Gorgothemoth's page

The abomination known as Gorgothemoth is a unique, semi-divine deep froghemoth with the advanced simple template and the half-fiend inherited template, sired by the batrachian demigod of bigotry and amphibians, Wastri (“The Hopping Prophet” and “Hammer of Demihumans”), and spawned by the demon queen, Lamashtu (“The Mother of Monsters”), goddess of abberance, monsters and nightmares, in the DeepOerth vault of the Oozemire—a vast subterranean pool of putrescent primordial ooze located nearly a full league deep beneath the Temple of the Toad in the Cold Marshes.
As of circa 600 CY, Gorgothemoth was conceived and spawned just under three decades ago, and to date, very few mortals on Oerth are even aware of the abomination’s existence, let alone the horrific circumstances of its profane genesis. In fact, only Lamashtu, Wastri, the deities and demigods of the Suel pantheon, and the few sentient creatures that dwell in close proximity to the Oozemire are currently aware that Gorgothemoth exists, but this is fated to change in the imminent future. The origin of Gorgothemoth follows.
Circa 505 CY, the “Mad Archmage” Zagig Yragerne, aided by several of his adventuring companions from the Company of Seven, trapped nine demigods of opposing alignments in a magical prison within the dungeons beneath Castle Greyhawk, known as the “Godtrap,” as part of his bid for divinity. Among these nine demigods was Wastri, formerly the mortal Suel founder of the Scarlet Brotherhood named Kevelli Mauk.
The identities of the other demigods are not widely agreed upon by sages, but it seems clear that Zuoken, prophet of physical and psychic mastery and a disciple of the Baklunish goddess Xan Yae, was imprisoned for a longer term than were the other eight demigods, who were inadvertently freed in 570 CY, in an unforeseen chain reaction resulting from the reckless actions of Lord Robilar, the patriarch Riggby, and the half-orc henchman Quij, who descended into the dungeon level under Castle Greyhawk, located the Godtrap of the Mad Archmage, and attempted to free only the chaotic evil cambion demigod, Iuz the Old, so they could then slay him. Instead, Iuz escaped back to his stronghold in Dorakaa, and seven of the remaining eight demigods (all except Zuoken) were unexpectedly released by some kind of magical chain reaction as a result of the adventurers’ freeing of Iuz. Lord Robilar and his companions barely escaped with their lives, and the powerful mortal monk who had been Kevelli Mauk emerged from imprisonment beneath Castle Greyhawk having undergone a true apotheosis, becoming the demigod Wastri, and sought refuge in the depths of the Vast Swamp.
Realizing that an upstart Suel monk of ill-favored appearance had attained a small spark of actual divinity, the jealousy and hatred of the evil demonic goddess, Lamashtu, “The Mother of Monsters,” was aroused, and she felt compelled to “put the misshapen upstart in his place” by deceiving and humiliating him before the Suel pantheon of gods, goddesses and demigods, whom Wastri so desperately craved approval and acceptance from. She devised a wicked scheme to which Wastri was particularly susceptible, deceiving him by appearing before him in the alluring guise of the Suel goddess of death and magic, Wee Jas, and seducing him under the pretext of choosing him to sire upon her “the perfected evolution of the superior Suel race,” to father the “new Suel ubermensch,” et cetera.
Lamashtu’s plan was cunningly conceived, and Wastri, whose portfolio includes self-delusion to this day, fell victim not only to Lamashtu’s devious deception, but also to his own hubris and arrogance, wanting very badly to believe in the lies he was told by the seductive demon-goddess of aberrance and spawner of the malformed and monstrous. Wastri mated with Lamashtu, thinking that he was siring a new master race of genetically superior Suel upon the coldly beautiful “Ruby Sorceress,” Wee Jas. The misbegotten seed was planted in the corrupt womb of “The Mother of Monsters,” and a true monster was conceived.
After a gestation of nine days and nights, Lamashtu, with hideously swollen and squirming belly, descended into the DeepOerth vault she had discovered in a fitting location—almost three miles beneath Wastri’s newly-erected Temple of the Toad in the Cold Marshes, in the foul and festering slime of the Oozemire—and there, in the chthonic depths of the Oerth, she bore unto the world the horror that is Gorgothemoth, “The Hunter of the Shadows,” “The Fell Croaker in the Depths,” and “The Thing That Should Not Be.”
Lamashtu’s purpose went beyond merely humiliating Wastri; the demonic bearer of innumerable abominations sought to establish a firm foothold within the legendary Prime Material Plane world of Oerth, and to increase her power thereupon, by expanding her influence through the depredations and rampaging horrors of a living weapon and engine of destruction, and Gorgothemoth served quite effectively as such. Through the panic and suffering spread across the realms of the Flanaess by her offspring, Gorgothemoth, the inhabitants of the Oerth would, by extension, come to dread the terrible power of Lamashtu, “The Mother of Monsters” and “The Spawner of Nightmares.” Nonetheless, she would also enjoy striking the cruel blow against Wastri in the fulness of time.
Waiting until the Eve of the New Year on the final night of 570 CY, upon which the Suel pantheon had gathered at the Wheel of Time, divine realm of their patriarch, Lendor, in the Clockwork Nirvana of Mechanus, to formally acknowledge the apotheosis of Wastri to the status of demigod and welcome him (albeit more or less enthusiastically or begrudgingly) into their divine ranks, Lamashtu unveiled her horrific revelation to Wastri and the entire pantheon of Suel divinities, sending her jackal-headed avatar among them to expose the awful truth—that she had duped the pathetic and self-deluded Wastri and seduced him in the guise of Wee Jas, begetting by him a true monster rather than a pureblooded “ubermensch” to usher in a perfected Suel race. Cackling hideously, she pointed out the humiliating and shocking irony of the pitiful would-be father of Suel purity siring an inhuman abomination.
Wee Jas was outraged and infuriated, of course, by Lamashtu’s irreverent imposture and abuse of her divine image and identity, but also by Wastri’s impudent presumption that she, “The Queen of Death and Witchcraft,” would ever deign to take so lowly and ill-favored a creature as he as her mate. She cruelly berated Wastri for several minutes, preventing the stunned and mortified demigod’s flight from the Wheel of Time until her wrath finally cooled and she had finished her stinging tirade. Kord, Norebo, Rudd and others among the younger Suel gods and goddesses could not stifle their mirth at Wastri’s expense, and their snickering quickly escalating into uproarious laughter and barbed jests.
Devastated and mortified by Lamashtu’s terrible revelation and cruel mockery, and by his painful diminishing in the eyes of the Suel pantheon he had so longed to be accepted among, Wastri fled into the Vast Swamp once more, where he would remain hidden and wallow in his unquenchable shame and outrage even unto the present day. He occasionally appears among his growing cult of bullywugs and human cultists who occupy the Temple of the Toad in the Cold Marshes, warning them of a dire abomination deep within the bowels of DeepOerth beneath the toad-shaped basalt temple-fortress, and urging them to remain vigilant against “The Hunter of the Shadows” that lurks in the depths; however, the majority of his time is spent cloistered within his Sacred Polystery in the Vast Swamp, where he rants and rages, unable to forget the injury inflicted upon him by Lamashtu (and other perceived enemies he plans to vent his insatiable wrath upon, especially gnomes, halflings, dwarves and elves, and any “infidels” among humanity that suffer these “demihumans” to dwell in peace among them).
During the past three decades, Gorgothemoth has grown to monstrous size, terrible power, and irredeemable evil, ever torn between the dual natures of his profane progenitors—one a lawful evil demigod of tyranny and xenophobic hatred; the other a chaotic evil demon queen and goddess of deception and wanton destruction. Gorgothemoth falls between these two opposing extremes, being of neutral evil alignment, ever vacillating between embracing the entropy and slaughter for which its Abyssal mother spawned it, and contemplating whether or not it might not rather champion the tyranny and genocidal hatred embodied by its father.
The abomination has inherited divine aspects of both parents—the wanton compulsion to devour and destroy on one side of the evil coin, and a seemingly incongruous idealization of the merciless tyranny, genocidal hatred, and delusional obsession with the genetic purification of the Suel race it inherited from its demigod sire on the other side. Conflicted and confused by its own bipolarity, Gorgothemoth is akin to a tinder keg, upon which Lamashtu will very soon toss a burning ember.