within pathfinder the gods are proveably real, the afterlife is a fact, and it's fairly easy for you to get reasonably accurate infomation on were your behaviour will have you end up.
my question is this:
Why would anyone worship evil gods?
Sure you get some short term power, but who with the wisdom to be a cleric would be willing to get a couple of decades of ease at the cost of an eternity in hell/the abyss, or even having your soul devoured?
even the neutral gods take evil worshipers, and they're promising a far better afterlife for lower-risk behaviour.
Even taking into consideration the fact that the dark gods tend to reward their favorites excessively, the price you pay to become one of the favored is generally far higher than the rewards are, and odds are you'll fall from favor if you put so much as a toe out of line.
considering all the cons, i'm not having an easy time understanding why people make these cults that characters seem to run into all of the time. seriously, what's the upside that the wisdom twenty cleric can see that i can't?
Doing evil well enough can earn instant promotions the moment you die. Be sufficiently evil and sufficiently successful in that evil and you might even get to lead armies of the damned in dread crusades against the living!
as i understand it, the price is that becoming a demon/devil in the afterlife is your personality and memories, no exceptions.
at least that's the impression i got from the fiend folios. could have been a misunderstanding on my part.
Evil gods offer power in this life which is what draws people in, a highly intelegent character such as a wizard my believe he can escape his fate through ego or a wise cleric may believe the rewards in this life outweight the punishments in the next.
Particularly powerful souls or paragons of evil may expect to be elevated to outsider status upon death, infact if your selling your soul to hell it might even be in your contract. If worst comes to worst you can always plan for death bed atonement to change alignment and god to something fuzzier.
Thats not even mentioning the people who aren't expecting to die, undead, epic level characters, etc and people who are raised directly into the faith such as Isgeri orphans.
In our own world, people believed as the people of Pathfinder believe that God(s) is/are real and that an eternity of suffering await the unrighteous, yet history is full of people being thoroughly evil swine!
And even today, some people worship the devil, or evil gods of polytheistic faiths.
Maybe their god lies to them about the potential rewards? He is evil, after all... and has probably had a long time to build up his bluff. ;)
don't pass go (was I the only one thinking is while reading the title?)
Better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven ...
Also some people don't care about long term plans when they get something good in the here and now, look at bankers for example. Some may think that they find a way to profit from it all and find an easy escape before the end.
You can ask the same about all those heavy-metal kind-of-devil-worshippers (yes I know there are nearly no real satanists out there), but they all prefer an afterlife with beer, heavy metal and naked chicks to the kind with order, enlightenment and inner peace...
If you don't think about the afterlife of evil people as sould-devouring torture, then it becomes clearer.
So you are saying that choosing a selfless and good life is ultimately a selfish and self-serving choice ?
People will likely be aware of hell as such but most people will not be aware they are likely to lose their personality and identity, or others while will not care.
thank you all for the clarification, it's been very helpful and allowed me to see clearly.
ten points to Richard Leonhart for getting the title.
now on a slightly related subject, we've got a character in our current group who was unfortunate enough to make a deal with a demon during an emotional weak point (her parents had just been murdered in front of her, and other bad things were done). specifically, she made a deal with a powerful succubus, which became her patron (she's a witch, with enchantment patron). the deal was verbal and loose, and as a result both sides are abusing the hell out of it (pardon the pun). she's a good character at heart, but her pact requires her to kill in cold blood and that disparity has her teetering on chaotic neutral. she gets around this by only killing criminals and 'bad' people, though she's not very thourough about her background checking (an aspect of her chaotic nature i think). meanwhile her patron's slowly turning her into a succubus (in game she uses spells like unnatural lust, and she's got the prehensile hair and disguise hexes, with charm on the way. fifth level will see her with the flight hex as she begins to manifest demonic wings.) and her familiar is a possessed cat (DM let her take improved familiar early, but just for the fiendish template) who makes sure she keeps up with her mistress's whims.
any ideas how my wizard can help her find an out before it's too late for her? long term plans will be needed (we're second level right now, and i do have something beginning to look like a plan (it involves planar binding minor demons to find out everything possible about this patron, then summoning her to a prepared battlefield for negotiation/epic showdown) but i'd like to at least have a backup if someone can come up with one).
I have to ask what is keeping hetr tied to the pact, what happens if he doesnt kill ?
I would say it is like when Judge Death was subjected to the fear gas of Scarecrow in the Dredd/Batman crossover... He got pink, fluffy, cuddly BUNNIES!!! It is too easy to assume we all want the same thing. If you want a place of peace, rest and harmony, it would be heaven for you, but to someone else, that might feel like being roasted alive over a spit. If you truly want to rule, to inflict pain, to exercise brutal power over others, then the hells mean you will be doing that for eternity. Even as one of the damned, you will have other damned to hurt and fight with. With enough viciousness and bile, you will advance. The loss of your identity and memories would probably notbea great loss to you, considering that you lived in a world where you were hunted and shunned, or at least reviled. You do get to keep your consciousness, don't you?
I have to ask what is keeping hetr tied to the pact, what happens if he doesnt kill ?
mainly RP. it's her first character, and she wants to do it right. part of the fluff is actually that she can't remember the exact wording of the pact...
given how she's playing the character, i'd suggest that the witch's libedo grows and grows until she can't take it any more (she's a black widow, and sacrifices people to her patron when she sleeps with them) but at this point i don't think the DM's got any mechanical penalty established.
...You do get to keep your consciousness, don't you?
um, i don't think so. you basically become putty to be shaped into minor demons/devils, at least as far as i understand.
Well then, without consciousness, you are just gone. I.e. There is no fear, no pain, nothing bad happens to you. Sweet deal.
What turns a Man's heart to neutrality?
If you see my wife, tell her that I said... hello.
Well then, without consciousness, you are just gone. I.e. There is no fear, no pain, nothing bad happens to you. Sweet deal.
there's a catch. your consiousness is stripped from you over several thousand years by very inventive torture. it's how the hells get their divine energy, and what powers their spell-like abilities. so if you don't mind having your very essence tortured out of you to power a couple of greater teleports, then i suppose it's not so bad. always remember that the more powerful you become through experience, the more energy your soul will yield when you're ripped into little pieces and converted into energy and building material.
Even so, you are aware. And the building materials thing only happens to those who are weak. You are not weak, so why worry, right? When you are a demon one day, it will all be worth it. For all eternity. Then it is you who is doing the torturing. And every bit of hate and pain you have been through, you can visit redoubled on the new puny souls.
It is like gambling. How many think they will win when they do it, and how many think they will lose?
Thats not how souls get formed into outsiders, if you read the books of the damned petitioner souls in hell just hang around in packs and get picked on by devils. Similar things happen in the abyss et al. Powerful souls can maintain their personality as a petitioner and interact with outsiders. The same thing happens on the good and neutral planes to petitioners but they don't get tormented as much.
Mechanically petitioner souls on outer planes have to make will checks not to become a generic petitioner, the same happens on some other planes too. Notably Elysium the NG plane can trap planar travellers and turn them into petitioners if they fail their saves while still actually alive.
These souls are then used up to power hell, not its magic but to make more devils or as labour or trade goods (spikey longswords 20 souls each), eg souls = lemures, then powerful devils can form the soul stuff or lemures into more powerful devils, at the whim of the greater devil a powerful petitioner can be changed into a powerful devil but its rare as no one likes competition and its up to the creating devil if they lose their memories.
Overall sucubi are not devils they are demons so it will work slightly differently due to their chaotic nature but overall every character no matter what god they worship is doomed to an afterlife of obscurity weather good or evil, eternal torment is saved in most d&d settings for the true unbelievers with no patron god.
i obviously need to reread the books.
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Bear in mind all the fine details are very setting specific.
Never thought about this before, but the one evil character I've played might have had an origin that's downright commonplace in Cheliax.
WORDS WORDS WORDS
So he "knew" he was going to hell. He threw himself into researching a way to escape this fate and possibly free his mother's soul. There were always tales of sorcerers attaining immortality, but this was the age of King Conan and everyone knew those guys wound up getting killed by some lucky barbarian sooner or later. And attempting to cheat gods and demons was a fool's game.
So he did the most reasonable thing he could think of: He settled. He hunted up and down for the right name of the right demon, one known for keeping true to pacts, and swore his life to his/her/it's service in exchange for a place of honor and relative safety in hell, as well as for his mother. If he must go to hell, at least he could avoid its worst torments.
Of course once he had thrown in with the demon, his ambitions grew. He never sought to cheat the demon it's due, and never sought a way out of being its slave for eternity, but he did seek to be rewarded by becoming a demon himself, and to be honored with slaves of his own. Enter his cult, filled with disenfranchised people who he led to believe were as damned as he believed he was, and that their only salvation was the demon he served. He also sought what revenge he could dare take on the priesthood of Set that he hated so much, particularly luring their family members into his cult as members or sacrifices, thus denying Set their souls and claiming them as his, and his master's, own. Completely self-deluded with regards to his cult. He told himself they were his family and that he cared for them, but he was essentially damning them to be his property just as he had sworn himself to be the same to his master. He managed to convince himself most of the time that he was doing it for their sake. After all, better that he had them than that old snake, Set.
And so it went, real subtle-like, up until the campaign stopped. I had always hoped someone would fill him in on the fact that his soul's fate was always in his own hands before he damned himself. Was looking forward to having him wrestle with the prospects of redemption or believing it was far too late for him. On the one hand he was definitely an Even Evil Has Standards character, and he did have some decency left. But he was also rather pathetic, living as a slave not only to the one he gave himself too, but to the establishment that he let chart his life's course when he could have been anything else.
In Cheliax, no telling how many orphans and other children get told by the establishment that they're hellbound for certain. If you "know" you're damned, of course throwing in with something that promises a better deal seems like a good idea. And once that first hook gets in, it becomes easier to go along with whatever they say and oh so much harder to stop.
And there are certainly a number of orphanages run by Hell's servants in and around Cheliax... Order of the Golden Erinyes for starters, with a dose of harsh martial arts disciplining as well.
...considering all the cons, i'm not having an easy time understanding why people make these cults that characters seem to run into all of the time. seriously, what's the upside that the wisdom twenty cleric can see that i can't?
This approach suggests that you've fallen prey to the illusionary concept called "free will".
My two cents: A person who enjoys being evil in life gets to do all of the evil things he loves (robbing, cheating, stealing, murdering, etc.) in the afterlife. The fact that other fiends are trying to do the same to him is a sadly unavoidable consequence.
... snip
any ideas how my wizard can help her find an out before it's too late for her? long term plans will be needed (we're second level right now, and i do have something beginning to look like a plan (it involves planar binding minor demons to find out everything possible about this patron, then summoning her to a prepared battlefield for negotiation/epic showdown) but i'd like to at least have a backup if someone can come up with one).
I'm sure that you and your PC have the best of intentions, but keep in mind this is just a game. It could be that your friend liked the role playing aspects of the whole thing. The concept of the good guy using evil power for good is actually quite common (Naruto, Bleach, Death Note). You might want to talk to your friend to see what she thinks of it. She might love the idea as a great oportunity for role play, or she might not I really can't say for sure.
To quote the fiendish codex 2:
"First of all, few inhabitants of a D&D world, even devil cultists, have access to accurate information about the the afterlife. Most lawful evil characters envision the Nine Hells as a place much like the everyday world, except with higher, sharper mountains and a touch more brimstone in the air. One might have heard that souls are tormented there, but she assumes that her own special relationship with her local devils will somehow exempt her from such treatment. After all, high-ranking minions of evil universally regard themselves as special and indispensable."
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Essentially, you're asking why people get into and stay in abusive relationships. There's a few notable differences about an intimate faith-based relationship as opposed to a physically intimate relationship, but, consider the parallels.
1. Because I deserve it: This works both ways. The selfish narcissist thinks that nothing is more important than what they've convinced themselves they deserve; certainly your pain comes second to their own. On the other hand, those who have been abused survive these relationships by rationalizing that abusive relationships are what they deserve.
2. Because Shar really loves me. It makes me feel special. False, of course, but imagine how seductive that would be with a god, instead of a seductive partner. Especially when they provide you with spells.
3. Because you hope that they will change. While abusers (gods, men, or monsters) will usually promise to change during the honeymoon stage, it is rare for an abuser to change while still in a relationship.
4. While you are not the cause of the abuse, it's less scary if you're to blame, because then, at least, you're in control. So you hope that by acting better or more in line with their demands/commandments, you'll make everything good again.
5. It's not so bad and everybody does it. False, of course, but possibly true to that person's life experience.
6. They draw a link between love and violence. Again, violence begets violence. Its damage gets passed down by generation. People who were abusers were very often abused themselves. This is sad, and worth a paladin's pity, but also damning, as nobody knows better the damage such behavior can do and not everyone who was abused becomes an abuser.
7. Hopelessness: The idea of being happy without your current deity may seem impossible now.
8. Gender ideology. You're falsely made to believe that it's your biological fate to be treated this way.
9. Embarrassment and shame often keep people in an abusive relationship, with gods or humans, for quite some time.
10. Financial dependence. All of your professional contacts are with this god. Where else are you going to get spells? Plus, you've made all these enemies. You need those spells. If anyone good finds out about your relationship with this god, they'll drop you socially, attack you, arrest you. Where else are you going to go?
11. You feel you have a lack of supportive relationships. The good guys will never believe you, you fear they'll smite you, and everyone you care about you've alienated or left to be with this all-consuming god.
12. Fear: This all-knowing, extremely powerful god will be ANGRY if I leave.
13. You're in the hands of an angry god, but at least you're not alone.
14. You're loyal. It's your best trait. It's what makes you feel good about everything you've done and you've stayed that way despite everything that has been done to you.
15. GUILT. With gods, we're dealing with world-class manipulators pulling the guilt-trips of a lifetime. Evil deities are world-class sociopaths.
16. Can you say, self-medication? Dependency on drugs or alcohol can play a part in staying in abusive relationships.
Given all of this stuff, please consider the awesome courage that it takes for someone to admit that their life's become unmanageable and their relationship intolerably abusive and to seek change. The miracle isn't that so many people get trapped and stay trapped in their abusive relationships with gods and men. The miracle is that so many people get out.
Source:
http://www.crisisconnectioninc.org/t...hytheystay.htm
Humans in the real world do many things that they know for a fact are bad for them. Over-eat, smoke, use instant in store credit to buy that new 72" LCD TV and then watch Fox News, etc. They know these are bad but they still do them anyway. Between weak will and wanting instant gratification they grab what they want and they grab it now.
Evil gods are all about getting you what you want right now.
Then there are the hopeless, the trapped, and the crazy that just want power to get revenge on those that gave them a swirly at the town well or ate their last cookie.
Evil gods are good for that too.
We need a goddess of revenge against those who ate the last cookie. A demigoddess serving Calistria?
We need a goddess of revenge against those who ate the last cookie. A demigoddess serving Calistria?
i'm sorry but i have to say it
COME TO THE DARK SIDE! we have cookies ;)
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Essentially, you're asking why people get into and stay in abusive relationships. There's a few notable differences about an intimate faith-based relationship as opposed to a physically intimate relationship, but, consider the parallels.
Some frighteningly apt comparisons in there. I've used several of them without making the connection. (sup CotCT group!)
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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(Not meant as trolling)
Look at some of the discussion of RPG Superstar, and Sean and Clark's 'auto reject lists' despite all the warning, people break those rules anyway, in the belief that they're the one the rules don't apply to.
It's the same thing here. Even someone who doesn't expect to win, but follows the rules, is looking for a reward (getting their work critiqued*). For evil characters, enough of them believe they're the one exception to the rules.
For others it's like roguerouge said. Or like the Offspring song "Self Esteem."
*
Part of the reason for worshiping evil gods is because they have a better benefits package rather than Hell in general.
Think of it a bit like an airport waiting area. When the damned arrive in Hell, after being processed by Pharasma, there will be servants of the various evil gods waiting there for those their god has told them to fetch personally. Whoevers on that list is up to the god, of course, but it's a reasonable bet that it includes priests, anti-paladins, and extremely faithful lay worshipers.
These souls are going to be taken back to the personal domain of that god somewhere in Hell or the Abyss or whatever plane it happens to be. The personal domain of that god is kind of like an embassy in that it has its own rules and laws and those are whatever has been set by the given god.
Yes, the general rules of Hell may be that souls are supposed to be tortured, stripped of their identity and whatnot, but Hell also has evil gods in it, and if an evil god wants the soul of their evil high priest to attend them right now, they're going to get it. The eternity of torture can be suspended as a threat if the evil priest ever betrays their god.
Let's pick an evil god for an example. Let's say Urgathoa. She's famous for having told Pharasma to get bent and becoming a goddess through sheer belief in self-entitlement. I'm probably getting some particulars wrong, but this is my take on her. She's willful, prideful, gets what she wants, but she's also a party girl and is good to her friends, terrible to her enemies, and has no patience for spoilsports and frumps, Pharasma being first on that list.
So, some devout worshiper of Urgathoa dies, someone who made undead or was undead, had marvelous gluttonous feasts, and basically lived his life and undeath like his goddess lived hers. He is so going on the invite list for Urgathoa's endless dead man's party. Plus Urgathoa's going to be pissed if she finds out some dumb daemon ate his soul before he got to the gates to her estate. Maybe not enough to recreate that soul via a Miracle or a Wish, but more than enough to squash the daemon into paste for ruining her playmate. And if that playmate was a key part in her evil plans? Yeah, she's going to intercede. She's a goddess, but more than that, she's a goddess who knows what she wants and is going to get it and screw any "rules" someone made up.
Devout worshippers of Urgathoa will come back as undead horrors or serve her in her palace or do whatever else she thinks is amusing. Yes, if they get themselves killed too much, they may outlive their usefulness, meaning their amusement value, and they'll be gone forever, or at least until Urgathoa decides to reboot their soul with a Miracle or Wish.
That's the perk of worshipping an evil god.
In pathfinder if you get powerful enough you will become immortal and nearly immune to death so it is really a bad deal for the evil gods to make the trade of power for a soul. Unless the evil gods real goal in the deal is to spread evil and misery and get some mortal ponce to to the hard work for you.
