Moander

MOANDER The Darkbringer, the Jawed God, the Rotting God, the Great Dread God

Symbol:An upright male human right hand, fingers outstretched, with an open human female fanged mouth, lips parted as though speaking, set in its palm

Home Plane:Rarandreth/Offalmound

Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Portfolio:Rotting death, decay, corruption, parasites

Worshippers:Moander attracted those who feared decay in themselves or the world around them and hoped to placate Moander to stave it off; it also attracted the nihilists who saw all of existence as a constant decay toward death.

Favored Weapon:Mace

Cleric Alignment:CE,NE, LE

NWN Domain: Animal, Death, Destruction, Evil, Plant

History Relationships: Moander (Moe-AN-der) was the god of rot, corruption, and decay. It wasn’t known whether Moander was male, female, or utterly beyond gender, and because of this most texts referred to the god by the neutral “it.” It was a corrupt isolation of one part of the whole cycle of birth, death, and renewal, an obsessive focus on the descending edge of the circle of life. The Darkbringer was a cruel and petty tyrant who enjoyed tormenting lesser beings and making them destroy that which they held most dear. Moander frequently lied, particularly when such prevarications caused great emotional distress in its victims. The Darkbringer sought to control every aspect of its worshipers’ lives, viewing them only as puppets. It sought to corrupt and destroy all who didn’t bow down before it.

Dogma: Minions of the Darkbringer were charged to feed Great Moander with fresh corpses of their own making. They were to hew down strong plants and trees to feed It. Moander’s priests were charged to keep the lands in which it manifested and held power as warm as possible. When a novice was first initiated into the priesthood and possessed by a seed of Moander, the Darkbringer instructed him or her through hor- rific dreams as follows: “Seek not to question the ways and words of Moander, lest you be stricken by the Eating From Within. Go forth and possess beings of power and influence for me. Slay, and let the rot cover all. Fight against cold with fire and magic. Fear me, and obey.”

Day-to-Day Activities: Moander’s Minions were a secre- tive, proud clergy that scoured the land for malformed life (such as mongrelmen and diseased plants and beasts) and brutish, destructive beings (orcs and the like) to feed to Moander. Cultists of Moander strove to spread intelligent veg- etable life throughout the Realms, including algoids, sham- bling mounds, gibbering mouthers, and vegepygmies (russet mold). Minions of Moander existed to feed the manifestations of the god, whose decaying powers quickly destroyed any body it they animated (always a tangled mass of carrion, dead or dis- eased plants, and the like). Minions were thus always kept busy building new bodies, leading the old ones to fresh food, or infecting other mortals to become new Minions. In rituals and spell-weavings in secluded wilderness ravines and caves, they built the Great Dread God endless new bodies to possess in its manifestation as the Abomination: triangular pyramids of decaying vegetation, dung, and rotting corpses. Moander ani- mated a “body” as the Abomination in a sacred ritual requiring but a single drop of blood from a living seed that granted the casting priest instant favor and promotion. To begin the ritual, the priest brought one of Moander’s living seeds to the new body. Living seeds were sentient mammals or reptiles of high intelligence and good alignment who had been possessed by a seed of Moander and who had (at least temporarily) survived the process.

Holy Days/Important Ceremonies: The church of Moander had no calendar-related high holy days except the Balefire. Always held on the first of Hammer, the Balefire cele- brated the will of Moander’s servants to hold back the cold by building huge bonfires in its honor-fires at which the god always manifested to thank them, to deliver inspirational sermons, and to charge them with missions to further its power during the cold months.

Affiliated Orders: The church of Moander had an affiliated association of wizards who specialized in spells and magical items that caused afflictions, boils, and the weakening of bodies called the Contagion of Moander. The Contagions were special- ists in discovering new and virulent diseases to plague the world-mainly their enemies.

Priestly Vestments: Moander’s priests wore cowled robes of mottled green and brown trimmed with natural vines, sym- bolizing Moander’s growth from decay, and faceless masks of white with a single eye painted in the forehead and surrounded by teeth. All senior clergy wore copper-hued robes enchanted so as to afford food for a creeping fungus growth that moved slow- ly and continuously over them; only the Master Minion had a “bare” copper robe. The Master Minion also wore an animal skull draped in black moss or moldering willow boughs. The Mouth of Moander wore a clean white robe bearing the red- embroidered device of an eye surrounded by an open fanged mouth on his or her breast. As puppets of the Darkbringer, all of Moander’s Minions sported a flowered tendril emerging from one ear and wrapped throughout their hair.

Adventuring Garb: When adventuring, Minions of Moander dressed practically in the best armor they could find. Most wore as much of their ceremonial garb as possible without drawing attention to themselves. Some enjoyed pretending to be druids and dressed appropriately, wielding scimitars. Others favored nondescript brown and green clothing and wielded cudgels inlaid with shards shaped to resemble fangs