Evil Deities for a Real World Campaign?

[King_Namazu]

So I'm running a Victorian Era campaign set in Europe and Asia and so far it's worked really well and taught me and my players a lot about history and mythology, however I've had some difficulty finding evil deities besides the obvious ones like Loki or Hades or Satan that races like the Drow or Duergar would follow. Shoot me some ideas for some evil deities or even just ones that are cool that i might not know about.

[Eltacolibre]

Depends really on your real world flavor, but anyway guess some quick list:

Set, Shezmu, Ares, Hera, Poseidon, Xipe-totec, Tezcalipoca, Huitzilopochtli, Baba Yaga, The Snow Queen (fairy tale), The Pied Piper of Hamelin(fairy tale).

[ForestDew]

From what I came to understand. Despite what our monder media makes of him, Hades isn't that evil, he is the god of the dead, not the god of death. He was more concerned in maintaining his kingdom than thinking of the living.
Thanatos is who you should think of. He is the greek god of death.
For the Celtics the formorians are a possibility. "The Fomorians seem to have been gods who represent the harmful or destructive powers of nature; personifications of chaos, darkness, death, blight and drought." (Wikipedia)
In a series I read, it mentions a lot a certain slavic god, Chernobog, The Black God, The God of Everything Evil(but the Slavic god are always balanced with their opposite, so to stay true, there should be Belobog, his brother, The White God).

[kadance]

You can't go wrong (or is it right?) with good 'ol Lovecraftian mythos: Hastur, Ithaqua, Nyarlathotep, Zhar and Lloigor, Cyaegha, Nyogtha, Shub-Niggurath, Tsathoggua, Aphoom-Zhah, Cthugha, Dagon, Ghatanothoa, Mother Hydra, Zoth-Ommog, and Cthulhu of course.

Victorian + Mythos = (bad guys) WIN!

Check out this wiki page for more ideas!

[avr]

From a modern perspective any number of deities look evil. Zeus, Ares and at least half the other Ancient Greek deities. Odin actually has a kenning of evil-doer (Bolverker, IIRC), and if you read Kevin Hearne's Iron Druid series he makes a solid case for Thor being a very not-nice guy. A name which keeps popping up in stories based on Celtic mythology is Maeve (or similar), the Queen of Air and Darkness.

How far into Asia are you looking?

[FormerFiend]

Though much of what makes Ares out to be evil is Athenian propaganda.

[Zelgadas Greyward]

If you're looking for evil Greek deities, Zeus is a serial rapist.

And no, that isn't even mild hyperbole - Zeus crossed a line even among the other gods (who rape mortals like most people eat popcorn) by raping fellow deities.

Persephone, Hades' wife, only had one child by Hades. Her other children were all the result of Zeus raping her. Not having an affair with her - straight up raping her.

Oh, and Zeus is also Persephone's father.

So yeah, go with Zeus. He's a massive a~@$++!.

[Create Mr. Pitt]

Chronos, Keeper of Time would be fitting for a victorian setting, He can have clockwork followers. I can probably expand further if you like but I think it would be an entertaining and fun TN god.

[PossibleCabbage]

What I would suggest for a real world campaign is- Deities don't have alignment, at least it's not known to any of their followers, and they accept followers of any alignment (who all think that they have the one true interpretation that is mutually irreconcilable with what other followers of the same deity believe).

(This is personally how I run deities in fantasy worlds as well, but it's especially appropriate for games with real world mythic figures the players may already have preconceived notions of. This lets you have sorts of "metaphysical whodunnits" where the players assume Ares or Hades is behind the bad stuff, but it turns out to be Apollo all along.)

[Mysterious Stranger]

Originally the drow were demon worshipers. Loth was originally a demon lord not a deity. Do a little research on demons from the Europe and Asia and use those for their religions. A surprising number of D&D demon lords and arch devils at least used historic demons.

[ngc7293]

From AD&D Dieties and Demigods:
(evil gods)
Babylon:
Anshar-lesser god (god of Darkness and Night) [CE]
Druagar-lesser god (ruler of the devil world) [LE]
Nergal-lesser god (god of the underworld) [NE]

Chinese
Chih-Chiang Fyu-Ya-demigod (punisher of gods) [LE]
Lei Kung-greater god (duke of thunder) [LE]
Lu Yueh-lesser god (god of epidemics) [CE]
No Cha-demigod (demigod of thieves) [NE]

Finnish
Hiisi-greater god (god of evil) [CE]
Kiputytto-demigoddess (goddess of sickness) [CE]
Loviatar-demigoddess (goddess of hurt) [LE]
Surma-demigod (demigod of death) [NE]

[technarken]

Why not just make all of them antagonistic? Imagine being a god. Now imagine your people abandoning you, being all but ignored for centuries, watching your powers dwindle and your grand divine deeds fade into myth, only to receive a trickle of worship because some gentleman's club found it TRENDY!? Take just about any mythological deity, add a heaping helping of deliberate neglect and isolation, and even the benevolent ones could snap.