[ Outsiders > Fiends > Parochial > Obyrith ]
Obyrith
Home Plane: Unknown, but they inhabit the Abyss now
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
Themes: Primordial un-architects of unravelling reality, ancient rivals of demonkind, and frankly every other kind of ‘kind’ too
Paragons: We’ll start with the paragons this time, as that’s apparently the way they did. You’ll no doubt have already heard the names of several of the obyrith lords, although you might have thought they were tanar’ri, and you certainly shouldn’t be speaking them out loud. Pazuzu is an Obyrith Lord, as are Dagon, the Queen of Chaos, Tharzax and Pale Night. Unimaginably ancient beings, all of them—older than the tanar’ri, than mortals, than even the powers. The chant goes that the obyriths are older than the Abyss itself, and perhaps even older than the multiverse. Cutters who claim this go on to posit that these beings somehow escaped from an alternate multiverse that they themselves ruined, and have invaded this multiverse to seek to reclaim their dominion by corrupting reality with pre-cosmic entropy. When they first invaded the Great Ring, so the tales go, the obyrith were legion. Infighting between them killed off many, as they backstabbed and betrayed each other for the best spots in the cracks in reality that would later become the Abyss. The unspeakable native horrors they found down there too, the qlippoth, wiped out many more. And when the tanar’ri were finally formed from twisted mortal passions, fears and hatreds, the obyrith were almost wiped out completely. The obyrith lords largely went to ground, disguising their true identities and masquerading as tanar’ri, while they rebuilt their numbers by slavery, mutilation and forbidden breeding. This led to newly spawned horrific monstrosities like the ekolid, the drudnu and the sibriex being inflicted upon the planes.
Philosophy: With new generations of horrors spawning through the planes, the once-secretive obyrith have become more open about their identities. While it’s still suspected a number of well-known tanar’ri lords are secretly obyrith, frankly this distinction is one the tanar’ri and obyrith seem to care about far more than the rest of the multiverse. To the rest of us, demons is demons is demons, and these are certainly all those. The difference between tanar’ri and obyrith can be difficult to put your tentacle on. For sure, both races of fiends despise mortals. While the tanar’ri want them to weight down their souls with sin, the obyrith instead seek to drive them mad, shattering their minds and consuming what’s left of their sanity. Many obyrith have a preferred kind of madness to inflict, and through their actions they seek to—well—there’s the problem. Nobody really know what they want. They’re not just cruel or destructive as much as their very existence is offensive to the reality of the Great Ring. And vice versa, cutter. The obyrith seem to be seeking to unmake reality itself, to twist the fabric of the planes and unspool it. This includes mortals, powers, tanar’ri—everything must go! Fortunately for everyone concerned, the timescales the obyrith work on are incomprehensible, and they’ll think nothing of taking a thousand years to achieve a single goal in their unfathomable plans.
More chant on the obyrith coming soon…
Canonwatch: †from the Pathfinder setting; the obyrith were also post-Planescape but are cool idea which add more flavour to the Abyss. I kind of think of them like the cylons from Battlestar Galactica.