"Rincewind stared, and knew that there were far worse things than Evil. All the demons in Hell would torture your very soul, but that was precisely because they valued souls very highly; Evil would always try to steal the universe, but at least it considered the universe worth stealing. But the grey world behind those empty eyes would trample and destroy without even according its victims the dignity of hatred. It wouldn’t even notice them." - Terry Pratchett, "The Light Fantastic"
@@theonesithtorulethemall He's not talking about one specific entity. He looking at someone who's become a gateway to The Dungeon Dimensions, a place inhabited by beings called Things. The feed on magic and they're harmful to Discworld.
Let me Guess what Is in the video before watching It. Atropous, the world Born dead Rognorra, the mother of Monsters The worm guy, I don't Remember his name, Kyuss? Those are my personal favorite as final enemies, in specific the idea of a creature that generated the First gods and died doing so, Just to come back as an undead to become the gods worst enemy and try to end all world, a looming Shadow that brings destruction to everything It meets, Is really cool campagna Wise. And then i went on writing for half and hour. I'm Sorry not Sorry, I put here my idea for a campaign and It took a lot of time to write. Read It if you want to, avoid to save 10 minutes and English mistakes. Fells like you can Attach It to many ideas, and It Fits well with One of the most famous/common type of enemies completely evil, undeads. A Lich trying to call Upon the world Born dead, to evade punishment from the gods, sounds like a neat campaign, and there are multiple ways he could be going about It. Causing huge battles while staying in the Shadows, hidhing all the time while controlling the world from far away using unknown spells (in 3.0 there Is a book for Epic levels, After lvl 20, that introduces "Epic" magic among other things, basically creating any type of spells, Is really cool concept I Wish to see in 5e), a puppet master that control the fate of the world and directs It all towards annihilation, so that the world Born dead Can find and devour his world. I tried doing a campaign like that, but It failed miserably becouse I'm a bad dm, if Someone can take the idea and make It happen pls let me know, I really wanna do something like that with my Firenze. Really long comment to explain my idea. Basically, I generated the world the Classic way, put cities and enemies, different factions and other stuff, then I created the final enemy, a Lich with access to Epic magic. I made his spells, and then I tried to immagine how he would go about causing massive death to summon Atropous and escape punishment for lichdoom. I also created a backstory for the Lich, I Will try to be short, basically a long dead cult of liches left behind something special, and an old archmage manages to find It along side the secret for lichdoom (basically he found an ancient trhone, some sort of articaft i created, that was holding the remains of the dead liches, and this archmage fused to It becoming a Lich, unithing his consciousness with the maddened left overs of the other liches giving him the same goal as the dead liches alongside access to Epic magic as long as he used the trhone). Then I basically used Epic magic to modify the world I alredy set up over the course of many years. The Lich wants to stay hidden, and becouse of the trhone he doesn't have to eat, so he creates a cult over the years and used the cult (via Epic magic he makes them Belive he his a deity). Now that the world as been changed by the Lich, about 500 years later, I insert the party. The idea Is that the liches keeps causing trouble to the party, basically using the cult to create various alliances beetwen various evil beings (various races naturally evil like goblins, Giants, etc). This thing goes on with the party finding out about the cult organizing various events, they track down the cult and learn everything that has happened, basically the Lich setting Major wars and all kinds of Chaos. The party learns that this was done in order to try and attract Atroupus (by causing Major Mass death he noticed the world and starts his long March to reach It and destroy It). They let the world know, the world forms some sort of united army to take down the Lich, they also join forces with previous enemy that learned the Lich was manipolating everything, and everyone join forces in an army of both good end evil trying to prevent the common enemy from ending the world. But Surprise, this was part of the Lich Plan. When the army his united and has come knocking on his Door, the lich used his greatest spell, that causes everything to go to shit. The various armies united thogether Remember everything that has happened before, and start fighting each other, some sort of Mass confusion spell. The party Somehow doesn't fall victims to this spell and reaches the Lich in his hideout, a dark tower of eeevil (with everything outside going to shit). They reach the trhone room and confront him, in this moment the Lich mocks them, letting them know that every step they made until this point was in his Plan and all they achieved was to lead to this moment, then they fight. The Lich can keep the "Mass confusion spell" up while he Is on the trhone, he can normally cast spells but he cannot move, wich means he can't leave if he wants to complete his Plan (this Is also the reason he didn't Just go and kill everything by himself, by creating a super powerfull Epic spell to kill and entire country) and so After a long and hard fought battle the party wins and cast down the Lich stopping the spell. Surprise that nobody saw coming, the spell achieved his purpose and managed to attract Atroupus and now he his coming (in a few months). Also, the trhone was made via means superior to Wish spells, wich means there Is no way for the party to destroy It and if Some powerfull mage sits there, the mad Lich his back (0 death, not even close, 100% Will be back in due time). Also, the archmage that found the trhone First, found It becouse the trhone was kinda calling him (and here It Is, the victory? That Will enrage the party 100% of the time, letting them know that eventually another Lich Will be Born again and they haven't solved the problem, only send It further in time), basically he Heard dark wispers during his sleep for his entire Life that gave him success as a mage, and as a dying old man he decided to follow those whispers to the trhone and in Exchange for ultimate Power gave his Life to It, this pretty much the Lich backstory. Then the party goes on the Quest to stop Atroupus, basically they have to fly out of the Planet while the world Born dead his close, in a desperate attempt to stop him by killing his avatar (they did some research and found out, via help from gods, that the world Born dead Can be out back to sleep by killing his avatar). Then, if they stop the world Born dead, they can either go on with their lives or try to do something about the trhone.
EDIT: Disregard this, Massimo got it right. Pretty much, though it was more like... "Screw the gods, let's summon an unstoppable sentient hypervoid that we can bully them into submission with" *Pandorym is summoned and starts eating the gods* "No wait you were just supposed to scare them so they would give us cool things oh shit oh fuck why aren't you listening"
From what I remeber from 3.5 Pandorym wass summoned by a bunch of stupid wizards who made him a contract to kill the gods. They then separated it body, who take the shape of a giant sphere of annihilation in a demiplane that can be accessed once a year, from its mind, capable of psionic that makes level 20 mystics like commonwrs, whom they put inside in a giant crystal. They then tried to blackmail the gods, who after the first request erased them from existance. The adventure in the book Elder Evil started because a lawful stupid inevitable wanted to free Pandorym since it was tricked over a legal and fair contract.
@@jonathanredacted3245 Yeah, I mean it would be kinda hard since not even the Last Word could kill Primus forever, but they are really inefficient. When the Arcane sold an entire crystal sphere to the demons (basically a solar sistem), a sphere that they didn't own mind you, they didn't bat an eye instead of, I don't know, giving them a massive fine for fraud and illicit appropriation.
One of the ancient 'evils' I created was a living realm of the purest concept of joy that spread like a mold into other realms. Since it is a entity that is beyond human comprehension. Now it sounds harmless but this has the dangerous effect of killing you from experiencing so much joy that your insides and brain start to melt and burn into liquid gold and you laugh and love every second of it as you are basically broken down from the sheer mental overwhelming experience of it to fuel the growth of its existence.
Mainly knowing that you are dying but are forced to love it even if its something you dont want is the scary aspect I think, but yeah mind break can be great or the worst depending on the hentai you watch lol
One I made was, essentially, nightmares. That's it. It had full control of the dream realm, but technically didn't exist. Its only goal was to find a way to materialize into reality by causing such terrible nightmares in mortals that they lost their minds and could then be influenced to a certain degree by the mass of writhing nightmares every time the mortal fell asleep.
My favorite of all the ones named in this vid is Tharizdun, and I'm kinda actually sad he didn't get more of a spotlight. I like him because he's described as being so insane that he constantly fluctuates between madness and being terrifyingly sane, and it's in the relatively-brief moments of sanity that he concocts some of his most elaborate schemes to free himself from imprisonment. Fortunately, most of these schemes end up being so elaborate that they end up collapsing on themselves, and because of the aforementioned insanity Tharizdun's plans rarely stay in motion long enough for him to pick up where he left off the next time he becomes sane again. The best part is how he goes about enacting his plans. It's understandably difficult to get worshippers to enact your will on the mortal coil when you, A: are an evil god governing chaos and destruction of all things, and B: are a primal entity so old and obscure that only the most knowledgeable of archwizards and scholars even know you exist. So to get around this, Tharizdun frequently masquerades as FAKE deities of some form or another, tricking people across all planes of existence into doing his bidding through half a dozen proxies at any given time. Lots of adventure modules over the past decade involving cults (including Princes of the Apocalypse and Tyranny of Dragons) are actually caused by Tharizdun doing shit WAAAAAAAY in the background (to the point where his name is never outright mentioned in the books, but if you do enough digging you can discover how one proxy is connected to another, and follow the trail back to Big Daddy Chaos himself).
I know of Tharizdun's aspect as the Elder Elemental Eye, but I didn't no he made a thumbtacks-and-string appearance in Tyranny of Dragons. What deity is he disguised as in that campaign? I want to know because I honestly am a huge fan of Tharizdun, especially as the creator of the Abyss.
Guys, I did some research into the video creator, and he didn't actually die in a train wreck. He just wanted to hide from the government. If you play the video at 1.0x speed, the voices are near identical.
Tharizdun holds the power to destroy Everything/everyone, he's the only known deity in the multiverse with such powers. All other deities (evil and good) worked together to lock his ass down... so hes basically the BBEG of all of D&D
I always use Tharizdun as the mastermind pulling the strings in my campaigns. Regardless of how far the party goes, killing demigods or tarrasques, at the end of it all it's always the king of the void waiting to be freed from his chains.
@@thoronbar I'm sure it seems that way, he was revealed in my first campaign to be controlling the BBEG, in the one after that they actually killed him, and a few years later the players learned they were in the same world as the previous campaign, things had just changed with time. So his essence was still around but not necessarily Tharizdun himself after being destroyed. It was meant to be a 3 part saga from the beginning but the players never knew. They seem to like it.
I have a background arc that ties all of my campaigns together as a grand scheme by Tharizdun to weaken the pantheon of the universe enough that, when he breaks free, they won't be enough in number or strength to stop him. Unfortunately, my group plays so inconsistently that we may never finish the current campaign, the end of which I was planning on finally hinting that all of the campaigns they've gone through so far are not only in the same universe, but connected.
I’m running a homebrew campaign set around an elder evil trying to breach it’s way into the player’s world. It’s full name is ridiculously long but usually it is referred to as the Ceaseless Speech. It’s a mind-bogglingly big mass of giant sentient tongues. It has control over all speech, music, and communication. My players have very little ideas as to what is coming.
I just had an idea like that, it basically boils down to "the elder evils are coming" and you have to figure out a way to stop them. Spoiler: the only way to stop them is to find a way to invoke io, which no one really knows if it exists or not, but supposedly it is the thing that all other things come from and it is the only way to stop the elder evils.
This video is “Basically Elder Evils,” and should not be confused with “Basic Elder Evils,” such as Cthulhu’s millennial daughter who drinks pumpkin spice lattes and wears Ugg boots.
@@DeltaOdyssey That is true, Cthulhu keeps her a secret from everything else in the universe just so she can act as an ultimate backup plan for if he is killed by his enemies.
@@SakuraiHikari15 wait, cthulhu can be killed? I always assumed if his physical body was destroyed, he would still exist somehow. Then again, I'm not the most well-versed on the mythos.
@@DeltaOdyssey He's at least scared enough of it happening. Though unlike the more popular belief, the Cthulhu mythos doesn't consider Cthulhu a god (Elder God or Outer God), he is just a priest of the Elder Gods. So he is basically just a really high level Cleric (though he is technically descended from gods).
I got one: The Endless Ash During the Spellplague, the world tree kinda fell apart into pieces, and was scattered about the Astral realm. From those tiny pieces, new trees grew into whatever they hit, along with the weave itself. They honeycombed together, forming a super-organism, that basically is the instinct of a tree to feed & grow...just on a godlike scale.
Imagine if all these elder evils just started to do their plans at the same time. Like "ANo I want to freeze time forever" "But I'm gonna cover the world in flames"
You missed a few Ragnorra, a being of corrupt positive energy that lands on worlds and reshapes all life on it in her own image. Sertrous, a demon lord who revealed that clerics don't need gods to get their powers, but can instead worship an idea or concept. And Zargon, the ruler of Hell before the devils came in.
I mean, Seritorus just revealed that Paladins exist and could be full casters with a slightly diffrent mindset? Definitely a threat to the gods, but as a feat of "this thing should never be allowed to exist near you" its... kinda anticlimactic. Especially after the "reworks all life into her image" lady
@@Cactus02-j7p No, clerics can worship ideas also. I suppose if someone who worshiped an idea trained to be a melee combatant instead of a spellcaster and took a sacred oath. then he or she would be a paladin. The two classes are pretty similar.
The D&D 3.5 supplement "Elder Evils" is a really valuable resource! The mechanics are dated, but it's full of campaign concepts that are still useful to DMs today.
@person person "if an eldritch deity trapped in a prison realm drinks tea but there's no one aware to be driven mad, does it deal sanity damage?" is the kind of philosophical argument I play TTRPGs for
Tharizdun and Atropus are my personal favorites. Something about being the embodiment of chaos and creating infinite evil is just really cool...And The World Born Dead being that inexorable end you know is out there but can only know when it will reach you in your deepest, darkest, most insane nightmares? Yeah.
Im not sure- even when you torture sims, you are still restricted to the code of the video game and bound to the system itself. Elder Evils however, are more climatic, some are powerful enough to change to fabric off reality itself in ways beyond the human mind. I would instead compare Elder Evil to an artist of sorts who stolen a project, then decides to not care about what in contains and twists it as they see fit.
@@wizardlizard4496 Or, y'know, modders. Most do care about the game and mod things that feel like they should already be in the game, but some just do it to change things up (i.e. abortionbirth mod for The binding of Isaac, aka, possibly the most unbalaced mod in existence), or to achieve some weird fantasy like the nudism mods for skyrim. Or, the worst of all, *_Round Minecraft_* *shudders*
Unintentionally, my homebrew campaign is made on the basis of the very elder evils you describe. Let me tell you the story of Zazendi: The elder evils in my campaign are two titans that embody Order and Chaos. Simply put they hate each other’s guts and do everything in power to kill each other. The only problem is that they’re too evenly matched for their own good. The recoils, parries, deflections, shockwaves, everything has an effect on the material plane completely on accident. By the time a feasible continent was formed (and dubbed Zazendi) the plane gained a consciousness and formed a primordial soup of gods, whose collective power could banish the Titans to the void forever, where they could do no harm to Zazendi for millennia. The Titans didn’t mind and kept fighting. Eons and an entire pantheon fixing Zazendi later, an event called the Weird Convergence arrives, bringing in all sorts of creatures from the Forgotten Realms like some kind of parasite. Think of it like the Second Sundering, but it’s Wizards of the Coast scrambling to make Faerun relevant again so they metaphysically plopped their creations into other people’s homebrew campaigns. Irresponsibly ditching their babies by fire stations. Why am I telling you about this? Well about 3 or 30 years after the fact with all the new races and magic settling in, one of the higher-level wizards got a little curious and started exploring different planes until he opened a portal and stumbled upon the void. Of course, the Titans were in the middle of a brawl, and they were getting really fist-fighty about things. In the few seconds that portal was open, it translated to massive earthquakes on Zazendi, ripping apart the continent in a snap. Of course, the Wizard was immediately killed from 6.02x10^23 d12 thunder damage (which according to his clone he succeeded the save for), but that damage was nothing compared to what could level, diverge, and plunge the Weave’s essence into a continent in a matter of minutes. TLDR, the elder evils are angry siblings and their fights break the only continent in the material plane, and now nobody can have nice things. Edited to be easier for the eye to read. Second Edit that hardly anyone will read unless they got Monsters of the Multiverse for Christmas: I changed a lot of the lore. Order and Chaos boys are one of many titan gods. The real elder evils were the friends we made along the way that teach mortals arcane magic and flesh warp like a ferverous sirbriex on accident, and the only ones that a cabal of astrologers know exist happen to be the seventy-two demons of the Lesser Key of Solomon. Of course there are hundreds more in this bitch of a galaxy, but the Far Realm is just too big to cover the spaces outside of Dominia, our galaxy and that stretch of fabric that connects the two.
This reminds me of world of light in super smash bros ultimate, where the two big "gods" Galeem and Darkhon represent opposites of chaos and order, light and dark, and a bunch of characters are basically caught between their fighting as spirits.
One of my players witnessed Atropus through a portal in his backstory and lived. Needless to say he is basically insane and isn't taking the news that his plane is fusing with atropus too well.
Friendly elder “evil” TLDR: he kind of just showed up a really long time ago and the gods can’t get him to leave so he just stays in this big tower/palace near the place we’re gods go to be gods and occasionally help the mortals without them knowing he helped
Considered "evil" by the gods as his power threatens their dominion over the planes just by being an alternative option. Cue godly meangirl-esc gossiping and smearing to convince reality itself that the guy is evil incarnate, leading the followers of the gods to do everything in their power to keep him buried under the sands of time with only the highest preisys actually allowed to know the name.
High Rollers had a great take on Tharizdun. A spectator summoned long ago by his worshippers went completely fucking insane and thought he was Tharizdun.
My main curiosity for watching the video was simply the 'why' for having an image of a league of legends character in the thumbnail to a video on elder evils in D&D. Suffice it to say I was not disappointed, 6:37, Tharizdun, the chained oblivion. Well played Runesmith, you tied in Thresh, the Chain Warden, perfectly there.
"Who are you to say that they can't?" We. Are the adventuring party. We are the ones who push back against the darkness. We. Are the ones who will not go quietly into the night. You want to change us? Then you best be ready to through hands.
You know....Runesmiths Basically Videos quickly worked their way up to one of my favourtie things to watch here on TH-cam. I really appreciate you and your work. Thank you.
one thing that's always confused me about beings such as these, or returning / rising ancient evils in general is just....well like Sauron/Voldemort/ The Titans (who in that film are more similar to the Primordials but I digress) was defeated before.......why are they a threat now? They are regaining their full strength you say? SO they are eveeeeeeen weaker than before by a massive margin.
Becuse in fantasy..due primarily to Tolkien. Everything is degression magic and the race of man gets weaker as time goes on. Not stronger, as do the gods. Ancient evils were dangerous in their day back when people where actually capable of amazing deeds. Compared to these modern idiots who can’t make it past level ten. This is also deeply tied into the editions of dnd where each edition has had a lower and lower max level. (20 in 5e, 30 in 4e, Infinte but really hard 3.5, 3.0, and infinte but no where near as hard in 2.0,) Literally the maximum power of anything in the universe continuously is getting weaker in most fantasy and espically in DND.
Imagine people 1000 years ago would have been able to defend the earth from greater evils by weaving carpets on a weaving loom. There were probably many people who knew how to use one as it was maybe a somewhat common thing. But these people died at some point, and generations passed while weaving looms became less significant and were replaced. Now, 1000 years later, these evils return and almost nobody knows how to deal with them anymore. Makes them rather threatening 🤷♂️ The Director's answer is better though :P
Defeating those evils required some kind of sacrifice so even if they are weaker those who stand against them are also weaker. Also consider that Sauron was only weakened without the One Ring, the Titans were imprisoned but still strong and Voldemort was still one the most powerful mages in the world.
The problem is that, either in addition to what was said about the weakening of Mortal Powers or in replacement to it, they were defeated or driven off by a *combined* and unified force of uber powerful mortal heroes and entire pantheons of gods(often times with some of said gods dieing or being destroyed in the effort), but the uber heroes are long dead or have been corrupted, and the gods have become fractious. At one point they would have been willing to work together, but llolth and gruumsh would both rather die then help correllon do anything, and that's just a minor example. The gods are nod longer willing to work together on basic daily stuff, let alone things that are actually important, so the Elder Things being weakened isn't a "oh lets steamroll them" but a "we have some miniscule chance still!"
These guys are always so interesting. The problem with using them in a campaign is that they're so deadly, the players will almost 100% not get to fight the big bad, only a minion, which is unsatisfying. If you want to see a scenario where the players do fight the big bad, take a look at the 3.5 Dungeon Magazine campaign, the Age of Worms. It's very deadly, I don't recommend using it without modification.
I just started a campaign based around these guys called the Dire Masters who serve Elder Evils as cult fanatics, and wish to usher in their preferred Elder Evil of their choice. Elder Evil's are awesome and offer so much potential!
best part is that that last bit, the bit about the "why," isn't even a joke. he pitched it like it was, but legitimately, who are you to tell Atrophus to not spread atrophy? What're you gonna do to stop him? he's literally *the* aspect of decay, accept no substitutes. even for a god to stand up to him would be as much an act of hubris as it'd be for a man to oppose a god, if not moreso; Atrophus legit just aimlessly annihilates worlds, and their associated pantheons, for fun. and that's just one of them.
@@JohnSmith-ex8iw Runesmith reuploaded this because in the original, now unlisted, upload of this video at the end where he'd list his patrons it just said "A" It was hilarious lol
So, I got a question. I'm actually trying to create a world where some gods had a change of heart, for good or evil. I was thinking some of the Elder Evils could actually make a _Heel-Face Turn,_ essentially finding redemption and becoming part of the world. Which ones remained evil, amd which ones turned Lawful, Neutral or Chaotic Good?
Surprised you didn't mention the Obyriths, interdimensional demons that created the ethereal crystal leading to Tharizdun fall. The lore behind them is cool as hell, and it wouldn't surprise me of they get a separate video
That moment when an unrelated TH-camr that you subscribe to uses art from your favourite video game. Actually did a double and triple check to make sure. Super cool >.< Edit: two Smite gods in one video, you spoil me
As a big Cthulhu mythos fan, I am glad that you have released this. Also, it gets the gears turning for a campaign that needed a big evil for the world. :D
In my game, my players have recently run into followers of a couple of elder evils, Shothragot & Tharizdun (these followers having the Star Spawn & Core Spawn stat blocks). In this game, each deity, including elder evils, have ways to get killed permanently, but this fact is forbidden knowledge, and the details are specific to each one separately, so figuring out what it is is extremely difficult, which is why so many problematic ones get imprisoned instead of killed. The party did some amazing research & discovered the way to permanently kill Shothragot, but since they're only level 10, they're not capable of doing it, & having this knowledge actually only puts them in more danger, so Shothragot is now on their BBEG list. (They basically need to complete two full dungeons, one with a CR 23 boss & the other with a CR 30 boss, on two separate planes, without a full day passing on either of those planes from the moment of one boss's death to the other's.)
I'm using an elder evil as the bbeg of my homebrew campaign, I call it the Crimson King, a being from the Far Realms that reaches into our world every 1000 years in an attempt to turn all into the abyss of the Far Realms
again. i like the idea of them basically viewing us as ants. a lot of them are that nasty kid that sets fire to ant hives and puts stilts on ants to confuse them. but others are that kid who wants to make a nice really elaborate ant farm.
4:42 “Papa booby is waiting to freeze everything, and eventually he will, but before he can do that-“ *”THIS IS A TEMPER-PEDIC MATTRESS, AND IT’S FUNCTION IS TO GIVE YOU FULLY TRANSFORMATIVE SLEEP!!!”* God, I love ad breaks. 🤣🤣🤣
"Why not? Who are you to say they can't do whatever they want?" sounds like a very good basis for an adventure, if you ask me. Think: puny mortals calling out into and despite the void: " _I_ exist, I exist. "
6:06 😯!! That's from Dragon magazine! With the elemental templates, for like, the border elementals, fire/air = smoke, earth/water = mud, fire/earth = lava, water/air = steam, earth/air = dust and all that jazz
I like the idea that Atropus may be stored far, far above the top of the moral planes mountain. The mountain I’m talking about is the one that connects hades and Elysium, as well as all the planes in between.
You should read about Haemnathuun, a primordial who was slain by Bahamut, Bane, and Ioun - an incredibly unlikely set of allies - during the Dawn War. His massive corpse still drifts along in the astral sea, with shrieking winds blowing through them that bring madness to all things that hear them - even the Slaad that live in his corpse. These winds are supposedly his death cries. Imagine being capable of driving SLAAD insane long after you've died.
I'll always love Father Llymic and had a campaign in the works before Icewind Dale got announced. His corrupting attribute is such a fun thing to have in remote villages that your players discover.
I was literally trying to find subclasses I could reflavour to make elder evil inspired characters in my world. Then I found this video explaining the elder evils and now I’m all inspired wow ty runesmith
You can’t forget that Borem is in the Sword Coast and has a dagger sticking out of his corpse that has the ability to slay gods...theoretically that is.
Good timing. I'm starting a campaign with a cult trying to raise an elder evil. Specifically the Great Unbeheld, being the oldest and THICCest kraken. I'm using him as a sort of Cthulhu type of deity.
"Rincewind stared, and knew that there were far worse things than Evil. All the demons in Hell would torture your very soul, but that was precisely because they valued souls very highly; Evil would always try to steal the universe, but at least it considered the universe worth stealing. But the grey world behind those empty eyes would trample and destroy without even according its victims the dignity of hatred. It wouldn’t even notice them."
- Terry Pratchett, "The Light Fantastic"
That was the scariest thing I've read in awhile.
Damn that’s both dark as and yet profound to read somehow
What entety hes talkingyabout
@@theonesithtorulethemall all you need to know is just not say the thing between 7 and 9 or the double of 4.
@@theonesithtorulethemall He's not talking about one specific entity. He looking at someone who's become a gateway to The Dungeon Dimensions, a place inhabited by beings called Things. The feed on magic and they're harmful to Discworld.
Sorry about the re-upload, the last one didn't have the proper patreon list... I might be a little tired. Enjoy learning about cosmic anomalies!
lmao
No problem man. Take some rest (then please do another city of mist video)
its 5 am out here you the star smith or what?
well I'll never let go of the first video. having access to an unlisted video makes me feel coooool
It was kind of funny ngl
I'm getting the distinct feeling that you've been reading the 3.5 edition book Elder Evils, Runesmith. Just a hunch.
It is a great book of background/campaign/worldbuilding ideas. :)
One of the best things to come out of 3.5.
some dudes on the internet even converted it to 5e fairly well.
@@ItamarO93 there's a 5e coversion? Nice! Going to look for that later today.
@@probablythedm1669 Not a full one. Just stats for the EEs and NPCs, but you can use the rest of the book.
Let me Guess what Is in the video before watching It.
Atropous, the world Born dead
Rognorra, the mother of Monsters
The worm guy, I don't Remember his name, Kyuss?
Those are my personal favorite as final enemies, in specific the idea of a creature that generated the First gods and died doing so, Just to come back as an undead to become the gods worst enemy and try to end all world, a looming Shadow that brings destruction to everything It meets, Is really cool campagna Wise.
And then i went on writing for half and hour. I'm Sorry not Sorry, I put here my idea for a campaign and It took a lot of time to write. Read It if you want to, avoid to save 10 minutes and English mistakes.
Fells like you can Attach It to many ideas, and It Fits well with One of the most famous/common type of enemies completely evil, undeads.
A Lich trying to call Upon the world Born dead, to evade punishment from the gods, sounds like a neat campaign, and there are multiple ways he could be going about It.
Causing huge battles while staying in the Shadows, hidhing all the time while controlling the world from far away using unknown spells (in 3.0 there Is a book for Epic levels, After lvl 20, that introduces "Epic" magic among other things, basically creating any type of spells, Is really cool concept I Wish to see in 5e), a puppet master that control the fate of the world and directs It all towards annihilation, so that the world Born dead Can find and devour his world.
I tried doing a campaign like that, but It failed miserably becouse I'm a bad dm, if Someone can take the idea and make It happen pls let me know, I really wanna do something like that with my Firenze.
Really long comment to explain my idea.
Basically, I generated the world the Classic way, put cities and enemies, different factions and other stuff, then I created the final enemy, a Lich with access to Epic magic. I made his spells, and then I tried to immagine how he would go about causing massive death to summon Atropous and escape punishment for lichdoom.
I also created a backstory for the Lich, I Will try to be short, basically a long dead cult of liches left behind something special, and an old archmage manages to find It along side the secret for lichdoom (basically he found an ancient trhone, some sort of articaft i created, that was holding the remains of the dead liches, and this archmage fused to It becoming a Lich, unithing his consciousness with the maddened left overs of the other liches giving him the same goal as the dead liches alongside access to Epic magic as long as he used the trhone).
Then I basically used Epic magic to modify the world I alredy set up over the course of many years.
The Lich wants to stay hidden, and becouse of the trhone he doesn't have to eat, so he creates a cult over the years and used the cult (via Epic magic he makes them Belive he his a deity).
Now that the world as been changed by the Lich, about 500 years later, I insert the party. The idea Is that the liches keeps causing trouble to the party, basically using the cult to create various alliances beetwen various evil beings (various races naturally evil like goblins, Giants, etc). This thing goes on with the party finding out about the cult organizing various events, they track down the cult and learn everything that has happened, basically the Lich setting Major wars and all kinds of Chaos. The party learns that this was done in order to try and attract Atroupus (by causing Major Mass death he noticed the world and starts his long March to reach It and destroy It).
They let the world know, the world forms some sort of united army to take down the Lich, they also join forces with previous enemy that learned the Lich was manipolating everything, and everyone join forces in an army of both good end evil trying to prevent the common enemy from ending the world.
But Surprise, this was part of the Lich Plan.
When the army his united and has come knocking on his Door, the lich used his greatest spell, that causes everything to go to shit. The various armies united thogether Remember everything that has happened before, and start fighting each other, some sort of Mass confusion spell. The party Somehow doesn't fall victims to this spell and reaches the Lich in his hideout, a dark tower of eeevil (with everything outside going to shit).
They reach the trhone room and confront him, in this moment the Lich mocks them, letting them know that every step they made until this point was in his Plan and all they achieved was to lead to this moment, then they fight.
The Lich can keep the "Mass confusion spell" up while he Is on the trhone, he can normally cast spells but he cannot move, wich means he can't leave if he wants to complete his Plan (this Is also the reason he didn't Just go and kill everything by himself, by creating a super powerfull Epic spell to kill and entire country) and so After a long and hard fought battle the party wins and cast down the Lich stopping the spell.
Surprise that nobody saw coming, the spell achieved his purpose and managed to attract Atroupus and now he his coming (in a few months).
Also, the trhone was made via means superior to Wish spells, wich means there Is no way for the party to destroy It and if Some powerfull mage sits there, the mad Lich his back (0 death, not even close, 100% Will be back in due time).
Also, the archmage that found the trhone First, found It becouse the trhone was kinda calling him (and here It Is, the victory? That Will enrage the party 100% of the time, letting them know that eventually another Lich Will be Born again and they haven't solved the problem, only send It further in time), basically he Heard dark wispers during his sleep for his entire Life that gave him success as a mage, and as a dying old man he decided to follow those whispers to the trhone and in Exchange for ultimate Power gave his Life to It, this pretty much the Lich backstory.
Then the party goes on the Quest to stop Atroupus, basically they have to fly out of the Planet while the world Born dead his close, in a desperate attempt to stop him by killing his avatar (they did some research and found out, via help from gods, that the world Born dead Can be out back to sleep by killing his avatar).
Then, if they stop the world Born dead, they can either go on with their lives or try to do something about the trhone.
No mention for my boy Hadar? He’s literally a hungry, evil star, and actually has spells named after him.
A Great Old One Warlock, who is blessed by Hadar.
Yaaaas.
Hadar is my BBEG! i love the necro-stars
Hadar has some fun lore behind him! He’s kinda basically like Dormamu from Dr Strange, but creepier and more unknowable
Humans: Screw the gods, we're fine without out them
Pandorym: *Exist*
Human: *Suprised pikachu face* Wait, no
EDIT: Disregard this, Massimo got it right.
Pretty much, though it was more like...
"Screw the gods, let's summon an unstoppable sentient hypervoid that we can bully them into submission with"
*Pandorym is summoned and starts eating the gods*
"No wait you were just supposed to scare them so they would give us cool things oh shit oh fuck why aren't you listening"
From what I remeber from 3.5 Pandorym wass summoned by a bunch of stupid wizards who made him a contract to kill the gods. They then separated it body, who take the shape of a giant sphere of annihilation in a demiplane that can be accessed once a year, from its mind, capable of psionic that makes level 20 mystics like commonwrs, whom they put inside in a giant crystal. They then tried to blackmail the gods, who after the first request erased them from existance. The adventure in the book Elder Evil started because a lawful stupid inevitable wanted to free Pandorym since it was tricked over a legal and fair contract.
@@marcsimo This is correct! Nevermind my previous comment, everybody.
@@marcsimo this is why we need to wreck mechanus now and again
@@jonathanredacted3245 Yeah, I mean it would be kinda hard since not even the Last Word could kill Primus forever, but they are really inefficient. When the Arcane sold an entire crystal sphere to the demons (basically a solar sistem), a sphere that they didn't own mind you, they didn't bat an eye instead of, I don't know, giving them a massive fine for fraud and illicit appropriation.
One of the ancient 'evils' I created was a living realm of the purest concept of joy that spread like a mold into other realms. Since it is a entity that is beyond human comprehension. Now it sounds harmless but this has the dangerous effect of killing you from experiencing so much joy that your insides and brain start to melt and burn into liquid gold and you laugh and love every second of it as you are basically broken down from the sheer mental overwhelming experience of it to fuel the growth of its existence.
Ah yes, the good ol' mind break death. One of the simultaneously best and worst ways to go depending on your personal philosophy.
Mainly knowing that you are dying but are forced to love it even if its something you dont want is the scary aspect I think, but yeah mind break can be great or the worst depending on the hentai you watch lol
Now this is something I could see a cult being built around
Sooo... The drug epidemic?
One I made was, essentially, nightmares. That's it. It had full control of the dream realm, but technically didn't exist. Its only goal was to find a way to materialize into reality by causing such terrible nightmares in mortals that they lost their minds and could then be influenced to a certain degree by the mass of writhing nightmares every time the mortal fell asleep.
"Chemicals aren't inherntly evil."
As a chemistry student, I can assure you, things like bromine or chromyl chloride are definitely evil.
Check out 1-Diazidocarbamoyl-5-azidotetrazole. Its formula is C2N14 and no that's not a typo.
*cough* Chlorine gas *cough coooooooooooooooough* ***ded***
Bromine compounds can be used as flame retardants and fire is kind of bad
Source: I watched avatar
@@conradshtock3039 That reminds me of another fun compound, chlorine trifluoride.
Certain ones, maybe.
My favorite of all the ones named in this vid is Tharizdun, and I'm kinda actually sad he didn't get more of a spotlight.
I like him because he's described as being so insane that he constantly fluctuates between madness and being terrifyingly sane, and it's in the relatively-brief moments of sanity that he concocts some of his most elaborate schemes to free himself from imprisonment. Fortunately, most of these schemes end up being so elaborate that they end up collapsing on themselves, and because of the aforementioned insanity Tharizdun's plans rarely stay in motion long enough for him to pick up where he left off the next time he becomes sane again.
The best part is how he goes about enacting his plans. It's understandably difficult to get worshippers to enact your will on the mortal coil when you, A: are an evil god governing chaos and destruction of all things, and B: are a primal entity so old and obscure that only the most knowledgeable of archwizards and scholars even know you exist. So to get around this, Tharizdun frequently masquerades as FAKE deities of some form or another, tricking people across all planes of existence into doing his bidding through half a dozen proxies at any given time. Lots of adventure modules over the past decade involving cults (including Princes of the Apocalypse and Tyranny of Dragons) are actually caused by Tharizdun doing shit WAAAAAAAY in the background (to the point where his name is never outright mentioned in the books, but if you do enough digging you can discover how one proxy is connected to another, and follow the trail back to Big Daddy Chaos himself).
I know of Tharizdun's aspect as the Elder Elemental Eye, but I didn't no he made a thumbtacks-and-string appearance in Tyranny of Dragons. What deity is he disguised as in that campaign? I want to know because I honestly am a huge fan of Tharizdun, especially as the creator of the Abyss.
Guys, I did some research into the video creator, and he didn't actually die in a train wreck. He just wanted to hide from the government. If you play the video at 1.0x speed, the voices are near identical.
Whoa...you absolute genius....
We gotta help him!
Tharizdun holds the power to destroy Everything/everyone, he's the only known deity in the multiverse with such powers. All other deities (evil and good) worked together to lock his ass down... so hes basically the BBEG of all of D&D
If we’re going that route, it was the Obyriths that made Tharizdun what he is, so technically, I think the Obyriths are the BBEG of all of DnD.
I always use Tharizdun as the mastermind pulling the strings in my campaigns. Regardless of how far the party goes, killing demigods or tarrasques, at the end of it all it's always the king of the void waiting to be freed from his chains.
From an outsider perspective, that sounds boring for the players, to be fighting against the same final boss every time.
@@thoronbar I'm sure it seems that way, he was revealed in my first campaign to be controlling the BBEG, in the one after that they actually killed him, and a few years later the players learned they were in the same world as the previous campaign, things had just changed with time. So his essence was still around but not necessarily Tharizdun himself after being destroyed. It was meant to be a 3 part saga from the beginning but the players never knew. They seem to like it.
@@Ra_views hey, if the players were happy, you succeeded.
@@Ra_views I would be a little dissapointed as a player to discover, that the big reveal is yet again "the chained god did it"
I have a background arc that ties all of my campaigns together as a grand scheme by Tharizdun to weaken the pantheon of the universe enough that, when he breaks free, they won't be enough in number or strength to stop him. Unfortunately, my group plays so inconsistently that we may never finish the current campaign, the end of which I was planning on finally hinting that all of the campaigns they've gone through so far are not only in the same universe, but connected.
Let's also not forget about Ragnorra: The Mother of Monsters aka. Red Comet that tries to heal everyone but really sucks at healing.
No orator goodbye healing. Loke it overheqls if I remember correctly. Its just that overhealing is lethal.
Damn, I just looked her up, she's like the high evolutionary except she loves everything way wayyyyyyy too much.
one might even say that she employs The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic
I’m running a homebrew campaign set around an elder evil trying to breach it’s way into the player’s world. It’s full name is ridiculously long but usually it is referred to as the Ceaseless Speech. It’s a mind-bogglingly big mass of giant sentient tongues. It has control over all speech, music, and communication. My players have very little ideas as to what is coming.
I just had an idea like that, it basically boils down to "the elder evils are coming" and you have to figure out a way to stop them.
Spoiler: the only way to stop them is to find a way to invoke io, which no one really knows if it exists or not, but supposedly it is the thing that all other things come from and it is the only way to stop the elder evils.
Planet wide silence spell macguffin to repel it from the world
Me: *reads the title as Basically the Elder Elves*.
My dislexia: Hah! Got'eem!
All hail our great overlord Got'eem!
You fit two dyslexia jokes in this one comment.
Good job.
This video is “Basically Elder Evils,” and should not be confused with “Basic Elder Evils,” such as Cthulhu’s millennial daughter who drinks pumpkin spice lattes and wears Ugg boots.
Funny enough, I think cthulhu does have a daughter named cthylla, though I remember little about her other than her name.
@@DeltaOdyssey That is true, Cthulhu keeps her a secret from everything else in the universe just so she can act as an ultimate backup plan for if he is killed by his enemies.
@@SakuraiHikari15 wait, cthulhu can be killed? I always assumed if his physical body was destroyed, he would still exist somehow. Then again, I'm not the most well-versed on the mythos.
@@DeltaOdyssey He's at least scared enough of it happening.
Though unlike the more popular belief, the Cthulhu mythos doesn't consider Cthulhu a god (Elder God or Outer God), he is just a priest of the Elder Gods. So he is basically just a really high level Cleric (though he is technically descended from gods).
@@SakuraiHikari15 oh yea, forgot about the priesthood thing.
I misread this as "Elder Elvis," and I'm honestly disappointed.
_So I got this idea for a new Elder Evil-_
Evil elder Elvis
Dugeons and Dragons: Lovecraft Edition
I believe it's called "Call of Cthulu"
@@calebdouglas2512 I love Call of Cthulu
"why"
because I need a good BBEG for lv20 and Vecna is already taken, dude, that's why
Did your imagination break?
I got one: The Endless Ash
During the Spellplague, the world tree kinda fell apart into pieces, and was scattered about the Astral realm. From those tiny pieces, new trees grew into whatever they hit, along with the weave itself. They honeycombed together, forming a super-organism, that basically is the instinct of a tree to feed & grow...just on a godlike scale.
Imagine if all these elder evils just started to do their plans at the same time.
Like
"ANo I want to freeze time forever"
"But I'm gonna cover the world in flames"
"but before that-" *Ad*
Logan, that was flawless
That was really painful.
I don't think it was his doing, though.
Mine was for ranch dressing, what was your ad for?
@@Seloa gee, three weeks ago, my brain already dropped that bit of trivia
@@hugofontes5708 understandable.
You missed a few
Ragnorra, a being of corrupt positive energy that lands on worlds and reshapes all life on it in her own image.
Sertrous, a demon lord who revealed that clerics don't need gods to get their powers, but can instead worship an idea or concept.
And Zargon, the ruler of Hell before the devils came in.
I mean, Seritorus just revealed that Paladins exist and could be full casters with a slightly diffrent mindset?
Definitely a threat to the gods, but as a feat of "this thing should never be allowed to exist near you" its... kinda anticlimactic. Especially after the "reworks all life into her image" lady
@@the_last_balladI thougbt Sertrous was responsible for introducing the idea of Heresy?
Isn't a cleric that worships an idea just a paladin?
@@Cactus02-j7p No, clerics can worship ideas also. I suppose if someone who worshiped an idea trained to be a melee combatant instead of a spellcaster and took a sacred oath. then he or she would be a paladin. The two classes are pretty similar.
Brought to you by the letter "A"
The D&D 3.5 supplement "Elder Evils" is a really valuable resource! The mechanics are dated, but it's full of campaign concepts that are still useful to DMs today.
"they can kinda do whatever they want"
Except escape that prison they're in
Bold words for someone in xenoforming range
Bold words from being in soon to be a devout cultist range
@person person they kinda can't drink their tea, really. Not alone with their own ~hands~ tentacles
@person person "if an eldritch deity trapped in a prison realm drinks tea but there's no one aware to be driven mad, does it deal sanity damage?" is the kind of philosophical argument I play TTRPGs for
@person person so you agree it can't deal damage if there's no target, good
Ah yes, A, the person carrying the Runesmith channel
Daddy died in a train wreck... he never did come home from the corner store that day
You and Jorphdan both doing Elder Evils uploads is exactly what my spacefaring, Far Realm exploring, epic level campaign needed.
Looks like A got the band back together.
The algorithm recommended this to me, AFTER I watched it.
Watch it again
Yeh man just Watch it Again
The algorithm is its own elder evil
They knew you’d like it
Same...
Ooh never been this early before, feel like a primordial over here
I thought there was only one patron and their name was “A”
Logan's sole patron is Gawr Gura.
@@citizen_grub4171 a
@@citizen_grub4171 a
@@citizen_grub4171 a
“and eventually he will, but before that- **T MOBILE IS UPGRADING AT A RECORD PACE**
Tharizdun and Atropus are my personal favorites. Something about being the embodiment of chaos and creating infinite evil is just really cool...And The World Born Dead being that inexorable end you know is out there but can only know when it will reach you in your deepest, darkest, most insane nightmares? Yeah.
I was in a campaign where Tharizdun was the BBEG and Atropus was his friend/right hand man
Wait a minute...are we the Elder Evils to the sims in our games?
Absolutely
Facts
No. You are god. Your pet dog is more like the elder evil. He doesn’t care about the sims but could still wipe them out by peeing on the pc.
Im not sure- even when you torture sims, you are still restricted to the code of the video game and bound to the system itself.
Elder Evils however, are more climatic, some are powerful enough to change to fabric off reality itself in ways beyond the human mind.
I would instead compare Elder Evil to an artist of sorts who stolen a project, then decides to not care about what in contains and twists it as they see fit.
@@wizardlizard4496 Or, y'know, modders.
Most do care about the game and mod things that feel like they should already be in the game, but some just do it to change things up (i.e. abortionbirth mod for The binding of Isaac, aka, possibly the most unbalaced mod in existence), or to achieve some weird fantasy like the nudism mods for skyrim.
Or, the worst of all, *_Round Minecraft_* *shudders*
Unintentionally, my homebrew campaign is made on the basis of the very elder evils you describe. Let me tell you the story of Zazendi:
The elder evils in my campaign are two titans that embody Order and Chaos. Simply put they hate each other’s guts and do everything in power to kill each other. The only problem is that they’re too evenly matched for their own good. The recoils, parries, deflections, shockwaves, everything has an effect on the material plane completely on accident.
By the time a feasible continent was formed (and dubbed Zazendi) the plane gained a consciousness and formed a primordial soup of gods, whose collective power could banish the Titans to the void forever, where they could do no harm to Zazendi for millennia. The Titans didn’t mind and kept fighting.
Eons and an entire pantheon fixing Zazendi later, an event called the Weird Convergence arrives, bringing in all sorts of creatures from the Forgotten Realms like some kind of parasite. Think of it like the Second Sundering, but it’s Wizards of the Coast scrambling to make Faerun relevant again so they metaphysically plopped their creations into other people’s homebrew campaigns. Irresponsibly ditching their babies by fire stations.
Why am I telling you about this? Well about 3 or 30 years after the fact with all the new races and magic settling in, one of the higher-level wizards got a little curious and started exploring different planes until he opened a portal and stumbled upon the void. Of course, the Titans were in the middle of a brawl, and they were getting really fist-fighty about things. In the few seconds that portal was open, it translated to massive earthquakes on Zazendi, ripping apart the continent in a snap. Of course, the Wizard was immediately killed from 6.02x10^23 d12 thunder damage (which according to his clone he succeeded the save for), but that damage was nothing compared to what could level, diverge, and plunge the Weave’s essence into a continent in a matter of minutes.
TLDR, the elder evils are angry siblings and their fights break the only continent in the material plane, and now nobody can have nice things. Edited to be easier for the eye to read.
Second Edit that hardly anyone will read unless they got Monsters of the Multiverse for Christmas: I changed a lot of the lore. Order and Chaos boys are one of many titan gods. The real elder evils were the friends we made along the way that teach mortals arcane magic and flesh warp like a ferverous sirbriex on accident, and the only ones that a cabal of astrologers know exist happen to be the seventy-two demons of the Lesser Key of Solomon. Of course there are hundreds more in this bitch of a galaxy, but the Far Realm is just too big to cover the spaces outside of Dominia, our galaxy and that stretch of fabric that connects the two.
That’s pretty cool and kinda funny when you think about it but in a scary way
This reminds me of world of light in super smash bros ultimate, where the two big "gods" Galeem and Darkhon represent opposites of chaos and order, light and dark, and a bunch of characters are basically caught between their fighting as spirits.
The kickstarter is getting pretty close to making this a million dollar idea. Cool.
it got there
Thank you I love the Elder Evils I’m glad to see them getting love!!
Watching it again so the algorithm doesn't screw our boi over
One of my players witnessed Atropus through a portal in his backstory and lived. Needless to say he is basically insane and isn't taking the news that his plane is fusing with atropus too well.
This is me interacting for the Almighty Algorithm-Sama.
All must do their part to satisfy the great Algorithm
Truly the most powerful elder evil.
Praise be to Algorithm-chan
Praise be to the algorithm-sama
Glory be to the Great Algorithm!
Oh no. An elder evil got Logan. Now he's forgetting he already uploaded this video!
@fire lord I was just making a haha funny
Friendly elder “evil”
TLDR: he kind of just showed up a really long time ago and the gods can’t get him to leave so he just stays in this big tower/palace near the place we’re gods go to be gods and occasionally help the mortals without them knowing he helped
Considered "evil" by the gods as his power threatens their dominion over the planes just by being an alternative option.
Cue godly meangirl-esc gossiping and smearing to convince reality itself that the guy is evil incarnate, leading the followers of the gods to do everything in their power to keep him buried under the sands of time with only the highest preisys actually allowed to know the name.
0:53 sponsored segment ends
Thank you
High Rollers had a great take on Tharizdun. A spectator summoned long ago by his worshippers went completely fucking insane and thought he was Tharizdun.
6:43 oh hi Thresh. didn't expect to see you here.
An Elder Evil? Oh, you mean [Prominent Politician from an Opposing Party]?
Blessed be the lords of light, for they have bestowed upon us the gift of another Runesmith video!
My main curiosity for watching the video was simply the 'why' for having an image of a league of legends character in the thumbnail to a video on elder evils in D&D.
Suffice it to say I was not disappointed, 6:37, Tharizdun, the chained oblivion. Well played Runesmith, you tied in Thresh, the Chain Warden, perfectly there.
"Who are you to say that they can't?"
We. Are the adventuring party. We are the ones who push back against the darkness. We. Are the ones who will not go quietly into the night.
You want to change us? Then you best be ready to through hands.
throw* hands
@@SapunMan monk: no, really, get through this hand
@@hugofontes5708 Ok, but that's not what he was going for.
@@SapunMan Bruh
I mean legit no 20th level party could fight tharizadun...
I love how they boo even before he gets a chance to say his pun
You forgot Dendar the Night Serpent, my dude. X_O
She's basically a big snek. A *really* big snek.
And a *cosmic necessity* , because she eats nightmares which makes people forget them, which helps keep everyone sane. She's great
@@snowboundwhale6860 Exept that she wants to eat the *sun*
@@foisopracurtir6389 *Snuff out the light plays menacingly in the distance*
You forgot the most terrifying eldritch abomination of all...
Kirby
You know....Runesmiths Basically Videos quickly worked their way up to one of my favourtie things to watch here on TH-cam.
I really appreciate you and your work. Thank you.
lol 'who are you to say that they can't.'
that sounds like a campaign pitch if i've ever heard one
one thing that's always confused me about beings such as these, or returning / rising ancient evils in general is just....well like Sauron/Voldemort/ The Titans (who in that film are more similar to the Primordials but I digress) was defeated before.......why are they a threat now? They are regaining their full strength you say? SO they are eveeeeeeen weaker than before by a massive margin.
Becuse in fantasy..due primarily to Tolkien. Everything is degression magic and the race of man gets weaker as time goes on. Not stronger, as do the gods. Ancient evils were dangerous in their day back when people where actually capable of amazing deeds. Compared to these modern idiots who can’t make it past level ten. This is also deeply tied into the editions of dnd where each edition has had a lower and lower max level.
(20 in 5e, 30 in 4e, Infinte but really hard 3.5, 3.0, and infinte but no where near as hard in 2.0,)
Literally the maximum power of anything in the universe continuously is getting weaker in most fantasy and espically in DND.
Imagine people 1000 years ago would have been able to defend the earth from greater evils by weaving carpets on a weaving loom. There were probably many people who knew how to use one as it was maybe a somewhat common thing. But these people died at some point, and generations passed while weaving looms became less significant and were replaced. Now, 1000 years later, these evils return and almost nobody knows how to deal with them anymore. Makes them rather threatening 🤷♂️
The Director's answer is better though :P
Defeating those evils required some kind of sacrifice so even if they are weaker those who stand against them are also weaker. Also consider that Sauron was only weakened without the One Ring, the Titans were imprisoned but still strong and Voldemort was still one the most powerful mages in the world.
The problem is that, either in addition to what was said about the weakening of Mortal Powers or in replacement to it, they were defeated or driven off by a *combined* and unified force of uber powerful mortal heroes and entire pantheons of gods(often times with some of said gods dieing or being destroyed in the effort), but the uber heroes are long dead or have been corrupted, and the gods have become fractious. At one point they would have been willing to work together, but llolth and gruumsh would both rather die then help correllon do anything, and that's just a minor example. The gods are nod longer willing to work together on basic daily stuff, let alone things that are actually important, so the Elder Things being weakened isn't a "oh lets steamroll them" but a "we have some miniscule chance still!"
@@janelantestaverde2018 actually, that's the background of my party's fortune teller
These guys are always so interesting. The problem with using them in a campaign is that they're so deadly, the players will almost 100% not get to fight the big bad, only a minion, which is unsatisfying. If you want to see a scenario where the players do fight the big bad, take a look at the 3.5 Dungeon Magazine campaign, the Age of Worms. It's very deadly, I don't recommend using it without modification.
The creation of Pandorym sounds like the greatest power move in mortal history!
logan's infrequent, yet tasteful critiques of capitalism are what keep me coming back
@@joesphrobinette8878 he didn’t make fun of Socialism in this video tho?
@@gromplestomp5593 when he said best he didn’t mean best at Population control.
@@colinstacy2085 define Socialism
@@gromplestomp5593 lmao keep dreaming, commie.
@@newjerseyyouth4853 To be fair communism does have better results that most diet pills.
I just started a campaign based around these guys called the Dire Masters who serve Elder Evils as cult fanatics, and wish to usher in their preferred Elder Evil of their choice. Elder Evil's are awesome and offer so much potential!
Just as good the second time around.
best part is that that last bit, the bit about the "why," isn't even a joke. he pitched it like it was, but legitimately, who are you to tell Atrophus to not spread atrophy? What're you gonna do to stop him? he's literally *the* aspect of decay, accept no substitutes. even for a god to stand up to him would be as much an act of hubris as it'd be for a man to oppose a god, if not moreso; Atrophus legit just aimlessly annihilates worlds, and their associated pantheons, for fun.
and that's just one of them.
I just ran my first ever one shot adventure from Twisted Taverns, and the whole party had a blast. Thank you and everyone involved in it's creation 😊
Dang I'm gonna miss my boy A
I've seen a lotta comments about A but I'm not getting the joke. Elaborate please
@@JohnSmith-ex8iw Runesmith reuploaded this because in the original, now unlisted, upload of this video at the end where he'd list his patrons it just said "A"
It was hilarious lol
I’m nerding out so hard right now, this is awesome.
Personal favorite is Dendar the Night Serpent. She feeds off of nightmares and is a planet sized danger noodle
My personal favorite was also left out. Zargon the returner.
So, I got a question.
I'm actually trying to create a world where some gods had a change of heart, for good or evil.
I was thinking some of the Elder Evils could actually make a _Heel-Face Turn,_ essentially finding redemption and becoming part of the world.
Which ones remained evil, amd which ones turned Lawful, Neutral or Chaotic Good?
Surprised you didn't mention the Obyriths, interdimensional demons that created the ethereal crystal leading to Tharizdun fall. The lore behind them is cool as hell, and it wouldn't surprise me of they get a separate video
Love the topic. If this wasn't a deliberately brief format, I would beg for each of these Apocalypses to have their own video.
That moment when an unrelated TH-camr that you subscribe to uses art from your favourite video game.
Actually did a double and triple check to make sure. Super cool >.<
Edit: two Smite gods in one video, you spoil me
"But before that-" Ad where they yell about freedom
Or pizza.
I feel like most of the elder evil’s goals are mutually exclusive and one day they’re going to have to have a conversation about that
Oh i love these guys. I once ran a short campaign (only like 6 sessions) that all revolved around wormy boy Kyuss and a necromancer who worshiped him.
As a big Cthulhu mythos fan, I am glad that you have released this. Also, it gets the gears turning for a campaign that needed a big evil for the world. :D
Basically I love every thing you and the guys at both this and the others at xp to level three do both here and there.
In my game, my players have recently run into followers of a couple of elder evils, Shothragot & Tharizdun (these followers having the Star Spawn & Core Spawn stat blocks). In this game, each deity, including elder evils, have ways to get killed permanently, but this fact is forbidden knowledge, and the details are specific to each one separately, so figuring out what it is is extremely difficult, which is why so many problematic ones get imprisoned instead of killed. The party did some amazing research & discovered the way to permanently kill Shothragot, but since they're only level 10, they're not capable of doing it, & having this knowledge actually only puts them in more danger, so Shothragot is now on their BBEG list. (They basically need to complete two full dungeons, one with a CR 23 boss & the other with a CR 30 boss, on two separate planes, without a full day passing on either of those planes from the moment of one boss's death to the other's.)
I'm using an elder evil as the bbeg of my homebrew campaign, I call it the Crimson King, a being from the Far Realms that reaches into our world every 1000 years in an attempt to turn all into the abyss of the Far Realms
By chance, do they have a legendary action that causes all other creatures to miss an entire round?
i am so happy to see your kickstarter pop off so hard you deserve it king you inspire me every day
Thurizdan is so powerful that if he regains consciousness for a second he will destroy all of reality
I love father Llymic no one talks about him enough
0:17 And also tended by "The investors", a myconid-dodrio fusion created by JessJackdaw.
again. i like the idea of them basically viewing us as ants. a lot of them are that nasty kid that sets fire to ant hives and puts stilts on ants to confuse them. but others are that kid who wants to make a nice really elaborate ant farm.
It's really great to have this subject being taken by both runesmith and jorphdan
4:42 “Papa booby is waiting to freeze everything, and eventually he will, but before he can do that-“
*”THIS IS A TEMPER-PEDIC MATTRESS, AND IT’S FUNCTION IS TO GIVE YOU FULLY TRANSFORMATIVE SLEEP!!!”*
God, I love ad breaks. 🤣🤣🤣
I see you reuploaded it because this video was previously unlisted
"Why not? Who are you to say they can't do whatever they want?" sounds like a very good basis for an adventure, if you ask me.
Think: puny mortals calling out into and despite the void: " _I_ exist, I exist. "
i read this as Elder Elvis and now im disappointed lol.
@Dude Man thats it im making a warlock bard now.
Pandorym is my favorite too. We encountered it (or its shard, i guess...) in one campaign. He was trapped in a crystal and just wanted to go home :D
How to stop Atropus was covered in the documentary The Fifth Element.
1:44 The Entity is one of my favorite eldritch monsters.
6:06 😯!! That's from Dragon magazine! With the elemental templates, for like, the border elementals, fire/air = smoke, earth/water = mud, fire/earth = lava, water/air = steam, earth/air = dust and all that jazz
I like the idea that Atropus may be stored far, far above the top of the moral planes mountain. The mountain I’m talking about is the one that connects hades and Elysium, as well as all the planes in between.
You should read about Haemnathuun, a primordial who was slain by Bahamut, Bane, and Ioun - an incredibly unlikely set of allies - during the Dawn War. His massive corpse still drifts along in the astral sea, with shrieking winds blowing through them that bring madness to all things that hear them - even the Slaad that live in his corpse. These winds are supposedly his death cries. Imagine being capable of driving SLAAD insane long after you've died.
I appreciate the double entendre implied by putting Thurizdun at the end of the list
I'll always love Father Llymic and had a campaign in the works before Icewind Dale got announced. His corrupting attribute is such a fun thing to have in remote villages that your players discover.
I was literally trying to find subclasses I could reflavour to make elder evil inspired characters in my world. Then I found this video explaining the elder evils and now I’m all inspired wow ty runesmith
Distinct lack of Snake Mom Dendar but I enjoyed learning about a couple Elder Evils I was unaware of. Thank you.
The worm who walks were also introduced in Dark Heresy as the Slaugth or Maggot Men.
You can’t forget that Borem is in the Sword Coast and has a dagger sticking out of his corpse that has the ability to slay gods...theoretically that is.
Good timing. I'm starting a campaign with a cult trying to raise an elder evil.
Specifically the Great Unbeheld, being the oldest and THICCest kraken. I'm using him as a sort of Cthulhu type of deity.