Gzemnid
The Gas Giant. CE lesser power of gasses, deception [He/Him]
Pantheon: Beholder
Realm: Outlands / Gzemnid’s Realm
Gzemnid, the Gas Giant, is the master of mists and illusionary magic. Imagine, if you will, a being so engulfed in a shroud of mist and deception that he is practically synonymous with obfuscation itself. Picture a beholder who is like a wisp of fog — here one moment, gone the next, leaving naught but confusion in his wake. That’s Gzemnid for you.
Now, it’s said that Gzemnid has a preference for dwelling in areas rich with gases and fumes, places where the air twists and turns with an almost tangible presence. This love for gaseous environments ain’t just for the atmospheric aesthetics — no, it’s a cunning strategy. See, in such places, his power grows tenfold, turning the fog into a canvas where his illusions take life, becoming almost indistinguishable from reality. He can bend and twist the surroundings, creating labyrinths of distorted space where every turn leads you deeper into a trap of his making. He can turn the fogs poisonous on a whim, or into an acid vapour that can strip the flesh from bones. Or into a flammable gas that explodes on contact with an explorer’s torch. You get the picture?
But don’t let the fog and gases obscure you, cutter. Gzemnid is also a deity of great intellect and trickery, using his control over gases not just to mask but also to deceive. The illusions he spins are not just mere mirages; they’re sophisticated manipulations of perception, able to trick even the keen-eyed observers into seeing what Gzemnid wishes them to see. Some even whisper that he can reach into a cutter’s mind and pull out their deepest fears, casting illusions so personally terrifying that they leave the poor sod paralyzed with fear.
Now, when it comes to interaction with mortals, the Gas Giant is a being of elusive nature. He’s the deity of the obscure, the hidden, and the evasive. His followers, if you can call the desperate bunch that, are those who find solace in deception and subterfuge. They worship Gzemnid through rituals shrouded in mists, where secrets are whispered and lost in the fog, never to reach unwanted ears.
The Gas Giant, while he got booted from his mother’s realm, has carved out a niche for himself, a place where deception reigns supreme. He plays his games from the shadows, a puppeteer of fog and gas pulling strings from behind a curtain of illusion. He has hidden his realm deep in the mountains of the Outlands, even able to his his wicked nature from the plane of neutrality.
But a word to the wise, cutter — if you find yourself wandering through a place where the fog whispers secrets and the air seems to play tricks on your eyes, be wary. For you might just have stumbled into Gzemnid’s territory, and in the realm of the Gas Giant, nothing is as it seems. You might just find yourself ensnared in a web of illusion, with no way to tell reality from the masterful deceptions of the elusive deity. It’s a place of ever-shifting realities, a playground for a deity who revels in the art of deception, a realm where truth is as elusive as the fog itself.
Now there’s one more question I can tell you’re dying to ask, so I’ll put you out of your misery. Who is Gzemnid’s father? Ah, now that’s diving deep into an obscure family tree. Or maybe it’s more of a family stick. You’ll see. The paternity of Gzemnid is a matter of great speculation among those who delve deep into things best left alone. The Great Mother ain’t exactly the sharing type when it comes to her personal affairs, you see. But fear not, for I’ve got some choice darks.
Now, the common chant among the sods who spend too much time pondering the romantic entanglements of Abyssal entities is that there ain’t no father. Yeah, you heard me right, cutter. The beholder race, they’re a strange lot, and some reckon they reproduce by dreaming themselves, see? If that’s not flam then maybe it’s all in the family, so to speak, with the Great Mother spawning new beholders through her fever dreams and nightmares. Imagine dreaming of a child in the midst of a terrible nightmare, and then waking up and seeing Gzemnid’s ugly mug staring at you, forged from the darkest corners of your mind. No wonder she kicked him out of the Abyss!
But let’s indulge in some gossip and take a walk down the road of speculation, just for the fun of it. There are hushed whispers that say that the father might be some entity from beyond the stars, a being of cosmic horror and unimaginable power. Some even murmur the name “Azathoth,” the blind idiot god at the centre of the chaos, a being of pure entropy. Now, I wouldn’t put too much stock in that, ’cause it sounds like a tale spun from the imaginings of a cutter with some kind of fetish, but in the Abyss, well, anything’s possible, ain’t it?
But if I were to take a bet, I’d put all my jink on the first theory — that Gzemnid is a child of the Great Mother, and the Great Mother alone. It fits well with the whole beholder ethos of self-centred paranoia, distrust, and absolute control. The only being the Great Mother could ever truly trust is herself, after all. A one-woman show is surely a lonely existence, but then again, when you’re a being of infinite power and malice, who needs company, right?
Sources:
- Jon Winter-Holt, mimir.net
- Manual of the Planes [5e] p84, (brief mention)
