D&D: Need a God Of Winter? Here’s Five
D&D has many, many gods—but perishingly few gods of winter and the cold. These five are in rare company indeed.
There are gods for just about everything in D&D. Often, multiple overlaps. After all if you go through and look at just how many deities of magic there have been in Faerun alone, you start to lose track. Mix in the myriad worlds of D&D’s multiverse and it’s god of magic soup out there.
But there are startlingly few gods of winter and/or the cold out there. Maybe because winter is such a harsh thing. Maybe we assign it to an oppositional force in the old mental arithmetic.
But even so, there are a few gods of winter—one of the rarest categories of deity in D&D though. Here are a few D&D winter gods, in case you need one for your next icy adventure.
Auril
We start with the most widely-known one. Auril is Faerun’s goddess of winter. Known as the Queen of Cold and Frost or sometimes the Frostmaiden or the Storm-bringer, she is all about the harsh winter that snares the soul.
Arrogant. Vain. They say that Auril was dedicated to ice and snow above all else. She is the titular antagonist in Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden, which is where most people probably know her from. Auril is feared and seen as the herald of winter upon the whole world. And even where her icy claws have a hard time reaching, her name is still respected.
Thrym
Thrym is the god of the Frost Giants. At least he’s worshipped as a god by the frost giants. Some say he is actualy a titan. Though typically not within earshot.
Thrym most often took the form of a massive frost giant—which might seem like an unnecessary intensifier, but he would be big, even for those big guys. He could also exhale a massive cone of cold that could freeze even those resistant to the cold. And if you’ve ever encountered a frost giant that can use arcane magic, they say this is due to Thrym’s blessing.
He could most often be encountered roaming the planes with a retinue of frost giant jarls.
Ulutiu
Here we travel back through the editions. Ulutiu was a 2nd edition D&D creation who also featured some in 3rd edition (that’s how few gods of winter there are, we’re already having to look through other editions). Ulutius, sometimes called the Eternal Sleeper or the Lord in the Ice is a god of glaciers and frozen seas and the peoples that dwell therein.
He would often appear to followers and potential acolytes as a short human with icy blue skin, or else a perfect circle of ice near a frozen shore. On the whole, her preferred solitude—so much so that he encased himself in ice and descended into a slumber-like state from which he has not stirred (at least not beyond the occasional projection or manifestation) for untold centuries.
Now his followers meditate and pray in isoluation to try and commune with a small fragment of his ice-encased dreams for a sign of the ice lord’s will.
Rellavar Danuvien
Then there’s Rellavar Danuvien, a minor elven god of protection from the elements—but most primarily associated with protection from the severe cold. Rellavar Danuvien gets a second pass as a winter god because he’s also primarily worshipped by the snow elves.
Rellavar is a friendly god, with many friends, who teaches his followers, called frostwardens, to protect the people from the harshest effects of winter. Under the watchful eyes of his priests, blizzards were blunted, glaciers glared at, and sleetstorms scoffed out of existence. As a result, a very niche priesthood, but a very welcome one wherever they hold sway.
Telchur
Now we’ve practically exhausted the list of Faerunian winter deities. Let’s turn to the world of Oerth, of Greyhawk. There we find Telchur, a dark-eyed, gaunt man with a long beard made of icicles. He is a bitter, brooding winter god, who is depicted riding a winged albino bull, wielding a spear made of ice. Or an axe made of ice. Or a broadsword made of ice.
Sometimes even a a great club—weirdly enough, not made of ice. Bronzewood. Yeah, I know, I’m surprised too. Beyond the ice and snow, which is pretty obvious stuff, Telchur teaches his followers all about hopelessness and resignation. About the cold, harsh grey at the end of every year. About the chill wind that extinguishes the flame of hope.
All while being Chaotic Neutral.
Stay warm out there!
