#cr tharizdun

[blazingstar24]

Matt clarifying that Tharizdun is not part of the family and literally turned up to the family drama during the Calamity with no stakes attached, just here to wreck house is so fucking funny.

Like Pelor and Asmodeus are fist fighting and then here comes the fucking cosmic horror black hole with teeth monster with a steel chair. No one in the family knows why it is here, why it wants to fight. The Betrayers are like fuck it, we’ll take em.

It takes a chunk out of Ioun and everyone is just like yo wtf? Like Tharizdun is even farther removed from the family dynamic than the Raven Queen. But also lol the RQ was once mortal so she must have believed the mythos that it’s one of the family members.

So did she become a god and go so what’s up with the Chained Oblivion and everyone went we don’t know and we are too afraid to ask it to leave.

[mareastrorum]

Matt: And then in the middle of all this, the Chained Oblivion just kind of-- which is its own entity that technically considered part of the "pantheon" from, like, a "we have to categorize these together," but is not is part of whatever the gods are, is just more of a cosmic horror entity that just barrelled into the middle of this and they all went, "AH! Who are you?! No, no, no, no, no!"

[utilitycaster]

The build of Ria'Doin is honestly just...such an elegant answer to so many things. Why has no one found this portal? Well, it's deep underwater in a lake that's so cold most commoners would drown or die of hypothermia just trying to find it, and as of some point in not too distant past an eldritch creature that lures people to their deaths quietly emptied out the town. It's in rural Issylra, already a place that tends to get overlooked by most larger powers...though honestly this raises the question of whether one of the motivators behind Vasselheim attempting to take over Hearthdell is if there were some documents in the vault that hinted towards a back door but were insufficiently specific regarding the location beyond "rural Issylra" and so they simply stabbed about for leyline nexuses. Another possibility is that the creature broke through in some way and created this rift, a la Vokodo, so it's a recent development, which would also explain why a town was able to grow and sustain itself and then very suddenly become abandoned.

It's also just an excellent vibe; it reads like a setting guide's plot hooks. It's a tight little D&D mystery, a fun change of pace from the scouting in a hostile environment, and it feels like the sort of classic tier 1-2 D&D setups that Bells Hells largely didn't have due to the early campaign circumstances.

[captainsparklefingers]

What I want to know is why Ludinus is convinced that Predathos will stop with just the gods.

This is what we know about Predathos, with the new information from Downfall:

- It, like the gods, came from Tengar. It wasn't some extraplanar entitiy that came to their home and drove them out, it (or what would become it) was born in the Orchard of Possibility, when Edun picked a fruit from a new tree and went away, becoming this point of lightnessness.

- The collapse of Tengar was this all consuming nothingness growing larger and larger. It wasn't hunting or anything like that, it just drew and sucked things in and made them into nothing. It WAS nothing.

- We can't say for sure, but it's possible that as the nothingness grew, it was forced into a more tangible physical form like the gods were as they fled, but we don't know that. So we don't know is Predathos is still this nothingness entity, or if it's taken on more and is something that can be contained. Well, it's contained now, so something happened.

- It didn't follow the gods immediately to Exandria, it arrived sometime after the Founding, but before the Schism, and the gods sealed it away with the Elementals into what is now Ruidis... but not before it consumed two more gods.

- It's definitely got a more tangible consciousness now, it wants to be awakened and released, but it sounds like it needs some sort of vessel?

- It's (supposedly) got a core of glass with big spikes sticking upwards throughout the moon, and that all is remnants of its last form from when it was sealed...which doesn't tell us much about what Predathos used to look like except that whatever it was was pressurized to the point of forming glass that's similar to obsidian (and magic).

- Ludinus does not seem to be a candidate for the vessel, since he's not Ruidisborn.

- And Ludinus thinks, or claims, when it's released it will be happy with consuming just the gods...which is weird because we just saw it consumed their ENTIRE PLANE OF EXISTENCE RIGHT AFTER BEING BORN.

So with all of that in mind, I once again ask: what makes Ludinus think this can be controlled? What makes him so sure that this will end with the deaths of the gods, that Predathos will be satisfied and malleable?

[ludinusdaleth]

cult leader and heavily implied aeorian ludinus "nobody wants a cult of tharizdun to be given free reign; that does not bode well for... anyone" da'leth when a demon of tharizdun is mass slaughtering his cult members in aeor

[the-last-knight-of-avalir]

I hope cr crew are gonna keep up a trend of once a year digging up one of the nine's deepest trauma from the past to fight a demigod in a cool oneshot

[arclundarchivist]

A meeting of Exandria is definitely something I am deeply curious about. Also very happy to see Grog again.

Curious to see where this goes.

The chance for interaction between the Gods and the Party, hearing what has happened while the party has been gone. The chance for interaction between the Gods and the Party, hearing what has happened while the party has been gone. I’m expecting some possible solo interactions outside of a big group deal, because Orym seems more and more intent on the Wildmother, and I really want to see Kord/Groon and Imogen interact again.

Hearing the Dynasty’s perspective on all of this.

Glad we are hopefully fucking done with Delilah.

And I do honestly kind of want to see them interacting with the Titan in some way.

But man I am getting frustrated with Ashton again.

Laudna seems to have come around, and seemed genuinely shocked the Wildmother showed her any kind of interest.

“She wanted you back on your feet.”

Which flies in the face of Ashton’s certainty the Gods are gonna “Smite us all with impunity the moment we leave.”

I just, how can he be so fucking dense about the chaos that would follow upsetting the world as it has been for eight fucking centuries

There are so many things that could rise to fill that vacuum, most of them are terrible, and could grow stronger in time with the absence of the Gods. Belief seems to grant some manner of power to those that claim divinity for their own.

It’s why the Traveler began to change and why Zehir smacked down Uk’Otoa.

With the main gods gone, with the betrayers gone, who would the mortals that need faith turn to? What is stoping those entities for being the answer to their prayers?

And with the Matron and Vecna vanished on the wind or dead, whose to say the secret of what they did can’t get back out there for others to discover, if not other paths to divinity?

What replaces them, because something will. Despite all his fucking platitudes part of me thinks that is what Ludinus is after as well.l or am I supposed to believe magical cannibal master manipulator is just gonna pass on true authority?

And as I was saying before, and confirmed by Matt again in the after show, Tharizdun isn’t from Tengar.

It’s not a Betrayer, it’s not even truly a Divinity.

It’s a big cosmic thing that just showed up during the Calamity and nearly made the bad worse

If it’s not a God, and has no ties to Tengar, and Predathos, at least according to Ludinus, is only after the gods what the fuck stops it from becoming the top dog?

From taking all the desperate and maddened who just lost all they believed in and send them after the now abandoned keys to its cage?

Like Chetney said. It will be all out war.

A war not for survival.

But Supremacy.

[gorgynei]

in the cooldown, nick is talking about how the dawnfather's fatal flaw is that he does not truly believe that any mortal could actually resist the gods. he thinks that the only reason the raven queen was able to take over for the god of death was because part of him wanted her to. which is fascinating!!!

at some point, something must grind down this perspective. in modern day exandria, pelor has absolutely no patience for anything that could jeopardize their positions as gods.

[aspiringwarriorlibrarian]

So I’m taking the prologue of Downfall as fuel for my “Predathos is related to/might actually be the Chained Oblivion” theory.

And yeah, there is no way Predathos is gonna eat all the gods and be content. You know what happens when an animal loses its food source? It gets less picky about what it eats.

[grayintogreen]

There's a chance that Taliesin or Noshir is Tharizdun (both have clues that suggest it) which would fuck the fabric upon which LitMoR rests with a rusty dildo, but at the same time, I could not ask for a better person to play it than either of them.

[druidposting]

Response by @gorgynei on this post;

I honestly dont even have much to add to this comment because I completely agree. Everything we know about Tharizdun is framed around how he's different from the other deities in some alien way. It's apparently also said that "It is feared that the nature of Tharizdun, being unlike the other deities, could shatter the Divine Gate alone if unleashed", which is presumably why they have him chained and bound by the prime trammels and the six shackles. The other Betrayer gods were all banished, but Tharizdun is the only one who had to be (and continues to be) physically chained within its plane.... Besides Predathos, who had to be physically bound within Ruidus and sealed behind a divine gate. So.

[blazingstar24]

Tharizdun and Predathos connections…..have we considered:

✨lovers✨?

[soath]

Throwing my hat in the ring, I think Sam is going to (not should, going to) most likely come back with some sort of paladin, Most likely ancestries, imo, are dwarf, kenku, or a very small tabaxi. One of the moon people would be fun but it's harder to justify them with good healing abilities, short of some sort of bioengineer themed artificer. Either he utilizes the jail break that was concurrent with the split-party mission to bring in a paladin of a Betrayer god (very juicy potential that brings in god-loyalty from a new direction) or throws a lawful good paladin from Vasselheim at them and watches everyone cringe.

In conclusion: I think they should let Sam play Teven Klask's daughter.

[swordscleric]

I don't know if anyone's gone through the original Dawn War pantheon* and compared the events of the Dawn War to the events of the Calamity, but it's interesting comparing how Tharizdun acts in the Dawn War to how little we know about it as the Chained Oblivion and might be useful as a theory-crafting aid for how the Chained Oblivion fits with Predathos**.

In the Dawn War, Tharizdun was a normal god, driven mad by extradimensional demons who provided him with huge amounts of power and attempted to force him to open a portal in the Astral Plane to release them. He took this power, and instead of releasing them created the Abyss. He and his would-be masters fought to a stalemate over control of the Abyss, until the rest of the pantheon found out and sealed him away, leaving him chained to a remote part of the Abyss[1].

By contrast, the Chained Oblivion is "something other entirely"[2], "less like a god and more like another world"[3]; it's been categorised as not of the Primes or Betrayers[4], and generally Matt has leaned much more into the cosmic horror vibes (sans a connection to the Far Realm) of the Chained Oblivion. It's a creature of "roiling ink and hungry darkness"[5], and was sealed at the bottom of the Abyss by the Dawnfather and the Knowing Mistress, with support from the Allhammer and the Changebringer[2, 3, 6]. The Chained Oblivion also wants to consume all and end the world and is kept at arms length by the Betrayers[5], and as a result of that plus its association with an unknowable hunger some people have now associated it with Predathos or think it and Predathos are of a similar species.

I think the Chained Oblivion is not Predathos in another form, but I do think that it's of a similar species. Looking at the Dawn War, and assuming (with the full acknowledgement that I'll more than likely be wrong) that Matt will stick as closely to the Dawn War as he has in the past, I think the Chained Oblivion is a smaller and weaker being of nothingness that decided to forge its own path instead of following Predathos' lead. My gut instinct is that the Chained Oblivion, seeing Ethedok and Vordo get eaten, took up Ethedok's mantle of darkness[7]*** and avoided working with Predathos and porentially fought the God Eater in order to survive and work its own odd plans of destruction. The Chained Oblivion makes a lot of plans to try and free itself (see the Angel of Irons or Cognouza), so I wouldn't be surprised if its propensity towards planning was present from the very moment it set foot on Exandria. Does this mean the Chained Oblivion will be let loose to fight the God Eater if Predathos is released? I doubt it, considering that it nearly killed the Knowing Mistress. And we know how the gods feel about family.

Footnotes

*The Dawn War pantheon is the slimmed down pantheon used for 4th edition D&D; can be found on page 11 of the 5th edition Dungeon Master's Guide. Used by Matt for the Primes & Betrayers with the addition of Sarenrae from Pathfinder.

**I'm aware of the pitfalls of using existing narratives and non-Exandrian lore to try and predict what's going on in CR at this moment in time; while there's not a 1:1 overlap between other D&D worlds' lore and Exandria, some of the major relationships do stay the same. For example, Pelor, Ioun and Tharizdun are all linked in Exandria and in D&D "canon" (Pelor, Ioun and Tharizdun all looked into the Far Realm and saw mysterious secrets, secrets which drove Tharizdun to want to destroy the universe as per Gates of Madness (2010). Additionally, Tharizdun is deeply associated with the Abyss across both settings). Bear with me.

***Zehir, the Cloaked Serpent is also associated with darkness; however while the Lawbearer and the Platinum Dragon are associated with order there is no explicit god of order which was Vordo's other domain. The Chained Oblivion is explicitly described as a god of darkness in both the Explorer's Guide to Wildemount (page 27) and the Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting Reborn (page 34).

References

1. Demonomicon (2010), pages 7-9. The wording of how the sealing took place is intentionally vague as it's a plot hook for DMs to expand on in their campaigns.

2. Titles and Tattoos, CR Campaign 2, Episode 84, from 14:00.

3. Explorer's Guide to Wildemount (2020), page 27.

4. Matt's Discord post during Nick Marini's AMA (linked here).

5. Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting Reborn, page 36.

6. The Endless Atheneum, CR Campaign 1, Episode 106, from 1:08:16.

7. Axiom Shaken, CR Campaign 3, Episode 43, at 3:02:19.

[song-of-baldy-ron]

The Prime Deities/ the Betrayer (or Alt) Gods at the Chained Oblivion showing up in the middle of the Calamity

[ludinusdaleth]

The Calamity in The Legend of Vox Machina Season 2, Episode 2, "The Trials of Vasselheim"