Great Old Ones of Aurikesh

My homebrew setting supports the Great Old One warlock pact (while hoping for a serious rework of its features in ’24), but doesn’t use HPL’s Mythos entities or (for the most part) the canonical D&D Great Old Ones. Within the setting they’re called the Abominations, and according to legend they come from a time when a group of powerful mages tried to exploit the range limit of the teleport spell.

To break that down a little more: you can teleport without failure to a location you can see. For instance, a moon, or another planet in your system. In Aurikesh, the planets are known to be the dwelling-places of the Gods:

• Forgeheart, the planet of Talend
• Silver Eye, the planet of Vashtal
• Purifier, the planet of Tura Keshik
• Skyguard, the planet of Sioctana
• Wayfarer, the planet of Ychirra
• Sechir, the Sixth Planet (not visible to the naked eye; known only to those with magical insight or very serious astronomical hardware). Sechir is a god, the original creator of Aurikesh, but has placed his Curse upon the world, as he seeks to reclaim Aurikesh from the other five.

The Gods claim those planets, but it’s more like they can get there easily, rather than dwelling there full-time. The planets serve two functions: one, as a place outside the Living World of Aurikesh, where they could work on things to bring to the world (think of this as “don’t test your code on the production server,” but also “it’s a lot easier if you don’t alsohave to transfer all of your work from the Heavens to Prime”). Two, the planets (which orbit the sun just as Aurikesh does) are Aurikesh’s first line of defense from the malevolent influence of the Outer Dark. Their course between the stars, as seen from the surface of Aurikesh, weaves patterns of warding-spells.

Sidebar: There’s a cosmic Power called the Dark in the setting. It’s probably more correct to call it the Inner Dark; the Gods split it off from the Outer Dark and made it their own. It exists as a force of trial and transformation, turning mortal people and creatures into unstoppable weapons. In Aurikesh, it is known to be the source of were-creatures, vampires, and umber hulks, as well as the Shadow sorcerous origin. The Gods needed a way to build an army, to fight Sechir and other cosmic foes. The Outer Dark is also a power of transformation, but transformation without anything like rational purpose.

The mages who teleported to the planets discovered much of this in ruins that the Gods and the angels had left behind. They rebuilt portions of those ruins, thinking to make them into workshops where they too could bring whatever they wished into the Living World. It turns out, though, that living on the cosmic front line against the Outer Dark is much worse for mortals than it is for Gods and celestials.

They were transformed into strange and terrible things, each in accordance with their nature and power, and sent one another back to Aurikesh to spread their “creative vision.” Some became solitary threats, only intermittently even maintaining a cult; others created legions of monsters or spread their occult power and initiatory practices through many societies across the world.

There are more Abominations than I’m listing here. This is just what I’ve created so far.

The Great Eye

The Great Eye came from a diviner of incomparable power, who was transformed into an all-seeing eye. It spawned (and continues to control) beholders and beholder-kin, as well as almost-humanoid creatures called thralls of the orb and legates of the orb.

In the eastern domains of the continent of Balioth – Gallmonte, Kaldeshar, and Tyrema – people have encountered creatures very similar to beruch, but distinctly wrong. Instead of reddish, their skin is gray, like dead flesh, and where the beruch have cloudy white crystalline growths, these creatures have smooth black stone, like marble. More rarely, these creatures have no eyes, only a single orb of green stone like the eye of a cyclops. When they are aggressive, the eyeless ones are the leaders (or perhaps shamans?) of their squads; some kind of connection through the stone of the leaders and the thralls increases the power of the leaders’ attacks against the opponents the thralls strike in combat.

The goals of these “thralls of the Orb” (a name revealed in a telepathic conversation) are not yet widely known, but violence is their primary means to that end. When the legates of the Orb win a battle, they focus their “gaze” on the bodies of their captured or dead enemies. A beam of grayish light emerges from the legate’s eye and constructs a copy of that person as an Orb thrall. If the target is a beruch, the newly constructed being is a legate of the Orb instead. The legates are known to negotiate terms for the return of their captives, revealing their need for the same food and drink that most non-veytikka favor.

The cult of the Great Eye emphasizes divinatory magic, information-gathering, and sacrificing natural eyes to replace them with crystal eyes. They offer information on one’s enemies, secrets that can’t be learned through any ordinary means, and the awful destructive capability of a summoned beholder or beholder-kin.

The Gallant Shields of Chardecum has clashed with the cult of the Great Eye on several significant occasions.

Zinguloth, the Crab

This creature lives in a sea-cave west of Chardecum, where a small cult of mostly sahuagin serve it. It seems content to spend most of its time sleeping and growing, waking only to feed and teach its supplicants to channel power through their black coral spellcasting foci. Zinguloth (not its mortal name) was a Tidal sorcerer before traveling to Skyguard.

The Company has clashed with Zinguloth and its cult on two occasions.

The Reveling Beast

Once the greatest of fey warlocks, the Reveling Beast appears as a conglomeration of many kinds of predatory mammals, wearing a mask over its face, and over the second face on the back of its head. The cult of the Reveling Beast emphasizes theatrical entertainment, bacchanals, ecstatic revelation, and transformation into animalistic forms.

Recent events involving the cult of the Reveling Beast include:

• 1561 KR: The first performance of the new opera Aquiline Transcendent in      Merrionbard (a province of Ferradona) sets off two days of rioting. Count      Orichell Greenwater closes all theaters in Merrionbard for eight months and arrests several of the actors for treason, though they are later released under the condition that they never return to Merrionbard.
• 1564 KR: The revelers of a Gallmontese courtly masquerade vanish overnight,      without any sign of struggle. Wherever they went, they took their masks      along with them. Their families have offered extraordinary rewards for their safe return, but they have received no response.
• 1565 KR: A series of high-profile thefts take place in Grevanda, Grand Terrace,      and Adeschon, apparently committed by violent thugs wearing papier-mâché      masks and wearing tattered finery. None of them were apprehended alive;      they fought to the death rather than face capture. The Prince of Grevanda and the Reeve of Adeschon have attempted to hush the whole thing up,      apparently to avoid a panic… or a diplomatic incident.

Thralls of the Mask are another new threat across the breadth of Balioth. Newly made Mask thralls look like normal people wearing expensive, beautiful masks and (typically) fine garb. They lose all care for the maintenance of their clothing, however, and over time their finery becomes ragged and torn, even as their flesh hardens into grotesquely corded muscle. A band of Mask thralls is led by a grace-of-the-Mask, and there are reports of still more outlandish individuals bound to the Mask… whatever it is.

Mask thralls seem reluctant to attack normal people who are wearing masks, and on some occasions a grace-of-the-Mask is even willing to converse with such people. Beware, however, for the grace-of-the-Mask will surely demand a contest of some kind – of wit, of dueling, of pure will – and defeat in such an encounter snuffs out one’s individual will. From that point forward, the person is a Mask thrall, body and soul. If one could defeat a grace-of-the-Mask in such a contest, though, it might be possible to end the Mask’s control over not only that person, but the whole band of thralls.

The Good Fellow is explicitly hostile to the cult of the Reveling Beast, as much of the cult’s membership their festivities are quite similar even if their ends are different, and many of the Good Fellow’s followers were lured away with promises of greater cosmic power and insight.

Ve’taaix, the Dream Ember

Ve’taaix was a Draconic sorcerer in direct line of descent from Ghezode the Unquenchable, last and greatest of the true red wyrms. She became the Dream Ember, a flame that travels between dreamers, when they dream of the same people, places, or past events. She lives in dozens of dreamers at a time and can live in a single dreamer for months or years. First consuming their attachments to the rational world, she moves on to burn away their emotional bonds, then their flesh. Her warlocks are those who instinctively create a psychic lattice that can contain and sustain her. Such people are rare, and there is no organized cult of the Dream Ember, only wanderers who occasionally meet.

This Abomination is new and not deeply developed; if you’re interested in helping me develop the idea further, this is a good choice.

The Egg of Annihilation

An abjurer named Lir-Saelas shielded himself against the Outer Dark as part of his daily preparations, thus lasting much longer than the other mages. He gathered the last few unafflicted mages and began protecting them as well, finally sending them back to Aurikesh to spread the word when it became clear that all was lost. He was supposed to be the last to depart, so he saw an entity made fully from the Outer Dark – a sphere of annihilation – come near the planets to consume whatever remained.

Lir-Saelas dropped all of his magical defenses to cast imprisonment, binding the sphere inside himself. As it tore him apart (delayed slightly by his training), he constructed a shell around himself that was strong enough to resist the sphere. Another of the Abominations sent it to Aurikesh, where it was discovered by a druid who understood it for what it was. Gathering a cult around the egg, they direct their devotion to the Egg of Annihilation and strengthening Lir-Saelas against the egg’s eventual hatching. They haven’t yet found a way to send the egg somewhere that the sphere can’t destroy.

This Abomination is new and not deeply developed; if you’re interested in helping me develop the idea further, this is a good choice. It’s also a good choice if you want a Great Old One that isn’t strongly morally compromised.

(Edited to add:) The Machine Prophet

All record of who the Machine Prophet might have been are now lost, from pages torn out of even the most lost and forgotten tomes; the Gods themselves can see nothing of the Machine Prophet’s name or origin. What is known is that the Machine Prophet’s power rests most strongly in conjuration, and the things that cultists of the Machine Prophet conjure are made of gears, struts, and pistons combined in inexplicable, chaotic ways.

The Machine Prophet’s goals include large-scale recruitment, digging deep into the earth, gathering powerful weapons, and developing improved metallurgical techniques. Their methods chiefly involve intensive body modification with machine parts (replacing healthy flesh as often as diseased or disabled parts, with or without the consent of the subject), commissioning adventuring parties to recover or purloin magical items, and infiltrating or seizing advanced forges and ironworks.

The cult of the Machine Prophet is found chiefly in Ferradona and Rindaria, two westerly domains of Balioth; and in the duchy of Mar Kandol in Sestomera. A character could be one of the first members of that cult in Chardecum.

The Malevolent Stars

You know what, I think it’s also possible to become a warlock of one of the malevolent stars – Acamar, Caiphon, Delban, Gibbeth, Hadar, Khirad, Ihbar, Nihal, Ulban, and Zhudun. There probably aren’t active cults of the malevolent stars, but a few people born under the influence of those stars who discover their powers as a warlock. This is a good choice if you’re not interested in a more active Patron story. They mainly show up in the names of spells, and in some magic items. Starspawn (from Monsters of the Multiverse) might turn out to be a thing, and they might or might not be on your side. Some parts of the planets are probably covered with starspawn now.

As I said above, this list is not exhaustive. It is intended to give Great Old One warlocks some options, and to flesh out some lore for my own use in the game.