#savras

[vela-pulsars]

WIZARD GODS ! WIZARD GODS ! WIZARD GODS !

[hellastrangedice]

Savras - was a god of mages and wizards in the service of Mystra, goddess of magic. Some said he was once a mortal. Their originally chilly relationship eventually developed into one of mutual respect. He was killed when the plane he was on collapsed during the time of troubles.

Will have very few available for sale in the shop update on June 25th @3pmEST.

Will be inked in gold.

[honourablejester]

Okay. So I was browsing D&D sourcebooks, wikis etc looking for gods for the knowledge and/or arcana domains. And I stumbled across a cool-looking dude named Savras from the Forgotten Realms, who is a god of divination magic (a+++, always love). And I’m thinking he sounds cool, I might use him, because he doesn’t have a lot of worshippers, and very few temples, and his shrines are hidden in corners of libraries and scriptoria, and this dude is absolutely my aesthetic over here, and then I get to this little detail about his followers:

“Such individuals can sometimes be identified by the elaborate staffs they carry in homage to Savras. According to legend, Savras was trapped in Azuth's staff for ages. Azuth eventually freed Savras so long as Savras swore fealty, and today the staff is a potent symbol for those who revere Savras. Devout worshipers take great pains to decorate and embellish their staffs, each hoping that Savras might find it a welcoming place to stop for a time.” (Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide)

And I just …

Just from this much, I was going … you’re going to hold up a symbol of his imprisonment in hopes he’s going to like you and trust you and stop on by for a kip? But then I looked up Savras and the deal with Azuth a bit more on various wikis, and it’s so much worse

Okay. Azuth. God of wizards, basically. Him and Savras were on the rise towards divinity around the same time (Savras was a demigod and so had a leg up), and promptly got into a massive fight over it. Spell Lord vs Lord of Divination

Azuth opened with trying to rip off a bit of Savras’ divinity for himself. When that failed, they had a knock-down drag-out fight, which Azuth eventually won

Azuth then imprisoned Savras in a staff called the Sceptre of Savras, which he’d made for the purpose, and planned to use as a staff of office-slash-magical battery

He was going to carry around his beaten and imprisoned rival as a badge and wave him in people’s faces while siphoning off his power

Azuth is not evil, by the by. He’s apparently lawful neutral. He’s just a vindictive bitch

Savras, because Lord of Divination, had some safeties in place, and manage to teleport the staff out into the world instead and keep Azuth from finding it again

He then spent centuries locked in this thing, going slowly mad as it siphoned off his power, begging wielders of the sceptre to let him out, including showing one lady how to turn into a silver dragon if she just let him out of the draining torture stick

(You would have had me a ‘dragon’, and this is why I should not be trusted with artefacts)

The silver dragon lady did not trust the creepy desperate haunted staff and did not agree

Stuff happened, and the silver dragon lady eventually handed the Sceptre back to Azuth, which Savras possibly saw coming but I’m imagining was not the desired result regardless

At this point, Azuth is having conscience pangs over the whole ‘trap you in a magic staff and wave your imprisoned form in people’s faces’ thing, as well as the whole ‘centuries trapped and going mad’ thing, so he wants to let Savras out

He’s not stupid though, and figures Savras may be carrying a wee bit of a grudge by now, so he extracts an oath of fealty first

Apparently after this it’s relatively hunky dory, they graduate from ‘uneasy service’ to ‘cautious friendship and a cordial working relationship’

Except for the fact that the staff had literally eaten a good chuck of Savras’ power and promptly vanished as soon as he was let out of it, taking the power with it

The big murdering-the-goddess-of-magic oops happens and Savras is (maybe?) killed, and it’s all a little moot, but then 4e became 5e and maybe that didn’t happen anymore?

Also he is, again, a god of divination and the staff with his power went conveniently poof for a while, so maybe he just Ragnarok-proofed himself again?

But! Coming back to the above point!

People who revere Savras take the staff as a ‘potent symbol’ of him and make themselves fancy ones in hopes that he’ll stop by for a while. I’m just. Maybe gods are made of much sterner stuff than me, and PTSD is not a thing for them, but if I was Savras I wouldn’t put so much as a wisp of myself within 20ft of a magic staff again, let alone go around camping in them. How do you … I like you a lot, so I’m just going to wave a symbol of your captivity in your face in hopes you like me back? Do wizard-adjacent folks just have zero tact?

(Maybe he really is chill about it, it just seems a little tasteless. At best. You know?)

Also? When the realms of the gods of magic got comprehensively blown up by the whole murder-the-goddess thing, Savras was safely dead (or safely ‘dead’), while a dying Azuth got catapulted into hell and wound up imprisoned in an archdevil. THE archdevil. Asmodeus. Who fused with him to become a god. Which … I’m just wondering. Imprisoned and fed on for power to become divine. Not by a sceptre, but by an archdevil. Arguably so much worse. And Savras is, again again, the god of divination. Including foresight. And is also lawful neutral and a god of magic …

I’m just wondering if Savras was not, in fact, at all chill with any of it, and was instead secretly joining Azuth in the ‘vindictive bitch of a lawful neutral wizard god’ mould by comforting himself with the knowledge that what goes around comes around, sunshine, and karma is a bitch

I mean, possibly not, maybe he is just a really chill, forgiving dude who hangs out in tiny shrines in libraries and got himself legitimately and fatally blindsided a couple of times over. I’d love that, honestly. But. I’m wondering.

Anyway. What I’m getting from this generally is that:

Wizards are vindictive as all (sometimes literal) hell

Nobody involved in the arcane has the remotest shred of common sense or tact

Divination, properly applied, is the best school of magic

[oscaronthegloryroad]

Sometimes D&D doesn't have a happy ending.

I was hanging out with some friends and we were all talking about D&D and the subject of Brynnley and Gath came up, and I wanted to cry a little bit because I am very tired.

Who are Brynley and Gath? Well, Brynnley is a divination cleric and pacifist who revived a mercenary named Gath (now a Paladin of Savras) whom he found dying on a battle field. and they were on a mission to distribute the payment for the final battle of Tooth & Claw mercenary company to their kin (It was more complex than that, but Gath was the last of the Tooth & Claw). And they were adventuring to their “higher purpose” by Savras via Brynnley’s pipe smoke.

They took up a mission for no pay to save someone because that is what Savras bid them to do, shit went sideways and Gath died, Brynnley made it out with the rest of the party due to Gath’s sacrifice. And it broke Brynnley.

The higher purpose he was searching for, that Savras was leading him to. He thought. The higher purpose that he saw for Gath, a man for whom he had come to respect and love as a brother. Gone.

the guidance of Savras lead him astray, and cost him his brother in arms life.

He broke, Gath had a mission separate from that of Savras, and it was incomplete. And Gaths honor was besmirched by it.

For the first time he gripped his mace in anger and declared that he was going to go back in. He was going to get the g***** mother f****** son of a b**** that killed his friend, he was going to get the banner of the Tooth & Claw, and he was going to get the gold owed to the kin of the fallen, or he was going to die trying. The others were welcome to come with him or not, but he was going in.

Luckily they ran into a real green adventurer who was willing to help, and the rest of the party were happy to follow their healer into the mouth of death once more.

And the gods must have smiled down on my quest for vengeance and redemption, because we went back into the cave and we ran rough-shod over the f***-mothering s***heels and I (who usually rolls a great number of nat. 1s per session and one or two nat. 20s) rolled three critical hits.

We won in the end, but Gath died before finding his greater purpose and Brynnley was broken emotionally and lost his faith. Brynnley will be spending the rest of his life hunting down the next of kin of the Tooth & Claw, finishing Gath’s mission as penance for failing him.

[normalwizard]

not sure he the quality on this is working but hey heres another penny

[vela-pulsars]

Pondering his orb...

[vela-pulsars]

Did you know old pantheon and setting books say some bards serve Savras ? That one is a sibyl too !

[vela-pulsars]

Sir, this is my emotional support setting... /🎨/