Father Llymic
| Father Llymic | ||
|---|---|---|
| Aliases | The Alien Thought Given Flesh | |
| Alignment | Chaotic Evil | |
| Divine Rank | Greater Deity | |
| Pantheon | Elder Evils | |
| Portfolio | Ice, corruption | |
| Domains | 3E: Chaos, Evil, Trickery, Corruption, Vile Darkness, Cold 4E: Winter, Darkness, Trickery 5E: Trickery, Death |
|
| Home Plane | The Far Realm | |
| Worshippers | Some barbarian tribes, Star Spawn, Broodspawn, cultists | |
| Favoured Weapon | His scythe limbs | |
Father Llymic is an Elder Evil hailing from the Far Realm, imprisoned in magic ice on top of a mountain. He seeks to escape his prison in order to remake the world to be more hospitable to him and his spawn (as in, a lightless icy wasteland). In his true form, he is a hulking demon-like monstrosity with scythes for forearms, three eyes, and skin covered in icy crystals. His title of 'Father' is accurate for two main reasons: one, he often tricks others by appearing as a friendly old man; two, in order to escape his prison he creates 'his children' on the outside. Said 'children' are called Broodspawn and appear like him, and are created by Llymic spreading a plague which transforms the infected into said Broodspawn. The more Broodspawn that are created by this plague, the more Llymic begins to awaken.
His icy prison is said to melt in darkness and thicken in sunlight - while this results in a net zero change to the strength of the prison over time, it does create a weakness that Llymic seeks to exploit. As such, as he awakens from the conversion of people into Broodspawn, Father Llymic uses his otherworldly power to begin shrouding the world in darkness, dimming the sun - with the end result being that the prison eventually melts enough to allow him to break free. Naturally the party's job is to either stop this from happening at all, or just kick his ass.
He's actually one of the weaker Elder Evils in 3E, with only a CR of 18 - though this can possibly be chalked up to him not being fully awakened, which if true would mean you would be fucked if you faced him at his prime.
Worship[edit | edit source]
Turns out Father Llymic actually has human worshippers - though whether they are willing or not hasn't been disclosed. In 3E's sample campaign, for example, there's a tribe of barbarians that worship him. Said barbarians are the reason why Llymic begins to awaken in said campaign, with their entire number becoming Broodspawns by the end of it (again, it is unknown if this was a willing transformation or not).
Obviously said Broodspawns worship him, as well as Star Spawn - the latter could be behind the aforementioned worshipping tribe of barbarians for a 5E-updated version of the sample campaign, at the DM's discretion. And since Llymic can easily dupe someone with his old man disguise, a player Warlock taking Llymic as a patron and later having to betray him upon learning his true intentions could make for an interesting campaign subplot.
Or you could just load him onto a Spelljammer and take him and his children to a world that's already icy and dark, so everyone's happy.
How to tell if you're going to fight him[edit | edit source]
The easiest way to tell if the DM is likely going to set you up to fight Father Llymic is if you find out some mountain is said to be his prison. Keep an eye on said mountain, either directly or by proxy - if its cold begins spreading further down its slopes, shit's about to hit the fan. The sun dimming with no other explanation is also a pretty obvious tell. Finally, as Llymic gets closer to awakening magic related to darkness is strengthened and magic relating to light is weakened - so if your light cantrip becomes less effective at lighting things up and magical darkness becomes advanced darkness, he might be to blame.
Ghulurak[edit | edit source]
It's worth mentioning that there's another "ancient godlike evil from a far-distant world that wants to turn the campaign setting into a frozen alien hellscape" in 3e. Introduced in DMG2, in the Magical Events section, is the Killing Frost of Ghulurak. People who are exposed to his influence, by either being exposed to his magical event, or by looking to much into it, have to make a DC 25 will save, or be compelled to cause it as the Geas spell.
The Killing Frost of Ghulurak is simpler than a lot of the magical events in the book. Both its energy source and its control elements are just "evil alien god too far away to reach or fight." It's triggered by one of its cultists carving a huge ice sculpture of him, the Form of Ghulurak, and then carving three Symbols of Insanity into its base. Once that's done, it generates an area of killing frost that expands at a rate of a mile a week, and another area of madness that surrounds the statue to a radius of one mile. This is the equivalent of a Dominate Monster spell each hour, DC 25 again, except permanent and it ignores spell resistance. Those who fail become his cultists, and are driven to protect his Form, and make a new one if the present one is destroyed. After a century, this radius also starts to expand, at a mile a month. If it ever covers the whole world, the Form of Ghulurak becomes animate flesh, as he comes to rule his new world.
There are some differences between the two, but someone at Wizards was definitely reusing ideas.