Otrogg, King of Pests

🪳 Otrogg, King of Pests

Lesser God of Vermin, Pestilence, and Ruin
Alignment: Chaotic (often invoked by Neutral or Desperate)
Domains: Vermin, Decay, Disease, Lycanthropy, Corruption
Symbol: A crown woven from centipedes atop a split grain stalk
Sacred Animal: Rats, centipedes, and cockroaches

📜 Lore & Origin

Otrogg, the King of Pests, is the whisper beneath the grain, the scuttle in the walls, the hiss in the dark behind the barn. His origin is unknown—some say he was birthed from a dying god's corpse, his spirit colonized by crawling things. Others say he rose from the gutters of creation, born of decay and bitterness, to challenge the high-born gods of nature and order.

To his faithful, Otrogg is the Lord of Inheritance, who promises a day when vermin shall rise, and the filth-born shall rule the world. While his primary worshippers are intelligent vermin—wererats, giant rats, sentient insects—he is not unknown among humans. Beggars, the fevered, the starving, and the mad sometimes turn to him. When all else fails—when harvests rot, children cough black blood, or rats devour a granary in a single night—people whisper to Otrogg. Sometimes, he listens.

Farmers occasionally make grain offerings to appease him, entreating the Pest King to keep his crawling swarms at bay. In a bitter irony, they pour out their bounty to avert his wrath—an unholy tithe paid to corruption incarnate.

Otrogg is also feared and venerated as the god of lycanthropy, particularly among wererats and the cannibalistic degenerate tribes of the undercities. Infection, in his cult, is a form of dark baptism.

👁️ Depiction

Otrogg is never seen in full—he appears as a swarm given shape: a hooded, lurching figure made of writhing vermin, wearing a crown of centipedes and rat skulls. In sacred visions, his voice is a thousand whispering clicks, promising dominance and hunger sated. His “face” is often an ever-shifting cluster of twitching antennae, blinking fly-eyes, and rotting flesh.

Statues of Otrogg are made from scavenged bones and taxidermied vermin, often hidden in root cellars, ruined temples, or forgotten sewer junctions.

🛕 Worship & Doctrine

Temples: Subterranean shrines, plague-choked slums, rat tunnels beneath cities.
Clergy Titles: Scab-Priests, Licebearers, Voice of the Crawling Crown, Mold-Brethren

Holy Days:

• Gnawing Eve – Celebrated when food stores run low in winter. Followers ritually devour vermin or grain-infected offerings.

• Blight-Tide – A floating holiday tied to the first infestation or disease outbreak of the year.

• Rat King’s Ascension – Celebrated by wererats during the darkest moonless night of the year, when new lycanthropes are initiated.

⚖️ Tenets of the Faithful

Followers of Otrogg must:

• Offer him infestation in times of plenty and silence in times of hunger.

• Spread disease when balance becomes too strong; sow collapse in systems too orderly.

• Inflict infection on the strong to empower the forgotten.

• Never kill a vermin creature without making offering—lest you call his name in vain.

• View decay as divine transition—life to death, death to power.

🧪 Optional Spell Access

Clerics of Otrogg may prepare the following OSE Advanced arcane spells as divine rites of pestilence, rot, and corruption:

🧥 Sacred Garb of the Scab-Priesthood

Clerics wear garments made of rat-hide, tattered sacks, and fabric infused with mildew and rot. Holy garb is never washed. Their ceremonial headdress is often a crude crown of insect legs, teeth, and centipedes woven into rusted wire.

Stages of Devotional Garb

1. Rag of Offerings (10 gp)

   • A sackcloth stole stained with blood and feces. Required for 1st-level spells.

   • “Every stain a prayer.”

2. Maggot Veil (50 gp)

   • Veil woven with the cocoons of sacred flies. Required for 2nd–3rd level spells.

   • Grants +1 to saves vs. disease.

3. Crown of Rot (150 gp)

   • A circlet of bone and wire, filled with living vermin. Required for 4th–5th level spells.

   • Once per day, allows “Speak with Vermin.”

⚔️ Enemies & Opposition

Otrogg is universally despised by the gods of Nature, Agriculture, and the Hunt. Ky, Nisaba, and Hyrn all consider him an abomination. Hyrn is especially enraged when his sacred beasts are infected by Otrogg's touch—calling it "sickness without wisdom."

Even most chaotic gods keep Otrogg at a distance; he does not test systems, he rots them.

Marks of Servitude

• 1st: Fingernails blacken and become clawlike.

• 2nd: Hair becomes patchy or grows in wiry tufts.

• 3rd: Eyes turn glossy black, like insect eyes.

• 4th: Mouth clicks or chitters unconsciously.

• 5th: Swarms of vermin crawl from the caster’s shadow or sleeves.