How is Zon Kuthon lawful evil?

[Username22221]

I might be missing something or misinterpreting how alignment works but I don't see the law in his alignment. I tried googling around for opinions but some of the ones I've seen don't track with me.

One that I saw is "They believe that the strong should rightfully prey on the weak" and that's more of an evil alignment thing than a law isn't it? Like sure Asmodeus feels that way too but I'm pretty sure the strong rule over the weak is the one constant of how the abyss functions as well and thats super chaotic.

Other ones are that by tracing zon kuthons connections to the hellraiser fiction you see people who play by a set of rules or a code, its just really messed up. And I looked into that but the whole thing with the cenobites is that you can only come into contact with the cenobites by messing with their funky box and even once they got called to you, there can be negotiating or other circumstances that can make them lose interest in you. But it seems commonplace that Kuthites can and do *often* just grab random people who were in no way connected to anything to torture.

The other one I see is that he upholds his bargains. And I guess that's true? But in all of history he's made 3 big deals and kind of broke one of them? Before he changed into Zon-Kuthon he swore to never harm Shelyn. He made a deal with abadar to sit in jail until the sun didn't rise. And he protected Nidal from the meteor. But I'm pretty sure he *has* hurt shelyn when he first came back as Zon Kuthon, and even CE beings can uphold a deal if it works out for them so Zon Kuthon saving a nation in exchange for their souls and worship in perpetuity doesn't seem like something only a lawful person would do.

[zimmerwald1915]

Good news: alignment isn't a thing you have to worry about any more!

[Arkat]

zimmerwald1915 wrote:

Good news: alignment isn't a thing you have to worry about any more!

If he plays PF1E, he does.

[QuidEst]

While alignment is something that's been dropped, if Zon-Kuthon doesn't seem Lawful Evil, then it's an indication of missing something.

Zon-Kuthon is pretty heavy on control and subjugation, just not in a "going out and conquering" way. Sure, Asmodeus is propping up Cheliax and running a lot of the show, but Zon-Kuthon has had Nidal under his sway for ten thousand years. When Nidal became a vassal state of Cheliax, that was as its own form of subjugation. Nightglass is an excellent book that gets into the Kuthite faith from a Nidalese perspective. Zon-Kuthon is also notable for being a deity that doesn't particularly care about sincerity so long as followers do as commanded.

You mentioned that a chaotic evil deity could keep up a similar arrangement for the pure self-interest of having worshipers and their souls. The thing is, those don't actually matter. Unlike D&D, gods don't get any tangible benefit from having worshipers, and most gods aren't all that invested in hoarding souls for their own sake. A god who loses every single one of their followers and is forgotten completely is no less powerful than if they had a massive following- the only practical difference is that a god with many worshipers has an easier time influencing the world they're known in without needing to directly intervene (something that seems to cost a certain amount of social capital amongst the gods, and risks intervention from others). So when gods in Pathfinder do something, it is because they want to, not to climb some ladder of power.

I don't really get the impression that Zon-Kuthon is actually a "might makes right" strongest-on-top kind of deity. His church, while not an exact reflection of him, factors things like "willingness and ability to endure pain" pretty heavily into the hierarchy. While demons are very much on board with "might makes right", I think Kuthite faith would instead consider it to simply be one of many power structures, the sort of example that can be given to any unenlightened outsider.

[Set]

I'm less fussed about Zon-Kuthon's ties to Law and Evil than some of his domain choices. Darkness, yeah, all over that one.

But I could see arguments for;

Strength (cut away weakness! Pain is weakness leaving the body!),

Healing (an evil healing god? One all about surgery and body modification (without painkillers, and not always elective...), oh yeah),

Artifice (former god of arts/crafts, credited with crafting the Star Towers that helped bind Rovagug, followers include people who cover themselves in fine metal ornaments and piercings),

Void (space ghost!)

All four of those Domains, IMO, fit better than Death or Destruction, both of which are well represented among other gods (Urgathoa, Pharasma and Norgorber for Death, Rovagug, Nethys and Gorum for Destruction), while Artifice (just Torag) and Void (nobody in the big 20) are pretty thin on the ground.

It would be interesting if Dou-Bral's domains were more like that. More about physical health and beauty and self-enhancement/body-sculpting (Healing, Strength) and less artsy and more crafty than his sister (Artifice)?

[QuidEst]

Set wrote:

I'm less fussed about Zon-Kuthon's ties to Law and Evil than some of his domain choices. Darkness, yeah, all over that one.

But I could see arguments for;

Strength (cut away weakness! Pain is weakness leaving the body!),

Healing (an evil healing god? One all about surgery and body modification (without painkillers, and not always elective...), oh yeah),

Artifice (former god of arts/crafts, credited with crafting the Star Towers that helped bind Rovagug, followers include people who cover themselves in fine metal ornaments and piercings),

Void (space ghost!)

All four of those Domains, IMO, fit better than Death or Destruction, both of which are well represented among other gods (Urgathoa, Pharasma and Norgorber for Death, Rovagug, Nethys and Gorum for Destruction), while Artifice (just Torag) and Void (nobody in the big 20) are pretty thin on the ground.

It would be interesting if Dou-Bral's domains were more like that. More about physical health and beauty and self-enhancement/body-sculpting (Healing, Strength) and less artsy and more crafty than his sister (Artifice)?

While I'm always up for some better and more thematic domains, I'm a little iffy on the selection here. That's a hard disagree on Healing from me with the "provide comfort to someone suffering" anathema. Healing is useful for Kuthites, but that's different than being what Zon-Kuthon is about. That's what spell prep is for, or better yet, Medicine checks with Risky Surgery. You can say that "Zon-Kuthon is a god of destruction" and it's a lot more accurate than "Zon-Kuthon is a god of healing".

Void was a late addition in both PF1 and PF2, so no core deities had access to it. It was renamed Nothingness in the remaster, and Zon-Kuthon did get it as an alternate domain- one that I recommend GMs swap in freely.

Artifice would be his old domain as Dou-Bral, and I think Destruction is actually one his domains specifically to highlight the change between Dou-Bral and himself, as well as to provide domain contrast with Shelyn. He's not a god of rampant destruction, but he's very much a god of systematically breaking things (well, mostly people) down.

Strength/Might... eh, I can see it, but I don't think he really is a "pain is weakness leaving the body" kinda deity; he's a "pain should be its own reward" kinda deity. He would rather see people weakened and helpless than strong. "Zon-Kuthon is a god of strength" doesn't really fit.

As for the Death domain, yeah. That one's just off, and unsurprisingly it got removed from him in PF2. The final set of Ambition, Darkness, Destruction, and Pain (with Nothingness as an alternate option) fits a lot better and does a better job of summing up Zon-Kuthon.

[Set]

QuidEst wrote:

While I'm always up for some better and more thematic domains, I'm a little iffy on the selection here. That's a hard disagree on Healing from me with the "provide comfort to someone suffering" anathema.

Admittedly, I don't have 2E, so I had no idea about this anathema thing. I suppose I can look it up on Archives of Nethys, but I was thinking from a 1E standpoint, hence not criticizing the stone cold terrible Domain choices of Law and Evil, which were mandated (and, IMO, garbage-fire trash) in 1st edition. :)

Even with that anathema, I did specify that Kuthite surgery was 'without painkillers and not always elective....', so a focus on healing/medicine/surgery wouldn't go against that dictat.

Anywho, I wanted to consider some Domains that A) felt on theme, more so than Death and Destruction, IMO, B) pick some Domains that felt less common, and C) pick some domains that felt less commonly represented in evil gods. There aren't a lot of evil gods with Artifice or Healing (or Glory, Sun, Nobility, Protection, etc.), just as there aren't a lot of good gods with Trickery, Death, Destruction, Darkness, Madness, etc. (One of the reasons I like Tsukiyomi so much! He breaks unspoken rules willy-nilly!)

[The Raven Black]

Zon-kuthon and his followers ask for complete obedience no matter who gets hurt.

100% Lawful and Evil to me.

[Morhek]

As far as I know, one of the big things about Zon-Kuthon that sets him apart from the average fiend is that, while he and his followers can and will inflict unimaginable torments, he requires them to be entirely consensual. Inflicting it on the unwilling is meaningless pain, irrelevant - a useful tool to achieve a goal perhaps, but of no true significance. The sights he has to show you must be willingly and wholeheartedly embraced for it to truly mean anything. Requiring consent speaks to having at least some code of conduct, which reads as enough to categorise him as Lawful.

[QuidEst]

Morhek wrote:

As far as I know, one of the big things about Zon-Kuthon that sets him apart from the average fiend is that, while he and his followers can and will inflict unimaginable torments, he requires them to be entirely consensual. Inflicting it on the unwilling is meaningless pain, irrelevant - a useful tool to achieve a goal perhaps, but of no true significance. The sights he has to show you must be willingly and wholeheartedly embraced for it to truly mean anything. Requiring consent speaks to having at least some code of conduct, which reads as enough to categorise him as Lawful.

I do think you might be off the mark on this one. Zon-Kuthon doesn't actually require that, and his church does not restrict itself to that. His obedience from PF1, something that was above and beyond what was required of normal worshipers, restricted it to somebody willing or legally owned by the worshiper, regardless of willingness. If Zon-Kuthon were a god of consensual BDSM, he wouldn't actually be evil.

[PossibleCabbage]

I think the thing about ZK is that Kuthites can do absolutely horrible things to you if you did something that you could have instead not done that they believe allows them to do it. It's like how the Cenobites in Hellraiser shouldn't subject you to the thing they do if you never touched the Puzzle Box (I make no guarantees about any of the sequels, this is how it should be.)

Now certainly in Nidal they are also the people who set the rules, so they can lay traps like "you allowed weeds to grow in your garden, time to remove 10% of your skin over the course of a week." But that's sort of the nature of "LE"- it's about following rules that are unfairly slanted to benefit the people in power.

[The Raven Black]

Yes. Lawful means you completely trust the system to bring you what you want.

And Evil means you want to be above the weak.

A strong organized church is IMO a hallmark of Lawful BTW.

[Lozzap]

Zon Kuthon is Lawful Evil not because of his domains (which suggest Neutral Evil more strongly), or even his church, but because the man himself is Lawful. When he was captured by the other gods after he first return from Beyond the Beyond, he _accepted their judgement_, and was willingly imprisoned for millennia, until the conditions for his release were met (the sun no longer shining on Golarion, thanks to the Earthfall). He is, in his own way, _honourable_. He has kept his deal with Nidal and the Horselords for ten thousand years, after all. He keeps bargains, and values deals and hierarchy, all Lawful traits.