Tuesday, March 26, 2019

Beast lords and associates

The beast lords are a group of deities from the Stormbringer universe that were copied by Dungeons & Dragons. The beast lords have appeared in official Dungeons & Dragons supplements and a number of third party publications.

In the Planescape multiverse, they live in the Beastlands (known as the Happy Hunting Grounds in earlier editions). Their celestial servants are apparently the guardinals. In Pathfinder, these names are changed for legal reasons: the Beastlands becomes Nirvana and the guardinals become agathions.

A number of third party supplements attempted to represent the beast lords (sometimes renamed "animal lords").
  • The Book of Templates - Deluxe Edition 3.5 introduces them as a combination of three templates: beast lord, elder beast, and spirit. These were reprinted in Monsters of Porphyra.
  • The Tome of Horrors introduced only the cat and mouse lords as examples. These were reprinted in Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Bestiary 3, along with several other example lords (bear, canine, cat, crocodile, dinosaur, raptor, rat, shark, serpent).
  • The Creature Codex introduced them as fey, with several example lords. They have more colorful names than the other examples: bat king, brother ox, lord of vultures, mouse king, queen of birds, queen of cats, and queen of serpents.

As a result, their traits and backstories are variable. They're generally treated as the gods of their respective beasts, but they're pretty wimpy as far as gods go because animal faith is simpler or something. Sometimes they're demoted to being the servants of nature gods, other times they are worshiped by humanoid races and accorded godly status. There's "usually" only one for each arbitrary categorization of animal, other times there are more than one with different personalities (sometimes they have to fight for the position a la Highlander). They may live on other planes, like the Happy Hunting Grounds, or hold court in the "spirit world." They acquire vast volumes of information from their subjects, which they might sell to the extraplanar lords or use to inform their subjects of danger. The lords look after their own and defend their subjects from encroachment, though individual lords disagree on how to approach the humanoid races.

Beast lords are ascribed with a number of different abilities by different sources:
  • By definition, beast lords have an affinity with beasts and beastfolk of the same kind. These kindred will not willingly attack their lord unless compelled by psychotropic means. The lord may speak with their kindred as if they share a language, may charm their kindred, and may scry on any of their kindred. 
  • As spirits, beast lords may become incorporeal or enter the ethereal plane.
  • Beast lords are effectively immortal. Even if killed, they will rejuvenate within the body of one of their kindred. The only way to destroy a beast lord is to destroy all of their kindred in the world.
  • Beast lords may change shape to assume the appearance of any variant of their kindred or any humanoid race.
  • Various other powers as befits the lord in question.

The elder beasts mentioned previously are a different being entirely from the beast lords, and may be thought of as their heralds or such. The elder beasts are ancient beasts from before the Age of Man, a la The Lord of the Rings. They are intelligent, capable of speech, and may charm animals of their kindred. Depending on the setting, they may be rare paragons of their species or form an exceptional race of their own (again, like the Mearas in The Lord of the Rings).

My ideas

An idea I had was that there was a whole system of peerage for the beast lords, accounting for the extremely diverse taxonomy of animals in reality.  The lord of felines may have a vassal each for lions, tigers, jaguars, wild cats, etc. The feline lord and canine lord may come into conflict over who represents hyenas (in reality hyenas are neither).

An idea I entertained was that the beast lords were the deities of the beastfolk. In canon the beastfolk are generally relegated to worshiping demon lords, but that's only because the beast lords are ignored by the writers and the PCs need a justification to mow through them with impunity. Fantasy pantheons seem to be more trouble than they're worth.

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