Negative LA-Assignment : Resurrection, but no diamond here

[GreatWyrmGold]

The other question is then: how do you even use this monster as a DM?

My first thought was using it as an aerial equivalent of sea serpents, but A. most D&D settings have few to no airships and B. sea serpents don't need to be human-plus-intelligent.

- No Str, +10 Dex, +18 Con, +4 Int, +8 Wis, +32 Cha. It's pretty hilarious how absurdly high you have to pump that charisma in order to make an incorporeal creature with a decent AC. To give you an idea, even a Great Gold Wyrm only has +22 Cha. Malcanthet, the freaking queen of the succubi, only has +30, and Aphrodite herself, the most charismatic god of all, only has +36. Even better since literally none of the worm's abilities key off its insane charisma.

If they did, the Charisma score would need to be sane (and not just a +16 bonus to AC).

Anyway, the stats are pretty good, and the SLAs are excellent if weird, but you are just a worm. No eye, no head, no mouth, nothing.

I feel confident arguing that the tunnel terror is all mouth.

I remember Kyuss' story being different (probably some 3.x retcons). Kyuss was a worshipper of Nerull, not Orcus, and his ascension to divinity was sponsored. A cosmic accident caused the lob of divinity Nerull to veer off, trapping Kyuss in the obelisk and making someone else, who was completely unrelated and just happened to conduct a big ritual at the same time, into a god. And this is how Mellifleur, God of Liches, came to be. Nerull is still angry about that.

On a primal level, I like this backstory better. It's funny.

But when I take it seriously, I prefer the version where Kyuss gets screwed over from his own arrogant callousness and not random chance. I get wanting to spite Nerull, though.
Maybe if Nerull told Kyuss how to become a god, forked over some important resource, and Kyuss screwed it up on his own? Would that be a good compromise?