Faranth

Template:Infobox Greyhawk creature The Faranth (the word is both singular and plural) are a race of hideous aberrations whose empire once dominated much of the known world.

Society

Religion

The ruling caste of the faranth includes sorcerer-priests. At least one of their gods is said to be nameless.

Language

Faranth communicate via movements of their tentacles or through their strangely-wrought pan flutes.

History

The faranth may have emigrated from another plane or world; the truth is no longer known. Thousands of years before the rise of the current political states, an empire of alien creatures stretched across the entire northern half of the Flanaess, its southern extent touching the Nyr Dyv, which was subtropical wetlands in that age. The empire included hundreds of miles of black basalt roads and imperial skyships that patrolled the air.

The faranth ruled their lands for thousands of years, only to be brought down when a celestial object impacted the Oerth, bringing about a time of ice and darkness. With massive crop failures, the faranth empire disintegrated into barbarism. One powerful sorcerer-priest, however, created an artifact, the Slave Stone, which forced all who touched it to become irrevocably obedient to the surviving faranth state, and thus rescued a small pocket of their society from anarchy. The sorcerer-priest then invoked the power of its nameless god and froze its city in an isolated valley in the Rakers, there to wait until the world was fertile again.

References

• Widen, Cameron. "Deep Freeze." Dungeon #83. Renton, WA: Wizards of the Coast, 2000.