Enthusiasts of Gaelic lore and myth know the Fomor, the ancient dark gods and foreign powers from whom the Tuatha de Danaan took Ireland, whom they also bred with, and feuded with, loved and hated. I’ve been building them in D&D 5th edition for use in an upcoming supplement, and for use in my Knights of the Broken Wheel setting, mentioned in the Settings in Progress portfolio section of this very website. But…they seem very setting specific. How could they be of use to the general D&D playing community, as they exist in an explicitly Celtic world, based on Gaelic and Briton myth and legend, steeped in Arthurian references, with Sidhe instead of elves, Fomor instead of orcs…but the version I’m presenting can easily be used in any D&D setting…because my Fomor are explicitly not native to the world they are menacing.

The Fomor, as I’ve presented them, are not a singular race or species, though they are a distinctive nation, a distinct culture. The Fomor are cthonian entities, of the shadowed undersea and underworld realms. In point of fact, they are extraplanar, even in their home setting. They come from beneath the sea, the darkest abyss of the ocean…but not, actually the ocean of the world of Knights of the Broken Wheel. Or, indeed, the oceans of our own world. They are not Irish, or Scots, or Norse.

The Fomorian Abyss is almost, but not quite, an outer plane like the Abyss of the Great Wheel cosmology. Far too vast to be considered a demi-plane, it is a singular place that seems to lie at an impossible juncture of places. It lies close, somehow, to the Shadowfell, particularly the Domains of Dread. But it also is not far from the Feywild. It touches on the limitless ocean of the Elemental Plane of Water, and also the Negative Energy Plane. Limbo, the great maelstrom, can be easily reached from it, as can the demonic Abyss itself. Perhaps it is an alternate material plane, lost long ago to evil and chaos. It seems, somehow, to verge even on Dreams, and on Unreality, and on that irrational not-place called the Far Realm. And it can encroach on any world. Perhaps it careens madly through the planes, converging here and there on any world with which it randomly makes conjunction, for a moment, a day, a year…or centuries. Whenever that happens, the Fomor pour into that realm, and try to take it for their own, and in so doing, destroy it, making its remnants part of their ruined empire. Like mindless army ants (though many individuals are of genius intellect) or perhaps, more accurately, like a virus or fungus that cannot help but destroy what desires, what gives it life, its host.

The Fomor I present certainly have similarities to demons…they come in a wide variety of forms, and their armies swarm over the worlds like a plague of locusts. But they are not demons. Like the Sidhe, they sometimes wield fey magics, and many of them have Sidhe blood. But they are not fey. Some are giants. Some are humanoids. Some are beasts, some are dragons. So, very many are undead. All of them are still Fomor, led by the Reborn Balor of the Evil Eye, brought back in the Cauldron of Rebirth by Cethlenn, queen of the Fomor, who stole it from the Tuatha and corrupted it into the Black Crochan. And whereever they go, they search for Balor’s lost eye, blasted from his skull by the sling stone of Lugh Lamfada Samildanach…knowing not even which world it may be in. Perhaps it is in your world, and that is why they have come. If he gets back his eye, undying as he is now…countless worlds will suffer under his gaze, starting with all those worlds where any of the Tuatha or other Celtic gods are revered. Whole planes will wish they only had the likes of Sauron or Izrador or Bane to worry about. Orcus himself fears Balor without the Eye. Worlds will burn and die, whole populations devoured or enslaved. The Fomor Host will make the seething hordes of demonkind look staid and controlled in comparison, for there are no devils dedicated to their containment…and they keep what they kill. All who fall before them join their host, one way or another.