Fleshing out Cindermaw

[Dirtfox]

I'd love to get ideas, evidence, and opinions from the writers and fellow DMs. For a variety of reasons, including his 'being seen as a god' growing more significant in my campaign, I'm fleshing out Cindermaw quite a bit.

One of the main questions - Can anyone help clarify for me how old Cindermaw is? I see things like 'creature of legend' and

other details players might not want to read:

'ate a Thassilonian portal of elemental fire'. Could I assume Cindermaw dates to Thassilonian times, since he ate functioning Thassilonian magic?

Are there other markers to help a DM aim for at least the right era? Old is good, declaring things true for my own game is fine, I only want to make sure I don't break in game world logic for something else.

Plus anything else you have all come up with related to Cindermaw could be fun or useful to read!

[tonyz]

I don't see any reason that Cindermaw has to be as old as Thassilon -- many of their magic remnants still survive in the area, so the worm could have run into one of those remnants and swallowed it not so long ago. But it certainly could be from that time so long ago -- maybe it has some kind of collar identifying it as Experiment #5153-Ceta from the labs of the Runelord of Gluttony. Maybe it escaped from Runeforge. You can make it whatever best suits your game.

One query: would it make any difference at all in how it reacts towards the players?

[Lakesidefantasy]

I expanded on the elemental portal. I put a white-hot portal to the plane of fire in Cindermaw's gut, and fire elementals belched forth when he used his breath weapon. When the player's characters went inside they suffered attacks from the fire elementals.

[Dirtfox]

This is for after the official Cindermaw encounter. The Clan-Eater has become a presence in my game :)