Ape Lord

[ Animal Lords ] [ Krigala | Brux | Karasuthra | Wanderers ]
[ Diurnal Krigalan Lords ] [ Ape | Chameleon | Dinosaur | Dog | Elephant | Hawk | Horse ]

The Ape Lord

Seyhrain Hominis. Planar animal lord [he/him] N

Realm: Beastlands / Krigala / Flower Fruit Mountain

Proxy: Ratazn (proxy carnivorous ape warden beast [he/him] / N)

The Ape Lord resides in the mountains and jungles of Krigala, far from the savannah that makes up much of the layer. Flower Fruit Mountain is a realm of sun-drenched forests and vine-choked valleys, with crystal waterfalls and the most deliciously ripe fruits high up in the trees just for the taking. It’s a place of constant movement and noise, with the barking of baboons and screams of macaques competing with the howler monkeys. The Ape Lord views these smaller simians as his wards, and is defensive of them all, to the point of aggression.

While planewalkers often assume that talking apes must surely be one of the more intelligent and even civilised of the beasts, this is more of a projection than reality. If anything, the simians of the Beastlands seem determined to show their differences between humankind, who they view as cousins who have lost their way with nature and become dangerous and untrustworthy (he calls humans ‘the storm that names itself the sky’). Or perhaps, more accurately, as souls who have yet to find their way back to nature—because remember, the apes of the Beastlands are themselves petitioners who used to be humanoids.

So we find ourselves in a strange circle of life here. Guvner graybeards tell us that some time ago, some unnamed powers shaped humans from simians. And now here we have petitioners of those same humans becoming apes in their Beastlands afterlives. It’s a head-scratcher for sure. Could it be that only the spirits of wild tricksters naturally gravitate to the form of monkeys in the spirit realm?

Now of all the animal lords, the Ape Lord is one of the wilder bloods; almost as if he’s rejecting ‘civilisation’ more forcefully to make a point. If he has a name, he’s never shared it—names are things that humans take, after all. On a good day, he’s a trickster at heart, who seeks to teach humanoids lessons in humility before the might of Nature. On a bad day, he can be downright unpredictable and violent.

The Ape Lord combines gorilla-like physical dominance with the strategic brilliance of a chimpanzee. He orchestrates labyrinthine “games” to test intruders—scattering puzzle-stones in clearings or dangling fruit above pit traps—to separate the worthy from the unwise, and his laughter rumbles like a rockslide when humans fail these trials. Though he protects ape spirits with a paternal ferocity, he also enforces brutal justice. Poachers or rule-breakers are sentenced to live as gibbons in his realm. His deals always leave humans less human, a dark joke on their evolutionary arrogance.

Allies and Enemies

The Ape Lord has a harem of six simians, from orang-utan to chimpanzee, all of whom are willing to defend him to their deaths out of sheer loyalty. In his human form, the Ape Lord appears as a burly human man equipped with a deadly spear. He seems reluctant to assume this form however, really using it only when he’s playing tricks on planewalkers or hunters. And be warned, it’s in his human form when the Ape Lord is as his most dangerous and unforgiving.

The Ape Lord has occasional dealings with powers and outsiders. Mbra (planar psychopomp usher of simian souls [they/them] / N) is a psychopomp who brings the spirits of petitioners destined to become apes to Flower Fruit Mountain. He takes the form of a baboon with a skull for a head.

Sun Wukong, also known as the Monkey King, was a former Ape Lord with ties to the Chinese pantheon. The chant goes he was born from a rock in the mountains of Krigala, but as a trickster power he rebelled against the Celestial Bureaucracy. Leaping through a waterfall, he found a hidden cave which opened out into Flower Fruit Mountain. The apes had never seen a cutter quite like him before, and he soon gained their trust and became their king. Always restless, Sun Wukong grew tired of dwelling in one place, even one as perfect as Flower Fruit Mountain, and left his people to cause mischief elsewhere in a place he called the West. The current Ape Lord assumed control many years ago, and has proved far less prone top flights of fancy. Sun Wukong, while beloved by the simian petitioners, would not be welcomes back by the Ape Lord.

Hun Batz and Hun Chowen are a pair of vrock tanar’ri who were transformed into howler monkeys after losing an epic battle against another pair of hero twins from the Maya pantheon, Hunahpu and Xbalanque. Initially humiliated by this drastic change, the howler monkey twins found their way to the Beastlands where they were adopted by the Ape Lord and taught the ways of the Upper Planes and the laws of the jungle. To everyone’s surprise the cutters excelled in their new afterlives, and act as musicians and clowns to amuse the other apes.

You’d be forgiven for assuming that the Ape Lord and the Egyptian power Thoth might get on well, since Thoth often takes for the form of a baboon. Turns out you’d be wrong, because as a power of knowledge and literature you couldn’t get much further from what the Ape Lord himself values. The Ape Lord despises the power, seeing Thoth as making a mockery of forest life. It’s unknown whether Thoth even thinks about the Ape Lord at all.

The Ape Lord’s proxy in the dealing with outsiders and other animals of the Beastlands is the ape Ratazn (proxy carnivorous ape warden beast [he/him] / N). Ratazn would rather kill and eat those that he is supposed to be dealing with, and makes no secret of this. However, he’ll deal with berks that treat him with the proper respect. He knows much of the chant that’s going down in the Beastlands, including the recent struggles between the Cat Lord and Bast. But any one looking for help in non-simian affairs best look elsewhere: the Ape Lord cares little about events that do not concern him.

Source: Dave King aka Heregul, Jon Winter-Holt. Canonwatch: The ape lord is homebrew, inspired by Heregul’s animal lords netbook. I’ve tried to make the character of the ape lord a little more complex, and added some simians from mythology. Mbra is a money judge of the dead of the Baule people of the Ivory Coast. Hun Batz and Hun Chowen are Maya howler monkey gods. Sun Wukong is the chief protagonist of the incredible epic Chinese stories, which I first encountered as the bizarre Japanese TV series ‘Monkey‘ (at least that’s what the dubbed version in English was called) that shaped my childhood.