XAMMUX (Patreon)

XAMMUX

Knowledge, Great and Terrible

Well met again!

I’d like to talk about a god this time.

An obscure god, worshipped in the Realms only by a few hundred people.

Yes, a cult.

A god whose worship was brought into the Realms by a handful of priests fleeing persecution in another world: Oerth, the world of Greyhawk. A god of knowledge. And an “it,” not a “he” or a “she.” Its clergy hoard knowledge, the more obscure, forbidden, and powerful the better, so they knew a lot about rare and dangerous magic. One of the things they’d learned about was gates, or portals if you will, that link worlds. So when they needed one, they knew where to find one—and they fled through it into the Realms, and brought veneration of Xammux, or THE Xammux, or “The Many,” with them.

And these cultists, or their descendants and recruits, still lurk in the shadows today across the Realms circa 1500 DR, murmuring prayers for guidance to Xammux in upper rooms in such cities as Luskan, Neverwinter, Waterdeep, Athkatla, Zazesspur, Westgate, Selgaunt, and Saerloon, and hidden temples in remote wilderland locations, such as the caverns in the High Forest seen in the excellent novel LESSER EVILS by Erin M. Evans. In return for their prayers,  the god sends them dream-visions when they slumber, that they use as guidance to seek out hidden, obscure, and forbidden knowledge, to gain power.

So why should we care? About Xammux in particular, I mean, and right now. After all, in the Realms, ALL folk believe in ALL the gods, and worship them as their lives move them to, so those who go sailing worship the sea goddess Umberlee, and Shaundakul the deity responsible for travel, voyages, and navigation; and farmers venerate Chauntea the Earthmother of agriculture but also give offerings to ward off the wrath of Talos the Lord of Storms, and so on. MOST gods send dream-visions to their followers, or at least their clergy. So what makes Xammux so special?

Well, Xammux has an ultimate purpose for his followers, unrevealed to anyone but his most senior clergy until very recently. However, Elminster and other Chosen of Mystra and Azuth, and  the senior clergy of Oghma (the god of knowledge known to most mortals in the Realms) have noticed hints and drawn conclusions from them, that tell them Xammux intends to remake the world into a very different place, ruled by Xammux with its senior clergy his main enforcers of its will upon the world. So ultimately, the whole world will have to pay attention to Xammux, and be ruled by Xammux or perish.

However, clergy of MANY other gods will tell you that the deity they venerate above all tells them of a future in which THEIR god will be THE god ruling all, and the world will bow to them: Lolth, or Bane, or Cyric, or Shar…and the list goes on and on.

However, there’s another and more pressing reason to know all about Xammux. And that is, what’s being done in accordance with the Guidance of Xammux RIGHT NOW.

And that wo uld be…well, lots of powerful individuals in the Realms want to live forever. There are two traditional roads to such an existence: lichdom or becoming another sort of undead, like a vampire, or becoming a divine servant of some sort (beholden to a deity as a Chosen or servitor, or even a cursed “cannot rest until this task is done” being). Both of these means have drawbacks, limitations to one’s power and freedom.

But what if there was another way? Knowledge of a process one could follow that didn’t involve lichdom? Xammux offers that.

And as a result, some powerful individuals in the Realms who aren’t yet liches or dracoliches are now VERY interested in The Xammux and its guidance, and are sponsoring its priests or fraternizing with them in various ways, trying to get at this knowledge for themselves.

It all stems from the murder trial of Annovea Yeltur in Mirtul of 1498 DR. She’s a woman accused of dissecting several citizens, beginning her work in every case while they were still alive and in some cases kicking, on her kitchen table in her modest North Ward home in Waterdeep.

She didn’t deny doing so, but said that what she did on that table was “needful,” as The Xammux wanted it done to “enlighten” her on her own walk on the Road To Forever.

Yeltur claimed to be a priest of Xammux who was “rightfully” following the direct divine commands of her deity, “The One True Many.”  When questioned about this Road to Forever, she at first refused to say anything at all, then requested she be allowed to pray to Xammux followed by a sleep, to receive guidance in her dreams from the deity. This request was, with some reluctance, granted. When Yeltur awakened, she revealed the bare bones of a long and complex process to achieve immortality that did not involve entering undeath, nor serving The Xammux or any other deity: the Road to Forever.

The ravings of a lunatic, or someone desperate not to be put to death for at least four barefaced murders?

Perhaps, but once the word was out, some powerful folk became VERY interested in this Road To Forever.

Among them are dozens of elderly and ailing nobles, city lords, and wealthy merchants now facing their decline and ultimate death, including: Dahlaglas Ilitul (NE hm R6) and Roevlarr Rosznar (CE hm R9), both “wastrel uncles” (unscrupulous old males who are not the patriarchs of their houses) in Waterdeep; the wealthy shipping fleet owner Avrath Stormchapel of Neverwinter; Ilivur Cammathserpent, Jesko Helmevven, and Unstraval Mirethcantur of Selgaunt, self-styled Lords and wealthy merchants in that city who are bitter rivals—and not of the top ranks in wealth or influence, and resenting their “second rank” status; and the ambitious, rising wizard Raedrim Halakauntar (NE hm W11) of the Zhentarim.

There are many others, but these I’ve listed have gone so far as to hire adventurers to go hunting Xammunite clergy, with orders to kidnap and interrogate them, and so learn the Road To Forever.

Such a tactic would backfire spectacularly when applied to priests of most deities, who would regard mistreatment of their clergy as an affront and react accordingly, but The Xammux is different.

Which means I’d better tell you more of what little is known about Xammux. A Neutral Evil deity of Forbidden Knowledge, Experimentation and Analytical Thinking, Exploration, and Indifference, granting its clerics spells from the domains of Darkness, Evil, and Knowledge. Its divine symbol is an outside calipers (of the symmetrical [both legs the same] sort known as a bow calipers or egg calipers, always depicted made of gleaming metal (steel), and with sharp, to-a-point bladed ends to both legs. Its favored weapon is the “long knife” or short sword, its colors are black with gleaming silver edges or hems, and it embodies cold indifference, and encourages its clergy to act accordingly. (This does not mean being rude or ignoring the commands of superiors.) 

Prayers to Xammux all customarily begin: “Be With Me, The Many,” because The Xammux is actually a divine Overmind caused by seven beings mentally and then physically melding to achieve an amorphous, flying immortal body and a shared, composite mind (or as Elminster put it wryly, “They went mad together.”)

Unlike the Masters of Absolute Accord, another combined being, The Xammux achieved divinity, because the seven beings were all telepathic and shapeshifters by nature, had achieved great mastery of magic, and two of them were draining the intellect and power (the “divine essence”) of a dying god when the others rushed to join in that feeding—and they unintentionally melded.

The result was something more glorious than they’d ever known, as separate entities, so none of them fought the deepening, subsuming result. Which seemed to them, as a shared mind (“Overmind”) to be a supreme state of existence.

From this came their indifference; they are above all other sentient creatures, who are lesser beings to be used, just as humans use fish.

So they are now The Many, but they are one. And glory in the power of knowing as much as they—or as they now think of themselves, “it”—can. “Knowing All” is the unattainable goal for it, but the pursuit of this goal has become its reason for being: the pursuit of ever-greater knowledge, no matter the means or cost. It is above morals or ethics, it makes its own way, 

The Xammux will use, and sacrifice, any and all other beings (including its own clergy) in experiments and to acquire the rare and dangerous to work and experiment with such things; it is immortal (or so it believes) and amoral—or rather, above all judgement.

(“In short,” Elminster commented, “insane.”)

Priests of The Xammux are few, secretive about their beliefs (being a priest is seldom their life-supporting profession), and due to their cold indifference, independent far more than cooperative. They tend to work together only to train novices into the priesthood, and to cooperate to get at knowledge they can’t get on their own (for instance, working together to break into a plunder a temple of Oghma or Deneir). The only saving grace of priests of Xammux   in the eyes of others is that knowledge itself is sacred: they will never destroy books, vandalize books by cutting out pages, or steal books for long; rather, they take away books only so long as they need to magically copy them, then return them—breaking into a temple or secured guild or royal library a second time to return the tomes, if need be.

The pursuit of ever-greater knowledge drives them, and they are encouraged to use what they learn to enrich themselves and better their lives, so they won’t hesitate to make use of secrets of making goods in mercantile pursuits, or use “insider secrets” for acquisition of city real estate or hidden treasure or stored wares.

Senior priests are collectively known as “the Coldest” within the clergy, though this is a descriptive term rather than a formal rank, and almost all of these forty to sixty (in the Realms, at least) individuals are pursuing their journeys along the Road To Forever: seeking immortality without divine service or undeath.

A personal shrine to Xammux may be as simple as the backside of a decorative inner-room statue made of polished steel, that rear side having a shallow table with a pair of calipers standing atop it, and a kneeling cushion in front of it. Temples will have larger, grander calipers hanging above a polished steel table altar.

This sanctified area may have steel-gray curtains around it, or even hangings of steel plates. But the building, room, or cavern that surrounds it is usually spartan, set off from squalor or the working grime of a warehouse or smithy only by a passage or antechamber clad in white stucco. If temples are located in urban areas and the priests establishing them want to keep their worship secret (they usually do), they often use their knowledge to equip passages and rooms leading to an inner temple with intricate locks, and clever traps—which has led to a popular belief, among Xammunite clergy and others, that ALL temples to The Xammux are guarded with numerous ingenious locks and traps.

So priests of The Xammux may hide their veneration, living very different public lives. They may just be gathering knowledge in a patient manner, or they may have begun to walk the Road To Forever, beginning their personal bids for immortality.

I asked Elminster if he could give me a few hints to share about what that Road is, and he gave me a long look and said, “It begins with mastering an understanding of the cycles of life in thy world, and then the natural flows of energy, and then understanding of thine own body and its processes and life cycle. Then ye proceed from there.”

From that, I gather that the Road is long. Too long to get farther in THIS video. So…farewell for now!