I was wondering if you could do something of a Monsters Reimagined for Luthic. It always struck me as odd that even though she is a deity of childbirth and fertility and motherhood she is evil simply because she is an ORC deity.
Monsters Reimagined: Luthic, Cavemother
There are no easy births: it always a matter of blood and broken bones and shit and curses and pain in the desperate hope of getting through it alive and maybe bringing something good into the world in the process. It would stand to reason then that the god who claimed birth as her domain would have to be strong, hopeful yes, but tough as old boot lather and not afraid to get her hands dirty.
Luthic is that god, who lends her strength to those who bear life as the process threatens to rip them apart, who councils with midwives, grannies, bonesetters, and village witches who keep the hardwon knowledge of the fever-herb and staunching poultice.
It is said that before she took her current form Luthic was a god of the dark and secret places of the earth, who first encountered mortals when they sheltered in her caves from the bickering of other gods and their aims during the primordial dawn age. The mortals were new, not yet knowing the design of thier own bodies, and when it came time for the first generation to give birth to the second, someone had to step up and help them through it. Like any mother Luthic encouraged them through their explorations, as playing with sticks led to spears and tools, and painting on stone walls led to art and language. When they were ready, she brought them blinking into the light, and then retired to a well deserved state of distant reverance as her adopted children took their place in the world above.
Adventure Hooks:
Like the great bear that is her crest, the cavemother likes to keep to herself much of the time, unless some idiot stirs up enough of a ruckous to wake her from her hibernation. This time it's some upjumped priest king that's convinced that if he can just impregnate the right woman he can sire a word redeaming chosen one. The only problem is that he's not giving the "right woman" much of a choice in the matter, and has decided to invade the party's homeland to search for and capture her. Luthic isn't going to stand for it, and appears to the party in the form of a local medicine woman to set them on the right path and patch their wounds along the way. Once they've earned her trust, she'll put an ancient bone knife in their hands sharp enough to cut through an army of zealots and imply that they should use it to feed the priest king his own cock. Something about a lession in not sticking it in where it's not welcome.
The caves marked off as sacred to Luthic are wellsprings of primordial power, resounding not only with the wisdom of previous generations but the energy of creation itself. Its said that if you pilgramage into their dark depths one might emerge remade, free of illness or debilitation, or reborn into a body more fitting of who they truely are.
Seeking the holiest of holy places to consummate his marriage to his longtime rival and off again on-again flame, an orcish champion has sought out a long-abandoned mountain temple dedicated to the Cavemother. His dreams of altartop honeymooning has been shattered however as he's discovered that the temple and surrounding highlands are overrun by the brood of Shub-Nuggrath and her cultists. Having perhaps bitten off more than he can chew, he requests the party's aid in ousting the "goatfuckers" from the region.
Titles: Cavemother, She of the Bitter Roots, Bellycarver,
Signs: Unnatural darkness, Rumbling in the mouths of caves, clawmarks in stone, particularly angry bears.
Symbols: The Orcish rune for cave entrance, The Cavebear, or the Jawbone of one.
Despite not being one of the more widely published deities Luthic has been one of my most requested gods to rework, and after I published my take on Gruumsh my inbox I got even more. Normally I won't go into the racial sub-pantheons more often than not because of how conceptually thin most of the entries are, but the asker (and a few others) rightfully noticed the oddness of having Luthic be marked out as an evil goddess despite her domains being centered around fertility, birth, healing, and the earth... all classic mother goddess stuff we could imagine any good aligned druid talking about.
It took me a little while to understand that Luthic's evil was strictly rooted in the idea that she was helping more orcs be born, orcs being a primary enemy of all good people and thus contextualizing a wholly unselfish and natural action as something counter to the forces of good. Remember kids, dig too deep into d&d and you WILL find genocide apologia waiting somewhere under the surface. The same goes for her healing aspect, which is repeatedly brought up as being crude and inferior to the medicine of other races (Her priestesses carry dirt to rub into the wounds of those they care for, because even though it's healing it needs to be gross and inferior because they're orcs and orcs are a standin for anyone the writers subconsciously think are gross and inferior).
That said, removing the one conceit that Luthic is evil ( and all the misogyny baked into her original writeups) we're actually left with a very interesting addition to our pantheon: A goddess who presides over the unpleasant and frequently gruesome process of pregnancy and birth, a fact of life for the historical-ish settings that most d&d campaigns but one that is seldom touched upon. I can easily imagine Luthic's acolytes being the ones to hand out herbs that deal with unwanted pregnancy or to be called for in the difficult case of a breach birth. Luthic likewise being the god who presides over caves because most of the more well-known deities that deal with the underground are specifically mining related, and there's a delicious tension there between between places below the earth that exist to be exploited, and others that exist as sacred, liminal spaces that we merely visit.
Out of curiosity, how do you think one could spin a Good aligned blood religious organization. Like blood rituals are an easy clue for some scary evil necromancy etc, but I was still stuck on the idea of a religious order that heavily relies on blood magic for, I don’t know, fertility or life based magic? In which maybe the shedding of blood is more akin to blood donorship, or something where the real blessing is not in blood shed itself but celebrating the body’s ability to heal?
Deity:Sekhmet, Lady of Life and Slaughter
When the heat of your blood feels like the scorching presence of the sun, whether in anger or in fever or in passion, you will know she is with you. Greet her with a smile, and dig your teeth into your foes.
Setup: As with their patron, the cult of Sekhmet has taken many forms throughout history, ranging from healers to generals to blood-mad killers. The lion headed goddess herself was said to have been created as a judgement upon the world, a scourge against mortals for their disobedience towards the gods. As her priests tell it, Sekhmet was too fit for her purpose and would have driven the mortals to extinction, had the gods ( or some clever hero) not intervened and tricked her into drinking a lakes worth of booze adulterated to look like blood.
Drunk enough to see reason ( and deciding she liked beer way more than she liked the taste of human flesh), Sekhmet relented, going on to become a protector and distributor of justice. It’s this incongruity of a “tame” apocalypse god that characterizes her worship to this day: Sure her breath is the killing heat of the desert and her displeasure manifests as plague, but that’s all the more reason to keep the goddess happy through cheer and good works. Sure in her time the Lioness devoured whole cities and cut down armies with sword and claw, but who’d dwell on awful things like those when we could throw a festival and get sloshed instead?
Sekhmet’s doctrine is a sort of benign nihilism that appeals to those who have seen the very worst the world has to offer, soldiers, survivors, and the dishonored who know that the “goodness” of the world is a thin veneer over an abyss of unremitting horror, yet choose to try and make it better regardless. They embrace the dichotomy of a slaughter god that has chosen peace, adorning themselves with weapons, fangs, and blood-invoking paint while going about their lives as healers, hosts, and peacekeepers. Though the majority of folk regarded these bloodied acolytes with wariness, those that know the cult of Sekhmet know there are fewer truer allies to call upon in a crisis.
Adventure Hooks:
While exploring the city, the party comes across the steps of a small temple laden with gold and other offerings, shadowed door open but seemingly unoccupied. Within they find the vivacious priestess Meryet, who’s otherwise pristine white robes are stained crimson around the edges, and who’s laugh is so deep and rich it makes their skin prickle in delight. She explains that the offerings are left by those who’ve received healing at this temple, an open display of their thanks and an invitation to those who would work in the service of the lioness. Meryet exalts the party to partake in divine slaughter: beasts, bandits, the unjust, anyone and anything who would improve the world should their blood run out upon the sand. She hints at wondrous rewards should the party wield their weapons in Sekhmet’s name, as the goddess observes all good works and would see them duly rewarded.
Plague has broken out in a settlement, followed shortly after by a series of grisly murders that are at first thought to be the result of attacks of a bloodthirsty animal. The apprentice of the local healer has gone half mad with loss and secondhand fever as the lady of slaughter whispers to him of those that are to blame. When night falls and his blood boils, he transforms into a great lion, hunting those who let the poor languish in squalor, or those who broke quarantine to see to their own amusements. He remains mostly unaware of these transformations, save for the grim satisfaction he takes every time he hears of a new victim.
The party are fortunate enough to be in town in time for a grand celebration, and end up running into a small congregation of Sekhmet’s devoted who are distributing pomegranate beer to the revelers as an offering to their goddess. The congregation is led by a retired mercenary who has plenty of stories to tell should the party be willing to listen over a drink, and might give them several leads on dungeons or other opportunities in the region. Shortly after they return from such an excursion, they find that the congregation has been censured and the mercenary jailed, on charges of tricking festival goers into consuming human blood. The faithful reach out to the party to investigate on their behalf, eventually pointing them in the direction of a power hungry high priest of a much more significant temple who wishes to use the “degeneracy” of Sekhmet’s followers to shoulder out other faiths in the region and secure a religious hegemony.
Titles: The Lioness, she of the golden eyes and bloody tongue, the prowling doom, the life-savoring
Signs: Blood flowing like water, scorching solar heat, the calls of lionesses, scattered riches fangs and fruit
Symbols: A golden lion with a red chin/lower jaw, A solar disk stained in blood or with claws, a pomegranate being cut by a knife
Hey sorry to bother you but do you have any ideas on a reimagined Tiamat/Tiamat worship? I've come an inspirational roadblock trying to figure out why anybody would worship a greedy power hungry (and pretty one note) evil dragon lady? Why does Bahamut get all the love?
Monsters Reimagined: Tiamat, Goddess of Primordial Waters.
Alright folks, strap in. This is overhaul has been a long time coming and is one that've I've been thinking about since long before I started this series, or even this blog.
Like most of the evil gods in d&d, worshiping Tiamat is silly. She's a one note god that cares nothing for her followers and has zero actual ideology. She exists solely so that there can be a god of evil dragons, but I'll get into that below the cut. TLDR: Rather than the clunky default version, you should use a riff on the ancient babylonian deity she's based on/steals the name from. The original Tiamat is a water/ocean goddess that's said to also represent the primal chaos from which all things spring. With her consort she gives birth to the first gods, then transforms into a great monster to battle her children when they try to pre kill her lover. From her body the earth itself is created, and are great monsters born. I think this is an amazing foundational myth that you can use for any campaign world, and gives plenty of reason for people within that world to worship Tiamat into the present day.
What's wrong: Right of the bat I'm going to say I never liked how d&d does dragons. Color coding them for our convenience decreases a lot of wonder when it comes to facing off against a such an iconic foe, and the way that their personalities have become codified over time further limits our ability to tell stories about them. I'm going to save my actual gripes about this canonization for a monsters reimagined focusing on dragons, but for the time being, I'm going to say that Tiamat's design looks a little silly and needs an overhaul on optics alone.
Next comes the divinity part: Tiamat isn't just THE mega evil dragon, she's THE GOD of evil dragons, which is silly for a bunch of reasons.
Why would dragons need a god? Dragons are ego given form, and the only worship they engage in is worship of the self.
From a cultural perspective, Gods are also creations of societies, reflecting the elements that society deals with or the ideologies that govern it. Dragons don't have a society or a culture, they're loners and alpha predators that can talk who may on occasion insert themselves into the culture of other civilizations either as a covert agent or by installing themselves at the top.
No mortal would worship Tiamat as she explicitly DOES NOT CARE for her followers, and only shows up if there's something in it for her. Even though she's listed as a goddess of greed, it's not like she embodies some kind of ideology that will enrich her dedicated followers: If you get too rich and worship Tiamat, she's going to show up and TAKE YOUR STUFF FROM YOU.
Lets fix it: We don't talk enough about bronze age cultures in d&d settings. Sure, there'll be remnants of the not!roman empire laying around, and there'll be ancient elvan enclaves or antlantis inspired lost civilizations.. but generally these things are so far off in the distant past that they're disconnected from the campaign's actual chronology. Much like LOTR or GoT, the faux-medieval period is presumed to have gone on forever, sometimes for tens of millennia, with no progress ever being made save for the occasional apocalypse to stagger back from.
In my own writing, I've been playing around with something I call " The Dawn Age" this is a semi-mythic era that served as a sort of trial and error period for the gods, as they made things, gave shape to the world, and figured out how they'd run things from thereon out. Like any alpha test, things go very wrong, very many times, and the gods and other nacient creatures of that time need a few attempt to figure out what works.
Tiamat and the bones of her original Babylonian mythology fit into this idea perfectly: one of the original creator deities that shaped the world out of the astral sea. Collaborating and conflicting with other powerful demiurges as they defined what would and wouldn't be for the plane our heroes would one day trek across. Tiamat eventually came into conflict with a group of semi-divine entities that had arisen from her creation, who wished to stop her chaotic reshaping of reality and institute a more settled and orderly process ( for a myriad of reasons, ranging form self preservation or the appreciation of what might be wiped away in her next revision). These entities would defeat Tiamat and use the power they stole from her to shape reality as they liked it, putting a gradual end to the dawn age and letting reality solidify and progress into the current chronology.
To bring it all Together:
In a way, Tiamat is the world itself, or at least the underlying primal forces that keep it in a cohesive shape. She is worshiped by those cultures with ancient knowledge for her miracle of creation and lifegiving, and remembered by others as a destroyer who would have gladly kept the world in a state of primordial chaos, destroying whole civilizations for the sake of an inspired whim.
Tiamat's primordial chaos and the way her essence was used to shape the world also explains why it keeps spitting out monsters, strange creatures arising from the wilderness with no explanation in ever more astonishing variations. In a way, she is still creating: seeping in through the cracks that formed since her defeat.
Titles: Spring of Origin, Primordia, Mother Hydra. She who wets the clay. The maker unmade
Signs: plantlife growing in the shape of animals, verdant springs, scale patterns on rocks, Her destructive aspects are heralded by tarpits, snakelike creatures with multiple heads, or water acting unnaturally.
Symbols: Entwining serpents, hydras, spiraling pictograms. A Tree with snake-tails for roots. Her destructive aspect is represented by interlocking maws full of fangs, usually in a jagged star pattern.
Followers: Perhaps one of the first "nature" deities, Tiamat's influence is less an ideology than it is a push towards creation and flow, and works guided by her end up becoming verdant and fruitful. Mystics may seek Tiamat’s influence to invoke a flow of ideas or the “will” of creation, while healers may channel her primal vigor to encourage new growth and stave off old rot. Those seeking to embody Tiamat’s more destructive aspects often resent the world the way it is, and wish in some way to restart the process of creation and perhaps even usher in a new dawn age. These groups or individuals are often outcasts from civilization, and seek a radical return to nature or opposition to forces that would “tame” the wilds.
Spaces that that flow and erode are sacred to Tiamat, such as riverbends, swamps, coastlines, deltas, springs, as well as less obvious places such as caves or lavaflows. Creatures and cultures that dwell around or within these areas may feel the mother hydra's influence
Adventure Hooks:
A temple to a more modern deity is famous as a site of pilgrimage for its healing spring, but suffers a dramatic turn of events when their main attraction starts producing poisonous tar instead. Requested by a friendly acolyte of the temple, or Employed by one seeking healing and looking to force the issue, the party must delve down into a nearby cave system to discover the origin of this blight. . There they find an ancient altar to Tiamat that was the source of the spring’s healing abilities, which was desecrated by unknown hands. Before the party was able to investigate, strange creatures begin to emerge from the tar, seeking victims. After teh beasts are dispatched, the party can piece together clues that it was a particularly zealous acolyte in the temple, who scorned the existence of a “heathen” shrine on their patrons holy ground.
There is a strong connection between Tiamat and the Yuan-Ti ( who some believe directly obtained their flesh reshaping magic by studying Tiamats primordial influence). Likewise, there is a strong connection her and Pharika, a serpentine goddess who is said to have shaped the world and its monsters with secret knowledge entwined within them. A priestess of this newer goddess of affliction and cure seeks the party’s help in exploring old sites sacred to Mother Hydra, but may run into some fundamentalist snake cultists guarding the ruins.
Depending on which canons you follow, Moradin Allhammer, god of craft and dwarvenkind, was part of the coalition of beings that rose against Tiamat and her primordial tumult, with his epithet originating in the ability he gained from defeating the Spring of Origin, and the labors he undertook to give shape to reality afterwords. Some religious hardliners have decided to finish what their patron started, and have begun a witchhunt against a local enclave of Tiamat worshipers, claiming them to be an origin of a spreading plague.
Dragons often nest in long abandoned temples to Tiamat because these sacred spaces are natural laylines, which attract wyrms the way that hot stones attract other reptiles. When an earthquake causes a shift in layline energy, a local dragon begins seeking the expertise of mystics and other scholars to “get the power back on”. Starting out disguised as a socially malajusted noble ( the nobility is a disguise, they have no idea how to talk to people), this dragon is not above returning to its original form and kidnapping a bunch of geomancers and terrified academics to see its mission through.
Hear me, young warrior. There is no glory in slaughter, no honor in conquest, and no such thing as a just war. These childish indulgences should be put down when we first pick up the sword. Instead there is only a chance, a chance to do the right thing when the opportunity presents itself, a chance to make the world a better place than we found it, a chance to spare the innocent their scars by bearing them ourselves. Follow if you see the truth in my words, if you don’t: well, you found your way up this mountain, I’m sure you’ll be able to see yourself down.
Setup: It is the rare wargod that acknowledges that war, and violence in general, is by and large a necessary evil, a burden to be taken up by the brave and the desperate and put down again when their is no more need for it. This is the true valor spoken of by the faithful of Tyr, a unique coalition of hardened warriors, pacifists, and fighters by necessity.
Tyr offers strength to those who must defend themselves in the most dire of circumstance, and a path of peace and redemption for those who’s lives have been stained by blood. Eschewing temples and a formalized priesthood, Tyr’s most faithful are itinerant healers, veteran commanders, or holders of ancient vigils, all of whom seek to safeguard peace, defend the innocent, and hasten the end of conflict. Shrines to the marred god are often constructed alongside battlefield memorials, or are simple stone cairns in the center of villages where weapons can be stored for times of necessity.
As a mythological figure, Tyr is often cast as an aging warrior who’s body bears many long healed wounds, most notably the amputation of his sword hand. Many sagas can be told about the adventures of a younger, more foolhearty Tyr which highlight the warrior’s many hardwon lessons, leading up to his sacrifice of his hand in an attempt to stop an apocalyptic event (though sources debate on which one).
Adventure Hooks:
To avert their own apocalyptic event, the party is told to seek a relic of Tyr that just so happens to be in the possession of a semi-retired adventurer. Said oldtimer happens to be a bit of an isolationist coot, and wants test the party’s character by seeing how they manage in the harsh environment he’s chosen to sequester himself in. If they force the issue, they’ll likely have to duel one of the greatest swordsmen of the age in a blizzard, but if they cooperate, they’ll have made an ally for life and gain a mentor in the process.
Now in possession of a cursed enchanted blade that drives them to glory and danger, the party hears tell of a shrine to Tyr that collects such objects in the hopes of purifying them. Said shrine happens to be in the depths of some haunted moorlands, the site of a vast and ancient battle that still draws scavengers and specters to this day.
An undead warrior haunted by a lifetime of misdeeds stumbles into town, repeatedly denied the rest of any afterlife. Taking hostages, he demands that the party take his blade to the local shrine of Tyr (up in the rocky highlands) and make offerings for him so that the god will relive him of his burdens. After a hard trek to the shrine, the hermit who keeps vigil there points out that Tyr would never take such a dishonorable soul into his service. Blessing the blade with the power to slay undead, the hermit sends the party back to defeat the drauger and become champions of their village, planting a seed of valor that might one day grow into legend.
Titles: The Marred god, Warden of Peace, Foremost among the Valorous
Signs: Clusters of old weapons buried in the earth, cold wind, things that have been broken and remade.
Symbols: A broken sword, or one buried midway up the blade. Tollstones ( large granite standing stones that have a cylindrical hole or bowlshape carved into thier top. used to collect offerings, markers for fallen warriors)
I would love to see a Monsters Reimagined on Yuan-Ti. I really like the aesthetic of snake humanoids, but the way they are described as “evil because they have no emotions by default” and the fact that they play into some of the worst mesoamerican stereotypes has always rubbed me the wrong way.
IMonsters Reimagined: Yuan-Ti
I'll admit that this one was a little bit of a challenge from a conceptual angle, in no small part because yuan-ti are one of d&d's many "monstrous humanoids" who's presence in the game is pretty much summed up by what kind of animal they are. Very specifically, they embody what western audiences THINK snakes represent: decadence, hedonism, scheming, coldness, eastern exoticism, mysticism, and evil. They are snake cultists, in that they are snakes who are part of a cult, and they are cultists who worship snakes, everything they do in the game is in some way related to cults and/or snakes, and that makes this post more of a full on reinvention than a simple reinterpretation.
That said, I love both challenges AND chances for me to give my opinion on things, so I'm happy to share my top to bottom thoughts on the serpentfolk beneath the cut. For now, the TLDR is that if you want to do something interesting with them, use the snake-cult transformation gimmick, but set it in the past, meaning that modern day Yuan-Ti are the descendants of heretics, visibly marked out as untrustworthy much in the same way that tieflings are. Some may lean in to this sinister reputation, while others attempt to hide it. Others use their hypnotic charm to carve out a place for themselves as courtiers, merchants, hucksters and influencers.
What's wrong: Much like orcs, Yuan-Ti were a pulp-adventure monster made to decouple tropes about exotic and sinister eastern spiritualities from any one particular culture. They were the default enemies to throw in if you needed fodder for a forgotten desert/jungle temple, and they rode the snake gimmick HARD, having traps, weapons, buildings, minions, cultures and religions all built around snakes. Yuan-ti culture went about as deep as finding an excuse to capture players and stick them to an altar for sacrifice, and most authors left it at that.
The more recent interpretation of Yuan-Ti ( present in Volo’s guide) paints them as a priestly faction of a bronze-age human empire that unlocked a process to transform themselves into a “more evolved” form. The transformation requires human sacrifice, but specifically makes them smarter, which creates a feedback loop where great technological and magical advancement leads to territorial expansion, which in term leads to more slaves to fuel the yuan-ti’s evolutionary process. I’m not going to lie, this is some great worldbuilding, and is certainly something that fits into a fantasy bronze age. The problem occurs that despite thousands of years passing canonically since the rise and fall of the serpent empire, the Yuan-ti are STILL AT IT, huddling in their decrepit temples and having made 0 social or technological process. Despite their updated lore, they still only exist to bushwack heroes traveling through equatorial wilderness and provide minions for greater campaigns.
it’s also weird to me that the Yuan-ti are singled out as if they were a particularly wicked force in history as nothing about the ancient yuan-ti empire was particularly more brutal than any IRL culture of a comparative era. Expansion, conquest, exploitation, and enslavement is what empires DO, regardless of whether their priesthood happens to be cold-blooded or not. The fact that the rich and powerful of that era would sacrifice others for their own benefit is just a given, and the fact came along with a scaled transformation and “physical perfection” is no different than a feudal lord going to war for plunder, or a modern tycoon overworking his employees to afford a new yacht.
As D&D baddies go, Yuan-Ti are odd in that they somewhat subvert the the “always chaotic evil” trope by not being spiritually compelled to do evil the way orcs or gnolls are. Instead, they’re universal sociopaths and their culture is just laser focused on the “Other people aren't actually people” angle. Nevermind that a culture like this couldn’t actually sustain itself, as civilization is only sustained by people working together, compromising, and caring about one another.
How do we Fix this: I think a lot of yuan-ti lore can be salvaged by thinking of them less as a “race” and more as the biproduct of a particular magical tradition that leaves a mark on practitioners and their descendants. Likewise, I think we can say that the “ emotionless cruelty” is more a styereotype about the serpentfolk given the callousness of their progenitors: the original Yuan-ti were sociopaths because sociopaths seek powerful positions, and people in powerful positions would have the resources required to perform the transformation into yuan-ti.
We also should change how the transformation works: the basic level of yuan-ti ( the pureblood) are the “intended” results of the transformation ritual, as this ritual requires no human sacrifice. All the other forms known are biproducts of a perversion of the ritual by using more life energy, which explains why the end results are so varied, and why they carry names like “ Abomination” and “ Anathama”. Those who are born purebloods/willingly transform into them carry this bloody legacy however, and the suspicion of those who remember the legends of the original Yuan-ti’s cruelty.
There’s also a lot of fun things that can be done with the legacy of the serpent empire itself, and I encourage you to mix/match any of these options as they provide adventure hooks/lore for your own setting.
The yuan-ti priesthood were smart, and when their empire crumbled ( as all empires do), those that survived the retribution of the peoples they had oppressed offered their services to the kingdoms and warlords that arose to fill the power vacuum. Respected due to their intellect and powers, but distrusted due to their previous crimes, the serpentfolk settled into the positions of sages, courtiers, and royal mages, jealously guarding the secrets of their transformation as would any mystic sect. In this way they have endured the turning of ages, at once separate from the people of their former empire, and subtly interwoven with them.
Every so often, someone discovers the lost lore of the serpent lords and attempts to claim a little of their power for themselves. Perhaps it is a pureblood descendant looking to reclaim their “birthright”, perhaps it is a sage reading ancient tomes hungry for the revelations of metamorphosis. Either way, this allows for Yuan-ti to pop up without warning, and can be used in a thematically similar way to someone trying for lichdom.
Seeing the fall of their domain, some serpentlords fled into the far wilderness, in order to create isolationist enclaves and maintain their power. THESE are where you get the hypertradionalist “ snake supremacy” sort of people, but they should be treated exactly like you would cult enclaves in our own world. Interestingly enough this gives yuan-ti players a chance to indulge in religious trauma narratives, except with snake-gods swapped in for offbrand Christianity.
There’s nothing the rich and powerful want more than being immortal, so lets say that some of the Yuan-ti elders figured out a way to do that ( possibly by reaching Anathema status). These elders would continue to exert cultural influence ( with the case of the court mages or enclaves options) or might have sealed themselves away in tomb-like strongholds for generations long hibernation. Awakening to find they’re no longer the dominant force in the world might not be a reality these regal reptiles could comprehend, so expect them to lash out at presentday authorities or try to reassert their positions from within.
On Deities: While I’ve got more than a few problems with how d&d does its gods, I think they’re all present in how yuan-ti religion is handled. Namely, the serpentfolk religion is less an ethical philosophy or belief system, and more a transactional pact between the sacrifice providing cultists and an ever hungry cosmic being that grants them powers in return. Volo’s guide points to this being a byproduct of their ego and inability to feel emotions like devotion or reverence, but mechanically it’s almost identical to how every other religion in the default setting works.
With Yuan-ti being so tied up with their religion, I figure it’s a good idea to give their gods a refurbishing like I did to Orcus, turning them from placeholders into real ideologies that people would actually want to worship, even if they were evil:
Merrshaulk: The default god for temple lurking Yuan-ti, the origin of all the sacrificial snake transformation rituals, currently in a millennia long hibernation where as his followers want to wake him and reassert their power over their empire. I’d go one step further and say that this was the patron god of the bronze age city-state that the Yuan-ti originated in, who was in-turn served by the priesthood who popularized the metamorphosis. Just like his followers, Merrshaulk began as a very basic humanoid god, and came to resemble a great snake more and more as the culture that supported him was transformed. This transformation from harvest deity to a man-eating god of imperium to all-devouring serpent in response to his follower’s desires makes for a great addition to any mythology, and provides a lot of texture to a setting where the serpentfolk feature.
Dendar: The “Night serpent” is one of the most amazing parts of default d&d lore that no one ever told me about; a titanic snake that arose from the first mortal dreams and has been devouring the multiverse’s collective nightmares ever since? METAL AS FUCK. For some reason ( likely because the authors were trying to create yet another all consuming big bad,) Dendar’s goal is to eat enough nightmares to one day manifest and devour the world. Eh... pretty cliché if you ask me. Why not lean into the ragnarok influence and say that Dendar will emerge to eat the world when there isn’t enough nightmares for her to eat, leading some of her most zealous followers to create nightmares in the hopes of sating their world devouring patron. Whether these fear-bringers are justified or totally misguided, it makes for a waaaay more interesting story.
Pharika: You couldn’t ask for a more serendipitous coincidence than for a whole other game to develop a snake based god of healing, transformation, and affliction, then for that game to lend it’s setting to d&d. Pharika SHOULD be the patron goddess of the Yuan-ti, as her mythology already has her filling the world with secret knowledge that her followers must learn to understand. Whether through the process of alchemy, medical service, or experementing on the bodies of other creatures, having Pharika as a patron gives the serpentfolk an amazing, thematically rich patron the way that dwarves have the Allhammer, or elves have the Archheart
