Waymoinen an eye that was not an eye for him to wear in his head and took from Waymoinen his true eye that he might see. This they hid within the helm of a servant of Leng. The eye that was not an eye would see what the True Eye of Waymoinen saw even though far away.

Leng left the City of the Gods on a chariot that flew and sailed through the clouds to reach the Plateau. As he approached the clouds became as black as the ice and the chariot bucked and twisted in the sky. Great cracks appeared in the Chariot of Leng and terror assailed them. Lesser  Gods shriveled and died in this struggle and Waymoinen saw through the clouds. 

Leng did not return, his chariot was swallowed the black clouds, and Waymoinen tore the eye that was not an eye from his face and smashed it beneath his heel. What he saw he would never say, no not even to Matar and Mikko, but no God or mortal was allowed to approach the Plateau of Leng again.

Such is known to the people of Blackmoor.

Nation - Blackmoor Land of a Thousand Witches - Part 1

Blackmoor Land of a Thousand Witches

Player’s Background

In Blackmoor the sun hides during the winter but stays out during the summer making the nights bright as day. Half the year is filled with snow and frost but the people endure and celebrate the days of light.

These celebrations feature Matar, the Mother who flew to oerth from the moon Celene when the land was ruled by the Ancient Things. Matar is said to have followed in search of Mikko the Father who also flew from Celene but in the darkness in search of some great and powerful element to aid Celene who was wounded and dying. Matar brought with her many followers and came to rest first in the terrible land of Black Ice near to the Plateau of Leng, a vast and horror filled area which is higher than the clouds (Leng the brother of Mikko, lost in his exploration of the Plateau which bears his name). Here she built the City of the Gods and fought the Ancient Things till she had wrested the land of Blackmoor from their grasp and rescued Mikko from their dungeons beneath what is now the ruined city of Old Blackmoor.

Matar rules the Summer and is worshipped in the light, while Mikko walks during the dark and still seeks that which will aid the dying moon Celene. 

The Birth of Waymoinen the Smith

While dwelling in the City of the Gods Matar and Mikko rejoiced and Matar  bore a son, Waymoinen. He was not born as a mortal would be but instead stepped from the EGG fully formed and hungry for knowledge. Matar taught him of nature, the life and death of mortal things, how they grew, how to heal, and how to bend nature to the will of the Gods. From Mikko he learned the ways of war, the many ways of fighting and the weapons of mortals and those of the Gods. From Leng he learned how to learn and the magic brought down from Celene, not the magic in the oerth, for as yet the Gods did not possess such magic, only that which animated the City of the Gods. From Ykko the Oldest he learned the making and shaping of things and at this Waymoinen excelled. 

Such is known to the people of Blackmoor.

NPC - Deity Malikat Al'afeaa

NPC  - Deity Malikat Al'afeaa

With the reawakening of Sutek other deities from ancient Zeif have reappeared. The most recent is a minor goddess, Malikat Al-afeaa. She rules over snakes and her return has set the Yuan-ti of Hepmonaland astir. Her ancient temples in Zeif are destroyed or choked with sand, her worshipers gone for millennia and her memory cursed by the Bakluni. But to the Yuan-ti she is the Great Mother and they have called to her for centuries.

No living women or man has seen her face. She has appeared to the diviners across the Flanaess as a crawling nightmare, her face hidden, her torso that of a lovely woman surrounded by adoring snakes. Soon, soon, she will reveal herself and she will bring terror.  

NPC - Neith - The Smoke from their Wings

The Smoke from their Wings

 Zeif, Old Zeif, is long dead and buried beneath the western sands. The Zeif of today is a fragment, a few seaports of the vast empire that was ancient when the Bakluni were unlettered nomads and the Suel wore skins and chipped flint knives and spear-heads for weapons. It was not the Invoked Devastation which brought about the end of Mighty Zeif but the relentless sands. 

The Gods of Zeif were not the Gods of the Bakluni or the God-King who rose from Zeif and left Zeif to first teach those same Bakluni and then to rule them. Those old Gods perished in the wars they fought among themselves, the war against Sutek who first brought the sands that swallowed cities, and the wars that followed till only a handful of the Old Gods of Zeif remained.

The goddess Neith, the Queen of Water, was slain by Sutek at beginning of the God War long ago, but the Immortal Queen could never really die and even today her priestesses can summon the ghost of their Goddess. When summoned during the Feast of Lamps at her temple in the forgotten and half-buried city of Ta-senet she appears as a creature of smoke with the wings of the holy Ibis.

The inner sanctum of the temple is set over an eternal burning fire that is said to come from the center of the Oerth and whose smoke opens The Way of Eternity that only the priestesses can breathe and survive. It is said that the path opened leads to the desolation of the west, a place worse than the empty deserts. 

The priestesses of Neith make the journey across this desolation on the Boat of Years that visits the city of Ta-senet once a year from the plane of Dreamland drawn by the great servants of the Cat-Goddess who is daughter to Neith.

Neith is also said to be mother of the Immortal God-King Sobek, first ruler of the Bakluni whose Necropolis is said to rise at night from the deep sands of the west. The two have been at war for as long as the memory of man. 

There is an inscription said to be in the sanctum of her temple purportedly saying;

"I am the things that are, that will be, and that have been. No one has ever laid open the garment by which I am concealed. The fruit which I brought forth was the sun." 

City of Greyhawk City Gates and the Gods

City of Greyhawk City Gates and the Gods

City of Greyhawk City Gates and the Gods

NOTE: The names and locations of these gates and the description of the city walls come from the novel City of Hawks (and Saga of the Old City in regard to the Black Gate/Beggars Gate), but linking them to the followers of specific deities is an idea from my Home Game. What provoked such an idea was the reference to alignment and religion within the city from Gygax's article "Varied Player Character and Non-Player Character Alignment in the Dungeons and Dragons Campaign" (The Dragon #9) and the practicality of having both clerics and magic-users as part of the guard compliment of the city gates. To maintain some sort of balance between clerics of differing faiths and alignments I could imagine only a rotating shift of clerics of varying faiths back and forth between the gates or dedicating a particular gate to a particular deity. I chose the latter as it seemed the most likely.

The Gygaxian City of Greyhawk has sixteen gates. Eleven of these gateways are roadways in and out of the city while four are interior gates leading from the Old City to the New and one connects the Foreign Quarter to the rest of the Old City.

The eleven gates that pierce the exterior wall are broad to accommodate wagon and cavalry traffic both coming and going. The outer wall around the city is actually composed of two walls separated by one hundred feet of open ground and so each road into the city is protected by two gatehouses.

The outer gatehouse is a square 40x40 tower, 40 feet high. The inner gatehouse is a 60 foot diameter tower 60 feet high. Each tower has its compliment of guardsmen. The outer gatehouse is the residence of the deputy-commander of the guard and also spartan quarters for both a pair of mages and a pair of acolytes.

The inner gate tower is the residence of the guard commander, a magic-user and several of his apprentices, and a cleric with a varying number of underlings.

The City of Greyhawk is not a bastion of Good, nor is it a cesspool of Evil, and neither does it strive for Neutrality. Instead the city manages an uneasy balance of all three and the myriad shades of differing alignments in between. Temples, churches and shrines abound, each representing most of the known deities and demi-gods of the Flanaess, but no single faith dominates within the city, except perhaps a whimsical and almost filial attachment to Zagyg by the general population. Still, in order to protect the city more than just stone and steel is required. Magic most certainly, and the Wizards' Guild pays a tithe for such protection with a small contingent of mages at each gate, but the assistance of the Gods is required as well.

When the great outer wall was constructed the foundation stones were laid with ceremony and the blessings, sacrifices and offerings to and from many deities. Each of the eleven gateways was dedicated to a different god after much wrangling, bribery and infighting and thereafter the clergy of those deities selected would be responsible for providing a small retinue of priests or clerics to reside at the gateways and offer their services for the protection and benefit of the city. The small portion of the tolls collected and handed over to these clerics was just the City's way of saying thanks and keeping the Gods on their side.

Here is a list of each gate and the deity whose priest or cleric resides within.

1) Southgate - Fharlanghn
2) Longgate - Bralm
3) Hillgate - Ulaa
4) Midgate - Hextor
5) Oldgate - Olidammara
6) Lordsgate - Pholtus
7) Fairgate - Beory
8) Highgate - Zilchus
9) Guarding Gate - Heironius
10) Lowgate - Zodal
11) River Gate - Geshtai

Although part of the Old City with much smaller gateways and only a single guardhouse, each possesses a shrine to the following deities though not a cleric assigned to them.

12) Markgate - Ralishaz
13) Waghalter Gate - Kurell
14) Safelock Portal - Rao
15) Craftgate - Bleredd
16) Black Gate (Beggars' Gate) - Istus

NPC/Deity - Sutek the Destroyer

NPC/Deity  - Sutek the Destroyer

Sutek was an ancient Bakluni deity of death, oblivion and destruction. He was trapped in limbo by his brother and sister deities managing to wreck havok on the Baklunish pantheon before he was trapped in a limbo-prison between the prime and negative material planes. 

After the Invoked Devastation some of the wards to his prison were damaged and his malign influence began to seep out. The Bakluni have always had a strong connection with death and this helped to lead to a rediscovery of Sutek and the rise of necromacers and his cult. It is rumored that an ancient Necropolus has been discovered in the Dry Steppes and  is the heart of a growing necromantic controlled army. What connection this actually has with the Prison of Sutek is unknown.

Recently the release of Zuggtmoy from the Temple of Elemental Evil triggered a sympathetic fracture in the prison wards of Sutek and the power of his clerics has never been greater. They are a rising threat among the Baklunish states and a contingent of priests, cultists and necromancers are headed toward Verbobonc to investigate the Temple and any links to Sutek's wards.

The priests of Sutek are unable to heal, but have many necromantic powers. Their bodies will continue to function past their physical death and do not suffer natural rot or corruption but they do dry out and become stiff and brittle or if submerged become bloated with liquid. Once slain the priests will continue to function for weeks before finally releasing their spirits to the Prison of Sutek where they will serve him for eternity.

Deity - Tor - Lord of Storms

Deity - Tor - Lord of Storms

Tor is the son of Votan, but worshipped by all the Volke, as the Fruzti call themselves and their kindred, or Manskr as the Schnai and Cruski refer to all those labeled as "Suel Barbarians" by outsiders.

Those who go out among the waters, from fishermen, to traders to longship raiders venerate and offer sacrifice to Tor. His followers are males more often than not, but he has as many priestesses as priests. There are temples to Tor built on frozen mountain-tops where thunder of his voice is caught in the ice to be released in the avalanche, but those are rare. For the most part any ship on the water is a temple to Tor and those who sail are his clergy. 

Although there is some animosity between the followers of Veli, Ve and Votan there is none between the followers of Tor it is often aboard ship that these three people, Fruzti, Schnai and Cruski interact.

The Oath of Tor is often given to confirm treaties of cooperation and peace, contracts and trades and weddings between the tribes. Many marriages are performed aboard ships and it is thought that these are the most peaceful and successful of joinings.

The Blessing of Tor is a funeral rite aboard ship and a small craft with a single sail and the body of the dead is set loose miles out to sea to journey where it may. Those without the wherewithal for such a rite have their bodies burned in the symbolic shell of a boat or buried in a cairn shaped as one.