Greymoria spiritually affiliated creatures
This older article was extensively re-written and reformatted for the May 2025 Rewrite Challenge
Greymoria is easily the most spiteful and vengeance-minded of all the Nine. Greymoria believes she deserves more love and worship from mortalkind and she will not hesitate to punish them.
Greymoria has a few Faustian spirits that can empower warlocks. This is a type of spirits that is almost exclusive to Greymoria. She has somewhat more benign minions that encourage the study of wizardry or mentor young sorcerers but Greymoria prefers to rely on her mortal followers to do that when possible.
First Age legacies of Greymoria that survived into the Third Age include but are certainly not limited to chimera and kobolds. Many of among the Children claim that Greymoria created the ocumati race but the ocumati deny this strenuously insisting that they birthed themselves emerging from Turoch's empty eye sockets
Pretty much every other creature that Greymoria created in the First Age has turned their back on her. Most egregiously the chimeras quickly turned from fighting against dragons to fighting for dragons. The dragon princes bought off most chimeras with the promise of food. Even if they turn from Greymoria, most of Greymoria's monstrous Children are still a thorn in the side of the civilized races, so it’s not a total loss.
While the Laershin kobolds have largely shunned Greymoria entirely and the Tiamalan kobolds have embraced worshiping all of the Nine equally , the Gilgren kobolds remain @Greymoria's oldest unbroken line of generational worshipers dating all the way back to the First Age.
Greymoria's creations from the Second Age include but are not limited to camazotz and Arachpliza . While dabeshi were and are considered primarily a Maylar creation, dabeshi were created with Greymoria's cooperation.
The arachpliza or spider people, remain Greymoria's staunchest worshipers dating back to the Second Age. There may be others, but the arachpliza are probably Greymoria's favorites. They like poison, magic, and harassing the human and demi-human races.
Modern camazotz are not especially pious, but they tend to live out Greymoria's values indirectly being creatures motivated by vengeance and spite. When camazotz do demonstrate piety, they give Greymoria more acknowledgement than the rest of the Nine, so they aren't a complete disappointment.
Tengku are widely speculated to be a Greymoria creation from early in the the Second Age, but if this is the case, the tengku have completely severed their theological ties to the Dark Mother millennia ago.
The cruorans are all too happy to play along and pretend to be vampires, so their enemies are completely taken off guard by demonstrating complete immunity to all the traditional banes of vampires.
Some among the Children claim that Greymoria helped fashion he first orcs, but most orcs deny this and relatively few hold Greymoria in much esteem. Most orcs believe they were created by Nami and Maylar working together, or according to some orcish legends, orcs were created by accident, the godly equivalent of a "oops" baby.
by Zeta Gardner
Greymoria's tools of vengeance are many and varied, but she is most famous for using various creatures to act as as her proxy agents of punishment. Since Greymoria is often called "The Dark Mother" or the "Mother of all Monsters", her minions are often called the "Children of Greymoria". Her priests and priestesses even call themselves the Children though this is metaphorical. This article covers Greymoria's children in a more literal sense.
Greymoria Spirits
Greymoria is roughly in the middle of the pack when it comes to spirits. She uses fewer spirits minions minions than Korus, Nami, and Maylar and more spirit minions than Hallisan, Phidas , and Khemra.
Greymoria's spirits are dangerous but they are usually indirect. They are often stealthy and/or wield silver tongues. A lot of them are the subject of local tales to frighten children. “Don’t go into the woods alone or the Crescent Hill Hag may take you.” The Shadow Creeper for instance, is a roving spirit that specializes in terrorizing gnomelings, but leaves non-gnomish children alone. Most Greymoria spirits are not that discriminating.
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The Chain Beasts are a different type of Punishment spirit. They mostly act as warden in Greymoria's version of Hell and only visit the material plane for purposes of intimidation making thing also sort of a heavy-handed Messenger Spirit. They will sometimes bring tortured souls to talk to people in the mortal plane as sort of a "Scared Straight" program.
Greymoria Creatures
In the First Age, Greymoria was furious that dragons didn’t love her as much as she deserved and she created numerous monstrous races to punish them. Some of these races were driven to extinction by the dragons themselves. Some of these races were driven to the brink of extinction by dragons and then the First Unmaking or Second Unmaking finished them off.comissioned art of Zirvid the Chimera by Harper James
-Eknok, tengku merchantTengku #5 by Zeta GardnerMany of the milk drinking mortals like to claim that we tengku are creations of Greymoria. This is usually a thinly veiled excuse for anti-tengku bigotry, or if you are talking about the Children, a thinly veiled attempt to try to recruit us. Milk drinkers will claim that since Greymoria spirits common fighting spirits take the forms of ravens, and that we tengku with the noble raven, this proves it. I think that reasoning amounts to little more than a pile of camel dung, but it really doesn't matter. We tengku don't focus overly much on the past. The tengku's ancient origins are not important, but our future is very important.
There are a fair few younger races created by Greymoria hiding in various dark places. In a way, they are especially dangerous because they are unknown. The strengths and weakness of Greymoria's older monstrous creations are well documented by mages and monster hunters, but not so the younger the races. In general, Greymoria's youngest monstrous Children rely on trickery and stealth more than brute force which makes it even harder for scholars to chronicle their abilities. Thecruorans remain undocumented because the few times they are witnessed, they are misidentified as vampires.
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Undead
Undead in general are said to be the spiritual creations of Greymoria, but are not often the literal creations of Greymoria. Greymoria has created some powerful forms of undead in the distant past, but few of the newest forms of undead have the Dark Mother's divine fingerprints on them directly.
Most of the Nine, Greymoria included, believe it is better to teach a man to fish than to give a man a fish. Greymoria essentially is responsible for the first necromancers and even in the Third Age, many necromancers create undead in Greymoria's glorious name.
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Many necromancers are very non-religious and don't care for creating undead in Greymoria's name, but a disproportionally high number of necromancers that trailblaze new spells and new types of undead are staunch Greymoria worshipers. Even when this isn't the case, The Children will stillclaim that most/all necromantic innovations were initially conceived by one of their own. In most cases, the origin of necromantic rituals is so steeped in mystery and legend that it's impossible to verify either way.
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