Elder Evils

Illus. by R. Horsley
80
hey brought it. They brought it and trapped it,
though many gave their lives to do so. They brought
it to threaten the gods, which they did. And the gods
responded. But the evil remains, imprisoned. Biding.
Planning. Seething.”
—Tune Majii, arcane investigator
Lured to the Material Plane by an ancient civilization
hoping to protect itself from the vengeance of deities,
Pandorym personifies the emotionless void of utter
annihilation. It was imprisoned by its summoners
millennia ago as a deterrent but never released. Now,
hidden in a forgotten prison, the godslaying weapon
awaits the arrival of a being powerful enough to
reunite its awesome mind with its potent body. Pandorym
seeks freedom—and with it, mass deicide.
BACKGROUND
Long ago, a cabal of foolish wizards violated the laws of
the multiverse in their search for ever-greater power,
discovering spaces “between” the planes that should
never have been breached. Their arrogance angered
the deities, who jealously coveted this knowledge. To
defend themselves (and incidentally, their people), the
cabal members sought a weapon with which to threaten
the gods. The wizards bent their wills toward a quasireality
best described as “perpendicular” to that of the
Great Wheel. The dark enticement of the chance to slay deities
called to the Material Plane a sentient singularity of scarcely
fathomable power and unrelenting destructiveness.
Given the name Pandorym by its summoners, it sought
greedily to fulfill the terms of its contract, but was instead
imprisoned. Knowing they couldn’t hold Pandorym’s full
might with magic—mortal or divine—they cleaved its alien
psyche from its body, trapping the former in a crystal prison
beneath their city and the latter in a transdimensional space
that touches the multiverse at only one point. (Knowledge
[history] or [arcana] DC 28)
In their hubris, those who brought Pandorym called on
the deities aligned against them, revealing only a hint of their
weapon’s unbelievable destructiveness. The wizards believed
such a display would force the gods to relent. Instead, the
deities struck first. What would stop a single member of
that insolent cabal from being consumed by madness and
reuniting the halves of Pandorym? Thus, before the cabal
could consolidate its position, the gods blotted every trace
of it from the world. (DC 32)
Ancient deities who remember that fearful time occasionally
speak to their modern clerics of their decision, striking
fear into the hearts of their followers. Having wiped out the
wizards and their civilization, the gods could not undo what
the cabal had achieved. Thus, they were forced to hide away
Pandorym in its dual prisons and erase all known records of
the thing’s existence. Nevertheless, tales persist of the weapon
that kills gods, and they hint at its location. (DC 35)