#gluttondark

It’s back! 

So day 4 seems to be the day that trips me up when I worldbuild, what with the year-long delay. Then again, I’m also going to blame the pandemic for falling off the wheel this time. Let’s dive back into Gluttondark! If you need a refresher, here is day 1, day 2, and day 3. 

Cataclysms on the planes are a bit weird since they are symbolic, mutable, and spiritual rather than geological. Gluttondark takes this one step further since it is constantly scoured of land and life by Zebgavizeb himself. That, though, gives me the first cataclysm I can play with.

Also, I’ve decided this region of Gluttondark is called Tolrath. Having a proper name is going to make writing about it much, much more manageable. 

Zebgavizeb’s Fury: Rather than focus on a cataclysm that shaped Tolrath, I’m focusing on one that hasn’t: the demon lord Zebgavizeb. The Lord of Reptiles’ hunger hasn’t touched Tolrath recently, it is very much overdue for cleansing, and everybody knows it. This creates a culture of desperation on the layer and plot hooks involving groups trying to accelerate/prevent Zebgavizeb’s arrival. 

Fires of Birkannoth: I want a bit of an Atlantis vibe for Tolrath, with some parts having sunk beneath the waves, so I’m going to scale up Santorini a bit and use the same general setup. A massive volcano erupted in the centre of a contiguous landmass, shattering it and plunging large portions into the oceans. The twist I’m adding is that the volcano links to a remnant of Tolrath’s previous incarnation of Birkannoth, a realm of burning predators. Part of that world survived Zebgavizeb’s ravages, so those who brave Tolrath’s volcanoes — especially the central one — can find ruins of a lost world and demons displaced out of time. 

The Celestial Grave: A trope I’ve noticed used frequently in fantasy RPGs is the corpse of a massive fiend or some other evil thing festering within the landscape. I want to invert this with an enormous celestial who fought Zebgavizeb in Tolrath’s early days but lost. Its bones fill part of the landscape, more on the scale of mountains than anything else, but because celestials are weird:

It somehow isn’t quite dead.

Celestials can spontaneously spawn in this tiny part of the Abyss.

Good has “infected” some of the residents who live in the area.

This generates some conflict and thus plot. It also gives storytellers using the region a chance to host a Planescape campaign entirely within Gluttondark without every single character being evil. 

So far I know that I want this planet-realm within Gluttondark to be wintery and volcanic, where fire and ice clash with each other. The wintery aspect also makes me think of megafauna and Cenozoic mammals more than dinosaurs... but I really want to use dinosaurs as well and it would be a waste not to use Zevgavizeb’s reptilian minions. And that is what gives me an idea. 

The mood/theme of this layer will be constant clashes and the struggle to survive. There will be xulgaths, kobolds, and iruxi, but this is the realm where most of Zevgavizeb’s mammalian worshipers end up, including morlocks and humans. The clash extends to the local fauna as well; dinosaurs will be common, but so will vicious mammoths and saber-toothed tigers. Everything reflects this Darwinistic, evolutionary clash, which also gives me some clear aesthetics and motifs to play with down the road.