CG worshiper of Yog-Sothoth?

[James Jacobs]

Yakman wrote:

Wei Ji the Learner wrote:

Yakman wrote:

That doesn't make sense though.

"I want to contain you so your power doesn't get out... now gimme spells!"

I don't want to really get into the mechanics, but I hope you can understand my puzzlement.

...that is not dead which can aeternal lie, for with strange aeons even Death may die...

You have entities that defy any conventional method of comprehension. They may even view 'empowering' agents as ways of 'escaping' their imprisonment 'on the cheap'.

Or worse, imagine the Old Ones as 'couch potatoes' and their pawns/priests/cultists whathaveyou are their televisions to watch a 'Reality TV series'.

except those are, as you said, empowering agents.

Someone who is actively seeking to contain the Elder Evils is not an empowering agent. Why would they receive divine power (or even want it) from an entity that they are attempting to restrain/defeat/put to rest? It doesn't make much sense to me.

The term "Elder Evil" is a WotC thing. It's not something we use at Paizo or in Pathfinder, and even if we COULD we wouldn't use them for the Elder Mythos deities. Because some of them, like Yog-Sothoth or Bokrug, are NOT evil.

A chaotic good worshiper of Yog-Sothoth wouldn't be attempting to put it to rest, but would be worshiping it as a potent force of dimensional travel or magic and would be trying to put that power to good use. But on top of all that... the CG worshipers are VERY VERY VERY rare, so that if you never use one in your game... you're actually on model for how it should work.

[James Jacobs]

GM Rednal wrote:

Soometimes, they're treated more like a force of nature than a being with any kind of thought. XD

For what it's worth, I've had an Oracle of Yog-Sothoth who was CN but leaned good (none of the crazy backstabbing stuff that alignment was infamous for - they were a good member of the party), and their main goal was making it clear to other people what their personal faith was all about.

Namely, not Chaotic Evil. XD (I've always been bothered by how most Lovecraftian deities in PF are listed as CE. I figure that being considered evil implies a sort of intentional maliciousness that doesn't really fit with the idea of uncaring alien overlords. I mean, maybe for Nyarlathotep it fits, but I really prefer it when they're CN, like Yog-Sothoth and Azathoth are. It just seems far more fitting.)

You can be evil and still be unconcerned with humanity.

The concept that something has to actually be working against us humans in order to qualify for "evil" is just as arrogant as assuming that these alien entities even notice us in the first place.

Being mean to us insignificant flyspecks is not a prerequisite to being evil.

[GM Rednal]

I suppose there's something to that. XD

My personal experience with the mythos, mmm... I guess you could say it's emphasized the "uncaring" part. That is, it's not just humanity that's largely ignored, it's a lot of other stuff as well.

For the most part - barring undead - I generally figure that evil things should be intentionally, deliberately evil, and I guess I just don't see most mythos entities behaving that way.

Thematically, I strongly prefer the notion of the Dark Tapestry as a primarily CN force - dangerous, difficult to understand, and probably not possessing anything resembling mortal morality.

It also fills a niche in the game that I don't think anything else properly fits in. Most of the CN deities are pretty independent, and the Proteans generally don't show up very much, so as a distinct force relevant to players and capable of showing up practically anywhere (much as devils, demons, or even benevolent angels), I think the actions of the Great Old Ones - and their cults - are a useful storytelling option.

(Though, I suppose one could also argue that anything purely chaos-aligned might not have much of a 'force' to begin with. XD)

Anyway, that's just my thoughts. ^^ I can't speak for anyone else, of course - Dark Tapestry/Lovecraftian stuff as CN is just my personal preference.

[Sissyl]

Fitzwalrus wrote:

I don't care what the "one step away" rule says.... if you're envisioning the destruction of the known universe and the annihilation of potentially billions of entities as a "Good" outcome you're using a different dictionary than I am.

Criminy......

There is quite a lot about what God almighty is going to do to billions of us humans in the end days in the Bible. Just sayin'.

[Yakman]

James Jacobs wrote:

Yakman wrote:

Wei Ji the Learner wrote:

Yakman wrote:

That doesn't make sense though.

"I want to contain you so your power doesn't get out... now gimme spells!"

I don't want to really get into the mechanics, but I hope you can understand my puzzlement.

...that is not dead which can aeternal lie, for with strange aeons even Death may die...

You have entities that defy any conventional method of comprehension. They may even view 'empowering' agents as ways of 'escaping' their imprisonment 'on the cheap'.

Or worse, imagine the Old Ones as 'couch potatoes' and their pawns/priests/cultists whathaveyou are their televisions to watch a 'Reality TV series'.

except those are, as you said, empowering agents.

Someone who is actively seeking to contain the Elder Evils is not an empowering agent. Why would they receive divine power (or even want it) from an entity that they are attempting to restrain/defeat/put to rest? It doesn't make much sense to me.

The term "Elder Evil" is a WotC thing. It's not something we use at Paizo or in Pathfinder, and even if we COULD we wouldn't use them for the Elder Mythos deities. Because some of them, like Yog-Sothoth or Bokrug, are NOT evil.

A chaotic good worshiper of Yog-Sothoth wouldn't be attempting to put it to rest, but would be worshiping it as a potent force of dimensional travel or magic and would be trying to put that power to good use. But on top of all that... the CG worshipers are VERY VERY VERY rare, so that if you never use one in your game... you're actually on model for how it should work.

couldn't remember "Old Ones" or "Great Old Ones". makes some sense. tx

[Jason Leisemann]

Tholomyes wrote:

Or Azathoth, or even Groetus, for that matter? I'd been reading through the Cults of the Dark Tapestry, but I notice that a good deal of them are CN, meaning they could feasibly have CG worshipers. How exactly would that work? These gods are more CN out of apathy towards Good and Evil, but it's hard to picture any type of CG character that would worship any of them.

I've actually had concepts along these ideas for a long time - there are ways to come up with heretical good clerics of just about any deity, and the ones with a neutral moral outlook are actually easier.

The key in these cases is to remember that many of these Old Ones and Outer Gods aren't gods who *cause* the end times. They *witness* them.

Yog-Sothoth: Outer God or not, Yog-Sothoth is Time and Space - most of his evil cultists aren't actually worshipping him him for *his* power, they're worshipping him to *manipulate* his power to transform the world by opening the hidden prisons of the Great Old Ones (see: The Whateleys.)

Bokrug: Great Old One of Storms, Revenge, and the Water... so he's basically a blend of Gozreh and Calistria. Run with it! After all, all signs point to the Men of Ib having been pretty decent guys all around....

Mhar: Great Old One of caverns, caves, mountains, and volcanoes. A CG cultist may not worship him to *release* him from his imprisonment beneath Xin-Shalast, but to *maintain* it.

Azathoth: Outer God of entropy, madness, and mindless destruction - this is the Pathfinder definition, but Azathoth is described as "the seething nuclear chaos at the center of the universe." The sun is a massive fusion bomb that produces nigh-on unfathomable amounts of energy. And yet, we've worshipped it for millennia. Why wouldn't a CG priest of Azathoth worship him not as the Outer God of mindless destruction, but rather as the Great Source of All Being, a personification of the raw, limitless potential in the Maelstrom?

Groetus: Again, not necessarily the *bringer* of the end-times, but the *god* of the end-times. The *witness* of them. I could easily see a splinter sect of Arenites who, having seen the death of their God, took to worshipping Groetus in the hopes of piercing the veil that shrouds all their remaining prophecies and seeing - even preventing - the apocalypse that surely must have prevented Aroden from returning as foretold.

Really, it's not all that difficult to see a good-aligned heretic of most of the evil deities, or an evil one of the good. Just as a few examples, picking out some of the most "obviously evil" of the deities:

Lamashtu: She's ultimately a fertility goddess, one who spawns incredibly powerful (albeit hideous and frequently insane) children. It's dirt simple to see a Good character worshiping her. I actually played a Gnomish sorceress who worshiped Lamashtu... the other players were less disturbed by her religious practices than by her tendency to flirt with half the monsters they fought, even while she was fighting them.

Zon-Kuthon: The god of pain, slavery, and madness. The god who went into the Dark Tapestry and came back warped by it. Obviously, there's no way *he* could have a good-aligned cult, right?

Wrong. Good Heresy: When Dou Bral went into the Tapestry, he wasn't possessed - if he was, why would he still have his strange affection for Shelyn? Instead, what happened was that he witnessed the horrors waiting in the Beyond. Great Old Ones. Interstellar empires slowly spreading out and destroying all that he and his sister loved. Abominations beyond anything conceived of on Golarion, that made Rovagug look like a mad goblin. On his return - his *escape* even - he saw that Golarion was unprepared for the horrors that awaited it, and he set out to harden its people in preparation for those horrors. The tortures, the flaying, the sadomasochism? All part of preparing the mind to endure what awaits. Zon-Kuthon, terribly misunderstood, is to this cult the only god who understands what is coming - and they seek to understand as well, the better to defend their home.

Asmodeus: His betrayal and the slaying of Ihys was necessary. Ihys, naively granting free will to mortals, allowed the Maelstrom to begin unmaking all that is good and right in the world. Witness Rovagug's rampages for the proof that you might want - surely it is no coincidence that the Devourer is imprisoned upon Golarion, where the last remains of Ihys are hidden? Asmodeus' good-aligned heretics aren't so much heretics as they are LG clerics and even paladins who devote themselves to order and to the destruction of the aberrations and abominations that all right-thinking beings dread.

[b]Rovagug:[b] Okay, I might be able to spin these others around to create good-aligned heretical sects, but Rovagug practically *is* a Great Old One, and one who *is* actively evil at that! But when you look at faiths around the world, there are actually a number of old religions that worshiped not out of love for what the gods would do, but to appease the gods and keep them from screwing everybody over. Similarly, as with my proposals for Mhar above, there could easily be a sect of the Great Beast's worshipers who pray that he will *not* awaken, who pray that His spawn will slumber and battle each other within the Pit rather than coming forth to destroy... or at least that, if they do come forth, they will turn their attentions away from the places the Cult defends.

You just need to look at it from the perspective that these clerics *are* ultimately heretics to the "standard" perception of their deity, and that they deeply believe in a what is almost a different god entirely than their own... and given that clerics don't *have* to worship a specific God, what's to stop them from gaining power all the same?

[DarkJaZon]

Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. He knows where They have trod earth's fields, and where They still tread them, and why no one can behold Them as They tread.

—H. P. Lovecraft, "The Dunwich Horror"

I'm playing a cleric of You-sothoth in the Shattered Star path. He's a member of the Gatekeepers with the party because the Stars say this is where he needs to be. The premise is When the Old Ones come it's over man. No Heroes nor Gods can stop it. That's just how it is. However the stars aren't right yet. So I'm one of those tasked by the Gate to stop all the nut jobs trying to muck with the cosmic schedule.

How ever on a side note I have learned to avoid most of the Divination spells available to me.