The Life and Travels of Obmi

I make no bones about the fact that Lord Obmi the dwarf is one of my favorite characters in the World of Greyhawk Fantasy Setting. His combination of cunning and ruthlessness, plus his occasional flashes of humor, really appeal to me as qualities of a great villain.

So I present a quick graphic showing his appearances and some of his travels as we know them.

I put Obmi in his room beneath Castle Greyhawk first, as that’s his first chronological appearance in the setting, even if it wasn’t his first published appearance. That comes in Hall of the Fire Giant King, and I place him there as the advisor to King Snurre after returning to his homeland in the Crystalmists.

From there, we know he entered the service of Iuz, both from the sourcebook Iuz the Evil and from the novels Artifact of Evil and Sea of Death. We learn of his missions regarding the Theorparts from those books, and his eventual transfer from the service of Iuz to that of Zuggtmoy (and Iggwilv), to retrieve the third Theorpart. I leave out exact dates, as it will take quite a bit of doing to figure out the dates of the Gord the Rogue books, not to mention the non-canonical status of most of them.

Click the image to set it to Wumbo.

Written by 

Wargamer and RPG'er since the 1970's, author of Adventures Dark and Deep, Castle of the Mad Archmage, and other things, and proprietor of the Greyhawk Grognard blog.

5 thoughts on “The Life and Travels of Obmi

  1. I, too, love Obmi…or perhaps LOVED (past tense) this murderous little rogue. These days I have little love for the Greyhawk setting itself.

    But he was great in G3, and certainly memorable in the Gord novels…at least the first two (the only ones I read). However, I don’t remember him being slain. Was that in Artifact of Evil? Or was he killed in a later (non-TSR) book?

  2. He is indeed a great, fun villain whom PCs love to hate. My latest G1-3 campaign made him the villainous uncle of one of the PCs (they had already established a questionable dwarven uncle in their backstory, and I informed them a month before we started the campaign that he had been “killed” in recent years in an altercation in the mountains). Not my most subtle work, but it panned out when they eventually got to G3.

    Nitpick: didn’t the questers after the Final Key start in Lopolla in Ket? Or am I misremembering again?

  3. What’s the source for his appearance in the Dungeons of Castle Greyhawk? Tell us more of this magical machine that reverses movement!

    1. It was one of Gary Gygax’s later Dragon magazine articles (I don’t remember which one, unfortunately), where he was reminiscing about the original campaign. He also mentioned it on the old Pied Piper boards:

      “Obmi first appeared in the setting, with a magical force projector that included both a reversal of course and a temporary illusion that the subjects were still moving towards the dwarf and his gnoll archers. After a round of enforced retrograde the effect ended, and the party was back where it started from. I think one of the PCs finally managed to lightning bolt the projector. Obmi survived and ran off using his boots of speed to thwart pursuit. That so enraged the battered party that I determined to make him a recurring and most villainous antagonist.”

      1. Cool! Thanks! … Maybe his evil twin brother Ibmo should make an appearance in one of your future modules 😉

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