Golden Maw

The **Golden Maw** is a villainous faction serving the Dragon of Earth, Laethys. They act out of pure greed, trying to claim all the wealth and riches of the world for themselves.

## Description:

The Golden Maw is an organization of bandits, Earth Planar creatures and mindless thralls that are overcome by pure greed.

> *The Black Spit Pirates, members of The Golden Maw, had been carrying plunder into a hidden vale reached through a cave in eastern Ember Isle. With this gold, the Maw were infusing the body of their leader, Caduceus, with the power of Greed, in an attempt to create a new body suitable for Laethys, the Dragon of Greed.*
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> *Like all Blood Storm gods, Laethys's true nature was capable of driving mortals to madness: She was literally made of pure gold and was capable of surviving being melted. Her true form wasn’t the winged dragon with two feet most mortals could see but a one armed wingless, tailless and legless dragon merged with the hoard that served as her lair. Only in this form could she be slain. (And she was)*
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> *The Gold Dragon’s flesh flowed like molten metal, and diamonds were her eyes. The riches of worlds fell through her clutches, and she never had enough while anyone else had anything at all. Laethys would feast atop a pile of famished wretches. All would adore her alone, and she would never give them quite enough.*
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> *Laethys would never let Regulos destroy the world, for how could she possess that which does not exist? She hated Crucia for spreading passionless devotion where there should have been ravening lust. But she would work with nearly anyone who offered enough treasure, if only to steal the source of their wealth and watch her former ally grovel in the dirt.*
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> *Spoiled and fickle, Laethys discarded her followers as quickly as she warmed to them. Who knows how many back-alley beggars were once fat merchants who forgot the proper sacrifice to Laethys: pretty youths, their eyes cut out and replaced with rubies.*
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## Excerpts:

A tale about the Ogres, creatures of the Plane of Earth:

> *Once, in another world, there was a little kingdom by the sea. It was a poor little kingdom, but happy—the rivers rushing to the sea made the fields fertile, and the bay was thick with fish. Its people, who called themselves Ogres, were strong from hard work and hale from good food. But the Ogres looked with envy upon their neighbors, who did not work quite so hard because their mountains hid glittering riches.*
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> *Time passed, and the Ogres wanted more.*
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> *They built a port in the bay to make merchants welcome. Soon, their market rang with tongues and coin from every corner of the world. The Ogres lived in pretty houses and their kings in a palace of alabaster. The Ogres became fat from feasting, with thick, rough skin to better grasp at coins. But in other lands the palaces were golden, and the houses were grand.*
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> *Time passed, and the Ogres wanted more.*
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> *They sent agents to the other kingdoms, to poison markets and ruin crops. They grew bigger and stronger, and marched into other lands to capture slaves for the block. Their capital sprawled across the sludgy rivers, and the fish died in the poisoned bay.*
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> *At last, all the wealth of the world was theirs, and all the other kingdoms lived in filth and squalor. But from their palace of gold and white stone, the bloated Ogre kings looked down upon their people, and saw coins slip through their fat, jeweled fingers. Coins and jewels that could and should be kept in the palace.*
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> *Time passed, and they wanted more.*
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> *The last of those kings knelt his mammoth frame in a room that was wall-to-wall diamond, all the riches of his picked-clean world hoarded in his palace. Since his grandfather had seized all the wealth from the citizens, the palace stood like a golden, bejeweled mistake amid stinking, starving squalor.*
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> *He chanted, reading from a child-skin book, and called out to a great spirit of wealth and excess, to come from beyond the stars and make his kingdom rich and beautiful, and his people hungry and powerful forever.*
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> *He prayed and the spirit came, along with her brothers and sisters. They tore that world to shreds between them, as they did all others where they had visited. But before the lifeless rock crumbled, the great golden goddess of wealth plucked the Ogre king’s diamond palace and squeezed it in her fist, fusing it into a great gem of every hue that she wore around her neck. The Ogres, grown great and fat and greedy, she took into the Plane of Earth, to set loose upon her victims in a hungry horde.*
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> *“But how did you get all the wealth of a whole world to concentrate in a single place?” asked Crucia in envy as the Blood Storm hurtled between the stars.*
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> *“Pressure. And time,” Laethys said, and smiled, mostly at the envy, and dreamed of unleashing her mighty new Ogres upon the unplucked wealth of a thousand worlds to come.*
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1. ↑ Telara Tales