The great molding hands of Overgod,
never much of a details kind of god, slipped on occasion. He was
quite displeased with his own sloppy efforts regarding the Beasts.
Overgod fretted and worried and after slow aeons of divine
navel-gazing began to reshape his imperfect efforts. Here he would
grab a creature and remold its marred proportions. There he tore off
and flipped away an unsightly talon, gullet, skin flap or tail.
Most of the Zvir patiently suffered the
celestial makeover and remain today in the form last given. Some
however resisted and even evaded his great reworking maintaining what
original forms they could under the strain of the long processes of
the World-Dialectic.
Racial memory
holdovers in the Weird keep a dwindling number of the First Beasts and their descendants as
petty gods of sort. Occasionally even worship of the so-called Beast
Gods grabs an especially isolated pocket of humanity on Zem. The
barbaric blueskins that prowl the Northlands above the World Canal
are especially said to be prone to such lapses.
Sect Characteristics
Attributed Alignment (A): Like humans,
beasts attribute a single, approximate alignment to the deity and an
aspirational doctrine for followers.
Bonus Spells/Powers (B): Special bonus
spells and powers granted to faithful clergy or other temporal agents
beyond their normal spell range. The number in parenthesis represents
what level the power is granted. All powers are useable once a day
unless otherwise specified.
Priesthood Class (C): Clerics are only
found in the ranks of the most supreme of humanity's gods, the Sun
Lord. All other clergy are vocational posts (with special
powers/spells) eligible to certain classes as per their deity. Clergy
will always be drawn from the anthropomorphic animals of a race or
rarely from humans.
Domain (D): What humans consider the
deity's area of control. Again the actual deity may consider his or
her's brief to be something wider and may share or battle another
power for jurisdiction.
A Highly Abridged List of the
First Beasts
Vlenosh (Angry Sloth)
Under
the molding hand of Overgod Lazy Sloth willingly became shorter (and
more adorable), His defiant brother, Angry Sloth, however fled to the
deepest folds of the new world. There seething in his unbridled anger
issues he became unhinged, demonic even in countenance. From the
sullen thoughts of this banished First Beast came lesser beings
bearing his like and his hatred for all of creation: the Slothrog.
A:
Chaotic Evil
B:
Slow (4 or Slothrogs over 40 hp)
C:
Slothrogs, lazy and evil human magic users
D:
Malice, Sullen Lethargy, “B-side” Animal Demons
Grandfather Tyger
It came to pass many aeons ago in the
murky depths of the Anti-Cantons that the Eldish prince Xzhilhaag
inherited the vast protein plantations of his house. Xzhilhaag, a
being so renowned for the sublimity of his arbitrary cruelty and the
depths of his sadism that even the Eld found him noxious and
tiresome, found himself more and more at odds with his brothers.
Through dark magic foul—and copious
applications of a food-borne contaminant--he transformed his visage
into that of a demonic cat and began arming a host of his hairless
ape slaves to aid him in his coming rebellion. That act, of
course, was a dismal failure leading to his mortal death and
spirit-exile back in the world mundane.
What is less known in that in his
cat-form years on Zem he had an illicit, ill-matched and mutually
denied amorous relationship with the noble First Beast of
Smilodons, Queen Zub. Their congress resulted in the oddly-named
and utterly sinister Grandfather Tyger (who has had no offspring).
A:
Chaotic Evil
B:
Eye of the Tiger (3): +2 to hit for 1d6 rounds when in the heat of
the fight
C:
Assassins, Weretigers, “Eldmen” (human slaves that pretend to be
of Eld descent), Tiger Wrasslers
D:
Killing for Pleasure
Koza (Regimental Goat)
While the divinity
and worship of most First Beasts are utterly denied in the
Overkingdom and the rest of Solarity, a few atavistic remnants manage
to hold on.
Nowhere is this
more obvious than among the Great Nemec Company of the Black Army (the
Overking's standing army) who hold--and indeed do homage--to the
seemingly immortal Koza, a First Beast nursed back to fighting pride
by Oldemar the company's founder two centuries ago.
Woe unto the
clueless backwater Pahr who calls this creature a mascot! For not
only does he hold the rank of Subaltern in perpetuity (except for a
brief moment three months in which he was demoted for spewing while
on a bender half-masticated star tulips over the wool gown of the
Over King's most beloved of illegitimate daughters) he is offered
sacrifice and devotions by the men of the company.
A: Lawful Good
B: Stubborn Pride
(1): morale raised to 11 for 1d6 turns. Horns of the Goat (5): a
single head-butting attack of 3d6 hitpoints damage.
C: Fighters, Goat
Majors
D: Military
Tradition of the Absurd, Stubbornness
