| Rovagug | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Details | |||||
Pantheon |
Core Deities | ||||
Alignment |
Chaotic evil | ||||
Cleric alignment(s) |
CN, NE, CE | ||||
| Chaos, Evil, Destruction, Weather, War | |||||
Favored weapon |
Greataxe | ||||
Rovagug is one of Pathfinder's deities.
Description[ | ]
Imprisoned since the Age of Creation, the god Rovagug, also known as "The Rough Beast", "The Great Destroyer" and "The Worldbreaker", seeks only to destroy creation and the other gods. Believed to be imprisoned in a state of torpor somewhere deep within Golarion, his increasingly restless stirrings are taken by many to be the cause of volcanic activity and earthquakes. His worshipers are known for embodying the god's dominion over destruction, disaster, and wrath.
Background[ | ]
Spawned to destroy worlds, Rovagug tore into existence while the cosmos was still young, devouring and destroying everything he touched and laying waste to the careful creations of the gods. Trapped by a union of desperate deities, Rovagug shudders in anguish and impotent rage, causing the earth to shake and mountains to crumble. He bellows and clouds of toxic gas billow from rents in the ground. He births monstrosities that clamber from the rotted depths of the world to ravage and destroy in their creator's place. Rovagug does not dream of glory or wonders. He dreams of the end of existence, shoveling all that lives into his devouring maw and crushing all that does not beneath his terrifying form. His ruin is not slow entropy but rather destructive fire. All rational beings, divine and mortal, hate and fear him, for he is the hastener of the end, the Unmaker, enemy of the gods and of life itself.
Upon Rovagug's arrival from somewhere beyond the depths of space and time, he launched a vicious war that eventually prompted an unprecedented alliance among all the gods as they sought to defend all they had created. While wily Calistria distracted the terror and countless now-forgotten gods gave their lives to aid her, Torag and Gorum forged an unbreakable prison in the heart of Golarion, and Asmodeus and Pharasma drew upon the power of the planes to fit it with potent magical locks and wards. When the sign was given that the work was complete, the great angel Sarenrae challenged Rovagug directly, taunting him with holy fire. His profane howls of rage and anguish shook the void as the Dawnflower lured him close to the world that would be his prison, and with her blazing sword, sliced a great rift deep into the land's heart. Power beyond mortal comprehension, born of the toil of dozens of gods and paid for with the lives of dozens more, lashed out and ensnared the destroyer, drawing him into the god-forged prison. As the cell quaked and threatened to buckle around its furious captive, Asmodeus used his Hell-forged key to lock the Rough Beast away for all time.
Bound for millennia, the Rough Beast has nursed his rage, believing that one day he will break free and feast upon Sarenrae, the fragments of the world, and the cooling flesh of all the other gods. He sleeps fitfully for centuries at a time, comforted by dreams of annihilation. Rovagug is the cancer at Golarion's heart, straining and struggling against his bonds until the day when he will consume all life.
There is nothing beneficent about the Rough Beast, no creation to offset his destruction. He has no friends or allies; once he has devoured the world, he will surely turn on even his own spawn and devour them in a cannibalistic orgy. The Rough Beast is indifferent to the petty things mortals do in his honor, or whether they speak his name with adoration or loathing. He requires no special rituals and demands no heartfelt devotion as a channel for his divine energy—he wishes only to be set free, and to know that he is not forgotten. Though some of his faithful may believe otherwise, he promises no honored place at his side or immunity from his destruction. The lucky ones may ride in his wake for a time, reveling in unbridled obliteration, but eventually they too will be consumed by their god's terrible hunger.
Rovagug's imprisonment limits his interaction with both mortal and immortal beings. His intervention in the world must be through his violent priests and, more infamously, through his titanic spawn, which act as his host of catastrophic heralds. Few civilized cultures attempt to depict the Rough Beast as anything more than a wormlike creature with a great toothy maw, and the primitive tribes and mad cultists who worship him are satisfied with simple depictions painted in blood on walls, banners, and shields. His symbol is a fanged mouth surrounded by spider legs, though individual cults might use slightly different symbols such as a crab with a mouth on its back, a maw surrounded by scorpion stingers, or a crude drawing of a claw encircled by a spiral. He has many names used by various tribes and cults, including the Tide of Fangs, the Imprisoned King, and the Worldbreaker. Rovagug's true form is maddening: a miles-long worm with countless limbs stretching along his length and grasping from within his mouth. Various parasitic creatures cling to his skin and spill forth from his wounds; some of them are sluglike or insectile, many are swarms of thousand-legged vermin, and others take more unspeakable shapes. These parasites voraciously consume those foolish enough to be caught in the wake of Rovagug's spilled blood, then die, unable to sustain their own existence apart from the god's flesh.
After earthquakes and volcanic eruptions occur, Rovagug's cultists pray and make sacrifices to wake him, believing such events are manifestations of his restless slumber. They see storms and toxic gas vents as his breath coursing up from the dark places in the world. If these things afflict the enemies of the cult, the faithful take it as a sign of their god's favor; he is clearly displeased if such natural disasters harm his worshipers.