Sunday, June 01, 2008

Something Familiar



From DEITIES & DEMIGODS

Cyclopedia of gods and heroes from myth and legend for Advanced D & D. Published by TSR in 1980.


NYARLATHOTEP (the crawling chaos, the messenger of the gods)

[Also known as Nyarly in The Unspeakable Vault (of Doom)]

Lesser god

[skip stats]

Nyarlathoptep appears as a tall dark man. His appearance in the world is said to foretell the the return of the Old Ones from their imprisonment. He charms humans, humanoids, and non-magical animals by his mere presence (good alignment, save at +4; evil alignment, save at -4). Those falling under his spell either obey him or behave in a purely chaotic manner. Thus his progress across the face of the land is followed by riot, war, mass murder, suicide, and insanity. No non-sentient creature can harm him, even if controlled.

The god is believed by some students of the occult to have various guises, including a red bat-like form with three evil eyes. He can call up an army of wild beasts or mindless humans within an hour's notice (1-100 of them). Each time Nyarlathotep hits an enemy, he drains 3-30 hit points from them, which temporarily add to his hit point total for one full turn. There is a 5% chance that a continual light spell will drive this being off into the Astral Plane.
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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

So lemme get this straight, A Tarrasque can't hurt him? I find that somewhat hard to believe.

Leslie Bates said...

I got the AD&D stuff in order to keep up with the rest of my group back then. I was mainly a Traveller ref.

Anonymous said...

Tarrasques are giant creatures, with 300HP(2nd ed, fights to -40), and can only permanently be killed with a wish spell. Their teeth have chance of severing limbs on each attack. They're quite honestly the most powerful nondeity in the game.

Lemme put it another way - on the one adventure where we fought a tarrasque as the goal of the adventure, one of the "random monster encounters" was a dracolich.

laZardo said...

In the language of the felines...

O RLY?

lol