The Great Old Ones, also called the Old Gods, were a diverse group of ancient and powerful beings who entered the world of Eamon around 400 millennia ago and inhabited it until the Great Battle of Darkness. Though their motivations were alien and inscrutable, mortals perceived the gods as indifferent to other life forms (at best) and usually profoundly cruel, selfish, or malevolent.

Though the Great Old Ones exerted their influence over Eamon and its living things, they themselves were influenced by the Cycle, a deep cosmic rhythm repeating every 23 centuries that pushed the gods into long periods of torpor punctuated by peaks of wakefulness and activity. During these peaks the gods' wakeful energy would strengthen and hyper-stimulate the evil and undead beings of the world, driving them into wild frenzies of destruction. These catastrophes, called Ruins, repeatedly decimated Eamon's population and held back the development of advanced civilizations for millennia.

The first threat to the Great Old Ones' primacy came in 2704 BA when the Talus Assembly succeeded in manipulating the Cycle's energies to extend the gods' slumber and circumvent the Eighth Ruin. The vengeful Xor'urr, mightiest of the deities, discovered its own means of overcoming the Cycle's influence and in their dream-halls the gods planned for the Ninth Ruin to be the start of their endless waking reign. When they emerged, however, they faced the pantheon of the sun-god Alaxar and after a terrible battle were defeated.

Pantheon

The following beings are generally counted among the Great Old Ones:

  • Y'Golonac the Defiler, god of perversion, depravity, and pain

  • The T'Zzanti, sculptors of illusion and deformers of reality

  • Xor'urr, god of chaos, decay, and death, known variously as the Rotting Smoke, the Great Shadow, etc.

  • Gorlith the Shatterer, god of stone and hammers

Other, lesser members about whom little is known include Chauggar, Mordigganth, Ghul'hulluth, and Yithoxa.