Fearing the End: Evil Deities

Fell behind already on my posting schedule. Yeesh.

Anyway, today’s theme is making the end of the world scary. And by that, I mean approaching a problem common in world design.

Let say our prospective deity designer sits down, has his map, has his cultures set up, but somehow doesn’t have his gods or religious philosophies built. Well, firstly I wonder how this guy has his culture’s set up, but..

He needs gods. Why? Well, gods are important, whether they be “powers,” “wizards,” “eidolons,” or the dozens of other stand ins for them in fiction and world design. They’re little polestars for PC philosophy, but where we have good aligned clerics worshiping good deities and good people following good deities, what about the evil ones?

That, you see, is the frequent problem. One I want to touch on before we move on to that whole ‘making the end of the world scary,’ thing.

Now back to the “where do enemy clerics come from?” problem, some get around this by having different cultures both have goodly deities but are in opposition. This works, because after all you had European history to go off of there. However, it seems trickier when you’re dealing with the objective good-and-evil baked into some settings.

Why would people build a temple to Lovitar, Bhaal or Bane in Forgotten Realms? Who wants to spend months erecting a benighted terror building to a deity who’s literal guide post is betrayal, murder and pain? What kind of lunatics worship Xon-Kuthon from Golarian? That we know. But who actually builds his temples, and why? Why does Bob down the street decide he’s going to throw in with a guy who’s literally a lunatic deity dedicated to pain? Finding workmen, supply trains and the like of crazy folk is difficult and not every hedge temple can be erected by zombiefied build teams or fiends.

It’s for this reason that your well designed evil deities have to have, well, a point. The point they have, is of course wrong, but it has to be something that could honestly seduce someone to following them, showing them homages and building them a doom fortress. If you can’t think of why the common man would have some reason to toss some blood on the altar, make them treated like a cult.

Only in Japan does organized crime hang a shingle outside saying ‘Hey Fuggadaboutit!’ Similarly an evil god whose sole function is to be propitiated isn’t going to have an enormous bleeding temple in town with ample underground adventuring space. Someone’s got to be motivated to build that, dig up stone, move through the earth, lunch beneath the leering eyes of the soon to be animated statuary and construct the spike lined electric shark pits. Also, even in the case of organized crime, they tend to be Lawful Evil, and give something to the community. See that’s the thing.

Evil gods like Bane from Forgotten Realms? They give something. Worship me and I will give you stability. Emulate me, and you will be strong. You can picture somebody telling you about how Bane’s religion is one of peace and order, with everyone having a place in the grandiose order set down by his iron hand.  Evil gods like Second Edition’s Cyric? They don’t give anything. “Follow my orders or I’ll freaking cut you!” has trouble dealing with the marketplace of deities. And when your clergy and practitioners pray to not be an unreasonable raving maniac like you, well, something is up.

Let’s do a more one-for-one comparison so I can try to make my rambling point clearer. Namira the daedric prince from Elder Scrolls, and Urgathoa from the Pathfinder core setting.

Urgathoa is one of those ‘why would anybody not crazy follow this god’ gods to me. The pallid princess is all about how death is the true state of the living, and also bizarrely about gluttonous and lustful excess. Her worshipers are like if you took epicureans but made them all think it’s their job to speed people along the ‘tomorrow we die’ part.

But, see the thing is this.. she’s not the only deity offering parties and licentiousness to her worshipers. We’ve got Desna, Cayden, Callistria, and even an (in my mind) inappropriately NG angel all focused around ‘do what thou wilt and pass the beer.’ Except none of those guys are demanding you murder people or consort with the dead on a regular or intimate basis. Ugathoa really works better as someone running a cult, but there she sits, pallid princess and queen of depravity with suitably large terrifying temples in creepy bad guy towns. Who, aside from necromancers, lunatics and the undead would worship this one? Like can you picture a ‘ground level’ Urgathoa follower who isn’t an orc?

Now Namira? Namira doesn’t have temples. She is entirely about cults. Secret cults. She’s a deity (of a sort) dedicated to the outcast, the things that crawl in the dark, cannibalism, ugly people and things people would rather not think about. To be honest, I think I can see people making a temple to her much more easily than Urgathoa. See, one of Namira’s thing is she also looks after the ugly, the forgotten, and those looked over. She’s the protector of beggars and undesirables. Cannibalism falls under her purview because its practitioners are those people who others despise and look down on. So you have a deity who could be worshipped not only by cannibals, necromancers, assorted weirdoes, but also by beggars, the cast off, the deformed, and people who are otherwise, well, normal but looked down on by their society.

I can see a Namiran opening an orphanage and it operating entirely normally, right down to the happy well-fed and healthy kids, except until you find out how she’s been making ends meet on her meat budget.  Urgathoa? I have more trouble there.

To summarize. Evil deities need to give something to their worshippers besides cleric levels. Otherwise they’re something that only crazy people should follow. And that’s ok. But crazy people rarely have the where withal to make large dungeon complexes.