Well, that's the point. They can wait and «pounce», with «pounce» meaning they start some terrorist-style attacks vs Eoxian and guerrilla tactic assaults vs Eoxian army. They don't seem to have a true army or navy, so even if Eox do something «horrid», the pharasmin church doesn't seem able to start an all-out war vs a true military power.
Pretty sure they can exercise political lobby to try to involve others who could, like Iomedaean knights, or other pact powers. But they, as a religious organization,seem to enter perfectly into Stalin's quote. Yep, the Pope doesn't like me. How many divisions does the Pope have?
Pharasmins believing Eox is blasphemous is a thing. Pharasmins being able to defeat the Eoxian Navy, maybe the Corpse fleet, and the entire Eoxian ground army, to actually stop Eox's civilization, is a completelly different dog.
Let's not forget Pharasma's zealots provide a necessary service to all, including the undead.
The cold war agreement that the pantheon has in place is held together by the belief that Pharasma is able to distribute souls properly, and for the sake of argument, evenly.
If enough evil people that would have been destined for evil planes are converting to undead and locking their souls out of the system, you'll end up in a situation where good and neutral outsiders gradually become more numerous than evil ones. Then it'll likely be the evil deities to strike out at the undead to "claim what is their right", spiraling into apocalypse.
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Command undead isn't going to bring parity to the outer planes.
If the disparity occurs and Hell is seen as a vulnerable target due to a decreased population, they'll be forced to do what? Mass planeshifting undead off of Eox to bolster their legions? I'm pretty sure that'd be an unacceptable encroachment on the material realm under the agreement.
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Let's not forget Pharasma's zealots provide a necessary service to all, including the undead.
The cold war agreement that the pantheon has in place is held together by the belief that Pharasma is able to distribute souls properly, and for the sake of argument, evenly.
If enough evil people that would have been destined for evil planes are converting to undead and locking their souls out of the system, you'll end up in a situation where good and neutral outsiders gradually become more numerous than evil ones. Then it'll likely be the evil deities to strike out at the undead to "claim what is their right", spiraling into apocalypse.
That's pretty much true, and probably a pharasmin will get more angry and will have a higher chance to join a crusade to destroy non-evil undeads (like, say, Irorian Mummies) than he will to destroy fiends. For them, it's not a matter of fighting evil. In fact, pharasma's clerics can be evil, and summon fiends. It's a matter of destroying blasphemous creatures, those who escape the judgement of their goddess. A succubus is ok, a Taiga Giant ancestor spirit is not.
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One difficulty with this discussion that occurs to me is that there is currently no way to determine alignments in Starfinder. All the Detect Evil/Good/Law/Chaos stuff is gone. Even if a crusader government wanted to scan and punish, closely observe, or banish its evil citizens, it can't. It just has to watch and react to objective behavior, like anyone else.
Pharasma's clergy can certainly tell their worshippers and interested unaffiliated people that undead are a blight on the natural order and inherently evil, but that's no different than Damoritosh's clergy telling the strong it's against the natural order for the strong to grant equal rights and respect to the unconquered weak.
That's just, like, your opinion, man.
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The thing is, I don't think Pharasma cares about alignment. She doesn't say that undead are evil or bad, but rather than they are a perversion of the natural order, and that they disrupt the proper flow of souls to the Boneyard. Alignment is immaterial. Detect Undead would be handy, though.
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The thing is, I don't think Pharasma cares about alignment. She doesn't say that undead are evil or bad, but rather than they are a perversion of the natural order, and that they disrupt the proper flow of souls to the Boneyard. Alignment is immaterial. Detect Undead would be handy, though.
This is pretty much this. I can see a pharasmin cleric using Planar Ally with a Div fiend to destroy a good aligned ghost.
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The thing is, I don't think Pharasma cares about alignment. She doesn't say that undead are evil or bad, but rather than they are a perversion of the natural order, and that they disrupt the proper flow of souls to the Boneyard. Alignment is immaterial. Detect Undead would be handy, though.
The thing is, most people don't care about Pharasma. But many of those would care about "evil" if it could be objectively proven. It can't, so Pharasma's argument from authority and assertion fails.
If Pharasma's doctrine was to stone adulterers most of the Pact Worlds wouldn't care. If Detect Evil existed and registered all adulterers as evil, it would sway some people who don't want people and behavior that predisposes you for damnation and a lack of incentive not to undertake other objectively and provably evil actions in the community.
