#tchazzar

The rivalry between Tchazzar and Alasklerbanbastos has always caught my imagination, and the hints in Dragons of Faerun are that the rivalry stretches to long before their recent altercations for control of Chessenta in 1373 DR and even before Tchazzar began his conquest of Chessenta in 929 DR.

So I tried to come up with a credible reason for their rivalry beyond mere draconic territoriality.

Dragonback Mountain in the Riders to the Sky is the current home of Alasklerbanbastos and he has a huge stockpile of magical artefacts, it would also seem that Tchazzar is reluctant to combat Alasklerbanbastos in his lair (since Alasklerbanbastos survived the centuries when Tchazzar was a god). The thought occurred to me that the lair might have belonged to someone else before Alasklerbanbastos possessed it.

Since I had already linked Tiamat to Tchazzar as a blood relative it wasn't too much of a leap to make the lair belong to Tiamat first, then her daughter, and finally Tchazzar himself.

I then needed a reason to have Tchazzar and Alasklerbanbastos not destroy each other and the Rings of Tiamat seemed the perfect tool, after all why would Tiamat allow beings that house her divine essence to destroy one another unless its the appropriate time.

I tried to portray Alasklerbanbastos as a careful, intelligent, truly dangerous dragon, it is just unfortunate that his rival was Tchazzar who has been far luckier than Alaklerbanbastos in all his endeavours.

Article one of Forgotten Realms Alternate Dimensions Issue V details another great dragon of Faerun, the dragon overlord of Unther.

Alasklerbanbastos and Tchazzar have been locked in a bitter rivalry for almost their entire lives. This rivalry all started with the death of Tchazzar's mother and Alasklerbanbastos' arrival to steal her secret lair. He forced out the young red dragon from his home and began a bitter cycle of revenge as each wyrm sought to defeat the other.

The rivalry between the two dragons resulted in them both falling under a curse that threatened to one day consume their souls and so they each sought to escape the curse while undermining the other.

Tchazzar sought his escape through divinity and his first attempt at uniting Chessenta and creating a cult of personality was foiled by Alasklerbanbastos in the guise of a prince of Mourktar.

Alasklerbanbastos achieved his escape through undeath, and achieved this by embracing dracolichdom offered by the Cult of the Dragon, in the same year that Tchazzar achieved his escape by ascending to godhood.

Yet even in undeath and godhood the two beings could not let go of their petty hatred for one another. When Alasklerbanbastos seized the lands of Chessenta and Unther for himself Tchazzar even returned from oblivion to foil his nemesis.

Tchazzar I find is an interesting deity. He achieved godhood seemingly through his manipulation of human nature, and yet once he became a deity did absolutely nothing and let the nation he had spent so long building fall into ruin.

During the godswar he acted as a vessel for Tiamat allowing her to be reborn after her death, and then he randomly returned in 1373 DR he returned to Faerun as some kind of fiendish dragon to battle Alasklerbanbastos.

The number of errors in Tchazzar's story are almost as numerous as Tiamat's and in many ways he is linked to Tiamat's story and errors.

This link inspired me to make Tchazzar a relative of my newly created Tiamat the Dark Lady, a human with the ability to turn into a dragon. If she mated with a dragon then she might spawn dragon children with the ability to change into humans, and Tchazzar was famous as a human war leader of Chessenta.

Tchazzar's writeup in Dragons of Faerun detailed a ring that was given as part of a pledge which is implied led to Tchazzar becoming a vessel for Tiamat's essence when she was destroyed. Using this idea I figured the Gestaniius and Skuthosiin were also given rings, and each contained a part of Tiamat.

It then occurred to me that Tchazzar may not have known fully what the pledge would involve and so his attempt at divinity could have been a means of escaping the curse.

Of course all of these ideas mean that Tchazzar is not necessarily in service to Tiamat, and so I have him hiding out in the contested region of Chessenta trying to stay out of her way.

His rivalry with Alasklerbanbastos is historic in nature because Alasklerbanbastos is allied with the Church of Tiamat so it makes no sense for her to be using Tchazzar to fight her own servant.

Article 9 of Forgotten Realms Alternate Dimensions Issue IV is a focus on one of the less well document gods of Faerun.

According to official sources Tchazzar was a dragon in human form that ascended to godhood after uniting the land of Chessenta and then disappearing following a battle with the Sahuagin of the Alamber Sea.

During the Time of Troubles Tchazzar is killed after seemingly by merging with Tiamat, only to return in 1373 DR alive and well.

So just who was Tchazzar before he became ruler of Chessenta, how did he gain the ability to take human form, what are the origins of his rivalry with Alasklerbanbastos,  just what happened to him during the Time of Troubles and his apparent death, and finally how did he effect his return to Chessenta 15 years later.