Tiamat and Sarissa

Tiamat (pronounced TEE-a-maht), was the lawful evil dragon goddess of greed, queen of evil dragons and, for a time, a reluctant servant of the greater gods Bane and later Asmodeus. Before entering the Faerûnian pantheon, she was a member of the Draconic pantheon, and for some time she was also a member of the Untheric pantheon.
Tiamat was also the eternal rival of her brother Bahamut, ruler of the good metallic dragons.
Appearance
Tiamat was a unique chromatic dragon, who had one head for each primary color of the most common species of chromatics (black, blue, green, red, white). Each head was able to operate entirely independently of each other and had the powers of a member of the respective race of dragonkind. Her body also had traits in common with a wyvern, including a long tail tipped with a poisonous stinger.
She also had three main avatars. The Dark Lady was a mulan female with long dark hair and completely black eyes. She always wore dark robes and frequently had a seductive smile on her face.
The Chromatic Dragon was a dragon with stubby legs and five heads that could be any combination of head belonging to a chromatic dragon, the skin of each merged into three stripes — blue-green, gray and purple before they merged again into brown skin that covered her tail. Sometimes, The Chromatic Dragon appeared in the form of Tchazzar when manifesting in Chessenta. The Undying Queen was a dracolich version of The Chromatic Dragon.
Tiamat had three manifestations in Avernus as well. One of which never left the gate to Dis. Her manifestation as Azharul was her other ‘public’ face used for when foes challenged her to combat, meanwhile her original body remained secluded in her lair.
Realm
When she was part of the Untheric pantheon, Tiamat had a realm in Zigguraxus. She also had a lair in Avernus, on the Nine Hells, known as Tiamat’s Lair.
After the dissolution of the Untheric pantheon, her realm was the Dragonspawn Pits of Azharul (a realm she obtained after having killed Azharul), that was located in the Dragon Eyrie lowest region, and she somehow connected it to her lair in Avernus.
She was reputed to have a realm in Heliopolis but in fact that was a hoax Tiamat used in hopes of confusing her enemies.
Personality
Tiamat was arrogant, greedy, hateful, spiteful and vain. She never forgave any kind of slight and was focused on obtaining more power and wealth. She disdained mortals, regarding them as mere disposable tools in her schemes. When needed, she was charming and fey, but her self-serving and reptilian personality betrayed her sooner or later.
After having experienced relative mortality as an archfiend, she became less reckless but also paranoid.
Tiamat enjoyed the company of male dragons, and had many great wyrms consorts of the chromatic varieties. Some sages speculated that, after so many years of enmity toward Bahamut, she also lusted for her brother.
She had an insatiable greed for treasures, but preferred that her followers brought it to her in the form of gifts instead of searching riches on her own.
Activities
Tiamat wanted to take control of the Realms, and even as she was thwarted again and again by her enemies, she didn’t give up. She had a particular interest in controlling Unther and Chessenta, and after the Spellplague, she also had interest in Murghôm, Tymanther, and the dragon empires of Returned Abeir. She didn’t like to leave her lair, however, and usually acted to advance her agenda by using members of her Church or her agents in the Cult of the Dragon.
Tiamat kept an active watch over evil dragonkind and always stirred them to further actions of avarice, pride and wickedness.
As of 1491 DR, however, her primary goal was to break free from the Nine Hells.
Powers
As a unique type of chromatic dragon with the traits of the five most common chromatic varieties, Tiamat was a foe to be reckoned with in battle. Along with all the standard powers and godly senses of a deity of her rank, those who saw her fight claimed that her heads were able to cooperate in battle, and that those heads had the ability to use the breath weapons and spell-like abilities common to their species. Although her sheer size prevented claw and kick attacks while on the ground, she was adept of its use while flying. She also had a stinger on her tail that injected a powerful venom on her foes, killing them in agonizing pain.
History
For ages, sages debated whether if Tiamat actually was a deity or not. Many believed she was the archetype of evil dragonkind, a devil or demon, the avatar of another deity or even a mortal dragon so powerful that chromatic dragons revered her as their queen and creator. Whatever she was, sages knew for certainly that she was powerful and worshiped by evil dragons as a goddess.
The fact is that Tiamat was actually a goddess. She came into existence alongside the rest of the draconic pantheon when the first dragons born. Her origins were highly conflicting, however, as there were many accounts about how she came into being.
In the more commonly accepted traditions, she was the daughter of Asgorath and sister of Bahamut and Null; while in the myths of the dragonborn of Abeir, Bahamut and Tiamat were born from the sundered corpse of Io (the name by which dragonborn knew Asgorath) instead, when Io was killed in the Dawn War.
Whatever the truth, her cult grew rapidly in the communities of chromatic dragons, especially among blue, green, and red dragons.
Once dragons as a race had established themselves during the Time of Dragons, the various religious factions of dragons began to battle one another over their different ideologies. Over time, religious fervor waned and draconic philosophers came to the conclusion that gods who allowed such behavior were not worthy of their worship. This started the draconic apathy toward their gods which lasted for thousands of years. However, the hatred that had developed between Tiamat, Bahamut and their followers was so intense that they refused to stop fighting. Their conflict came to be known as the Dragonfall War. During the first years of the war, Tiamat breed horrific and aberrant draconic creatures known as the Spawn of Tiamat, in an attempt to wipe out the followers of Bahamut.
The war waxed and waned in intensity, with the last era of intense fighting occurring between -2087 and -1071 DR. It was during this time that the Untheric empire began and with it, their pantheon became prominent. Tiamat became one of their deities by using a three-headed aspect, and her purpose in the Untheric pantheon was to balance the “order” represented by the other Untheric gods with her “chaos”. However, the plane of Zigguraxus increased the worst traits of her nature, making her something too powerful to be balanced by the other Untheric gods alone.
Now that both, Bahamut (who had become a member of the Untheric pantheon under the alias of Marduk) and Tiamat had humanoid worshipers, the Dragonfall War entered into a new period of intensity. The two siblings fought each other personally, with neither being able to gain the upper hand. Tiamat also worked against the other Untheric gods, with the result of the church of Enlil naming her the “Nemesis of the Gods” and blaming her for every problem the nation had.
Then, in -1071 DR, in a fight of the Orcgate Wars known as the Battle of the Gods, Tiamat saw an opportunity to slay Gilgeam while he was battling Ilneval. However, Marduk intercepted her and in the ensuing battle they killed each other. With both of their Untheric aspects dead, Tiamat and Bahamut were both stripped of their divine power. Tiamat was reduced to the status of an archfiend, her last few followers in Unther not enough even to allow her to remain as a lesser deity. However, as Gilgeam became a tyrannical God-King, the people of Unther never forgot the Nemesis of the Gods and they increasingly turned to her in secret for succor.
As an archfiend, she was given rulership of Avernus by Asmodeus. Her job was to prevent outcast devils on that layer of Hell from becoming a threat but performed so poorly that Asmodeus demoted her. Knowing her failure was not deliberate (by reading her thoughts), Asmodeus deigned to allow Tiamat to remain in Avernus unpunished, and even gave her a chance to regain her position if she impressed him in her new role as the guardian of the main gate to Dis.
This state of affairs lasted until 1346 DR when some Untherite cultists managed to summon another aspect of Tiamat to Toril. This aspect, known as the Dark Lady, formented rebellion all over Unther against the church of Gilgeam. Gilgeam was so hated that the membership in her own church swelled, and Tiamat was elevated to status of a demigoddess. She also took the opportunity to influence the lich Sammaster and his Cult of the Dragon into tracking down the Dracorage mythal.
During the Time of Troubles, after Ao banished the gods from the Upper planes, the Dark Lady was transformed back into her three-headed Untheric avatar, which was promptly slain by Gilgeam’s. Her divine essence though was somehow divided into three and came to inhabit Tchazzar, Gestaniius and Skuthosiin, three powerful chromatic dragons. Tchazzar devoured the other two, combining the three essences and ushering in the reappearance of Tiamat’s more powerful five-headed form, which she used to kill Gilgeam and therefore cause Ao to dissolve the Untheric pantheon completely.
Having attained the status of a lesser deity once again, she was able to manifest avatars once more, until one of them was destroyed in 1359 DR by King Gareth Dragonsbane who had been tasked by Bahamut to destroy the Wand of Orcus in her heartsblood. Having done so, the king of Damara also brought the worship of Bahamut back to his people, elevating Bahamut to the status of lesser deity and re-kindling the Dragonfall War once more. In response, Tiamat unleashed her aberrant dragonspawn and many of her followers to Vaasa to make trouble for the Church of Bahamut in Damara, while gaining some followers among disaffected members of the Cult of the Dragon in the process. This time, however, the Platinum Dragon countered them by reviving the ancient race known as the dragonborn of Bahamut.
She projected her wishes through the transformed primordial Entropy and in this guise, expanded her base of humanoid worshipers, and she joined the Faerûnian pantheon in 1371 DR after gaining the worship of a cult in Luthcheq. Tiamat’s body had been suffering from aches and pains that had been growing worse over time but her elevation back to deity-hood reinvigorated her. However the relative mortality she had experienced as an archfiend had made her less reckless and more paranoid. She misinformed her clergy that she no longer resided in Avernus, but instead maintained a grand divine realm in Heliopolis.
When members of the Twisted Rune discovered that her only asset in Heliopolis was a disturbed lichnee netherese archwizard, known as the Listener, and attempted to steal his magic, she manifested an aspect that defeated the intruders and forced them to kill the minor draconic deity Azharul in his home in Dragon Eyrie. With the Listener and the Twisted Rune’s forced help, Tiamat subsumed Azharul, taking his body and divine realm, completely unbeknownst to anyone but herself. All the while, she had already begun creating her real divine realm in the mountains of Avernus.
In 1373 DR, Sammaster managed to alter the Dracorage mythal to cause permanent insanity in all dragons, unless they allowed themselves to become dracoliches. In one of the worst dracorages ever seen on Toril, Tiamat resurrected Tchazzar, Gestaniius and Skuthosiin to act as emissaries which she would use to solidify and expand her power base in Chessenta, Mulhorand, Threskel and Unther.
After the destruction of Sammaster and the end of the High Magic that sustained the Dracorage mythal, she had to withstand an invasion Bahamut launched to her demesne in Dragon Eyrie.
The destruction of the Dracorage mythal also heralded the prophesied “Turning of the Great Cycle” which sparked off the religious fervor lacking in dragons since the beginning of the Dragonfall War, and Tiamat gained new draconic converts. In 1374 DR, lightning and meteor showers pounded Faerûn, and Bahamut and Tiamat instructed their respective followers to seek out such sites as they would each contain some form of dragon egg. Unfortunately for Bahamut, Tiamat’s followers were much more effective in retrieving the eggs than his own. Tiamat’s followers brought the eggs they collected to Unthalass in preparation for a new battle of the Dragonfall War.
Tiamat spent her new forces mostly in her efforts to conquer the east but that task proved more difficult than she envisioned. Only Tchazzar met with success, cementing his rule in Chessenta while Unther was conquered by Mulhorand. Her tentative ally Alasklerbanbastos also ruled Threskel and allowed Tiamat’s church to establish a stronghold there. A short-lived but powerful cult of humanoid fanatics was also lost to her in the Wyrmbones.
Her losses outweighed her gains however: during the Spellplague, Entropy ceased being a simple vessel for communication and spells, taking away her power base in Luthcheq. The dissolution of her subsumed realm in Dragon Eyrie during the Spellplague also saw the badly-wounded body of Azharul fall into the hands of Bane. Tymanchebar’s transplantation from Abeir to Toril saw some of the strongest bastions of her faith disappear overnight to be replaced with people who would become staunch enemies. In 1479, Tchazzar managed to conquer Threskel for himself but this just drew him into a war with the Abeiran nation of Tymanther in which he was killed.
With her most powerful servant dead, her forces beginning to crumble and Bahamut’s power increasing after he became the subservient god of Torm, the Dragonfall War stalled. In Banehold, Bane discovered that Azharul was merely a vessel for Tiamat and enslaved it. Furious but overwhelmed by other events, Tiamat did not immediately retaliate against her enemy, instead serving Bane loyally despite his harassment all the while, discovering his secrets and passing them on to Asmodeus.
Some time in the next decade, Tiamat saw an opportunity and took it, wrenching Azharul out of Banehold, along with much of Bane’s divine energy, which she used to mend Azharul’s broken body and increase her own divine power. Delighted, Asmodeus offered her the rulership of Avernus once more but to avoid disappointing Asmodeus again and to prevent a conflict with Bel, Tiamat refused, instead offering to be Asmodeus’ champion, devouring all who opposed him (and offering covert aid to Zariel to prevent Bel from becoming too powerful).
Agreements in the Hells are binding however, and Tiamat’s placed her under the direct compulsion of Bel. Her brief attempt at resistance allowed her to see into Bel’s mind and the directions Asmodeus had given him to imprison her in her divine realm and prevent her from becoming ambitious. Betrayed and angry, Tiamat instructed her followers in the Cult of the Dragon to assemble the Mask of the Dragon Queen that would allow her to finally escape Avernus and enter Toril.
Relationships
Tiamat was the antithesis of her brother Bahamut, as both of them represented opposing values, and this enmity was reflected in the attitude of each deity’s worshipers as well. She was also at odds with her brother Null for some slight lost to history. The god of the kobolds, Kurtulmak, was also his servant.
Being a member of certain pantheons made her some other enemies. She conflicted with Iyachtu Xvim as he was the only significant opposition to her joining the Faerûnian pantheon, then later with his father, Bane. She also counted Ilmater among her enemies. Tiamat had some kind of contract with the githyanki race after their leader Gith treated with her.
Having once been an archfiend living on Avernus, Tiamat was loosely allied with Bel and lent him many Abishai to fight in the Blood War. She resented Mammon for converting some evil dragons away from her. She helped Asmodeus forge his Ruby Rod. She developed an enmity with Asmodeus and the archdevil Bel after they betrayed her.
She maintained a male consort from each of the chromatic dragon races. She had children with each of them and they served her as mortal agents.
Worshipers
Tiamat had a reputation amongst the people of the state of Unther for battling with the other members of their pantheon and was blamed for every one of the many setbacks Unther experienced. This later became an advantage when Gilgeam’s behavior served to foment rebellion against him and those rebels began to worship her, eventually creating an organized church.
Tiamat had made inroads into the Cult of the Dragon and claimed some members as her worshipers. Also, for fifteen years, the Karanok family of Luthcheq unwittingly served Tiamat while they were worshiping the primordial Entropy. Tiamat transformed Entropy into a conduit for her power and gained the Karanoks as pawns.
Many evil dragons have worshiped Tiamat since their species first appeared on Toril, and kobolds believed she was their creator, and although they didn’t worship her as god, they revered her as their creator. After the Spellplague, she also gained a few dragonborn followers.
Clergy
Tiamat accepted only evil clerics. They, like Tiamat herself, sought to place the world under the domination of evil dragons.
The church of Tiamat was regimented by a strict hierarchy of ranks and titles. Her clerics were occupied by the twin tasks of acquiring an ever-increasing hoard of wealth for the faith and sabotaging the faiths of other deities. As a result, they occupied most of their time with an unending series of thefts, assassinations, acts of vandalism, and arson. In Unther and Chessenta they were primarily concerned with seizing as much power as possible, while in western Faerun, the cult’s agents were focused on subverting the Cult of the Dragon.
Orders
The Serpent Guards were a fellowship of Untherite warriors and crusaders fanatically devoted to her. They were charged with guarding Tiamat’s cult in Unther.
The Knights of the Five-Thorned Rose were her elite five ranking crusaders, tasked with the destruction of the followers of Bahamut, especially metallic dragons.
Temples Though most evil dragons honored Tiamat, few keep shrines dedicated to her in their lairs because they didn’t want her gazing at their treasure hoards. Instead, they dedicate vast, gloomy caverns to their deity and kept them stocked with treasure and sacrifices.
Tiamat had more temples among her non-dragon followers. The two most prominent sites of her faith were the Altar of the Scales in Unther, and ruins of Castle Perilous.
Dogma
To Tiamat, deities of all creeds and from every pantheon are inherently tyrannical, and therefore her rivals. She considered herself the only being powerful enough to defy these gods and overthrow their despotic rule, as demonstrated by her overthrowing the other Untheric deities. Her followers worked tirelessly toward her agenda of world domination. When Tiamat assumed her throne as the only goddess of the Realms, her draconic children would served her as dukes, or so her followers believed, and her clergy struggled gain the position vassals when that moved came.
Rites Clerics of Tiamat prayed for their spells at dusk, in hopes she will return the sun the following morning, as part of a ritual known as Tithing. The Tithing required a small tithe, typically several gold coins or a small gem, which were hidden in the cleric’s cupped hands while praying, then buried.
Tiamat’s clergy also performed various other daily ceremonies in homage to their mistress. The Rite of Respect was a complicated ritual of abasement and appeasement was performed while approaching any chromatic dragon. This ceremony didn’t provide any special protection from the dragon’s fury, but failure to perform it was a death sentence.
In Unther, a sect of her followers known as the Dark Scaly Ones proclaimed the day of the first full moon after Midsummer a holy day dedicated to her. Known as the Festival of Vengeance, this day marked the defeat of Gilgeam at Tiamat’s hands. In Unthalass the day was celebrated by general anarchy, rioting, and widespread mayhem incited by the clergy and the faithful. During that day, clerics of other gods tried to contain the looting and destruction, and prominent officials were aware against assassination attempts executed by Tiamat’s worshipers.
Death
Upon her attempt to break free of the 9 Hells during the War of Tyranny, Tiamat engaged the armies of the material plane in combat.  Her enemies would eventually prevail, and one member of the Scarred named Sarissa Runesblood was able to inherit her divine spark and ascend to divinity.  Sarissa also inherited Tiamat's former profile, history, and worshippers, going on to fulfill all of Tiamat's command over chromatic dragons while adopting a more cooperative role with Asmodeus in exchange for her residence in Avernus.  Sarissa has been known to exhibit two faces when dealing with her worshippers: power and favor to those who show abject loyalty to her, and condemnation for those that don't.