Discover Top Posts Tagged with #divinity: fear

Deity: Tergrid, God of Fright

"Terror is the natural state of a child, they know they are small, vunrable, glass fragile. It is only once we grow that we delude ourselves into thinking we are safe, that we are strong, that we have control over the world we live in. Show a grown man how little control he really has, and you will see the child he always was: pissreeking, repentant, and pleading for his mother. " - Gerheart, village executioner

A goddess for those who hold close to the light dreading the unknown or those who wander gleefully into the dark seeking it, Tergrid is a deity of imagined horrors and terrible omens.

Depicted as a young woman always bearing a lantern, myths speak of Tergrid's shadow as a monstrous, murderous thing with a will of its own. Unable to kill the goddess due to the light she carries, it vents it's directionless wrath on those who linger beyond the lantern's glow. This duality, as both as the victim of fear and the source of it defines the brightmaiden's worship; as she is both threat and saviour to those who draw her attention.

Adventure Hooks:

The party arrive at a country roadhouse at dusk, only to find the inhabitants have nailed shut every door and shutter as if preparing for a siege. They say some horrid murderous things are lurking just off the road, and as the light wanes they refuse to let the heroes inside. The roadhouse's residents are terrified and are willing to fight to keep the party out, half convinced the party are themselves the things they should be afraid of... which isn't to say there ISN'T anything else waiting for that door to open. After negoitating their way inside (or forcing the issue) the heroes discover the roadhouse residents were warned of the danger by a mysterious woman who passed through earlier, though none can remember exactly what she looked like.

A knight renowned for his fearless deeds wanders the street in a waking nightmare, seeing threats everywhere and lashing out at phantoms and passersby. Even after being subdued it’s clear he won’t awake, and many suspect interference from jealous rivals in the upcoming tourney. The knight’s meek squire asks the party to help investigate the causes and possible cures of her master’s madness, never suspecting that her suppressed resentment at his recklessness might’ve manifested as a curse.

In desperate need of answers, the party consults an oracle dedicated to Tergrid who has them undergo trials of fear and phantasm so that they might know the truth. Chiefest among these is battling in a dark cave full of shadow monsters, while flickering visions of the future are cast on the wall by the guttering lantern light. The longer they can endure, the more they will know, but that isn't likely to be long unless they fight harder than they ever have before.

#deity #Tergrid #kaldheim #divinity: fear #random encounter road #oracle

Deity: Torog, the Crawling King

But see, amid the mimic rout / A crawling shape intrude! A blood-red thing that writhes from out / The scenic solitude! It writhes!—it writhes!—with mortal pangs /The mimes become its food, And seraphs sob at vermin fangs / In human gore imbued.

Out—out are the lights—out all! / And, over each quivering form, The curtain, a funeral pall, / Comes down with the rush of a storm, While the angels, all pallid and wan, / Uprising, unveiling, affirm That the play is the tragedy, “Man,” / And its hero, the Conqueror Worm.

- Edger Allan Poe

An avatar of suffering and madness, the worm god Torog embodies the worst aspects of mortalkind’s relation to pain: both in the cruel supremacy of those who inflict it, and in the desperate degradation of those they inflict it upon.

There are many mythologies that explain why the king crawls, usually painting him as a great and terrible divinity of the dawn age who was broken in battle with some foe, imprisoned within the underdark and crushed beneath its ever shifting weight. There Torog lingers, suffering eternally save when someone inflicts suffering in his name. To these individuals Torog grants power, blasphemous secrets, the promise of endless indulgence to their heartless desires. One would think that only the most twisted and broken of souls would worship such a foul god, but the worm wriggles its way into the hearts of many as there is always profit and power to be had in the subjugation and exploration of others. From the slave driver to the industrialist to the prison warden to the residential school instructor, few actively understand that their cruelty is a form of worship, or what exactly that worship is feeding.

Hooks

Travelling into a decrepit castle for whatever reason adventurers do, the party makes its way to the actual dungeon part of the dungeon, discovering disused torture chambers and a single cell that still seems to be occupied by some poor wretch begging for release. This is a lure into one of Torog’s many prison realms, a realm the party will have to escape but not after being marked by the crawling king’s agents for further collection.

Grotesque monstrosities have been lurking about the city’s underbelly: shambling tangles of wormflesh that sprout from the wounds and ruptures of humanoid corpses. There seems to be no pattern in who these, until the party investigates and discovers that one of the vessels was a vagrant and petty criminal that was sentenced to a workhouse some years ago. There they find the workhouse is operated by a puritanical social reformer that places strict emphasis on cleanliness, obedience, and piety. All the corpses turn out to be those who stepped out of line and died as a result of her “discipline”, but it’s not until the party notices that her dutiful but bruisemarked husband shows the sign of infection that they realize that her abuse is what’s allowing the worms to take root.

While excavating the foundations for the duke’s new estate, a group of workers stumbled across an unsettling statue and altarspace buried low beneath the earth. The duke ordered the altar torn down and work to continue, and since then has not known peace. Terrible accidents befall everyone who was on the digging crew that day, and the duke’s dreams are full of the earth yawning open to swallow him and everything he knows. The heroes are hired to break whatever nightmare or curse is preventing the duke from sleeping, but must deal with their patron growing increasingly paranoid unhinged as Torog’s influence over him grows. Should the party not play their cards right, they might end up imprisoned by their employer just as a colossal worm breaks through the foundations and begins ravaging the castle.