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I don't want to spoil anything, so if you know what product I am talking about then keep it mum please. I figured I would get more notice posting here than on the specific product page. I've perused the Zon-Kuthon section of Skeletons of Scarwall already.
I'd like to solicit some creative ideas from the community regarding Zon-Kuthon's followers. Say that the PCs are going to a place where Zon-Kuthon is worshiped openly. Say that there's a disease outbreak going on, and there's only one cleric in the town. How does a cleric of Zon-Kuthon regard a disease that's afflicting his flock? Blood-letting? Surgery? Apathy? Maybe a masochism competition where the winner gets the daily remove disease?
Another request I have is for suggestions of specific tortures or deformities that I can inflict on the PCs if they come to the Kuthite church looking for assistance. I don't want to say to a player, "The cleric will offer a cure disease for the standard CRB rate." I don't even want to say "He'll cast the spell for you, but you'll have to undergo an hour of whipping first". I'd like to describe to the players the specific, graphic and scarring procedure that they'll have to accept in order to do business with the Church of Zon-Kuthon. Any ideas or past experiences to share?
We could call the thread "100 Kuthite Mutilations".
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I'd like to describe to the players the specific, graphic and scarring procedure that they'll have to accept in order to do business with the Church of Zon-Kuthon. Any ideas or past experiences to share?
In my home game (which was heavily set in Nisroch), I played the Church of Zon-Kuthon as a mixture of fire & brimstone "Christianity" (specifically the Redemptive Suffering/Flagellant aspects) mixed with various new-age cults (specifically the ones that use love bombing as a recruitment tool), sprinkled with a bit of Scientology. All wrapped in a warm BDSM blanket by the sort of people that give BDSM a bad name ... if you survive long enough to tell anyone.
Heavy suppression of passion and emotion in public, a high premium on self control and appearance. Pleasure (sexual and otherwise) were rewards for self-denial and it all escalated the closer you got to the "center" of the church. Publicly the church was supportive of prohibition style laws. No dancing, no drunkenness, no drug abuse. But they also supported all of these things privately and used them to manipulate people.
So I played Nidal (particularly Nisroch) as a very film noir place. There were no bars or theaters in the city, but there were speakeasy-style underground clubs all over the place. Officially, they were illegal and occasionally busted by the law. Unofficially, the owners payed the church and gave special attention to customers when the church asked them to. No one in the city talked about them, but everyone knew where they were and how to get in.
The Spires were neat, orderly, clean. Buildings were several stories high and everyone dressed well. Nobody wore bondage gear in public. In public you dressed well. No overt displays of wealth, no bling, but a lot of time and effort showing off without looking like you were trying to show off. There was a high demand for tailors in Nisroch. Buildings were multi-storied and largely empty because being wealthy enough to afford empty space in a crowded city was a socially acceptable display of power.
The wealthiest families were "old money" who had lived there for centuries. The older family members ruled over the younger family members using an abusive mixture of love, gossip, and the occasional wire hanger. The oldest family members ran everything, usually from creaking rocking chairs in dark corners of a private suite of rooms. The Winchester House meets Sunset Blvd meets the Mafia.
The clergy would wear severe robes with uncomfortable (and often painful) contraptions and clothing beneath them. Sort of a mixture of medieval flagellants and Hollywood Catholics.
If you asked the church for help they wouldn't start you with an hour of whipping. That would be too much, too fast. You have to train before you get into the harder stuff. Build up to it. They'd probably start out with just one lash, at most. A small thing. Maybe you'd have to stand still and not talk for a minute or two. Maybe lay down on the ground and not move for a moment. Maybe a proud PC would just have to say "please" and mean it. It doesn't really matter what, so long as you are submitting (at least momentarily) to their authority. Then the church would build from that. They'd hurt you with a smile and a polite manner.
Also, the person asking doesn't have to be the person paying. Money, sure, but not necessarily the submission part. A strong person, like a PC, would probably be better performing the punishment on someone else:
"The illness is a manifestation of your sins, my child. The Midnight Lord instructs us that mortification of the diseased flesh will sanctify it. Now now, don't look so cross. I'm not going to whip you. I doubt a strong warrior such as yourself would even notice my little whip. There are others here who have voluntarily accepted corporal punishment in exchange for spiritual reward. One of them will pay for your sins. Please take this whip and give that young gentleman over there a lash. Just one will do, across the back. That's a good lad. Just once and be done with it, and your disease. See? He thanked you. Now was that so bad?"
Of course, no one mentions that the person being whipped could have accepted it in exchange for the money he needs to put food on his family's table. Or in exchange for the Church handling some other problem. Or perhaps they're a priest in training and really do enjoy the pain. You'll never know.
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Wow. That's good Aberrant Templar. I'll need to keep that in mind.
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Just keep in mind possible emotional triggers for your players. Make sure in advance how graphic they may be comfortable with you getting.
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I'd recommend looking at the various pictures of son myth on and his followers (npc codex), which show people wearing weird barbed jewelry and such.
Stuck in straight jacket... With spikes
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With limited magical resources, and Kuthonite tendencies, unpleasant but effective mundane techniques might also be prevalent.
So, for a disease which can be fought off with fever, 'treatment' might include sitting in a hot room, with the heat being constantly raised until the afflicted are suffering near heat exhaustion (with plenty of water on hand to drink, but not quite a sauna atmosphere). Old fashioned remedies like leeches probably, not so much, since this is a magical world with divination, magical remedies, etc. where medical techniques that just plain don't work (well, leeches work just fine, for *other* ailments) would likely not have continued. Anyone showing up for magical healing, when there are a ton of people already afflicted, might be expected to endure a few days worth of harrowing non-magical attempts to fight off the disease (hot rooms, ice baths, whatever, stuff that would count as a successful Heal check, but always seem to be terribly unpleasant, like smearing the skin in a stinging solution, or a round of acupuncture, or being made to eat and then expel various expectorants, to 'purge the body,' in the case of potential parasitic infections, or eat minute traces of poison, to kill whatever is within them, at the cost of feeling awful all day).
The actual magical cures would be saved for those the local priest deems most necessary (such as himself!), or at greatest risk of dying, with a preference for local leadership, etc. (And, lacking any strong indicator of one person being more pleasing to the eyes of his god than any other, the deciding factor might come down to who offers the most cash, or who the priest likes more, or dislikes least...)
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Just keep in mind possible emotional triggers for your players. Make sure in advance how graphic they may be comfortable with you getting.
This is a big part of the reason why I played Nidal as a Film Noir kind of place. Noir is risqué but not necessarily gratuitous. I can imply depravity effectively without showing anything except what happens before ... and after.
Mostly, it's because I feel like Nidal (specifically Nisroch) has all the proper elements for good Noir ... starting with the shadows and working out from there. But also because Zon-Kuthon is a corrupted god of beauty, art, music, and love. I feel like it is important to emphasize that aspect of his faith and noir gives a great outlet that isn't limited to just black leather and spikes (those only come out on "special" occasions).
Plus, I feel like there needs to be some temptation. If you over-emphasize the "spikes and pain" aspect of Zon-Kuthon's faith then it starts to get hard justifying why anyone (particularly PCs) would volunteer to work with them or where you'd find enough worshippers to qualify as a major religion. I also have trouble working out how a society like Nidal's would function on a daily basis, or why people (especially pirates from the Shackles) would ever choose to visit Nisroch if there's too much "Demons to some" and not enough "Angels to others."
Ultimately, I just think a worshipper of Zon-Kuthon would make a perfect femme fatale and a campaign world with everything from robots to mammoths to flumphs has room for a little Dashiell Hammett, Harry D'Amour, and Lauren Bacall.
This is all good stuff, as I'm playing a non-evil cleric of Zon-Kuthon right now. I'll keep an eye on this thread, perhaps I'll share my insights (trivial in comparison as they are). Keep up the good work, chaps!
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I made the mistake of having the Kuthites harm themselves (just a quick pinch or cut) every time they spoke Zon-Kuthon's name. It became comical, not what I had hoped for.
One PC did come to the temple for aid and had to flog an unwilling subject ("His faith is weak"). The player was completely nonchalant about it as the victim cried for mercy, then the priest swabbed down his back with alcohol. I think we are too desensitized, or I just can't impress upon them the horror they should feel.
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Just keep in mind possible emotional triggers for your players. Make sure in advance how graphic they may be comfortable with you getting.This is a big part of the reason why I played Nidal as a Film Noir kind of place. Noir is risqué but not necessarily gratuitous. I can imply depravity effectively without showing anything except what happens before ... and after.
Mostly, it's because I feel like Nidal (specifically Nisroch) has all the proper elements for good Noir ... starting with the shadows and working out from there. But also because Zon-Kuthon is a corrupted god of beauty, art, music, and love. I feel like it is important to emphasize that aspect of his faith and noir gives a great outlet that isn't limited to just black leather and spikes (those only come out on "special" occasions).
Plus, I feel like there needs to be some temptation. If you over-emphasize the "spikes and pain" aspect of Zon-Kuthon's faith then it starts to get hard justifying why anyone (particularly PCs) would volunteer to work with them or where you'd find enough worshippers to qualify as a major religion. I also have trouble working out how a society like Nidal's would function on a daily basis, or why people (especially pirates from the Shackles) would ever choose to visit Nisroch if there's too much "Demons to some" and not enough "Angels to others."
Ultimately, I just think a worshipper of Zon-Kuthon would make a perfect femme fatale and a campaign world with everything from robots to mammoths to flumphs has room for a little Dashiell Hammett, Harry D'Amour, and Lauren Bacall.
That's a great idea. It helps answer the fundamental question, "Why the heck would anyone ever go to Nidal?" They don't commence the floggin's the second you step off the boat. And most people aren't walking around with open wounds or anything.
I could see Nidal as being an extremely polite society. , with the horrible stuff hidden underneath. And there's the added wrinkle that a lot of the "criminals" are actually just good people trying to survive in an oppressive culture.
Maybe another good real-world influence would be Soviet culture. Everyone officially tows the party line, even if only a few people really buy into it. But if you ever show signs of disbelief, you'll find yourself getting "reeducated"...
Nidal has an entire novel written in it which goes into some Z-K stuff too...
Yeah, I'm running The Midnight Mirror right now (not much ZK flavor) but I used Nightglass (the novel) and Cities of Golarion (Nisroch) as the primary sources for all the flavor.
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This thread is awesome.
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Before reading this thread, I had trouble grasping Zon-Kuthon as a Lawful diety. This thread cleared that up immensely.
Zon-Kuthon probably empowers The Chirurgeons. They a surgical experts who can make one living creature from 2 corpses. The one destroyed cannot be raised or resurrected, at least not from any part of that body. If the donor was an Orc, they may have darkvision in one eye.
I may use this as a sort of alternate cleric class when I get a group together.
This thread is awesome.
Just had to participate in the Thread Necromancy to second this.
Zon-Kuthon probably empowers The Chirurgeons. They a surgical experts who can make one living creature from 2 corpses. {. . .}
So, if we're performing Thread Necromancy, where's the other corpse thread to stitch into this one?