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I'm working on a new campaign/setting where the gods were killed by... Uhm, someone? Okay, so I'm still filling in the blanks. So far I have 2 contestants that both fit pretty well.
The Asuras: Lawful evil outsiders who were rejected by the gods. The fact that they want to unmake the cosmos fits well with the campaign, as the universe is already dying.
The Titans: Chaotic evil outsiders that rebelled against the gods. The planar leap ability of the hekatonkheires fits really well with the story and cosmology for this campaign. Being cast out to the farthest reaches of the multiverse also fits well.
My knowledge of Pathfinder monsters isn't complete so are there any other monsters that I may have missed? My criteria are:
- They live beyond the planes, or at least the ones that are recognized as part of the multiverse. Being banished to any kind of inhospitable area will do.
- They have a grudge against the gods, and everything that was created by the gods.
How about each other? The gods fought each other until only one was left standing, and then that one remaining god disappeared without a trace.
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Aeons. Rogue aeons.
The gods never saw it coming. Rogue aeons are achieving universal balance by reducing the equation to 0. Think of it as a cosmic immune over-response.
What you put in your first post is fine as far as it goes, but why stop there?
The Daemons: Neutral Evil Outsiders who want to destroy the world and all life, not for pleasure and profit like the Demons, but as an end in itself.
The Qlippoths and Great Old Ones/Outer Gods: Chaotic Evil entities (Outsiders and beyond) that want to destroy the universe as we know it for their own purposes, including defending their home, which isn't part of it but is getting polluted by it.
The Psychopomps and Aeons: Neutral Outsiders that by some unfathomable means, have avoided the palpable taint of Evil, but for some unfathomable reason, have decided that it's closing time for the universe.
Maybe they didn't die. They... left?
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Daemons: We're trying to liberate a daemon herald in our current campaign. Maybe we need something that is a little bit more unique.
Qlippoths/Great Old Ones/Elder Gods: pretty much what I'm going for, but it does seem to fit. A bit trite though.
Aeons: I actually really like this idea, and a pleroma would be pretty bad ass villain. They are not exactly from beyond/cast out by the gods though. This can be done with all kinds of aeons though, resulting in a fun campaign.
I think I'm actually going for the Asuras. I've got the aspect of Hextor mini that kinda fits for Asurendra. They also seem kinda obscure.
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- The souls of their petitioners changed over the ages, effectively becoming toxic to the Gods.
- Planar "tectonics" caused Planes to temporarily overlap, and the resulting upheaval wiped the inhabitants of those Planes out.
- A wizard did it.
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Humanity.
Finally justifying their center stage presence in fantasy media that has scads of far more interesting options.
Azathoth killed them all, including himself and all his friends and all their cultists, Nyarlothotep told the story as he was dying horribly.
Rovagug escaped and couldn't be stopped this time?
Some dark force possesses Pharasma, and thus, fate itself, causing the gods to all die before their time? Maybe the same darkness that corrupted Zon-Kuthon?
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Some pantheons have a designated ubermonster for killing gods. The idea is to not allow the gods to kill one another, yet keeping the option of killing dangerous gods. So, what if this enormously powerful yet somewhat simple creature got loose and finally just did its job? With the other gods gone, anything could have happened to it.
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* raises hand *
Sorry.
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You can't go wrong with a reference to Mike Moorcock's Eternal Champion saga. Corum, one of the incarnations of the Eternal Champion, ended his career speaking with Kwll:
"Your enemies the Chaos gods are gone. With my brother's help I slew them and all their minions. [...] For good measure we slew the Lords of Law as well. Now you mortals are free of gods on these planes."
Kwll is a "lost god" and sounds like some sort of extradimensional titan. But given the Moorcockian influences from the inception of D&D in the 70s, you really can't go wrong weaving that into a homebrew campaign. The basic idea was that now the gods are all dead and gone, Man will have to confront his own destiny without divine intervention and interference.
Tammy killed them.
It had to be done.
Titans are unlikely for a 'secret' deicide. They want to take over in their stead, and as such, they would revel in becoming the new cosmic hegemons. They would demand that all mortals hold a yearly festival celebrating it.
Asuras might be interesting. The thing about them is that they are not just rejected by the gods- their entire state of being is due to some divine abuse or mistake. Most of their origin stories can be summarized as "a god got angry and then went all Greek pantheon on the poor fool". So Asuras can be interesting, since the genocide of teh gods could be seen as 'karmic'. And while they would be maniacally laughing in the crumbled divine palaces, they might not care enough to tell mortals about it.
The other evil outsider usual suspects have the same problem as titans- they wouldn't stop, so we would all know what is happening (or at least see the growing area of continuous destruction that no one can ge close enough to investigate). Daemons want to kill everything, and qlippoth want to kill mortals, so they would not stop after the biggest resistance is dead.
So other than asuras, you will likely want to look at the more neutral forces, like aeons, that would want to avoid expanding destruction due to balance or whatever.
Of course, you could go for 'natural disaster' style. Have the gods run on a divine mana that seems endless... but it dries up.
With Asuras being one of my favourite monster types I vote Asuras. :)
What about the moon-demigod that floats above the Boneyard, if following Golarion lore?
- Cult of atheist wizards achieves mythic levels and figures out a way to block divine energy from reaching the gods and starves them to death (or kills them in epic combat). If there are still clerics in your campaign world (worshiping philosophies or nature or something), they could be secretly hunted by the wizards' agents, wanting to stop any new gods from cropping up.
- Fenris (or their equivalent) ate them. Ragnarok is in-progress and it hasn't hit the mortal realm yet.
- Loki (or their equivalent trickster god) offed them and is pretending to be dead (or took himself out in the process).
- The gods went off to fight some larger threat (e.g. Entropy) and died fighting it. It's more a force than a deity, so nobody was left to tell anyone what happened.
Check out the Hundun from Bestiary 5. They sound perfect for what you want.
They are still there but a (plot device) is blocking their ability to contact the mortal realms. (or what ever) Basically the phone is off the hook.
But if you really need them dead, it was Cthulu. If in your universe Cthulu can outright slay Rovgug that means something. Better yet, have the final fight come down to the two that world destroyers and they kill each other (or do they?)
The Auditors took care of the Gods.