The Most Romanceable God in D&D is a Lich

what would you be willing to do for the one you love above all others would you fight would you die would you undy hello and welcome to Legend lore the show where I your humble host share with you some of the most fascinating bizar and truly hilarious Tales from all across the multiverses of Dungeons and Dragons as well as the real life history of the game itself it is my hope that you'll find these Tales inspiring or at least entertaining and who knows y might find inspiration for something you want to include in your own game world or maybe you'll just finish building your base in pal World while you listen along that's right Jacob I know you're only listening to this while you play video games and that's totally chill I'm just here to tell stories and today's is one of Love Obsession and the ultimate RPG campaign manager wait what what was that last thing this episode is sponsored by World Anvil the premier all-in-one software for tabletop Gamers fantasy novelists and anyone who loves Creative World building if you're not already familiar with with World Anvil allow me to show you one of the most gamechanging tools you can add to your toolkit World Anvil allows you to create and manage sprawling game worlds in a cohesive way so that you can keep track of and Link Between all the important bits of lore in your Universe you can create interactive maps organize session prep for specific campaigns create timelines family trees and so much more plus it's got out of the box integration with over 45 ttrpgs including DND D this means that you aren't just creating lore entries but you can also manage custom stat blocks and character sheets and there's even a digital DM screen which is integrated with all of your world building efforts in order to create a seamless dming experience you can even control which Bits Of Your World are accessible to the players or just you so that your adventuring party can look up anything they might need to know about the game world without accidentally stumbling upon the fact that your bb is just 15 Cobalts and a papier-mâché Dragon if any of my players are watching ignore that last thing I said so whether you're running your campaign in person or online World Anvil is an invaluable tool tool for writing the best possible game session that you can head on over to worldanvil decom and check it out for yourself and if you decide you want to sign up you can save 51% off any yearly subscription right now by using Code dad at Checkout 51 is a lot of percents so thank you once again to World Anvil for sponsoring this video now without further Ado sit back relax and allow me to tell you the tale of evening Glory [Music] known to some as the deathless beauty to others as the eternal lover she is most commonly referred to by her proper title evening glory evening glory is a lesser deity who first appeared in libris mortise the book of Undead for Third Edition D and D she appears as a beautiful flawless woman with ice white skin and platinum white hair her eyes as well as her fingernails are soft blue and she is typically depicted clad and an elegant backless gown she also has two Telltale marks that identify her without fail her hands are both pierced by a perfectly symmetrical heart-shaped hole that goes from the palm of her hand to its back this heart-shaped gap in her hands also serves as her holy symbol where it is often depicted surrounded by Moonflowers and despite her uncanny appear she's definitely not what most people expect when they hear Undead God unlike basically every other Undead deity with a few notable exceptions evening glory is not of the evil alignment and I find that really fascinating so often the gods of undeath are evil to a point after all it's not exactly good guy Behavior to mess around with the Eternal Souls of the living often trapping them in grotesque perversions of what they were in life as most Undead gods are want to do but what makes evening Glory truly different are her motivations she is not fueled by some kind of grand ambition power or any other simple thing that moves most Divine beings to action the thing that lies at the core of everything evening Glory pursues is love her teachings say that Love and Desire are the utmost important things in life and that love should never be allowed to fail because of something silly like the end of your natural lifespan she teaches that those who truly love one another should embrace that love Beyond The Pale of death and become Everlasting for in her mind it is only through the grace of undeath that old age can be conquered as an obstacle Between Two Lovers now that's all good and fine but most people no matter how much they love each other probably don't want to spend eternity trapped in the body of a rotting corpse zombies aren't exactly known for their good looks after all and this is where the other domain of evening Glory comes in that of beauty what she offers isn't merely Everlasting unlife but preservation she puts forth a for form of undeath that allows one to maintain their faculties and preserve themselves as they are though you might end up a bit pale and cold to the touch for this reason her followers often don't wait until they're old and gray to become Undead they undergo a ritual as young as possible once they reach adulthood after all if you're going to pursue undeath anyways and you already know that why not do it when your body is young and strong as a lesser deity she often conducts these rituals of undeath herself in a sort of profan marriage that involves the two lovers drinking poison which kills them instantly allowing themselves to be raised as a special sort of preserved Undead creature with a kiss I die however those dedicated to the cause of evening Glory who wish to become part of her clergy she is a God after all she has priests become something much more peculiar these special individuals are gifted by the goddess with lichdom though unlike your typical Lich they are preserved and retain their physical appearance for all time and part of what makes this also fascinating to me is that although she is Undead and all of her followers and clergy are Undead they're not out to conquer the world but rather spread this message of love to anyone who will listen they're not even trying to trick people into joining them for some darker purpose they simply offer this admittedly maob version of eternal love and they make it very clear what they're offering if you're not interested that's fine with them in fact more often than not followers of evening Glory find themselves on the wrong end of a Paladin sword just for the crime of being Undead they take Great Lengths to hide their true nature because many would see them destroyed for perverting the natural order and like yeah most Undead creatures aren't this chill but the followers of evening Glory aren't conducting necromantic rituals for dastardly plots of control she does have ritual rights but they include writing and receiving love poems helping lovers in need even if they have no intent on becoming Undead and heaping praise upon their goddess for granting them an unchanging Beauty Frozen at its height by undeath you're so hot and this is so much more interesting to me as a DM than many of the other deities found in this corner of the world I mean just look at the next entry in this book Naru the reaper foe of all good hater of Life bringer of Darkness king of all Gloom the reaper of Flesh there is of course a time in place for the rules of the world of course there is but rather than provide the reader with some world-ending threat or horrific scheme evening Glory offers a more nuanced interpretation of something that is almost always considered evil repugnant and worthy of Destruction the moonflower also known as evening Glory only blooms in darkness and much like the flower that shares her namesake evening Glory captures living beings at their most pristine even if it is in the cold dead of night all of her followers are are willing and they know what they're getting into before they do so sure some may unlive to regret that choice after all eternity is a very long time but should they be prevented from making that choice in the first place maybe but that's not for me to decide now I do feel like I've been somewhat dishonest with you because while everything I've set up until this point is true and factually correct evening Glory's portfolio does not end with undeath beauty and love some of you may already know this but if you do I suspect you're in the vast minority because evening glory is no mere relic of the past she's already made her way to D and D fifth edition and let's just say she did not go through this move entirely unaffected spoiler warning if you're currently playing through curse of strad I'm about to discuss a few Minor Details surrounding a certain Temple and for the one of you who's currently playing through the curse of strad Adventure path from 2016 I'm basically going to spoil the entire thing consider yourself warned in ancient barovia Millennia ago long before strad long before The Mists long before the land was a domain of dread a secret society of wizards constructed a mighty prison known as the Amber Temple this Temple would be used to summon and capture great forces of evil imprisoning them each in a magical sarcophagus made of Amber over time the concentration of dark powers in this Temple had dire consequences ultimately resulting in barovia becoming what's known as a domain of dread what exactly a domain of dread is and what makes a domain of dread distinct from just another spooky part of the Multiverse could be a topic for an entire video but essentially all you really need to know is that it's a place cut off from all of the other planes and controlled by the dark Powers who reside there serving as both a prison for these evil forces and a hellscape for any other creature trapped along with them I'm simplifying a few things here for the sake of brevity but this is all information included in the curse of strad fifth edition campaign book it's never made clear exactly who or what every one of the dark Powers is however it is obvious that they are still alive and well although trapped within their amber sarcophagy in fact if you go to the Amber temple in curse of strad you can not only commune with these entities who are all trapped in the Temple's basement but they will also offer you dark gifts powerful Boons that come at an exceptional cost this encounter is potentially a very pivotal moment in the campaign depending on what the players decide to do but did you know that there is a secret chamber even deeper within the am Temple hidden below the place where you encounter the dark Powers if you didn't don't feel bad it's not detailed in the campaign book but rather it's hidden elsewhere in plain Scythe in 2016 the adventurers League storyline Misty for fortunes and absent Hearts began it started officially in March coinciding with the release of the main campaign with a One-Shot module titled suits of the Mist this adventure path would span 14 One-Shot Adventures concluding in July 2016 with the dark lord for those not familiar with adventurers League they are all official fifth edition DN modules intended to be used as one shots for convention play as well as D and D kns at your local game store essentially allowing a group of strangers to come together and play some D and D with an ongoing story that everyone was a part of if say we decided to sit down right now and play through part six of this adventure path The Ghost and you've never played with me I've never played with you our entire group is all new to each other as long as we've all played through Parts one through five even if the outcome of those Adventures was somewhat different the general idea of what's going on in the story will all be the same so we can easily pick up and play right where we sort of left off last time the Adventure Pass can also make for great ongoing campaigns to play with your regular group in the case of this specific Adventure path it's meant to be intermingled with the curse of strad campaign if that's something you're interested in doing now how does all of this relate to evening Glory well you'd be surprised how much wild lore sneaks its way into the cannon through these little modules for it is in this adventure path we see evening Glory reborn and brought into the fold of fifth edition gods Our Story begins with Esme amarantha Esme is a beautiful young woman living in the village of barovia she grows up under the shadow of Castle Raven Loft and develops a fascination with its Lord and ruler count strad Von zarovich as she grows older that Fascination transforms into infatuation and after seeing strad in person during one of his visits to the Village itself she decides that she is now in love with him Esme comes to the conclusion that she can win str's Heart by impressing him somehow so she begins to learn the Arcane Arts hoping to prove herself useful as a powerful sorceress someday and she makes these intentions very clear to strad now anyone familiar with C strad knows the only one he has eyes for is another woman named Tatiana federova their history together is long and complex and kind of a core piece of str's personality but the important thing to know is that strad is utterly obsessed with her and that while he is an undying vampire Tatiana is a mere mortal however because barovia is a domain of dread and therefore severed from the rest of reality when a living creature dies its soul is not allowed to leave instead that Soul lingers and is reincarnated into a new creature born within barovia so when Tatiana dies she is simply reborn again and again and again sometimes in a different village almost always to different parents but it is consistently her and while each incarnation of her may not have memory of her past life strad is all too familiar with every single one of those lives because every time he pursues her only to inevitably be rejected after one particularly violent rejection that resulted in Tatiana's death strad was feeling particularly cruel wishing to parcel out some pain on another as any emotionally mature adult man is liable to do he promotes Esme to the rank of barovian witch now this is a pretty big deal the barovian witches are among the most powerful spellcasters in barovia and all of them serve count strad directly but what might have seemed at first to be a generous gift would quickly sour into a terrible punishment by putting Esme within his inner circle it only provides more opportunities for stod to reject and humiliate her efforts to get close with him because keep in mind at this point Esme is fullon obsessed in voner pilled she will stop at nothing to win the affections of the count for some reason so she concocts a plan years have passed by this point and she is painfully aware that strad is only interested in Tatiana but by using her magic which has now improved to the point where Esme is the most powerful barovian witch she believes that she can successfully complete a ritual that will allow her to join with the soul of Tatiana essentially transforming herself into an immortal embodiment of the woman strad loves she would become Undead like strad and would also finally contain whatever Essence possessed Tatiana that made her so irresistible to him she was determined to do this even if it meant losing some of herself in the process she had become completely obsessed with him but in order to complete this ritual she would need two things first she would need personal objects that once belonged to the original Tatiana in order to facilitate the ritual the more she could find the better through through extensive research she was able to uncover the existence of four such trinkets an Old Powder box a pair of gloves a comb and a mirror she was unsure of their precise location but was able to track them all down with the help of her four subordinates a group of individuals she referred to as her obsessions for each one was obsessed with something in much the same way she was obsessed with strad her first Obsession was a woman named glovia fonescu glovia was a Healer living in the village of oras now she was not only a skilled practitioner of healing magic but also had a good grasp on medicinal science and Anatomy she was also obsessed with necromancy see in the past glovia daughter Isabella had become Gravely ill and try as she might she was not able to cure the disease that was plaguing her young daughter after Isabella's death glovia became mad with grief and obsessed with trying to bring her little girl back from Beyond the Grave the intense grief she felt was so palpable that her daughter actually did return as a ghost but this was not enough to assuage glovia heartache this obsession with the return of her daughter drove glovia to researching dark magic and forbidden rituals and when her husband Lucien discovered this he urged her to stop and in response glovia murdered him and returned him to Life as a flesh Golem in order to make him Cooperative with her Quest and this is the part of the story where Esme comes along sensing the desperation Within glovia and sees an opportunity she offers this grieving Mother exactly what she wants promising her a way to bring her daughter back if glovia could find Tatiana's powder Box by using many Undead servants she was ultimately successful and true to her word Esme taught glovia a ritual which would allow her to transplant her dead daughter's Soul into the body of another little girl welcome to barovia while she did actually go through with it and try to conduct this ritual she was of course stopped by a group of adventurers and this particular part of the adventure ends with glovia death and Isabella finally being free to pass on to the afterlife promising the adventuring party that she'll take care of her parents in the next World little do they know there is no next world it's just this over and over again but the sentiment is nice the second Obsession in esme's employ was a creature named graig gak someone who couldn't get enough templates it would seem graac is a half dragon half troll who was turned into a ghost in life he wanted nothing more than the approval of his father a powerful black dragon named throstle Grail while he venerated his draconic father graig was never shown much mind or respect and unfortunately died at the hands of an adventurer who had invaded his father's Lair slaying the two of them and his troll mother his soul however would return as a ghost in order to seek fulfillment obsessed with filling the hole in his heart though he had no idea how to do do that Esme again seeing an opportunity for manipulation took the ghost under his wing and offered him the validation he so craved sending him on a mission to retrieve Tatiana's gloves what follows is a pretty convoluted series of events that is way outside the scope of this video but essentially it boils down to him being successful in attaining the gloves giving them to Esme and going off in his own Direction presumably he still roams barovia somewhere but his exact fate is unknown however his Mission did become somewhat of a compulsion as the half dragon troll goh still collects and hoardes any gloves he can find so if you're looking for a weird NPC to have your characters come across this is the one esme's third Obsession would be a man by the name of Ivan rovic the burgo Meister of oras now Ivan's Obsession was a real simple one money he was in love with the idea of acquiring wealth and as the local Tyrant he was able to skim plenty of extra gold from the Town's residence in the form of over taxation he was tasked with finding Tatiana's silver comb a task which he completed and was rewarded with golden kind he's probably the most straightforward member of our mly crew here I'm a warrior I'm going to win lastly was omow the fourth Obsession omow was once a human Afflicted with Leprosy wandering The Mists of barovia it's unclear exactly how but it seems that his leprosy was cured perhaps by the dark powers of barovia but not without cost om was granted potent psionic powers and he transformed into a mongrel folk one of the half humanoid half beast hybrids found throughout barovia he is an extraordinarily tragic character whose obsession is twofold see omu is a very talented artist a painter and a sculptor his primary wish was to return to his human form that he might reflect his inner beauty externally and be freed from whatever curse seems to have both saved his life and mutated his body his second Obsession was with Esme herself much like str's obsession with Tatiana and esme's obsession with strad omau is in love with Esme and in much the same way that esme's feelings towards strad have been Twisted in manipulated om's feelings towards the barovian witch have essentially been hijacked to make him do her bidding omau is convinced that if he's able to prove himself by finding the silver mirror Esme is after maybe then she will see his true value so he tracks it down sure enough and delivers the mirror to Esme along with a love poem he's written explaining how he feels and when presented with this proclamation of Love Esme laughs in his face tells him he's weak pathetic and he should stay far away from her that's not even me embellishing for the sake of the story that is Verbatim what she says to him straight up utterly heartbroken by this rejection omow mouss his horse and rides it as fast as he can back to his cave along the way his unstable emotional state completely takes over and as a result the psionic abilities gifted to him by the dark Powers cut a path of Destruction everywhere he goes dozens are killed and when the group of adventurers chasing him down finally catch up to him they see he has ridden the horse to its death beyond the point of exhaustion and they find him alone in his cave which is filled with Incredible statues and paintings all created by om before he's slain he leaves the group with a mental impression showing them the location of Esme while om's actions throughout this entire Adventure are irredeemable one can't help but wonder what his life may have been like if a Kinder path was set before [Music] him but with that Esme now has everything she needs to conduct the ritual except cep for the raw power to do so however thanks in large part to Ivan she has learned about that secret chamber in the bottom of the Amber Temple and inside that chamber is something beyond what she could have hoped to find remember those Wizards who constructed the Amber Temple Millennia ago well once the dark Powers took hold they all became trapped within that Temple however they were not content to Simply roll over and die they were still there they could still do something so making the best of this awful situation the Wizards all ban together and decide they will do their utmost make it their life's mission to stop these dark powers from escaping if they couldn't leave the temple they could at least ensure their tomb would be the Eternal prison of the evil forces they sought to contain I'm not locked in here with you you're locked in here with me by placing innumerable Wards and enchantments on the sarcophagy they were able to block out the influence of all these dark powers except for one see evening glory is one of the dark Powers she is one of the malignant entities that was trapped within an Amber sarcophagus by the Wizards and while not an evil deity she was trapped for thousands of years exposed to the same darkness that worms its way in and infests everything within barovia so her portfolio of love beauty and undeath was twisted with the addition of obsession the idea of true love had become misshapen grotesque to her loving someone or something now was to be completely engrossed by it and this new element to her portfolio would allow her to corrupt the Wizards within the temple they became obsessed with their work obsessed with sealing the dark Powers away forever their way this gradually LED them down a dark path which resulted in the wizards turning on one another in the end they were all killed by their former comrad ads but death was not the end they were returned from beyond the grave as ghosts largely in part due to the powers of evening glory and it was through this subtle manipulation that Esme came to know of evening Glory's presence in the Amber Temple so when the barovian witch arrived and stood before evening Glory the Stars had finally aligned for both of them evening Glory promised Esme that her love for strad could last forever if she merely freed the vestage from the Amber prison using a magical locket built to house the essence of another creature Esme withdrew evening Glory from her sarcophagus and then drew that Essence into the locket then she simply opened the locket and allowed evening glory to merge with her as you can imagine this granted Esme a ridiculous amount of power because while evening Glory may be a lesser deity lesser is not the operative word in that phrase not only did it augment her already potent spellcasting but due to the presence of a Bonafide dark power she gained the ability AB ility to pull other regions from the Multiverse into barovia permanently merging them and expanding the domain of dread knowing that strad would find this unique ability very useful she set off to conduct the final part of her plan in the snowy ruin of Boss zorin keep in the heart of esme's lirer she begins to conduct the ritual she places the four objects at the edges of a summoning Circle and starts the incantation because Tatiana has recently died and not yet been reborn her soul is still in The Ether if the ritual is successful her soul will be drawn forth and pulled into Esme merging them irreversibly creating a new being that is one part Esme the witch one part Tatiana federova and one part evening Glory goddess of love undeath beauty and Obsession in this pivotal moment as where things diverge in many directions because this is the true finale to a series of D and D Adventures we don't know how this story ends the last page of the book is blank waiting to be written by adventurers who would take it upon themselves to stop this ritual but there are three distinct overarching possibilities and one of which I personally choose to believe the first is that Esme succeeds she binds herself to the soul of Tatiana and possessed with the essence of evening Glory leaves the ritual site to go be with strad str's reaction to this TR of events are tough to predict but whether Esme is finally embraced or if strad more than likely simply uses her to his own ends while being really mad about the whole thing this is truly a world changing State of Affairs in this scenario evening Glory has essentially been reborn into fifth edition as a darker more malignant version of herself possessing the body of an extremely powerful witch capable of slowly dragging the entire material plane into a domain of dread and that's terrifying but in what is more likely to be accepted as the Canon ending of this adventure Esme is defeated and evening glory is trapped once again within the locket used to pull her out of the Amber sarcophagus in this ending esme's tale comes to an end she dies pining after a man who hated her simply for daring to fall in love with him leading her down a path that led her to inflict that same trauma on others the locket however is the truly intriguing piece of this puzzle if the party remains in barovia they now have a locket with the essence of a minor deity trapped in side and you better believe she's trying to break free praying on the obsession of Mortals wherever it might crop up however in what I personally consider to be the general Cannon ending of this story at the end of the adventure The Mists clear ever so briefly allowing the party to return back to the waking World leaving behind barovia for good the module states that they return with all of their belongings and equipment except for the locket where it went that remains to be seen it's possible that evening glory is still trapped within the locket laying on the cold floor of a forgotten ruin in barovia but it's also possible that she made the Journey Back to the material plane as well that she's now free returned to the Multiverse she was taken from allowed to follow her heart's desire still changed and Twisted by the countless years trapped amongst the dark powers of barovia but perhaps with a chance for Redemption maybe someday someone will find a way to break the chains of obsession that now bind her maybe she can once again be known as the eternal lover a God who sought to help Mortals seek their true love even Beyond Death itself the goddess whose only demand of her followers was a poem recited for the one they [Music] adore thank you for joining me today I truly hope that you enjoyed this story evening glory is one of the most fascinating members of the D and Pantheon and I think she has a lot to offer a dungeon master there are so many ways she could be included in a story whether it's as a friendly character or the primary antagonist or something in between but whatever the case I look forward to reading the comments about how you would use this fantastic character to tell stories of your own I also just want to stress that there are a bunch of details I had to leave out of the entire story of this module because I didn't want this video to be 4 hours long the purpose of this video was primarily to focus on evening Glory so naturally I didn't have time to talk about everything but if you're interested is even remotely peaked by this story I highly encourage you to check out the module for yourself or the group of modules the whole Adventure path I think it's a really cool Hidden Gem that not many people know about I could honestly go on about barovia and the dark powers for many more hours but that's a tale for another time thank you so much for watching until we meet [Music] again I wonder if evening Glory has some sort of secret connection with the morning Lord maybe they're secret lovers after all look at them hard to blame a gal

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Id: Z43Vl-jAOg4

Length: 31min 3sec (1863 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 01 2024