#divinity: knowledge

Deity: Boccob, the God of Magic for Magic's Sake

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It is strange (especially for those who view their relationship with the gods as transactional) that one might offer up prayers to a figure known widely by the epithet " The Uncaring". Why perform oath and ritual for a being that will not intercede on your behalf? Or grant you good favour in exchange for your sacrifices? Those that study the words of Boccob understand they have no need to beg for miracles when they have magic at their command.

Known to commoners as a god of magic, foresight, and balance, Boccob is not so much a deity as he was a great teacher, a philosopher-sage who's now ancient treatise on magic and council on it's use are as much an object of faith for many as a more ordinary god's scripture. In instructing his students how to be wizards, Boccob taught his students how to be good wizards, and these lessons form the ironshod foundations of innumerable magical traditions practised to this day.

Central to Boccob's teachings was the idea that magic was a path that must be walked to gain greater understanding, and that an adherent of this path should study, experience, and witness as much of its wonders as possible in order to become better arcanists, leading to the adoption of the open and unjudging eye as his symbol. Boccob himself followed this path to the outer planes and beyond, never to be seen again, leading many to credit Boccob with being the first mortal to climb the fabled infinite staircase, or perhaps even its architect.

Adventure Hooks:

Millennia after his (literal or figurative) ascension, a scroll containing hitherto unseen passages of Boccob's writings have been discovered in a crumbling library, setting off a disastrous chain of events as jealous archmages scrabble for the text like seagulls after a frenchfry. Their clashes are frequent, leaving the surrounding area scattered with hastily summoned servitors and all manner of misfired magic. Perhaps if the party is quick and clever they could sneak in and take the text for themselves, learning its wisdom or using it as a bargaining chip with one of these powerful spellslingers.

If it’s one thing Boccob’s Acolytes like almost as much as uncovering the arcane secrets of the universe, it’s proving their intellectual superiority by hiding their findings behind inscrutable riddles and logic games, the way The Uncaring did for his first pupils. Ledoran’s Labynthical Libram is an infamous example of this practice, a spellbook containing all manner of useful rituals and genuinely brilliant insights hidden behind a gauntlet of ciphers, mazes, and "gotcha" enchantments. Any self styled master of the arcane is likely to have a copy on their shelves, meaning that' it's only a quick looting spree away from ending up in the party's possession.

If "a wizard did it" is the answer to the age old question of "how?", "because they were listening to Boccob?" is the answer to the inevitable follow up of "why". Arcane crossbreeds, inexplicable puzzle dungeons, magical items amounting to bad jokes with bodycounts, all of these are created by The Uncaring's followers as a means of testing and expanding their abilities.

More of my adventures involving Boccob and his followers can be found HERE

Deity: Vecna, the Whispered One

My task of overhauling d&d’s villanous pantheon was started by a simple critique:  that if god was evil, there still needed to be a reason for people to worship it. To go with one example,  So many of the death gods in d&d want to kill everything that lives, yet they’re still presented as having legions of followers who are happy to die for them in opposition to the party.   You can say “Oh they’re just brainwashed, crazy cultists” but that’s just bad writing and thematically empty, neither of which I want for the sort of games I run. 

Vecna is actually an interesting case study in that he’s an outwardly wicked deity that has a theme which people would actively want to follow:   As a god of secrets, Vecna is the patron of any who will sacrifice anything to learn the answer to their problems, or conversely, the ones desperate to ensure their own secrets will never be known.  The story of Vecna as a mortal mage who attained first lichdom, then godhood is an aspirational one for all those power mad occultists out there, a common enough demographic in the d&d world both as villains and as player characters. 

Cults of Vecna worshippers likewise make sense as the whole point behind the historical practice of mystery cults was that those at the upper levels maintained their power through control of information and access to secret learnings.  You want to learn how to do magic? To speak to the dead? To protect your secrets from being known? Put on this ominous robe, learn the secret handshake, and don’t forget to drop your tithe intto the altar’s collection skull. Think of it like a forbidden knowledge based MLM. 

 Here’s some adventure hooks: 

While many of the whispered one’s acolytes dedicate themselves to discovering to the delving of arcane mysteries, others focus their attention on more worldly secrets. A powerful noblewoman is being blackmailed by a worshipper of Vecna not only for personal enrichment but also as an act of devotion, after he uncovered proof of indiscretions that would ruin her reputation.  While she’s too afraid to go for help herself and risk exposure, a devoted servant has seen her hidden suffering and has contacted the party for aid. 

Barely disguising its fiendish nature, a devil in service to Vecna approaches the party with an offer to reveal the secret intents or weaknesses of their enemies, if only they will deign to meet its terrible price.  While this information could do great good, or even save lives, just how low are the heroes willing to stoop? 

Seeking out the aid of a powerful mage, the party discover the old man on the brink of nervous collapse, having looked to deeply into the void and filled his mind with visions best left unmentioned.  Haunted by nightmares both real and imagined, he needs their help in quieting his mind through the gathering of rare ingredients and the distillation of a potent elixir. The process is not without risk however, are the party willing to help if it means erasing the information they need from his head, to say nothing of potentially lobotomizing the poor wizard? 

Deity: Urania, The One Who Names The Stars

Hear me, brothers, sisters, my fellow orphans of the vast,

We are lost, but we are not forgotten,

The Bright Maiden has set a Star Burning for us,

And she calls us Home

The wild unknown and the simple laws that govern the universe, the cold embrace of space and the warmth of distant stars, the mystery of the infinite horizon and the knowledge of your course through it: The goddess Urania is a being of contrasts. Patron to astronomers, navigators, and any who find themselves alone with only the stars for guidance, the bright maiden is called upon by many who sail the astral sea to bless their journeys into the vast cosmos and to guide them back home again. 

Legend says it was It was the Gith who found her, aboard a lost and aimless refugee ship too full of desperate souls who’d just escaped from the tyranny of the ilithid. They saw a stranger cast adrift in the void, and though they did not have enough to go around they cast out a line and pulled her from the void because the thought of leaving anyone behind without hope of rescue was too terrible to bear. In rescuing her they rescued themselves, for when the captain gave up his ration of water the goddess awoke with her eyes full of grateful tears, whispering to him of a course towards sanctuary just as a new star flared on the horizon.

Since then it has been tradition among the Gith ( and those who have learned the art of astral navigation from them) to keep a star shaped lantern burning in the goddess’s honour, and to rescue any they find adrift, no matter who they might be.

Deity: NokolOb-Zich , Outer god of the Unmaking Inquiry

As you approach the cultists altar, you can’t help but shake the feeling of being watched. Something has witnessed your deeds here, and it is hungry to see more.

Setup: Many occultists will speak of the terrifying obscurity of their patrons, of powers beyond mortal ken that look upon the waking world with little more than disgust or disregard. Few then speak of those powers that are fascinated mortal kind not in the jealous, imitate way of gods, or in the detached curiosity of alien arbiters, but in the rapture of a child staring at insects beneath an overturned rock, or an anatomist over a vivisected frog. The scrutiny of such a being would be terrible, as it can bring unseen powers to bear to poke and prod the object of its focus into the desired stimulus, moving through impossible angles to allow the target of its obsession no possible escape from its probing scalpel.

  NokolOb-Zich is one such entity, a thing that peers through cracks in reality looking for new things to catch its interest. Seldom invoked by dabblers in the forbidden arts, ‘Ob-Zich is less likely to grant its petitioners power or knowledge as it is to crack part their minds and start picking over all the pieces. Still, the Voyeur has itself a following, mainly in other inquisitive sorts who hollow out a part of their own mind to act as the outergod’s peephole into their own lives, absorbing scraps of eldritch insight like some kind of cognitive remora.

Those who have encountered the entity report that it has very little of a physical form, existing as only a sense of being observed and an endless stream of nonsensical questions: “ When will you cry? How does joy taste? What shape is your favorite sound? that lead in the general direction of a conversation”. Others have reported visions of eyes peering through empty spaces and endless grasping hands, though these are likely to be an effort by NokolOb-Zich to communicate its intent rather than a hint at its physical form.

Adventure hooks:

The Voyeur seeks not only to observe, but to provoke, spurring the subjects of its fascination into action so as to better be able to understand them. To this end it may set a horrid monster on a settlement divided by civil strife to see how the community reacts to an outside threat, or haunt a lone individual to test how their mind deals with the pressure. Stranger however is when the entity randomly chooses to be “nice”, creating facsimiles of long departed loved ones to see who a bereaved individual might change, or delivering an oddly appropriate gift to a stranger just to see their reaction. The outer god should never be considered benign, as those gifts are never given out of a sense of selflessness and are most often intended to make the target squirm.

Those seeking to know the dark secrets of history or the possible future will sometimes invoke NokolOb-Zich if their need is great and their self preservation is small. Eschewing traditional sacrifices of blood or treasure, the outergod prefers twisted tales involving the lives of mortals, traditionally involving those who compromised their values or ended up in bizarre or paradoxical situations due to their convictions. Those petitioners who do not have their own stories of mishap are often forced to create one if they wish to trade, creating innumerable networks of tragedy, blackmail, and sorrow that all lead back to the wandering eye.

Terrible is the favor of a god of heedless knowledge, as ‘Ob-Zich’s blessings are likely to manifest in the form of ceaseless visions from across the known universe, just as likely to contain the wisdom of dead civilizations to your neighbors’ dirty gossip. What’s more, the voyeur has no problem distributing dangerous knowledge to those people/cultures totally unready for it, leading to calamitous advances in technology, magic, or warefare for those unready for its burden. More than one disaster has been caused by NokolOb-Zich depositing dangerous information into the mind of an unstable arcanist or inventor, or simply some emotionally immature weirdo given step-by-step instructions to unleashing havoc.

Titles: The Voyeur, The Wandering eye, The all devouring unknown,

Signs: Feelings of being watched, endless questions, constant whispering, alien eyes staring through holes in places where there should not be holes.