Sayoghal, a WIP setting based on incorporating Lovecraftian mythology into D&D 5e.

[Requilac]

Upon finding time constraints, this project is postponed to be completed at a later date. It will be completed eventually though.

Among those who play D&D, the works of Howard Phillips Lovecraft are well known. His work has been very influential in the genres of fantasy and horror, both of which are inextricably linked to D&D. Many I would hear claim that the works of horror and subtlety by Lovecraft are not best used in the epicness and combat centric system of Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition, but to this I must digress for various reason. First I must state that despite the overall epic mood of D&D, it has always prided itself on being moldable to virtually every form of fantasy, and the success of the adventure book Curse of Strahd had made the point that D&D can be well used for horror even when containing the high amount of combat necessary for balancing 5e. And I must also point out that Lovecraft was not a strictly horror writer. He is most known for his horror stories yes, but alongside those he also published tales of adventurers in seek of the cities of the gods which are guarded by the Great Old Ones (The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath), of vengeful dragons reigning ruin upon the cities of knights (The Doom that came to Sarnath) and of curses being inflicted upon the wicked by those whom they had slighted (The Cats of Ulthar). It is proven that these aspects of Lovecraft’s works, especially the deities, so typically associated with his works of horror can indeed be used in contexts which can easily be molded to D&D worlds. An environment where both terror and adventure can be used side by side.

So I have sought not only to include elements of Lovecraft into my games of D&D, but to create an entire campaign setting based around the scraps of myths handed to us in his many stories. A major roadblock with this is that Lovecraft did not gives his stories the details that are required for D&D; he has made no mention (that I know of) of flying dragons, ethereal planes, divine gods, fiends, fairies, weapons of magical might, Resurrection, governments led by magicians, elves, dwarves and halflings. Here I will be trying, with the help of the community of GitP, to create a campaign setting for D&D 5e that merges all of these aspects needed for D&D alongside Lovecraftian mythology so that the mechanics of 5e make sense without much house ruling while still staying true in nature to Lovecraft's intentions and purposes.

In the pursuit of this goal, I will strive to stay as true to the nature of Lovecraft's deities and lesser monsters as possible. Any fact stated about that creature in the Cthulhu Mythos should also be true in this campaign setting, although changes will be made if I believe it will in some manner improve the story of this world. Luckily, Lovecraft has remained vague about many of his deities, so this is exceptionally easy to do. I have read many stories written by Lovecraft, but far from all of them, so I may miss something or provide misinformation that defeats this purpose; please catch me out on this if that happens. I should also note that I will only be sticking to the works of Lovecraft and will be, for the most part, excluding the influence of August Derleth, Clark Ashton Smith and similar contemporaries. Exceptions will be made when I deem it helpful to the worldbuilding, but these will be few and far between.

To describe the setting I will write a document which covers the following subjects

- the planes of existence
- the nature of dragons
- a comprehensive sample of possible deities, many of which will be plucked out of Lovecraftian myhtology, and details on both them and their worship in the world
- a detailed explanation on the functionings of magic
- the afterlife, ressurection, necromancy and undeath
- a sample of countries within the the Material Plane and details on their geography, government, culture and economy
- new flavors for each offical 5e race and how they relate to Sayoghal
- a myriad of other less significant subjects.

You can find this document either in the google doc or homebrewery link below. Please note that the google doc will only show what I have edited and am waiting for review by others but the homebrewery link will have many of my organizational notes which need to be further fleshed out before I include them as official to the setting.

Homebrewery: http://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/HkmUUoN3QQ

Google Document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...it?usp=sharing

Any help or comments on this project are useful to me. Whether that is suggesting changes to existing content, sharing your ideas about any subject related to the project (such as proposing a country, tenent of worship for a deity or race's culture), correcting any innacurate information I have on the Cthulhu Mythos, asking clarifying questions, discussing what I have written, or even criticizing my work, everthing is helpful to me.

Thank you in advance to anyone who assists me.

Current Progress: I am now onto writing up the description for the worship of Bastatan, the Lord of Crabs.

[Requilac]

Commentary on Introduction

The main gist of this section if you couldn’t see was that the Gods of Sayoghal are dead, slain by the primordial of R’lyeh and the fiends. Many of you may question why that was necessary feature and claim that it would just be easier to have no gods to begin with. I think such a solution has some holes in it though because the divine are too linked to D&D to gracefully just completely ignore. The very existence of the Cleric, Druid and Paladin class alongside the subclasses of many other classes (Path of the Zealot for barbarians, Way of the Sun Soul for monks, Dive Soul Sorcerers, Celestial Warlocks, etc.) all center around divine energy. Pretty much anything on the Cleric’s spell list would not make much sense if divine energy were never existent. By saying that the gods are dead but their influence is still there, we can still set the mood without invalidating many player options. And the idea of a silenced threat resurfacing to reign havoc is quite common in Lovecraftian literature, especially in The Call of Cthulhu, The Doom that came to Sarnath and At the Mountains of Madness.

But what sort of mood does the death of the goods actually set? Needless to say, this is a deviation from most campaign settings and brings some changes to how the world works. I think the first and foremost would be be new vulnerability of the Material Plane. There are no gods to protect you from the aberrations, fiends and undead, increasing the tension on the Plane sure some of the angels are there to help, but they are not invincible even when they are immortal. The humans of the Material Plane are largely at the mercy of these extra planet creatures, which is a heavily recurring theme in Lovecraft’s work when comparing the Great Old Ones and Other Gods to humankind.

But interestingly enough this doesn’t mean that humans are completely powerless, the contrary in fact, they are actually more powerful. The extraplanar creatures don’t even come close to approaching the power of gods in most D&D cosmologies. This means that humans are relatively power boosted in Sayoghal. One mortal person who reaches enough power can rival some of the weaker extraplanar deities, and a group of powerful mortals can challenge an entire pantheon even. This of course means that the new extraplanar deities who now rule over the land after the Godsfall cataclysm need to keep the people of the Material Plane weak so that the mortals cannot strike against them. This will be a point which comes up a lot later on.

One thing which I also need to mention is that the aberrant primordial were not wholly responsibly for the death of the gods, that was largely the work of the fiends actually.
Let me start off by saying that not every creature from Lovecraftian mythology is one of the primordials. Bokrug, Cthulhu, Dagon and Yog Shothoth will be, but many others will not be (including but not limited to Nyalrathotep, Azathoth, Shub Negrath and Yig). I was trying to imply that the primordial started the conflict and then the fiends finished the job. In fact, the fiends killed five gods and the aberrations only killed three. The fiends will receive a lot of detail later on, but that is a topic for later in this section.

And finally some of you may want to know who these eights gods were whose death was so destructive to the world. I didn’t answer this because it was largely insignificant. What matters are the events after the fall for players, not before it. I haven’t actually though out this in full yet. I have considered choosing the gods by plucking them out of the Greek pantheon, the FR pantheon or even a myriad of them from different historical domain pantheons, but no one solution especially is to my liking yet. Maybe one day I will establish this.

[Requilac]

Commentary on the Planes of Existence

This campaign setting cannot use the default D&D Cosmology. That entire system is based too much on alignment, and I don’t believe it is fair to have alignment in this system. Lovecraft’s Great Old Ones weren’t evil, they were completely alien and can’t be judged by the same scale. Thusly a new system needs to be instituted. And I believe that the easiest way to do this is by planes based on certain creature types.

Some of you are undoubtedly going to ask why I made it so that a creature in another plane of existence can use magic on it innately. My reasoning for this is because that all of these planes, especially Leng and Zihnn, were heavily inspired by Lovecraft’s dreamlands where people can do this to a certain extent. Kuranes (from The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath) could create an entire town due to his dreaming abilities, and Menes (from The Cats of Ulthar) could command the cats to kill the cat hating couple. Neither of these people were particularly knowledgeable on magic, they could just sort of do it inherently.

Each of these four planes in the Dreamlands each provide a place where all of the creature types can easily be categorized into. Aberrations are in R’lyeh, celestial in Leng, Fiends in Leng Fey in Sylwyth, and plant creatures in Sylwyth. Beasts, humanoids, dragons (more on them later), elementals and monstrosities can essentially be anywhere in the five planes and Constructs and Oozes aren’t populous enough to warrant having their own plane.

Although this was a subconscious decision on my part, I am sure many of you saw recognized how similar these planes were to elemental planes. R’lyeh is nearly identical to a creepy version of the elemental plane of water, Leng is heavily associated with fire even though it isn’t technically on fire, Zihnn has a lot to do with stone and earth, and Sylwyth is very loosely occupying a similar philosophical place as the plane of air. Try to take a wild guess as to which elementals go where.

Finally, I would like to point out is how inhospitable these planes are to mortal humanoids (you know, except for Sylwyth). R’lyeh is completely underwater, Leng is searing a desert and Zihnn is a desolate cavern. This wasn’t intentionally done, but I actually really like how that turned out. It fits well with the Lovecraftian theme with these places being completely alien to humans and further separates them from the Material Plane. It makes the world outside of the Material Plane cruel and unforgiving, which is exactly how alien planes of existence should be in my opinion.

Next up, why don’t we have a chat about the icon of D&D itself, dragons. How do they relate to these new planes and deities of Sayoghal?

[Requilac]

Commentary on Dragons

Many of you probably want to know why I wrote the dragon entry now. My main reasoning behind this is that originally I planned on writing a brief entry for every creature type and how they related to Sayoghal. While I was writing these though I realized that all of the creature types would either be detailed immensely elsewhere in the document, weren't out of the ordinary for 5e lore or were just pretty self explanatory. Except for dragons, which needed a change from the traditional D&D color coded system because it couldn't be easily implemented for a lower magic world.

Then this raises the question, what would a dragon in Sayoghal look like. Lovecraft didn't write much about dragons, the only example I know of possibly being Bokrug from The Doom that Came to Sarnath. That doesn't give us a whole lot of room to work with. Seeing as how Lovecraft didn't have a precedent in place, I had to ask my next question of how would they best fit into the world without their basic assumptions being different. What power would dragons have to compete with the extraplanar deities so that they could still be strong?

Then it occurred to me that perhaps what gives dragons their power isn't might, but mobility. Dragons can walk, fly and sometimes even swim with amazing speed. Their ability to get wherever they want to is well known for them. But what if the dragons in Sayoghal could not only travel over land with great efficiency, but go to other planes of existence better than anything else could? Whereas all other creatures are bound to their plane, dragons go wherever they want to. This power in and of itself makes dragons incredibly powerful even if they couldn't 1 vs. 1 Azathoth.

Now that I established that I needed to determine what the different types of dragons are. Considering how vital a role the outer planes are to Sayoghal, I decided that basing them on outer planes would be the best decision. The very presence of the outer planes make's the dragon's trait, not its parents, representing just how influential the planes are on its visitors. I am not quite sure where the idea that some dragons would look like certain animals of a kingdom, but I like it anyway. And the whole two different breath weapon thing is just to make sure that a dragon couldn't be shut down by an enemy immune to their breath weapon, increasing the difficulty of facing off against one.

If you couldn't tell, I heavily based the dragon's personalities off of the four temperaments. R'lyehian dragons are phlegmatic, Leng dragons are choleric, Zihnn dragons are melancholic and Sylwyth dragons are sanguine. Now I don't want to say this in the document because I am trying to emphasize how alien the other planes are, and if the elementals of these planes are bound by humanity's categories of humors, seasons and elements than it takes away from their strangeness. By not mentioning the inspiration for the dragon's behaviors, I can maintain the theme of how unnatural the outer planes are, which is a key factor of Sayoghal.

[noob]

I do not think dragons need to be powerful in any way(and in dnd 5e they are not powerful) so why do you say there is a need to change them.

Dragons already were much inferior to random rag tag groups of humans(such as the famous "give a bow to 500 commoners" and the random groups of 4 adventurers that deals insane amounts of damage or even worse can tailor the spells they pick to defeat it) so why should we compare them to creatures that are quite defined as being way beyond human comprehension and way beyond the powers of the humans (and not something that can be defeated by 500 or even 5000 random humans grabbing bows and arrows).

I mean a dragon is usually way less a problem than 4 archmages getting together so should we suddenly decide "groups of 4 archmages should get new different shiny powers because there is now greater creatures"

About the divine thing it gives no incoherence to have no gods when we draw from older dnd fluff where divine casters can either draw power from a god or from having a faith so intense it make them able cast spells without a god if we use that fluff we can just say "from the start there have never been gods but people have so much faith they can cast divine spells without".
If someone walked to my door and believed in a god so intensely he could create lantern archons I would suddenly consider the existence of that god as a possibility no matter whenever it is a proof or not and then myths about gods are not hard to write (you do not need actual gods for people to start writing stories about them).

[Requilac]

Thank you so much for responding. I need as much help as I can get in my fledgling effort here and am very glad that you have decided to support me in doing so.

I do not think dragons need to be powerful in any way(and in dnd 5e they are not powerful) so why do you say there is a need to change them.

Dragons already were much inferior to random rag tag groups of humans(such as the famous "give a bow to 500 commoners" and the random groups of 4 adventurers that deals insane amounts of damage or even worse can tailor the spells they pick to defeat it) so why should we compare them to creatures that are quite defined as being way beyond human comprehension and way beyond the powers of the humans (and not something that can be defeated by 500 or even 5000 random humans grabbing bows and arrows).

I mean a dragon is usually way less a problem than 4 archmages getting together so should we suddenly decide "groups of 4 archmages should get new different shiny powers because there is now greater creatures"

While the idea that dragons should be exceptionally powerful was part of my building process for the new dragons, it is not the reason why I changed them. The reason why I made new flavor for dragons is because I believe that the normal dragons as presented in the MM do not support the themes of Sayoghal I am looking for well. I really want to emphasize that the Material Plane's only native inhabitants would be humanoinds, beasts and the occasional monstrosity to fully express just how unnatural magic is. Magic in Lovecraft's works were consistently very sinister, so I want to ensure that it feels that way in Sayoghal too. So I didn't want the dragons to be on the Material Plane for that reason.

Now the easy way out of this would be to simply have the dragons settle in the Dreamlands, but I do not think that the dragons from the MM are very suiting to the Dreamlands. The outer planes should feel weird and alien, and the M:TG style color coded dragons are much too normal and stock standard to convey this eldritch feeling. I believe that gargantuan dragons of R'lyeh with the coloring of sharks and Axlotl style gills or the albinic bat dragon hybrids of Zihnn really speak more of the unusual than your typical giant lizard with wings.

I changed the dragons not to give them more power, but to make them fit the themes of the campaign setting.

And I also when I was referring to power I wasn't necessarily talking so much about raw might so much as ways to achieve political power in the world. In FR almost every dragon presented has been flanked by many minions and have proved to be a very influential presence on the world around them. I feel like the MM dragons simply wouldn't be able to command this sort of power when in the Dreamlands because the other extraplanar creatures would possess better magical capabilities to counter dragons. By giving dragons from Sayoghal nearly infinite mobility capabilities, it gives them the ability to better spread around their influence and followers without simply pumping them with stronger breath weapons.

About the divine thing it gives no incoherence to have no gods when we draw from older dnd fluff where divine casters can either draw power from a god or from having a faith so intense it make them able cast spells without a god if we use that fluff we can just say "from the start there have never been gods but people have so much faith they can cast divine spells without".
If someone walked to my door and believed in a god so intensely he could create lantern archons I would suddenly consider the existence of that god as a possibility no matter whenever it is a proof or not and then myths about gods are not hard to write (you do not need actual gods for people to start writing stories about them).

Hmm, this is definitely an interesting concept to ponder, and I think it fits well within the Lovecraftian theme too. The human never had any sort of divine powers on their side, they are simply alone and stuck to fend off the extra planar threats by themselves, left to their town devices. All of this talk of divine saviors was never actually real, just the spewings of rhetoric spread by warlords and demagogues attempting to manipulate the common people into supporting them (please note that I am not trying to make any statement about real world religions with this statement). It is a very cynical and bleak outlook which has some definite basis to it.

But part of me thinks that the idea of the gods being killed by extraplanar creatures would really make the campaign setting more interesting. Having one central events which mobilized the rest of the multiverse to take action on the Material Plane makes for some very good plot hooks. I am very attached to the idea of these different extraplanar creatures trying to take their slice of the Material Plane pie after the stabilizing element on Sayoghal, the gods, fell. It could explain a lot of different relationships between how fiends came about and their objections with the celestials, why the people of the Material plane would rather shun and condemn R'lyeh than embrace its power, why the celestials and primordials may be in conflict with each other, why the fey would care about the Material Plane, etc. This concept of a five-sided fantasy Cold War where everyone's trying to stamp each other's power is too much of a gold mine for plot hooks and world building for me to want to give up on it.

My main concern with having an entire lack of gods is that it may make the campaign inconsistent. Without that unifying element it just becomes hard to explain why some things are the way they are. I would have trouble even creating a reason as to why celestial and fiends even exist, why the humans would despise the primordials, and why Fey are even interested in the Material Plane. I worry that without at least an initial presence of the gods that everything becomes its own element which I must clumsily combine. A feeling of discordance is of course necessary for Sayoghal, but I feel as if it were too much of it would result in poorly organized and incoherent writing.

While I can't deny the merits of a lack of gods from the beginning, the idea of the gods once existing but being killed gives me a lot more creative space to work with and make the setting the best it can be. Some may make the claim that the former would be an approach closer to Lovecraft's interpretation of things, but I think it runs into some complications and can lead to incoherent settings that lead with dead ends. I will certainly consider what you have told me though and maybe make some changes.

[Requilac]

Commentary on how magic works in Sayoghal

Honestly, I have a lot less to say about this particular section simply because of how thoroughly I detailed it. That was quite the wall of text consisting of six long paragraphs which should leave no questions once it is completed. I do believe that this will be by far the longest section of the document actually. I believe it is deserving of that actually, considering how important magic is to D&D.

I decided to ditch the whole "weave" system for this. That way of explaining how magic works is simply too human and not weird enough. It makes it sound like magic is akin to knitting and making clothing and tapestries, which is just way too easy to comprehend for a Lovecraftian magic system to work. Lovecraftian magic should be nearly incomprehensible and laced with eldritch weirdness, not reminiscent of a Obed Marsh knitting a sweater in his free time.

So then the question comes of what to replace it with, and this is where I came up with the subject of Astral Projection. I like this because it is a process that is actually possible to explain without massive handwaivings and statements along the lines "nobody knows" because I can't come up with anything while still being considered an arcane subject for most players of D&D. A lot of the religions and philosophies where Lovecraft drew some of his ideas of creatures from were stooped into the sorts of esoteric subjects which would practice it. This system is also much more psychological and less physical, which I believe would make sense in a world infested with creatures from the Cthulhu Mythos.

Also another part of why I like it is because of how it explains why magic is a dangerous thing. Constantly sending part of your brain to another world in that quick amount of time is very stressful to the mind and easily result in mental instability. This is why magic couldn't simply be used by everyone, it would shatter their sanity. In my personal opinion, a low magic world would actually make much more sense from a narrative perspective simply to emphasize the strangeness of the extra planar creatures.

[Requilac]

Commentary on the Rarity of Magic

One of the biggest challenges I faced when creating this setting is making it so that I can make magic seem eldritch and weird, as Lovecraft displayed it, while still reaching the requisite prevalence of magic necessary for play in D&D 5e. Too much magic may invalidate the possibility of Lovecraftian themes, whereas having too little magic and a "burn the witch" mentality will make it hard to justify the existence of many spellcasting characters. Thusly, I tried to find a number forms a compromise between these two ideals. I would say that having about 2-5% percent of the population is an appropriate number for this. Having just enough casters in a country to fill a decent sized university means that they can still be arcane and spooky but not so much as to be damned by society; just sort of looked down upon.

The fact not even 10 natives to the Material Plane could cast a spell of 6th level or higher is largely meant to really emphasize the power of higher level casters. A spellcaster of advanced levels is much more of a threat on the world if they are less people of competitive power. I also like how it makes the inhabitants of the Dreamlands all that much more powerful than natives of the Material Plane. These are largely the Great Old Ones after all; humankind should pale in comparison to them. I believe this accomplishes that goal quite well.

And that is all I had to say really. A lot of my thoughts on the system of magic are already pretty well expressed through the document itself. Now we move onto the afterlife and raising the dead.