"You said Tiamat suddenly appeared after you slaughtered the green dragons in the Dragon Forest, and then expressed her desire to meet me?"
Zuo Si fiddled with the colorful scales brought back by his entourage, with a very strange and confused expression on his face.
As the current second-in-command of Baator Hell, a planeswalker who has recorded a lot of knowledge and secrets in his mind, it is naturally impossible for him not to know the name of this evil dragon queen.
In fact, unlike many people's impression that Tiamat is widely worshiped by the five-color dragons throughout Faerûn, the real situation of Tiamat is that she has been almost completely driven out of the world several times.
Even now, strictly speaking, we have not been able to establish a solid connection in a real sense.
Apart from the Unther, Mulhorand and Chesenta regions, it is estimated that only the madman Sammaster and the Dragon Worshiping Church he founded worship the evil dragon god to a certain extent.
Because their brain circuits were not very normal, they were deceived by Tiamat's tricks, thinking that this was the prophesied god of dracolich, and even gave her a resounding name, "The Immortal Queen".<
/p>
Due to the belief and worship of these madmen, the Dragon God obtained the third incarnation of the color dragon in addition to the Dark Lady (in human form), the dracolich with multiple heads.
Considering her extensive influence in many different material planes, as well as her behavior of repeatedly jumping between hell lords and gods, it is difficult to really figure out what she wants to do.
For a while, people even speculated that Tiamat and Asmodeus should have reached some kind of unknown agreement in private, and might have become a member of the Great Devil.
This comes from the part of its teachings that preaches against the gods and drives the influence of the gods out of Faerûn.
Except for Cyric, a madman, only demons and demons would preach against all gods.
And she has too many titles and appearances, including Azhar who killed and merged with the dragon god system, Taksis, the powerful god in the world of Klein, and Tiamat in the next door world of Greyhawk.
Even Tchazzar, the dragon of the gods, and Entropy, the god of wasteland in the Quesenta area, were once completely controlled and possessed by Tiamat.
Although the latter two eventually regained their independence, Tchazzar lost his previous ambition to become a dragon god, and eventually ended up becoming the "Dragon of the Gods", and was forced to become Tiamat's chosen one and serve as his successor.
The gold medal fighter in the material plane.
In addition, there are two completely different theories about how Tiamat appeared in Faerûn.
Some say that she and her mortal enemy and brother Bahamut were both born from the war between the gods and the Primes in ancient times.
Erric Hutz, the most powerful Primeval, used a powerful battle ax to split the Nine-Faced Dragon God in half in a one-on-one duel.
As a result, half of the part that was inclined toward good became Bahamut, and the part that was inclined toward evil became Tiamat.
Since then, the brother and sister have always disliked each other and have been locked in an eternal battle.
However, since this record is also written by ordinary people, so everyone understands it, and the credibility is basically not too high.
After all, before the distant Thunder Age, it is not known whether there was any civilization on the planet Toril and whether there were any texts that could record the War of Dawn. Such detailed and outrageous records can basically be regarded as legends or myths.p>
On the contrary, the other version is more credible.
In the latter's well-documented description, Tiamat came to the continent of Faerûn with Unther and the Mulhorand pantheon.
As for the reason, of course, after the ancient Imasca Empire was hit by the plague, it opened interdimensional portals to capture slaves everywhere to replenish the population and labor force, causing the slaves to bring over the beliefs of the original world.
Among them is Tiamat.
But at the beginning, the majestic Dragon God only existed as a "scapegoat".
Whenever the god-king of Unther encounters setbacks or failures, he will blame Tiamat and accuse her of bringing disaster, destruction and death.
Over time, although Tiamat did not gain people's faith, she gained people's fear.
As we all know, fear is actually another kind of belief. The storm god Talos and the furious gods led by him draw strength from the fear of mortals and become a powerful force that cannot be ignored among the gods.
So in the end, Tiamat used the power of these fears to gain the power to send an avatar to Toril.
According to the religious legend of the locals in Unther, Tiamat has been at war with Marduk, the messenger of justice, for centuries.
The latter finally succeeded in defeating the former and completely destroyed his incarnation, but he paid a huge price and was permanently exiled.
Subsequently, Marduk's sect was quickly annihilated and never appeared again in the long river of history.
By the way, Marduk is actually an aspect of Bahamut in the Unser pantheon.
What does it mean to fall in love and kill each other, and what does it mean to have a bad relationship? Just look at these two people and you will know. One of the gods is not enough for them, and they have to go to other gods to change their vests and continue...
Gilga, the second-generation god-king of the Unser pantheon (the first-generation god-king Enlil voluntarily abdicated in favor of others and left the world of Toril) does not know what he is thinking.
Maybe it's to prove one's legitimacy, or maybe it's just to create an enemy to scare mortals, and ultimately achieve the goal of gaining more faith.
In short, he chose to target Tiamat, who had disappeared from the continent of Faerûn, and continued to promote the evil dragon god in various books and sacrificial activities as the biggest threat to the entire pantheon and even the country.
And this indirectly helped Tiamat, who was expelled from Toril, to successfully maintain a weak connection.
When the Unser pantheon began to weaken and shrink, and the god-king Gilga continued to degenerate and eventually became greedy, jealous, cruel, and arrogant, the situation finally changed.
To be precise, the people under Unser's rule began to grow more and more disgusted, hating the god-king who only knew how to continuously increase taxes and force himself to give up the food rations he relied on for survival.
As a result, they began to no longer believe in Gilgar, but instead prayed to Tiamat, the enemy Gilgar constantly preached.
At this time, the Tiamat Church, which had been hiding in the dark, also began to come out to teach the people at the bottom who were eager to resist how to establish a stable relationship of faith with the Dragon God.
It didn't take long before Tiamat once again gained the power to descend into an avatar on the continent of Faerûn.
What a coincidence, not long after she was successfully summoned by the believers, Io, the god above the gods, knocked the gods down to the mortal world.
The most shocking year of turmoil in the history of Toril has begun!
Gilgar, who thought he had the home field advantage, openly launched a divine battle against Tiamat, hoping to use this opportunity to eliminate the most threatening enemy once and for all.
Since Io had not yet modified the rules between gods and faith at that time, Gilga, who had moderate divine power, won the victory as expected.
He succeeded in killing Tiamat, and then fell into uncontrollable ecstasy.
In the eyes of this God King of Grace, with the death of Saint Tiamat, he can finally sit back and relax.
But what Gilga didn't know was that before her death, Tiamat split her divine power and divine essence into three parts and merged them into the three most powerful dragons in the area.
One of them is the famous "Dragon of Conferred Gods" and "Father of Quesen Tower" - Chasusa.
At that time, he was ambitious and wanted to become a dragon god, so he accepted the power and divinity from Tiamat without even thinking about it, and began to track two other colored dragons like himself.
Shortly after the Year of Turbulence ended, Tchazzar not only successfully found two other dragons, but also killed them and devoured each other's divine power and divinity, directly transforming into the form of Tiamat's dragon.
But before she could be happy for long, Tiamat, who had been dormant and observing for a while, took away control of her body and launched an ambush on Gilga, who had declined to a demigod.
Because at the end of the Turmoil, the god Io completely changed the rules of this world, and the power of all gods is directly proportional to their believers and influence.
This also means that Gilga, who has long lost the hearts of the people after practicing tyranny for a long time, does not have many true believers at all, and suddenly fell from medium divine power to a fragile demigod.
The life-and-death struggle between the two gods raged throughout Unser to the outer planes.
The final result was that Gilga's essence as a god was destroyed, while Tiamat lost an incarnation, and she was also reduced from a weak god to a demigod.
This is the price a god must pay to kill a god.
But as the saying goes, the mantis stalks the cicada but the oriole is behind.
Just when Tiamat returned to Unther with victory and was about to be crowned as the new god-king, rule this huge land and people, and gain faith to increase her strength, no surprise came to Bahamut and his followers, who were their mortal enemies.
He did something wrong.
This attack caused her to lose the precious opportunity to harvest faith and monopolize divine power.
When the new incarnation was completed a year later, Unther had been eroded by the Mulhorandian pantheon, and Tiamat could only barely pick up the scraps.
As for Tchazzar, who was devoured, he later gained independence and freedom for unknown reasons.
There is no doubt that compared to the first version of the story, which is completely fake at first glance and is obviously highly suspected of fabrication, the second story is not only well-documented, but also reflects the proposition from a certain aspect.
The close relationship between Yamat and the Unser pantheon.
So Zuo Si feels that the latter is closer to the truth.
But the problem is, this cannot explain that before the elves came to Toril, when the dragons ruled the world, they fought with each other individually or as clan units, and even developed some inexplicable religious fanaticism and desire.
Completely destroy the opponent.
You must know that at that time, the enemies Tiamat and Bahamut were already inciting their descendants, believers and followers to engage in genocide, and even triggered the famous "Dragonfall War".
Because of this, after the religious fanaticism subsided, many dragons came to the conclusion that these two dragon gods were not the patrons of their own race, and abandoned their belief in them.
This can be gleaned from the fact that both Dragon Gods have weak divine power and do not have many dragon believers at their disposal.
So what is the source of the birth of Tiamat and Bahamut?
Could it be that the first and least reliable record is the real one?
To be continued...