Fifteen Less Common Warlock Patrons

[Jubal]

Fifteen Less Common Warlock Patrons

By Jubal

The Warlock, as they appear in various popular D20-style role-playing games, is redefined from the general sense used in other media to mean a magic user who has a patron providing their magic.

A Warlock has a different relationship to their patron than the chosen of a god, and this matters. Their relationship is fundamentally contractual: they are not required to express devotion, nor have they been chosen for moral or cultural qualities, only as smart investments towards a goal of some kind that the patron is working towards.

In fifth edition D&D, warlocks can be engaged in their contract by heaven or hell (Fiend and Celestial), by beings from other planes (the Archfey for the Feywild and the Hexblade for the Shadowfell), they can tap into the aberrant power of Lovecraftian horror (Great Old One), or pick from two elemental themed patrons (Fathomless and Genie), and two undeath themed ones (Undying and Undead). Surely, though, there are plenty more beings out in the cosmos trying to get things done who might need a go-getting fool to lock into a bad contract?

Thus, this article gives a few other thoughts and possibilities on what sort of beings might offer you a power-for-service deal. You could do some of these with existing concepts - I've focused on ideas and plot hooks rather than stats, not least given I don't usually run D&D myself, and in some cases I've opted to read bits of lore the way I want (some versions of Slaads give them actually quite a lot of societal structure, whereas I like leaning into them being more ultra-chaotic). In any case, I hope you find these interesting - onto the examples...

A Wilderlord has little need to look human.

1: The Wilderlord

Most Warlock patrons offer power from some other element of being. The Wilderlord offers the power of the Prime Material Plane in all its own strangeness and majesty.

The Wilderlord's warlocks may have some things in common with druids, but druids have their own innate connection with nature. The warlock has someone else's connection with nature, and may not even particularly like cute fluffy animals, let alone horrifying crawling ones, but is still obliged to fight for them because power has a price and sometimes the price is seeing things from a giant centipede's point of view. The Wilderlord in representing nature does not of course have to represent it as an eco-warrior either: the beasts of the wild fight one another all the time, and the shifting realities of the world change. A Wilderlord of the woods might send a warlock to help trees that are encroaching on and drying up a swamp or vice versa, dragging the players not just into conflicts between humanity and nature but conflicts within nature itself.

2: The Mage Ascended

Your warlock patron could literally be a guy. Gods have statblocks in this game and they're not impossible for sufficiently epic-level parties to reach – so why wouldn't a mage so powerful they could just give power to random non-specialists do exactly that? They might be pursuing more traditional mage goals like obtaining magical items, or they might have much larger and longer-term plans in which you are just a small part.

There are good reasons why the Mage Ascended might choose to make a warlock rather than simply training wizardlings. For one thing, it gives them safeguards: training a wizard who actually understands their magic may be someone they see as more of a future threat, whereas if they contractually bind the warlock to not harm them then they might see that as a safer bet. They might, of course, eventually be willing to see their warlock as more of a potential partner in their schemes to save or revitalise the cosmic magical order – or they might see them as a pawn to be tossed aside, which may become more difficult than they'd realised given contracts work both ways.

What lurks in the shadows of the night? You do.

3: The Night's Oracle

Several of the have some: the Shadowfell. The Night's Oracle would, however, be a patron who leans into this role much more explicitly, one solely concerned with dreams. It has often been the bringer of prophecies to the slumbering minds of the material plane, but its domain is far wider and more fickle than the simplicity of the truth.

The Night's Oracle is as multifaceted as the minds of all beings that dream – which are many – and seeks through its realm of dreams to experience and imagine the physical realms that it can never reach. Empowering a warlock as its interface with the Waking World gives. It may act in contradictory ways, as it acts inquisitively but without much consideration for morality: it is unlikely to want mass death, but may act in ways to either quell or prompt darker dreams among the living as it tends the grand psychic gardens of the sleeping world. Curiously, it particularly dislikes psychic and control spells at least when it does not control them: it will give these to its warlocks as extensions of its own power, but in the hands of others it sees these as an encroachment on its own domain to be met with all possible resources as a threat.

4: The Greater Sheddu

A powerful good-aligned patron with a twist. Unlike a celestial, a Sheddu is tied to a particular site of worship: they are guardians of heaven on earth, not agents of heaven in its purest form. This gives them a very different priority order: reducing damage to their temple is paramount, and the warlock has been empowered as an additional agent to achieve that goal first and foremost. If the Sheddu's temple is a ruin, this might tie the player to a strange place or give them a specific responsibility for clearing out a dungeon. On the other hand, it might be at the centre of some great city, with the Sheddu maintaining its own staff of warlocks as agents alongside the temple staff.

Either way, the Sheddu has a good reason to want warlocks because unlike the Sheddu, the warlock isn't tied to a particular place. As roaming agents looking for information and eliminating evils and other threats, the Sheddu's warlocks are contractually tied to it and its temple, unlike Clerics or Paladins who are tied to the deity more directly. This might be a source of tension with followers of the deity whose temple it is: the Sheddu's warlock need not be a follower of that deity, and might well be contractually bound to defend the temple much more than they are to follow the god's teachings more widely.

5: The Forgotten Wind

What if there was a patron who didn't ask anything of their warlock – what if there was a patron who didn't even think in a conventional sense? Well, that might be boring, but let's try and add some interest to it. The Forgotten Wind is a powerful but not sentient concept: it selects people at seeming random, granting them powers at a price it does not set out because it has no concept of itself. The "terms of the contract" are well known in the cultures where the wind may be felt, passed down as tales through the generations: the wind provides power, but it also blows you in particular directions, to particular places. What you do with that it leaves up to you, but you cannot reject it. Wind doesn't think, but it does act in patterns, through annual cycles, blowing more or less strongly at particular times. The wind in particular encourages the warlock to keep moving, perhaps cyclically, perhaps driven bit by bit around the world, always with a sense of where they are going next but without a sense of why – because in the end there is no why, there is only the song of the wind.

Maybe a slaad will eat you, maybe it won't.
Maybe this is just a frog.
There are no rules.

6: The Overslaad

The Slaad are beings from the Chaotic Neutral plane, beings of absolutely pure chaos that make very little sense indeed. This is pretty odd when you end up having a contract with one. Whilst you do have a binding pact with the Overslaad, you have no real idea what it says given the utterly chaotic nature of Slaadi language, and equally importantly the Slaad has basically no idea either. The things that may be required of you might be entirely at right angles to anything that anyone would deem logical: they may even be actively working to undermine logic itself by some means or other. Serve the overslaad. Be served by the overslaad. They're kind of the same thing from different angles, right? Go forth, warlock, and bring the world down about your ears because it was too round (or insufficiently round, the overslaad is not your boss except that it also is, it doesn't have to make sense, nothing makes sense) and needed to be messed up a bit.

The Overslaad being a rare example of a truly chaotic patron, it could be appropriate to factor in some mechanics to represent this. Something like "every time you pick spells, pick two and add them to a list, then you can cast a totally random selection every day" might be a pain at the table but could also be fun.

7: The Modron Lock

Converse to the Slaad, the Modrons are the computer-like pure logic creatures of the Lawful Neutral parts of the cosmos. What do the Modrons want? Order. But Modrons have a problem – prolonged exposure to the chaos of life outside Mechanus isn't very good for them, and indeed can drive some of them mad (as shown in Planescape: Torment). The solution, then, might be to hire someone, say by means of a binding contract that gives someone the power of Mechanus in exchange for being pressured to eliminate more chaotic elements that might threaten universal order.

The Modron patron is a way of really going in deep on what the contract nature of a Warlock's power means: they have absolutely no wish to do good or evil, they're not going to twist the contract at all, but they are going to enforce it absolutely, and expect you to do the same. It may be possible for you to wiggle around a contract more than with some patrons because Modrons struggle to even understand the concepts of untruth and imperfect communication, but they will expect any arbitration to be binding – on your soul if needs be.

8: The Archflumph

Flumphs, the curious good-aligned flying jellyfish aberrations, are perhaps hard to fit into many D&D campaigns particularly well. Their solitary, monastic lifestyles mean that they do not always interact with humans, often living deep in caves in the underdark or other secluded locations.
What if, though, one of these ancient flumph sages, these strange but good beings, wanted someone who could interact with the world for them? An asset, a follower, even a friend in the loneliness of whatever deep void they live in to contemplate existence? What if their years of contemplation have given them such incredible power that they could donate that power to others who could interact with the world on their behalf?

What if... the archflumph?

The Archflumph is a great idea for a good-aligned warlock patron because it immediately solves the question of why the powerful patron doesn't do a job themselves: they're not doing the job themselves because they're a weird enormous floating magic jellyfish, and the job requires talking to normal people who might react badly to an aberration turning up on their doorstep. Unlike a celestial patron, they're physical, fallible beings, and their lack of understanding of the world isn't based on a burning zeal, it's just based on the fact that they have literally been living under a rock. Possibly living under all the rock.

That doesn't mean that the Archflumph is going to be only setting you easy tasks – it doesn't understand how difficult anything is, and may think that a conversation is very difficult whereas hovering is a normal thing that everyone can do because it has not spent much time talking to anyone but certainly not to bipeds. Its inherently ponderous nature might make it hard to communicate with when you really do need an answer. Also, whilst it is undeniably on the side of good, it may take very particular philosophical views on what that means (a celestial as typically portrayed is unlikely to direct you to steal: an Archflumph that has decided that property rights should be a meaningless concept on the basis of its extensive personal theories of value that it came up with by reading obscure interplanar philosophy books in a cave for ninety years gives no such guarantees if it will help someone somewhere).

The archflumph is wisdom without practical knowledge, theory without application, the philosopher without the polis. You are the application, and that may be more than you thought you were bargaining for.

The Monk found inner peace. As you're not planning to, they have other ideas for you.

9: The Monk Ascended

Much like the Mage Ascended, the Monk Ascended is a mortal who has ascended beyond the ken of the world in perfection of their craft. Unlike the Mage Ascended, whose goals are about understanding the outside, the Monk Ascended is all about spreading internal understanding. Why would they make a warlock rather than training a fellow monk? Well, because a monk is on a path to enlightenment: they're the goal. You, their Warlock, are a response to things that threaten that goal.

The patronage of the Monk Ascended may well not be given to one who the Monk expects to find personal inner peace and enlightenment – after all, those people are potential monks. Instead, the Monk might well think the warlock is a lost cause, and therefore best used as a tool to protect the inner peace of others. What if all the mental clutter and torment could be loaded onto one guy who, after all, actually signed up for it? Well, now the guy is you, your boss wants a universe at inner peace, and there's a lot of nasty things out there that really, really do not spark joy. Good luck!


10: The Witch in the Woods

The hag to end all hags, a Baba Yaga figure who can create forests and lakes on a whim, bound mostly by wrapping herself in her own fairy-tale rules and the pettiness of her cruelties. Children she eats, mortals she tricks: she will do a deal, of course. Her deals have costs, and the costs are rarely ones mortals know how to bear.

The Witch differs from something like the Wilderlord above in that while her domain is the wilds, her concerns are much more human; and she differs from a devil in that her concerns are smaller, pettier, more persona. You are not a concern in some great war, she doesn't want your soul, she just wants to mess with you and everyone else as much as possible. You need not worry about the Witch in the Woods ending the world: she is too busy giving nightmares to the goats, drawing the blood from old men at night, and passing pestilence to expecting mothers. You, too, are bound to these things, the little hurts. Was it worth it?

It could become so, for if you do well, she will make you the nightmare that your enemies will fear most: the one thing you have over her is that you can think bigger than she, with all her power, knows how to. But her actions now mark your soul too, and if you break the rules, it will be your own essence on the line.

Three weavers... with a job for you?

11: The Weaver

Many become warlocks to escape fate: the moment when a mighty being offers you a contract is often the moment of weakness, the point when you will accept their power and aid because you do not think you have an other option. But a warlock could be made to reinforce fate, equally. You got a single opt-out from the weavers who create the fabric of the wyrd: to pay for that one hitch in the fabric, you will spend your life ensuring that none can challenge the ordination of the future.

The weaver's warlock will especially be tasked against wizards, sorcerors, and other warlocks who seek to meddle with the cosmos and act against its will: their cause may be good or evil, but the will of fate is locked, and you are a part of its great chain. Those who escaped death shall die, those who escaped, and those who were never meant to face justice shall be freed. It is known, it is ordained: the weaving continues, always. You cannot see the tapestry, but the small threads you are handed are power immeasurable. You will see the weft and warp bound.

12: The Master of the Revels

The Master of the Revels is the greatest showman in the cosmic order, and in you it has found a new side-character for one of its great productions. It grants you powers, you agree to play the role: fame and fortune await, but the stage is a fickle business.

This works particularly well with some of the more personal and creepy side of Warlock spells – Charm Person, Friends, but also Puppet have an obvious connotation set here. Important to make sure the props are all in the right place, after all.

There's something about the Master of the Revels that could get too meta-plot but also could work very well narratively, in that the patron has an enormous incentive to get their warlock into high drama, high tension situations, and doesn't need a tactical reason why, because producing the drama is the whole point of the thing. The show must go on!

13: They Who Were Before

We've seen patrons displaced from the adventuring party by space or the planar cosmology. But what about time?
They Who Were Before – whether they were an ancient race of dinosaur people, or of giants, or Atlanteans, or the first dragons who were slain by the emergence of the gods and now haunt the world in spirit – need to very much be defined by their ancientness. They may or may not ultimately want to reclaim the world or get re-embodied, but in practice that's an enormous plot to dump on one character, so their more immediate goals might involve finding their old artefacts, preserving or cleansing their old tombs, or rebuilding the memory of them in the culture of today.

Their warlock might be a scholar, but equally they might pick someone who reminds them more of their cultural ideals: perhaps their scholar wanted to be a fighter but then was chosen for their contract precisely on the grounds that the ancient ones valued those martial traits. They might also have difficulty relating to what the world has become (and your contract might produce some difficult technicalities if they ask you to "make it like it used to be"...)

14: They Who Will Come After

A more sci-fi twist on the timeskipped patrons: they come from your world's distant future and are granting you cosmic warlock powers to help stop the doom of their timeline. They're willing to promise you whatever's needed to achieve that, as long as you help them create, or avoid creating, the timeline that they're in.

There could be twists on this: the patrons' idea of an ideal future for the world may not be your own, and you might have some difficult decisions to make if it isn't. Their goals might be pretty brutal – assassinating certain people in your present to avoid them giving birth to future fantasy dictators – or you might literally need to go stop a butterfly flapping its wings in a forest (and fight your way past a bunch of strangler vines to get there).

I think playing these guys as a bit sci-fi could work: you might be in a pseudo-medieval setting, and having your future patrons behave in a much more anachronistic military or scientific way could be fun.

A rightful ruler's power may take many forms...

15: The Mandate of Heaven

We tend to think in quite capitalistic terms about warlock contracts – power granted by a negotiated legal framework wherein the patron is essentially your boss. Let's try a different framing. What if a polity or region – in the totally abstract sense – chose its leaders? If they accept the mantle of leadership, they are bound into a particular social role and all its requirements, they exchange the freedom of powerlessness for the burdens and responsibility of authority. In exchange they can have power, the sort of power no other member of their people can possess, perhaps the sort of power no-one else in the world can possess. They have, as it were a mandate to rule. That's a contract, in its own way. It's also quite like the royal farr of Persian legend, or the Chinese concept of Mandate of Heaven.

The Mandated warlock simply adds to a general sense of right-to-rule the ability to eldritch blast their disloyal subjects into next week. The charisma-focused casting of a Warlock makes particular sense here, where casting is not just about a relationship with the patron but also, because the patron is the polity, a collective relationship with the political entity as a whole. Of course, if they fail to rule well – if they breach the social contract – they risk losing the Mandate, leaving them very literally weakened and vulnerable to their enemies and the rise of a new ruler in their stead...


Anyway, those are my thoughts on some alternative warlock patrons. Please let me know in the comments if you make use of any of these ideas, especially the archflumph who I've not played a warlock of but would really like to now. And if you have more additions, thoughts, and comments, I'd love to hear those too!