Iastur, the Laughing God, revolves around madness, mind games and literature.
The supplicant of Iastur, his first worshipper and victim, starts with the Laughing Tome, a book authored by Iastur though which maddening insights into the nature of reality can be glimpsed. Iastur is the creator of the world, and has gone through uncounted cycles of creation and destruction, and he rebuilds and destroys the world, utterly consumed by a drive to achieve a perfection which even he cannot conceive of. The book describes this drive, along with insane and impossible tales of alien worlds and horrific secrets about the one the humans inhabit.
The book can be carried safely by your agents, but any human who comes into contact with it loses their sanity over time. If forced upon a ruler or hero they will continually read from it and lose sanity, which in the game leads to adopting extreme behaviours and hatreds. Rulers will cripple their kingdoms as they ignore unrest and brewing civil wars, or engage in unwinnable wars due to hyper-aggressive impulses. Heroes, too, will turn on their fellow man, growing paranoid and fearful of the other heroes operating nearby, and finding themselves possessed with violent urges, which cause them to fight amongst themselves. If left to a human settlement, the book will pass amongst the people of the place, causing them to lose their sanity, as well as slowly infecting the place's ruler. If it reaches full, and a cultist group has been infiltrated into the location, they can rise up and turn on their society in a hopeless civil war which will leave no victors, only devastation. Madness will also induce a set of random behaviours in heroes and rulers alike. They can act in unpredictable and self-destructive ways, in addition to their paranoia, such as hiding all their gold (in places you or other heroes could easily find and steal from), raving about the end of the world (causing panic and unrest in the human population), bribing guards to leave their posts, or other similarly useful (to you) acts.
While the book is being passed amongst people it can be bound by heroes, who try to prevent this horror from occurring. Magical seals can prevent it from compelling the heroes from reading it, allowing them to study it in a safe fashion. When in this state the heroes can perform a quest to harm Iastur or his agents. If Iastur has sufficient power reserves, those will be drained, but if not he cannot shield his agents from harm and they will be exposed, gaining profile and menace as their association to the insane god is discovered. After this, the tome can be retrieved by agents to begin the cycle anew. Iastur only gains power while the book is read by humans, so begin anew the cycle must, if Iastur's unknowable goals are to be reached.
On a more personal level, Iastur can affect the thinking of NPC heroes. By altering their personality he can turn a brave fighter into a coward who flees from combat, or make a weak doctor who previously specialised in disease into a combat focused bandit-hunter. Careful influence over heroes likes and dislikes allow Iastur unparalleled control over the behaviour of enemy heroes, and a skillful player can find a range of strategies which benefit from these subtle changes.
When awakened, Iastur's soul is present on Earth, in the Elder Tomb, for your agents to empower or your enemies to destroy. Both parties can influence the strength of Iastur's soul. If it reaches zero it will be destroyed, and Iastur will be driven back to the void outside our world for the following aeons, while if your agents are successful in strengthening it sufficiently Iastur can achieve his final goals, and complete this cycle of creation (invariably in frustration, leading to the destruction of the world, as Iastur's broken mind rejects the world's flaws).
Iastur has been brought to life by the talented Megan Wong ( https://www.artstation.com/meganwong ), and gives a look at the type of art I hope to obtain for all gods, over the course of early access. His insane visage can now look down on game world as the humans go about trying to keep their minds, kingdoms and world safe from his deranged games.
