I'm trying to wrap my head around what an evil worshipper of the morally neutral deities would be like, specifically a NE cleric of Pharasma.
A LE cleric of Abadar could favor harsh taxes, oppose charities, and be cruel to her slaves, a CE bard of Calistria could be a cruel gossip who kills those he considers more beautiful than he, but a NE Pharasmin? I'm having trouble imagining it.
Kill 'em all and let god sort 'em out! (Look, you asked for a NE point of view...)
Have you read Death's Heretic?
Have you read Death's Heretic?
** spoiler omitted **
I haven't but I desperately want to, but alas I gave into temptation and clicked on the spoiler.
I'm trying to think of ways they can be evil while still observing the tenets of their faith, even using them in evil ways.
I'm going to have to second the "kill them all" line of thinking. Neutral Evil is evil for evil's sake. Not crazy, not stupid, just pure evil. An evil cleric of a neutral death goddess would probably focus on the death portion of her portfolio, and ignore things like childbirth. Maybe take pleasure in killing and in inflicting as much pain as possible.
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Keep in mind that part of Pharasma's portfolio is Fate, and one of her domains is Knowledge. I'm seeing a mad scientiest here, maybe a vivisectionist that is trying to understand the workings of death. Perhaps he kidnaps people who he thinks have achieved their destiny, and then more or less tortures them to death, to see if he can figure out how death works, what it means, and all that. After all, if their destiny is complete, what more use do they have, other than being judged after they die?
Alternately, you could go with someone who wants to understand fate, possibly a mad Oracle. He gets visions and prophesies about various people, and in trying to figure out how fate works, he tries different things to jack with people, wondering if he can alter the course of fate, or if he is bringing the events into fruition himself. I'll admit that it's kind of a flat concept, but hey, it's easier to explain things when you start by saying "Well, he is crazy."
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A NE cleric of Pharasma who skips the death and undeath business to focus on birth and prophecy, specifically the children of prophecy who are supposed to be born so such-and-such "Will of Pharasma" will come about. Theologically, consent doesn't come into the equation with Fate, so why should it matter with Birth? If the prophecy says that child Z will be born from the union of X and Y, find X and Y and remove any obstacles to that union such as inconvenient spouses or lovers not included in the prophecy or even frivolous protests about "consent". Use a geas or just order X and Y to do it or you start lopping off body parts unnecessary for life or procreation. Use similar methods to make sure the child comes to term and destroy any obvious obstacles to the child fulfilling its destiny.
A NE cleric of Pharasma who skips the death and undeath business to focus on birth and prophecy, specifically the children of prophecy who are supposed to be born so such-and-such "Will of Pharasma" will come about. Theologically, consent doesn't come into the equation with Fate, so why should it matter with Birth? If the prophecy says that child Z will be born from the union of X and Y, find X and Y and remove any obstacles to that union such as inconvenient spouses or lovers not included in the prophecy or even frivolous protests about "consent". Use a geas or just order X and Y to do it or you start lopping off body parts unnecessary for life or procreation. Use similar methods to make sure the child comes to term and destroy any obvious obstacles to the child fulfilling its destiny.
That is DELICIOUSLY twisted!
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Options;
1) Similar to Kevin's idea, take a gander at the Euthanatos mages of the Magic: the Ascencion setting.
They focus on death, fate and entropy, and one of their tenets is that there is only so much 'good stuff' and 'bad stuff' to go around. Certain people, by dint of their circumstances, birth, etc. happen to get 'more than their fair share' of 'good stuff,' and yet squander these opportunities, wasting them, while others, who would have improved their situations greatly by these chances, gain nothing.
Someone with this sort of mindset could take it upon themselves to 'balance the scales' and 'free up opportunities' by killing those who have received more than their fair share of good things, and wasted them. The character might think of themselves as a sort of 'Robin Hood' of destiny, not seeking out the wealthy, but those blessed with fortunate circumstances, and yet continuing to 'spin gold into straw,' as it were.
By assassinating the impetuous wastrel first son, the much more deserving (in the eyes of the Pharasmin...) second son can now inherit.
2) A different take on this could borrow from the movie Prometheus. The NE Pharasmin believes that the cycle of death and birth must continue at a proper pace. Someone who lives a longer-than-expected duration infringes on their children's chance to ever blossom, free from the constricting shade of the parent tree. Some may seek the elixer from Thuvia, or have a trace of elven blood, or make infernal compacts, or have been reincarnated into a younger body, or have found some other means to live beyond a 'proper' span of years, and the Pharasmin sees themself as performing a service by hurrying them off to the Boneyard. If those who would benefit from this 'early retirement' wish to reward them for this service, so much the better...
(Woe to the ambitious youngster who mistakes this Pharasmin for a common assassin, and asks for the 'retirement' of a parent who is still in the prime of their life, as the Pharasmin might decide instead that their less ambitious younger sibling might make a better eventual inheritor. The wheel turns when the wheel must turn, and the Pharasmin is just as opposed to rushing it, as to delaying it.)
3) A Pharasmin could believe that, in the age of lost omens, that some children were simply not fated to be born, but survived a difficult birth through extreme measures (such as curative magic). Using strange and difficult to confirm (or refute!) portents, they could determine that any given person was 'not meant to be,' and seek to 'correct the imbalance' by killing them! (They might even believe that for every person raised from the dead, another must die, and seek out those who have certain sympathetic similarities to, or even relatives of, those who have been returned from the Boneyard, to 'take their place in line.)
4) Careful research into family trees, originally meant to confirm inheritances and birthrights and lines of succession, revealed some... discrepancies, which sometimes proved to be acts of infiltration by unnatural creatures such as dopplegangers or fiend-possessed spawn, and these researchers formed their own secret society, aware that the infiltrators were *everywhere,* could appear as *anyone,* and had their own supernatural means of insight (such as detect thoughts and fiendish telepathy and mind-affecting abilities). They send out agents publically to confirm noble scions, and are known to keep the bestest ever records of family lines, and oh-so-privately send out assassins to eliminate those that they have deemed to be infiltrators, imposters or changeling children (and, sometimes, they are wrong, but their creed is 'in doubt, send them to Pharasma and let her make the final judgement...').
Funny enough, I made a cleric once that was fairly similar to option 2, but I never got to play him. He wouldn't kill anyone, because he was more of astoryteller than assassin. He would travel around, learning about people's life stories so that he could chronicle them, and when he felt that their story couldn't get any better, he'd let them die. And of course, to raise someone that died, say, covering the group's escape, because that would diminish the story.
I didn't really consider that evil, but it might be. The thing I like so much about Pharasma though, is that you can get a lot of alienness out of something like that, without it necessarily being evil.
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All the listed examples seem good to me.
That said, there's a very simple alternate possibility:
He's a NE guy who just happens to be a worshipper of Pharasma. Take the motivations of a NE fighter, Rogue, or Wizard (greed, ambition, revenge, virulent racism, etc.) and just also have him dislike undead and keep scrupulous birth records.
One of Pharasma's key features is her utter indifference to things outside her very limited concerns. A Pharasmin Cleric in Ustalav could attempt genocide of all non-humans (or maybe just Half-Orcs) and Pharasma would keep giving them spells all the same.
Think Hunchback of Notre Dame, the spanish Inquisition, every horrible excess committed by members of the clergy in the real world, and realize that (unlike a Good deity) a Neutral Deity has absoutely no reason not to allow their followers to do the same if they wish it.
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All the listed examples seem good to me.
That said, there's a very simple alternate possibility:
He's a NE guy who just happens to be a worshipper of Pharasma. Take the motivations of a NE fighter, Rogue, or Wizard (greed, ambition, revenge, virulent racism, etc.) and just also have him dislike undead and keep scrupulous birth records.
One of Pharasma's key features is her utter indifference to things outside her very limited concerns. A Pharasmin Cleric in Ustalav could attempt genocide of all non-humans (or maybe just Half-Orcs) and Pharasma would keep giving them spells all the same.
Think Hunchback of Notre Dame, the spanish Inquisition, every horrible excess committed by members of the clergy in the real world, and realize that (unlike a Good deity) a Neutral Deity has absoutely no reason not to allow their followers to do the same if they wish it.
A cleric is more than just someone who gets free spells so long as they don't violate a few taboos and/or obey a few commandments. They're supposed to be the voice of their god in the world and the "only one step away alignment" limitation is meant to mean the amount their god will allow them to stray while indulging their personal hobbies which have nothing to do with the god's creed.
That said, even if they were just people who got free spells for obeying a few taboos and/or commandments, those taboos and commandments would still get them in hot water with their god if they came into conflict with their personal hobby.
Let's say we've got our NE who's a cleric of Pharasma and has as his NE hobby something like orcish genocide, especially all half-orcs, since while they may not be an abomination to Pharasma, they're an abomination to him and he has a huge personal hate for them. Let's even assume he's got some dark personal history with orcs and/or half-orcs killing his family, eating them, and setting fire to his village, not necessarily in that order.
So he's head of the temple of Pharasma and a bunch of human women come to him claiming to have been raped by orcs and would like his services as a healer to give them abortions. A few have even given birth and have the half-orc babies to prove it and ask whether infanticide is okay with Pharasma and if she'd prefer exposure, meaning leaving the kid out on a hill to die of hypothermia, or if they can just toss them down a well or something. Or could he do it? They heard him going on about how "The only good orc is a dead orc!" and thought that might be part of Pharasma's official theology, since they're 1st level commoners and didn't take any ranks in Knowledge Religion.
Now let's be pretty clear on things here. The goddess of birth:
A). Isn't really down with the idea of abortion unless the mother's life were endangered, and
B). Even if she were down with abortion, depending on the politics of the players and the theology of the GM, infanticide is right out of the question.
Now the NE genocidal cleric of Pharasma can maybe stall, consult his holy books, and pray for guidance, but all that happens is that the peasant women dump the half-orc babies on the altar and skip town, leaving the decision to him as the priest of the goddess of birth.
Pharasma has relatively few commandments and taboos. The only three I can think of are "Don't make undead or suffer them to 'live'," "Don't give false prophecy in her name," and "Don't kill babies." Only one of those is applicable.
The fact is, if you have genocide as a hobby, you're going to run afoul of the third one in rather short order, and you're going to have to choose between engaging in your NE hobby or keeping your status as cleric of Pharasma.
It's not like she's not going to find out either. The moment someone dies, the soul goes to her, and as goddess of death and prophecy she jolly well will know the exact circumstances of their death. A cleric of hers killing babies? Excuse me?
Cutting you off your daily allotment of spells is probably the mildest censure.
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A cleric is more than just someone who gets free spells so long as they don't violate a few taboos and/or obey a few commandments. They're supposed to be the voice of their god in the world and the "only one step away alignment" limitation is meant to mean the amount their god will allow them to stray while indulging their personal hobbies which have nothing to do with the god's creed.
Not based on well, the existence of PCs as such. A NG PC Cleric of Pharasma is likely to wander around adventuring and, if he never happens to run into any undead, never do a single thing in play that has anything to do with his deity's priorities.
It can be assumed he does things to advance the church when he can, off-screen so to speak, and indeed should be. The same can be assumed of the villainous version.
A Cleric must be devout, and champion their God's viewpoint in most things when it comes up, and even to some degree work towards the god's agenda in the world as a whoe. But the Neutral Gods tend to have such a broad spectrum of what that means that it's almost a meaningless statement. Gorum wants you to fight (and, ideally, win), Nethys to increase your mystical power and knowledge, Irori to improve yourself, Abadar to spread and support civilization, Calistria to avenge anything bad done to you (and maybe others, up to you), and Gozreh and Pharasma simply don't care at all as long as you stick to a few rules.
Pharasma certainly cares if you neglect your duties...but beyond stamping out Undead, your duties are static (keep birth records, act as a midwife, perform funerals, etc.)...they aren't an agenda per se. Which means you can have your own agenda (like 'conquer the country') without even bothering her in the slightest, and do whatever you like that doesn't violate her few rules to advance that agenda.
That said, even if they were just people who got free spells for obeying a few taboos and/or commandments, those taboos and commandments would still get them in hot water with their god if they came into conflict with their personal hobby.
Definitely true. Of course, it's usually pretty easy to come up with a villainous workaround, since the rules aren't based on a general moral stance. My immediate thought in the Half-Orc genocide thing is only killing the adults and then raising the children in workhouses to, as adults, be enslaved as inferior beings fit only to work for the benefit of their betters, in an atrocity combining the Indian Schools used in the US and Canada with institutionalized slavery. Just for example.
The point isn't necessarily the specific example (which I pulled out of thin air, based on there being a lot of both racism and Pharasma worship in Ustalav, apparently without thinkng it through as thoroughly as would be ideal, my bad), it's that Pharasma simply doesn't care if you do bad things as long as you stick to her specific rules. Torture? Rape? Mind control? Murder of adults? Slavery? All fine with her, even on a mass scale. For any reason you like.
Of course, so's opposing them, but that's another discussion altogether.
Oh, certainly selling the kids into slavery or using them as labor for not-slavery-but-might-as-well-be workhouses would be perfectly fine with Pharasma, but it doesn't square with out-and-out genocide.
The easiest way to make a NE cleric of Pharasma is to just give them situational ethics. Let them murder people when it suits them and is theologically permissible, engage in the slave trade when convenient, and basically whatever they feel like so long as it's not setting up a secondary religion or devotion apart from their god.
This pretty much goes for anyone playing a cleric. If you're devoted to a cause that isn't one of your god's causes, why exactly are you worshiping that god? Pharasma doesn't mind if you're evil or chaotic, but once you're both you're so far from her moral center that she really has no use for you as a cleric.
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My personal idea for a NE worshipper of Pharasma is the following:
Pharasma judges all souls, and sends them to their rightful reward, and as long as she endures, so does the afterlife. But Groetus, the Harbinger Moon, hangs above the Boneyard, drawing closer, and it is said that once he arrives, all things will end.
It's a closely kept secret of the Pharasmin clergy that one thing repels Groetus - the souls of atheists, kept in crystalline form in Pharasma's vaults, and sacrified at need to repel Groetus.
But who knows how many souls there are left within the vaults? Who knows how long the End Times can be postponed? What is required...are more dead atheists.
This NE cleric/bard of Pharasma travels from town to town, posting as the leader of a cult of self-actualisation. He preys on the gullible and the timid, convincing them that the only thing they need has been within them all along, that as long as they believe in themselves, nothing else matters.
And then - subtly - he tries to twist them from the gods. Obviously he's got to be careful, but he's got enough Sense Motive to spot the likely ones, and not go too far with the others. And once they've renounced their deity, once they're convinced that the only truth they needed was within them all along, he kills them. Poison, probably. Other mothods work, of course. Another atheist soul for Pharasma. Maybe. Probably. I mean, they renounced their god, after all. Another soul to repel Groetus! And another dead...all for the greater good of the world.
Pharasma, as goddess of prophecy, has a thing against false prophets--it's actually the origin myth for the lamias that she cursed a bunch of her prophets and turned them into beasts for offering false prophecy in her name--so an actual devout cleric of her posing as an atheist to get people to quit belief in all gods? It doesn't wash.
Besides, there are perfectly happy atheists in Rhahadoum, and the Prophecies of Calistrade seems to take the place of gods quite neatly too without being evil.
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Say, what ab out evil followers for Abadar and Irori? In the hopes of avoiding the beaten-to-death 'greedy merchant' stereotype for Abadar ("Mwuahahah! Money, money, money!" -- I see his clergy as being more like Scrooge McDuck, myself), how about a city defender who turns their city into a police state to 'protect it from the barbarian/criminal hordes'?
And with Irori, maybe someone so stuck on self-perfection that the self becomes the only thing worth anything? Or a monastic teacher who callously cripples or maims their students because "By removing their main strength, I am forcing them to confront their weakness and overcome it"?
Any other ideas?
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These ideas are based soley off their portfolios not necessarily the beliefs or tenants of the faiths.
Adabar: Burn down farmhouses to force families to move to the city. Cook the books at merchants in order to remove under performers from the market in order to spur commerce with whomever is greasing your pockets the best. Hook up w/ an alchemist to transmute lead into gold and use the wealth to depose an Adabar unfriendly regime and set up your merchantocracy. Dupe thousands into worshipping a mercantile standard calling it a 'prophecy of kalistradae' while siphoning off their souls to Axis to fuel your gold powered inevitable army.
Irori: Oversee a selective breeding program to breed a perfect master race. Liberate libraries, violently of course, spreading their knowledge to the imperfect proletariat. Kill antiquities hoarders and liberate their historic artifacts.
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For inspiration on Abadar, see how some aboriginal populations were treated in real life. An evil priest of Abadar might kidnap the children of "less-civilized" people, force them to abandon their native beliefs and language, all the while virtually enslaving them, just to bring "civilization and order" to the "savages"
Irori: Perfection of body in mind will lead to mastery over all other beings.
Gozreh: Bring civilization to its knees by burning the cities and forcing people into a life of savagery.
Gorum: Create war for the sake of war.
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Pharasma, as goddess of prophecy, has a thing against false prophets--it's actually the origin myth for the lamias that she cursed a bunch of her prophets and turned them into beasts for offering false prophecy in her name--so an actual devout cleric of her posing as an atheist to get people to quit belief in all gods? It doesn't wash.
Besides, there are perfectly happy atheists in Rhahadoum, and the Prophecies of Calistrade seems to take the place of gods quite neatly too without being evil.
Frankly, I disagree. The lamia were cursed for lying about their prophecies, faking prophetic visions, and - the big one - deliberately concealing a genuine prophetic vision received straight from Pharasma.
What this guy is doing isn't prophecy; he's basically offering self-help seminars with a nasty ulterior motive. He's not offering these sessions in Pharasma's name, indeed, Pharasma isn't mentioned at all. He would certainly try to avoid 'converting' any worshippers of Pharasma in his audience, if he became aware of their affiliation.
As far as I can see, Pharasma has big things about a) lying in Her name and b) undead shennanigans. I don't see what this guy is doing as strongly and specifically conflicting with any of her portfolio.
Is what he's doing evil and morally reprehensible? Absolutely. Is the slow trickle of atheist souls he delivers to the Boneyard going to make any difference in the long run? Highly unlikely. Is he, in fact, totally insane? Yep! The guy's basically a 'mission-based' serial killer - except in Golarion, there actually *are* higher powers that someone can be killing in aid of!
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Let's say we've got our NE who's a cleric of Pharasma and has as his NE hobby something like orcish genocide, especially all half-orcs, since while they may not be an abomination to Pharasma, they're an abomination to him and he has a huge personal hate for them. Let's even assume he's got some dark personal history with orcs and/or half-orcs killing his family, eating them, and setting fire to his village, not necessarily in that order.
I actually think that would be a fantastic idea for a Lawful Evil Clergymember of Abadar.
Imagine a charismatic Bishop of Abadar who truly believes that for the march of civilization to progress, Barbarian nations must not merely be converted: they must be exterminated. And what's worse, let us say that she believes that barbarism is endemic to certain racial and ethnic groups, such as Orcs and Half-Orcs, but also humans of Shoanti, Kellid, Mwangi, and Ulfen backgrounds. In order to build the perfect civilization, she believes that the vermin must be extirpated, and calls for bloody crusades against these peoples to be wiped out down to the last child. She may also believe that certain human ethnic groups are qualitatively better in every single way for shouldering the burden of creating the perfect state, such as Taldorians and Cheliaxians.
And what is worse, she is able to convince thousands upon thousands of people that her views are correct. That the world is full of disorder and Chaos, and that it must be cleansed of the dross and forcefully reshaped into something new.
For inspiration on Abadar, see how some aboriginal populations were treated in real life. An evil priest of Abadar might kidnap the children of "less-civilized" people, force them to abandon their native beliefs and language, all the while virtually enslaving them, just to bring "civilization and order" to the "savages"
This.