Are there any evil elven gods that are not drow? I've seen a neutral elven god, but no evil. I understand goodness is next to elveness or some such but serious isn't there one pissy evil moon elf god?
Fizz
Nope, just the drow I think. Gnomes get Urdlen (the mole man), Halflings get someone I can't remember off the top of my head, Dwarves get Abbathor (and the Derro/Duergar gods), Orcs get most of their deities but the only possible way that there can be an evil elven god is if it's drow and therefore no longer an elf in the accepted sense.
Note: These are courtesy of the Forgotten Realms racial pantheons as detailed in the 3rd edition Faiths and Pantheons.
Nope,
What the hell I thought there would be one? What are they Smurfs???
Fizz
edit Damn it, I forgot that happens...
Alas, there are to my knowledge, no evil elven gods. There should be though. Elves in 3.5 are way too goody two shoes for my taste. We need badass evil dammit! Devil-worshipping elves, or twisted necromancer, or better yet, elves who worship the Queen of Air and Darkness. No more dancing through the meadows with song in their pure hearts I say!
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In FR (assuming they haven't been slaughtered in the edition change) there are some Neutral gods and goddesses - afraid I haven't played FR for a while, but they are in the 3E Faith and Pantheons book. Obviously, an individual worshipper could be evil and still within the pale of his religion.
EDIT: read your post properly now, so I guess you know about that already.
Alas, there are to my knowledge, no evil elven gods. There should be though. Elves in 3.5 are way too goody two shoes for my taste. We need badass evil dammit! Devil-worshipping elves, or twisted necromancer, or better yet, elves who worship the Queen of Air and Darkness. No more dancing through the meadows with song in their pure hearts I say!
I'm probably misremembering something out of FR campaign in the mid nineties, centered around Skullport, but I thought the so-called drow pantheon was made up of evil rebels and rejects from the elven pantheon.
I've worked on a particular homebew campaign on and off for several years, based on a tri-planar cosmology, where elves were strongly tied to the Fey, who were in turn strongly tied to the Far Realms. Some of the sronger Fey, who were based off of Northern European mythology (Lugh, Sluagh, King Volde/Wildhunt) were seen as elven deities on the prime material plane. Of course, the only place that setting is published is in my head and a few scattered notebooks.
In Golarian, it seems that racial deities are few and far between, as more often then not, different races venerate different aspects of the same deities.
Given that Ironbriar, and elf, worships an Aspect of Norgorber, perhaps that could be adopted into some cell-based, Elven mystery/murder cult,.
Are there any evil elven gods that are not drow? I've seen a neutral elven god, but no evil. I understand goodness is next to elveness or some such but serious isn't there one pissy evil moon elf god?
Any specific setting or just in general?
Are there any evil elven gods that are not drow? I've seen a neutral elven god, but no evil. I understand goodness is next to elveness or some such but serious isn't there one pissy evil moon elf god?Any specific setting or just in general?
just in general
Fizz
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Are there any evil elven gods that are not drow? I've seen a neutral elven god, but no evil. I understand goodness is next to elveness or some such but serious isn't there one pissy evil moon elf god?
Fizz
That's about as easy to find as a lawful elven god. The first rule of pantheon building is apparently "though shalt adhere to stereotypes"...
Meh. I don't have a problem with those stereotypes. Elves are supposed to be CG. If you start giving them a lot of non-CG (or one step therefrom) deities, you trash the "stereotype." My opninion is that it's not really a stereotype so much as a common point of reference, something which gives elves identity. If there was no guideline, elves would either just be pointy-eared humans or the guidelines individual people came up with would have far less rhyme and reason (and there's not a lot of that to start with, anyway). I actually get a little irritated when I see something like an elf worshipping Pelor. "Why the hell is the elf worshipping a human god? There'd better be a damned good reason behind this...."
Giving a race a sense of identity does typically mean enforcing patterns, norms, and even stereotypes. Religion is one of the best ways to give a race a sense of identity. I therefore personally dislike demihumans worshipping human gods (provided that racial deities are part of a setting). I see a lot of elves and dwarves and halflings and such being played simply as Joe Smith with pointy ears, which I really dislike. Thus, I prefer to keep racial norms, like religions, firmly in place.
You could, of course, bloat the racial pantheons to double or triple their current size, which would give enough room to enforce the guidelines and still throw in exceptions to the rule for "character options." At that point, however, I think you'd be at risk of the things falling over and crushing you beneath their corpulence. IMHO, racial pantheons are stupid. Each one repeats what's in every other racial pantheon, and provides such a glut of gods that only one or two (see: Moradin, Corellon Larethian) ever get used at all. Yet the travesty that is standard D&D's religious system assumes all of these other gods have cults and churches and faiths of their own, more or less independent organizations, running around, presumably having an impact on the world somewhere (which we never see for some strange reason). Bleh.
Give me elves that worship the moon and stars in general, or dwarves that worship the ancestors, and orcs that worship elemental fire. Give me actual diversity of religion, not just "Our gods are Tom, Tim, and Tyler. Their gods are Bob, Burt, and Bill. What's the difference? Uhmm...." Or if you keep racial pantheons, make the clerics out as priests of the entire pantheon, with the lesser deities akin to saints and spirits accompanying the head-hancho god.
[/rant]
All that said, I do like evil elves, and not just drow. But it doesn't necessarily require the existence of another deity to boot.
Are there any evil elven gods that are not drow? I've seen a neutral elven god, but no evil. I understand goodness is next to elveness or some such but serious isn't there one pissy evil moon elf god?Any specific setting or just in general?
just in general
Fizz
Give me the weekend, Let me see what I can come up with.
You can always invent one.
Let's try this:
Cal-Dohir, the Splendid one.
NE lesser god
Domains: Evil, Magic, Destruction, Death (Elf)
Portfolio: Elven superiority, ethnic cleansing, racism
Favoured Weapon: Longbow
Symbol regal elven face looking down with disdainful features
Cal-Dohir embodies the one of the darkest aspects of elvendom: The conviction that elves are the paragon of humanoids, and all other races are lesser, there to serve the true People.
Cal-Dohir's followers are a minority, but a very vocal one. Whenever someone talks about elves thinking themselves better at everything than anyone else, they probably witnessed a Dohiran disciple loudly proclaiming his dogma and mistook it as the elves' general outlook.
His church is basically divided into two branches. The Proselytisers mainly preach their deity's dogma and try to win over converts to their cause. Some do so regularly in any sizable elven settlement while others travel the lands, waiting for some skirmish between elves and other races to occur and then standing there on the battlefield droning on about the lesser races while the elves take care of their dead.
The Defenders, on the other hand, don't content themselves with poisoning their fellow elves' hearts, but try to carry out the ethnical cleansing their lord talks about. Since they consider other races lesser than even animals, they feel no shame in using the most vilest tactics imaginable: ambushes, raids, assassinations, poisoning wells, leading monsters into their settlements, and so on. In fact, many of the battlefields the Proselytisers pray on are the direct result of the Defenders' actions.
Cal-Dohir teaches that only elves are a True People. Other races, especially Humans, Dwarves and Orcs, are worse than animals, and should not be trafficked with, except when you eradicate them or make them serve the real people. Their forms are ugly, their manners nonexistent, they don't get along with nature, their art is laughable, and their voices shrill and unpleasant to hear.
Dohirans are not averse to taking slaves (even though elven culture generally values freedom) or using undead humans, dwarves or orcs for debasing labour (even though in elven culture, the rest of the dead is never to be disturbed with necromancy or resurrection). The only reason they don't regularly rape other races is their near limitless disgust of them.
Dohirans talk of the Great Cleansing, a prophetised event they say will come in the future. They say that through war and natural disaster and great sickness, the face of the earth will be cleansed from those abominations. While most just use this future event as a soothing balm, some actively work towards making it happen by trying to amass enough millitary power to wage war upon the other races, gain enough magical power to make nature unleash all its wrath upon their foes, or study disease enough to create one that will kill all the hated races, but gainst which the People will be immune.
It's just a rough draft I whipped up on the fly, but I'm sure you can use it to create an evil elven deity.
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An elven god(dess) who believes in some sort of elven manifest destiny to rule over the shorter lived races, who encourages putting other races under elven rule 'for their own good,' would be interesting. Elves have always struck me as the race most likely to turn supremacist, particularly after reading the 2E Complete Book of Elves, which implied that they ate sunshine and laughter and crapped pine-scented moonbeams. This diety would be something of a paradox, a god of freedom and independence *for elves,* which, regretfully, requires that the 'children' be 'kept in line,' for the good of all. Humans, Dwarves, Halflings and Gnomes would be strictly regulated, and would think of this diety as lawful in the extreme (and evil), while the restrictions of the clergy upon fellow elves would be all-but absent, and the diety would seem to be all about making the world safe enough for the elves to be free from care and live their lives aware of their responsibility to 'care for' and 'shephard' the lesser races, to help them find their way. (After a few centuries of this 'benevolent guidance,' it would be pretty obvious to anyone not part of the system that the elves had long ago given up on 'caring for' the 'lesser races' and were more interested in perpetuating the slavery of anyone who wasn't born with sufficiently pointy ears.) Under such a system, Half-Elves would be the 'most favored' slaves, put in authority over the other races. (Similar to the situation in Haiti, in the day.)
A god(dess) of the hunt, all about the stalk, the chase, savoring the fear of the prey and, finally, that sweet moment of release as the arrow goes forth to make the kill, would also fit some elven stereotypes, while being not-good. This diety would be all about surrender to the primal instincts in all elves, whether those chaotic impulses are said to be animalistic and natural, or fey and otherworldly, the follows of the Hunter would be forceful and aggressive in all things, savoring the hunt, the feast and the pleasures that come after.
The elves have gods of Water (Deep Sashelas) and Air (Aerdrie Faenya), but lack specific gods of earth or fire.
A hedonistic and exuberant (violently so) god(dess) of fire, seen by some as the diety of passion and creativity, dance and energy, others as the inferno that sweeps through the forests, might not be specifically evil, but could be neutral and have evil worshippers who attempt to cleanse the world of unclean things with purifying flames, the same way the forest fire clears the deadwood from the unhealthy forest and leaves only the strongest and healthiest behind, making room for new growth.
An earth god(dess) could be somber and resolute, and also have some connection to the elven metalcrafts of mithral mail and the crafting of longswords. A diety of tools, weapons and shaping nature into submission, the diety could be very lawful and regard the natural world as being placed there for the elven people's use. This ethos also puts elves into conflict with other races, who compete for the resources that the elves have been taught are theirs by right, and so the church also taught elves to burn and beat the metals of the earth into armor and weapons, to defend what is theirs. Not just a diety of earth and stone, but also of things that grow within the earth (plants) or walk upon the earth (animals), all are seen as gifts of this diety, to be shaped and used and administered by the elven peoples. All earthly things are meant to know the touch of elven hands, and so be shaped and turned to elven purposes. Again, a neutral diety, but one that could easily have evil followers, who decide that 'all earthly gifts' include other sentient races, to be 'shaped and turned to elven use.' (This diety could be turned into the elven supremacist diety quite easily!)