Gorellik

Gorellik
Mottled White Hyenadon Head
Alignment	Chaotic Evil
Divine Rank	Demigod (Formerly "at least a lesser god") or Dead God
Pantheon	Gnoll
Portfolio	Hunting, Hyenas, Hyenadons
Domains	Animal, Creation, Necromantic, Protection, Travelers (Subdomains: Blood, Caves, Ferocity, Loss, Night, Fur)
Home Plane	None, wanders the Abyss and Pandemonium
Worshippers	Gnolls
Favoured Weapon	Claws & Teeth

Gorellik is a fallen demigod from Dungeons & Dragons. A feral and primordial god of hyenas and hunting, Gorellik is connected to the Giant pantheon in some obscure way, perhaps because of the fact that his creations, the Gnolls, turned to giant gods for a time when they began to realize just how inept and "ungodly" a patron deity they actually had.

Indeeed, very little is known about Gorellik beyond three things: he made the gnolls, he taught them the arts of hunting and domesticating hyenas, and he is a complete idiot. Seriously; the one thing we know with any solid detail is that he's so disinterested in actually acting like a god that the gnolls increasingly turned away from his worship, ultimately being seduced to the worship of Yeenoghu, Demon Prince of Butchery. Gorellik never even noticed, and even though this has cost him severely -- to the point that not only is he now a demigod, he's barely clinging to even that level of divinity, having only enough power to sustain a single avatar that prowls Pandemonium and the Abyss -- he's become so feral and avatistic that it's doubtful that he could ever begin to start reversing his decline.

This came to its ultimate inglorious end in 4th edition; in Dragon Magazine #364, the Demonomicon of Iggwilv: Yeenoghu article claims that Gorellik was a god of wild beasts and the hunt who was slain and eaten by Yeenoghu, allowing the Beast of Butchery to claim Gorellik's gnolls as its own. Three issues later, gnolls were instead stated to be the result of Yeenoghu deliberately feeding his most vicious demonic minions to a pack of hyenas, transforming them into the first gnolls (although this was said to be "just a legend").

It's perhaps telling that, come 5th edition, despite the widespread backpedaling from 4e's lore, Gorellik remained retconned out of existence; instead, the first gnolls sprang into being when hyenas scavenged the kills of Yeenoghu as he rampaged across the material plane and were mutated by his taint into demonic humanoids.

Thus endeth the story of Gorellik, one of the more pathetic gods of D&D. It is kind of fitting how lazy and uncaring he was with his own creations, who are also well known for laziness and using slave power for anything.

Dogma

You cannot survive without the hunt. The hunt is life, it sustains you and your kindred. Whether to feed your clan, seek revenge against a wrong, or defend from outside aggressors, you must always fight to prove your worth, or else you have none. It is this that sets you above the scavenging beasts from which you arose.

This, and a few teachings on the domestication of hyenas, is all that remains of Gorellik's religious lore. Even the creation myth is long lost, and it's been suggested that this absence of a creation myth was one of the reasons why Gorellik's faith was too weak to protect against Yeenoghu's predations. Another theory is that his dogma's emphasis on strength and fighting meant he was easily usurped by seemingly stronger, more vicious rivals.

Known Sources

Monster Mythology, pg.83 Planes of Chaos - Book of Chaos, pg.9