Ubtao

Ubtao was the patron deity of Chult. He was also known as The Father of the Dinosaurs, Creator of Chult, Founder of Mezro, and The Deceiver. He stayed distant from both mortals and other deities, and he seemed to be above the daily doings of the world and his followers. This might have been partly due to his origin as a primordial, and in fact, it was not fully known if he was a deity in the traditional sense. After Time of Troubles, Ubtao began to show interest in his followers.

"The world is a labyrinth, and the true followers of Ubtao know the pattern that represents their life. When they die, they must recreate that maze, spell out their past for me. To be a paladin of Ubtao, a bara of Mezro, you must know more. You must complete the maze long before you die, look ahead to the pattern that will be your life in the years and decades to come."

- Ubtao to Artus Cimber

Description
When Ubtao showed his form to mortals, he appeared in the shape of a powerful Tabaxi human male with dark brown skin, short cropped black hair, trimmed goatee, and distant look in his dusky eyes. The age of the avatar was hard to pinpoint as he appeared ageless. The color of his skin symbolized the bark brown fertile earth of his jungles.

Manifestations
The shape Ubtao took most often was a massive tyrannosaurus rex, more than twice the size of the biggest mortal dinosaur creature. Before the 14 century DR, Ubtao appears in Chult much more often in forms other than his massive dinosaur avatar. When Ubtao communicated with his followers via messages, they were always cryptic and open to interpretation. Some messages came from an ageless, calm, and emotionless dark-skinned Tabaxi human face, while that lack of emotion could be considered as an ill omen or a blessing. The fact that Ubtao did not talk when appearing as a manifestation made it even harder to interpret.

After the Time of Troubles, Ubtao took on manifesting as a thunderous roar rolling across the Chultan jungles. The roar sounded as if every dinosaur in Chult vociferated at the same time. Apart from the dinosaur form and a roar, Ubtao manifested himself through the copious number of jungle spirits found throughout the peninsula. And the Father of Dinosaurs acted through his children.

Some sages speculated that Ubtao was worshiped as Haaashastaak, the Master of all Lizardkind, in the southeastern Faerûn. Despite numerous similarities between the two deities, a few scholars believed that Haaashastaak was an aspect of Sebek, a minor Untheric crocodile god.

Personality
Ubtao's main personality trait was his endless patience and lack of emotions. He projected detachment and promoted wisdom. Unlike many of his peers, Ubtao showed little involvement and interest in the daily activities and lives of his followers. He showed the same detachment towards dealings of other gods.

Powers
The Father of the Dinosaurs could cast spells from any sphere or school of magic but greatly favored domains of animal, combat, divination, elemental, plant, protection, sun, thought, and time. and the schools of abjuration, Evocation, as well as divination.

In his dinosaur form, Ubtao was the biggest and strongest creature found on the entire Chultan Peninsula. His sheer brutal dinosaur strength was enhanced by the deity's keen tactical mind. The dinosaur form's claws were strong enough to shred a humanoid to a bloody pulp in moments. However, the t-rex's bite was even more dangerous. Ubtao's dinosaur shape could swallow a large creature or anyone smaller, which was an instant and painful death to the engulfed. His tail was a deadly blunt force that could shatter walls, and when the tail struck a creature, they were likely to become stunned, unable to function for between four and fourteen minutes. All creatures who gazed into Ubtao's eyes became entangled by the jungle's vegetation unless they were lucky enough to avoid restraint. Additionally, all dinosaurs within a mile from the god's avatar were fully under his control, willingly obeying Ubtao's telepathic commands.

He was unaffected by spells from the animal, charm, and plant sphered as well as charm and conjuration schools of magic.

Divine Realm
Ubtao's main divine realms bore the name of the Labyrinth of Life, a massive labyrinthine jungle in the Outlands of the Outer Planes. He also created a realm for his favorite children – dinosaurs. The realm of the Forbidden Plateau was located in the Beastlands. Ubtao could often be found in the Plateau when he needed seclusion from his human petitioners. In that domain, Ubtao took on a shape of a free-roaming tyrannosaurus rex.

Relationships
Ubtao was considered to be the leader of the Chultan pantheon, despite the fact that he was the only power within it. Other being worshiped by the Chultans: numerous spirits of nature, minor gods, and the essence of the Chultan jungle – all were various aspects of Ubtao. Due to this, he only had power in and around the jungles of Chult. Those who inhabited Chult and worshiped Ubtao considered dinosaurs to be "Ubtao's Children." The dinosaurs, however, were not intelligent enough to worship and venerate their creator.

Because of Ubtao's distance from the other deities, he had few allies: Thard Harr, the Lord of the Jungle Deeps and the protector of wild dwarves, and Corellon Larethian of the elven pantheon.

His biggest foe and antithesis was Eshowdow, born from Ubtao himself. Due to the nature of Eshowdow, Ubtao was incapable of perceiving the Shadow Giant and could do very little to protect his domain and devotees against the dark antithesis. He had only one other enemy: Sseth, the Great Snake, a deity of yuan-ti and an aspect of Set. Together with Thard Harr, Ubtao opposed the snake god and his yuan-ti, who sought to enslave both people of Chult, the Tabaxi, and the wild dwarves.

With the imprisonment of Dendar underneath the Peaks of Flame, Ubtao forged an ancient pact with the deities of Faerûn. He was granted the exclusive domain over human inhabitants of the Chultan Peninsula, and as long as he guarded Dendar's prison, members of the Faerûnian pantheon were to refrain from expanding their influence in that part of the world.

Worshipers
The Church of Ubtao was split among three wholly independent sects that venerated three aspects of Ubtao: the jungle itself, spirit worship, and the worship of the deity himself. All were based in the jungles of Chult among the various clans of the Tabaxi humans.

Being technically a monotheistic society of sorts, Chultan humans and their dominant ethnicity – the Tabaxi, have worshiped Ubtao since the early days of the deity's existence. The church consists of Ubtao's specialty priests called the Mazewalkers, jungle druids, and Tabaxi shamans. The Ubtaoan faith was tolerant of other religions. The worshipers of the Creator of Chult did not attempt to convert others nor stopped anyone from venerating other deities.

As Children of Ubtao, Chultan warm-blooded dinosaurs were venerated by the worshipers of the god. The creatures were considered to be harbingers of fate that carried the will of Ubtao: if a Tabaxi hunter successfully hunted and killed a number of dinosaurs, Ubtaoans believed it signified the hunter's special place in Ubtao's heart, while if a dinosaur killed a hunter, they believed it was punishment for vexing the natural order of the jungle.

Among other creatures that served Ubtao were couatls.

Rituals
The clergy of Ubtao prayed for spells and miracles at noon, when the deity was in his zenith over the jungle. There were scores of ceremonies and holy days, most particularly to dead ancestors. Many of these rituals were necessary before performing certain activities, such as hunting special animals or burials. The small, moveable stone altars which were used for these ceremonies were treated just like any other rock in the jungle when they were not otherwise in use.

Chultan followers of Ubtao used gravestones and grave markers to bury their dead. When such a thing was unavailable, following a death deep in the jungles, for example, a big flat surface, such as a large flat leaf, was used for a similar purpose. As with the tombstones, the people closest to the dead would write the perished soul's name upon the surface, and the others each would add a single word of praise. These ritual inscriptions were intended to serve as the deceased's introduction to Ubtao when the god arrived to claim the person's soul.

Places of Worship
The Temple of Ubtao, also referred to as the Maze of Life, at the heart of Mezro was the only major Ubtaoan place of worship. It accommodated the worship of all three Ubtaoan sects.

History


Ubtao molded and shaped the land of Chult in primordial times. However, this act of creation was the reason for the god's distance from his land and his worshipers. To rectify that, Ubtao splintered his being into aspects – various spirits of nature and land. The biggest part of his being became the essence of Chult's jungle, this fracturing of his divine power left him little time to affect and interact with his mortal worshipers directly.

The creation of Chult's jungles and the splintering of Ubtao's being had one unexpected result. The dark part of Ubtao's essence, a primeval antithesis, the shadow entity Eshowdow was born. Eshowdow, the Shadow Giant, or "Shadow of Ubtao," became its own separate divine being that strove to annul and repeal anything Ubtao created or accomplished.

During the Shadow Epoch of the Blue Age, when Toril was still a new world, the gods and the primordials fought for dominance. This Age came to a sudden stop when the primordial known as the Dendar, the Night Serpent, took the sun out of the sky. Eventually, the Elder Gods won the fight when the primordials were betrayed by one of their own: Ubtao the Deceiver.

Circa the, Ubtao called on an army of couatls who started worshipping him as their deity. The creatures flew across the ocean from the far-way continent of Katashaka and settled on the Chultan Peninsula. Those couatls who stayed behind started spreading the Ubtaoan fate in Katashaka circa the. In the, the Eshowe, the Tabaxi, and the Thinguth human tribes tribes followed the religious voice of the Ubtaoan couatls and his plumed servant named Ecatzin, and traveled from the far continent to the Chultan Peninsula.

Ubtao made an agreement with the rest of the Faerûnian pantheon to guard the Peaks of Flame for the day when Dendar the Night Serpent would enter Toril and end the world. "She who gorges herself on all the unremembered nightmares in the Realms," Dendar, was said to be trapped behind a gargantuan iron door that sealed the Realm of the Dead and the serpent primordial away from Toril. As a reward for this service, the other deities granted him sole control over Chult and agreed to leave his lands alone and never to spread their own religions there.

Followers of Ubtao believed that the deity himself shaped them into existence, as well as animals of the Chultan jungles, and that he raised the great city of Mezro up from the ground with his own two hands for the Tabaxi people in the. The legends claimed that Ubtao lived within the city among his creations but was driven away by the worshipers' constant complaints, requests, and demands. Since then, Ubtao took on a detached attitude towards his worshipers, allowing them to shape their own lives and the world around them.

During the Time of Troubles in the, Ubtao took on a form of a tyrannosaurus who hunted in the jungles of Chult. During the exile, avatars of Ubtao and Sseth the Great Snake clashed in a fierce battle in the eastern part of the jungles. Once the Godswar was over, Ubtao returned to the planes, but he became more involved in the dealings within his church and expanded the number of clergy and his worshipers.

As of 1372 DR, Shar had recently absorbed Eshowdow, and it was believed this activity might be the beginning of the end for the agreement between Ubtao and the rest of the deities.

Sometime before 1400 DR, Ubtao abandoned Chult, allegedly because he had grown angry over his worshipers' infighting and on their overreliance on his assistance. Thereafter, his influence ceased to be felt among his Chultan followers, and yet, despite the spiritual void left by Ubtao's absence, the many warring tribes among the Chultans learned to unite as a people and set aside their differences. With Ubtao gone, many Chultans turned aside to other gods, including those introduced by foreign missionaries such as Waukeen, Gond, Savras, Sune, and Tymora. Without Ubtao, nine trickster gods – jungle spirits resurfaced in Chult. However, like countless other spirits of the jungle, the trickster gods were likely splinters of the Creator of Chult himself.

Appearances

 * Adventures
 * Tomb of Annihilation &bull; The Tortle Package
 * Novels
 * The Ring of Winter
 * Master of Chains &bull; Viper's Kiss &bull; Vanity's Brood
 * Video Games
 * Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir &bull; Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition &bull; Neverwinter
 * Video Games
 * Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir &bull; Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition &bull; Neverwinter
 * Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir &bull; Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition &bull; Neverwinter