Gzemnid

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 fogs poisonous on a whim, into acid vapour that can strip the flesh from bones, or into 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 power of the obscure, the hidden, and the evasive. His followers—if you can call the desperate bunch that—are cutters who find solace in deception and subterfuge. They worship Gzemnid through secret rituals shrouded by the mists, where their 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 Eyenabella, 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, operating behind a curtain of illusions. He’s hidden his realm deep in the mountains of the Outlands, even able to hide his wicked nature from the plane of ultimate neutrality. 

But a word to the wise, cutter—if you find yourself wandering through an Outlander valley where the fog plays tricks on your eyes and the air seems to whisper secrets to you, 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 become ensnared in his web of illusion, with no way to tell reality from masterful deceptions. It’s a place of malleable realities, a playground for an elusive deity who believes truth is an ever-shifting concept.

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 dig into things best left alone. The Great Mother ain’t exactly the sharing type when it comes to her personal affairs, 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 up, 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 her, forged from the darkest corners of her mind. No wonder she kicked him out of the Abyss!

But let’s indulge in some gossip and 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, 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?

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-eye-tyrant 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)