Nangnang (pronounced: /ˈnɑːŋnɑːŋ/ NANG-nang) was one of the nine trickster gods of Omu in Chult.[1] She was a primal spirit[2] that took the form of a grung.[3] Among some of her followers, she had once been venerated as a goddess of death.[4]
Personality[]
Nangnang was greedy, selfish, and cruel,[3] yet also skittish and crafty.[2][6] She refused to share with others.[3]
Abilities[]
She was only weakly able to grant miracles to her clerics, forcing her to cull her clergy and demand sacrifices to grant her power.[2]
Her spirit could inhabit and share the body of another individual, allowing her to speak to her host and imparting parts of her personality and power to them. The host gained the ability to climb across vertical and even upside-down surfaces with ease.[3] She could also bolster their vitality and lend psychic force to their attacks.[7]
Relationships[]
Among her fellow trickster gods, Nangnang was enemies with Shagambi.[3] Omuan worshipers of these two gods devised a story to explain this animosity: the goodly Shagambi once crafted a holy spear to pierce and relieve the evil in the hearts of the Omuans, but Nangnang stole this spear and stopped her.[2][8]
She hated Acererak for killing and imprisoning her, and was eager to take revenge against him.[8][7]
Worshipers[]
In Omu[]
Nangnang's Omuan followers were instructed to pursue their own selfish ends, but at the same time to bring her riches and gifts[5] and to help her establish dominance over her rivals.[2] They constructed a shrine in her honor on the eastside of the city, just northeast of the Royal Palace.[9] At this shrine, aspiring priests competed to earn her favor by demonstrating a willingness to give her gifts (in the form of illusory treasures[5]). Failure to impress could mean being sacrificed to provide her with the power necessary to grant miracles to her faithful.[2]
Among the Grungs[]
The grung shrine to Nangnang in Dungrunglung.
Nangnang was regarded as a god by some grungs across Chult.[10][11] This aspect was believed to be more frog-like in appearance and more loving and reassuring in mannerism. She was venerated with the construction of shrines, the conducting of great rituals, and the killing of live sacrifices.[10]
As a Death Goddess[]
Somewhere in a clearing along the River Tiryki, a chamber with walls lined with skulls was constructed belowground and dedicated to the veneration of a grim and heavily altered aspect of Nangnang. This version of her was a goddess of cruelty and death, and was depicted with a distended belly and a skull for a head. Followers at this site crafted idols of her from onyx inset with rubies,[4] and made sacrifices of blood, water, hair, and flesh.[12]
History[]
Nangnang and the other eight trickster spirits came to be worshiped in Omu sometime in the 13th century DR, and for nine decades, she was a cruel and divisive deity.[2]
With the arrival of Acererak in Omu in the 14th century DR, Nangnang and her fellow trickster gods were killed and their spirits were entombed within Acererak's Tomb of the Nine Gods. Her spirit was bound into a pearl of power shaped like a petrified grung egg, and she could possess any creature that touched this object. The pearl was placed in an urn alongside Nangnang's physical bones, which was in turn placed inside a sarcophagus on the second level of the Tomb that was guarded by an invisible gray slaad.[13]
In the late 15th century DR, she was still worshiped by grungs across Chult, including in the village of Dungrunglung[10] and in a colony that dwelt on the roof of her shrine in Omu.[11] Concurrent with the events of the Death Curse, Dungrunglung's king—Groak—aspired to summon Nangnang via a great ritual, in which he hoped to wed her. He commanded his followers to erect a 60‑foot-tall (18‑meter) statue of her out of painted mudbrick, and made it clear that heads would roll if the ritual failed. Suspecting that it could not succeed, the priest Krr'ook hatched a plan to fool the king with the use of Nolzur's marvelous pigments.[10]
Around the same time, a party of Lords' Alliance members led by Arreni Goldbirth discovered the chamber dedicated to Nangnang's death god aspect,[4] and soon fell prey to its undead occupants, transforming into wights.[12]
Appendix[]
Appearances[]
References[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Christopher Perkins, Will Doyle, Steve Winter (September 19, 2017). Tomb of Annihilation. Edited by Michele Carter, Scott Fitzgerald Gray. (Wizards of the Coast), p. 256. ISBN 978-0-7869-6610-3.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 Christopher Perkins, Will Doyle, Steve Winter (September 19, 2017). Tomb of Annihilation. Edited by Michele Carter, Scott Fitzgerald Gray. (Wizards of the Coast), p. 92. ISBN 978-0-7869-6610-3.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 Christopher Perkins, Will Doyle, Steve Winter (September 19, 2017). Tomb of Annihilation. Edited by Michele Carter, Scott Fitzgerald Gray. (Wizards of the Coast), p. 129. ISBN 978-0-7869-6610-3.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Monica Valentinelli, Shawn Merwin (2017). Over the Edge (DDAL07-02) (PDF). D&D Adventurers League: Tomb of Annihilation (Wizards of the Coast), p. 6.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Christopher Perkins, Will Doyle, Steve Winter (September 19, 2017). Tomb of Annihilation. Edited by Michele Carter, Scott Fitzgerald Gray. (Wizards of the Coast), p. 109. ISBN 978-0-7869-6610-3.
- ↑ Christopher Perkins, Will Doyle, Steve Winter (September 19, 2017). Tomb of Annihilation. Edited by Michele Carter, Scott Fitzgerald Gray. (Wizards of the Coast), p. 183. ISBN 978-0-7869-6610-3.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Christopher Perkins, Will Doyle, Steve Winter (September 19, 2017). Tomb of Annihilation. Edited by Michele Carter, Scott Fitzgerald Gray. (Wizards of the Coast), p. 186. ISBN 978-0-7869-6610-3.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 Christopher Perkins, Will Doyle, Steve Winter (September 19, 2017). Tomb of Annihilation. Edited by Michele Carter, Scott Fitzgerald Gray. (Wizards of the Coast), p. 130. ISBN 978-0-7869-6610-3.
- ↑ Christopher Perkins, Will Doyle, Steve Winter (September 19, 2017). Tomb of Annihilation. Edited by Michele Carter, Scott Fitzgerald Gray. (Wizards of the Coast), p. 98. ISBN 978-0-7869-6610-3.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 Christopher Perkins, Will Doyle, Steve Winter (September 19, 2017). Tomb of Annihilation. Edited by Michele Carter, Scott Fitzgerald Gray. (Wizards of the Coast), pp. 49–51. ISBN 978-0-7869-6610-3.
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 Christopher Perkins, Will Doyle, Steve Winter (September 19, 2017). Tomb of Annihilation. Edited by Michele Carter, Scott Fitzgerald Gray. (Wizards of the Coast), p. 93. ISBN 978-0-7869-6610-3.
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 Monica Valentinelli, Shawn Merwin (2017). Over the Edge (DDAL07-02) (PDF). D&D Adventurers League: Tomb of Annihilation (Wizards of the Coast), p. 8.
- ↑ Christopher Perkins, Will Doyle, Steve Winter (September 19, 2017). Tomb of Annihilation. Edited by Michele Carter, Scott Fitzgerald Gray. (Wizards of the Coast), p. 143. ISBN 978-0-7869-6610-3.