Zevgavizeb

Zevgavizeb

(Deity)

Titles

The Glutton in the Dark
Beast of Gluttondark
Sun-Devourer
God of the Troglodytes
Lord of Reptiles
Troglodyte God

Adjective

Zevgavizebian

Realm

Verdant Moon, Zevgessos, Gluttondark, Outer Rifts

Alignment

Chaotic evil

Areas of Concern

Caverns
Reptiles
Xulgaths

Worshipers

Evil lizardfolk, morlocks, saurians, xulgaths

Edicts

Slaughter the cowardly, subjugate the weak

Anathema

Favour stealth over shows of strength, eat cooked meat

Follower Alignments (1E)

LG	NG	CG
LN	N	CN
LE	NE	CE

Domains (1E)

Animal, Chaos, Evil, Strength

Subdomains (1E)

Demon, Ferocity, Resolve, Saurian✝

Follower Alignments (2E)

LG	NG	CG
LN	N	CN
LE	NE	CE

Domains (2E)

Destruction, might, nature, wyrmkin

Favored Weapon

Spiked gauntlet

Symbol

Twisted, taloned tentacle

Sacred Animal

Dinosaur

Sacred Colors

Black, green

Images of Zevgavizeb

Source: Book of the Damned, pg(s). 106–107 (1E)
Life's Long Shadows, pg(s). 62–67 (2E)

Zevgavizeb (pronounced zev-GAV-ah-zeb) is a bestial demon lord worshipped by the xulgaths of Golarion. His religious symbol is a set of twisted tentacles that end in vicious talons.

History

In the primordial days of the Great Beyond, the qlippoth lord Zevgavizeb ruled over a dark corner of the Outer Rifts. When the demons displaced the qlippoth from the upper layers of the Outer Rifts, a group of proteans known as the Wyrms of Paradox transformed a few qlippoth, including Zevgavizeb, into demons to weaken the Outer Rifts, distracting both races from the Maelstrom and allowing reality to spring from it.

Whether his qlippoth origin is the reason behind Zevgavizeb's seeming disinterest in the rest of the Great Beyond, like foul Dagon, is open to speculation.

Home

Zevgavizeb makes his home in Zevgessos, the central and largest of the planet-sized cavern worlds that make up the Abyssal realm of Gluttondark. He encourages the fiendish xulgaths and monsters who live in these caverns to wage war against each other, culling the weak and cowardly, and ensuring that his minions are as powerful as possible. Instead of a miniature star like other caverns, the core of Zevgavizeb's personal demesne is the Verdant Moon, where he spends most of his time sleeping, only awakening to feast on all life within defeated nations as the price of failure. If forcibly roused, Zevgavizeb is filled with such fury that he can rampage for years before returning to sleep.

Appearance

Zevgavizeb eating a spinosaurus.

Zevgavizeb is a truly hideous monster even by Abyssal standards, which is full of monsters: he is a dragon-sized beast, part reptile, part bat, part overgrown worm. Features often ascribed to Zevgavizeb include a massive, fang-filled maw, massive sharpened wings, and acidic tentacles lined with suckers and jawless mouths.

Zevgavizeb exudes a horrific stench that can permanently nauseate anyone who smells him. In his presence, his occult power is strong enough to tear enemies apart with but a thought. His screams can be heard across the entire Outer Rifts, whether he is sleeping or rampaging through Gluttondark.

Relationships

Zevgavizeb is friendly with fellow ex-qlippoth lords who became demons, like Jubilex and Yhidothrus, and sometimes considers them to be family. In contrast, he despises qlippoth lords who did not, especially Rovagug, whose followers often clash with his own; and Shiggarreb, who has been trying to convert the xulgaths of Deep Tolguth to her worship. He grudgingly respects Nocticula, Lamashtu, and Dahak, due to their shared areas of concern, but also views them as rivals whom he might have to usurp in his own bid for godhood.

Cult and worshippers

Zevgavizeb cares little about events in Gluttondark except to satiate his immense hunger when he emerges from his long hibernations, and shows no interest in the rest of the Great Beyond. As a result, he is perhaps the demon lord providing the least danger to Golarion, although the same cannot be said of the xulgaths who worship him and follow his tenets seriously, with little regard for their own safety: growing in number and strength, conquering, subjugating and sacrificing victims to him. They often breed with demons, particularly vavakias, to give birth to mutants who are believed to be the key to earning strength and Zevgavizeb's favour.

Because he cares little for his flock, the worship of Zevgavizeb is generally disorganized and only consists of superstitious traditions, crude rock drawings, and ancient tales told over cold meals in the dark. For the most part, Zevgavizeb's followers have few goals other than survival and violence, and are uninterested in studying texts, but prefer to bask in power through bloodshed, strength, stealth, and dominion.

Zevgavizeb's xulgath worshippers live in mortal terror of his hunger. They believe that when he awakens from his slumber, the weak are the first to be culled. When faced with difficulties, they often look to him for guidance, and Zevgavizeb only has one answer: thin the herd. Because of this brutal cycle of warfare and cannibalism, Zevgavizeb's worshippers tend to be culturally and technologically primitive.

Zevgavizeb demands his worshippers to consume at least one meal of warm-blooded flesh daily, so devout xulgaths usually keep a pen of such prey on hand. Another tradition involves dancing and screaming around an impaled sacrificial victim; for this purpose, xulgaths build their largest cooking fires alongside concentric rings of butchery tables located around a large, sharpened stalagmite.

Although Zevgavizeb is known primarily as the patron of the xulgath race, he is also worshipped by debased tribes of iruxis, morlocks (who worship him primarily as a god of caverns), gugs, and saurians. His saurian followers primarily wage war against other saurians, and their talent for training dinosaurs for war is unparalleled. The combination of internal power struggles and constant opposition from other saurians that view them as abhorrent degenerates has kept them isolated.

On the surface, Zevgavizeb also attracts a small following of evil druids who mix primal with divine magic to augment their bodies.

The greatest temples to Zevgavizeb are located in Orv and were built by the xulgaths during the height of their civilisation. The most terrifying among them is the Pyramid of Frozen Screams, located in a satellite cavern of Deep Tolguth, in a stone city at the heart of Orv. Unlike their surface-dwelling kin, the xulgaths living in this city can still recall their racial name.

References

Paizo published a major article on Zevgavizeb in Life's Long Shadows.