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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ackem" data-source="post: 1252299" data-attributes="member: 15003">Nonsense. Read Memories of Ice by Steven Erikson ( or read all of Erikson's novels as they're probably the best fantasy currently being written). The evil in that book consists of a very nasty ascetic cult run by a monstrous being of immense power. The mix of asceticism and evil given in it works rather well and makes a strange sense.The evil being, who poses as a human prophet called the Pannion Seer despite being completely inhuman and something like a lizard, created the cult out of insanity, a hatred of humanity, and a desire to deform everything as it itself is deformed. It's followers exist in a religious frenzy where they not only deny themself but seek to destroy everything, they raze cities, burn crops, reduce nations to dust. They go beyond the normal idea of an ascetic; they scorn and destroy normal food and use starvation/privation to create more frenzied mobs of fanatics willing to join them in their cannibalism of those who will not convert, they often lack weapons and tear apart those who oppose them with their own hands, they have descended so far into insanity and frenzy that even shelter and clothing are often beyond their savagery. Their asceticism is not because they seek a higher spiritual awareness but because their "god", who is everybit as mad and horrific as they are, is driving them toward debasement and inhumanity. The condition of asceticism maybe the condition of mystics and spiritualists but it's also the condition of animals, which is the state that the Seer seeks to drive it's followers to by stripping away all their material posessions.This idea could be lifted from it's setting in the Malazan world of Erikson's books and be dropped into a D&D world without many problems. The insane evil being could even be replaced with a completely rational Demon or Devil. Maybe a Devil sees the potential to gain many souls by driving a nation into ruin and evil with a false ascetic religion. Maybe a Demon simply wants to revel in the sheer chaotic destructiveness caused by it. To destroy a country in this manner would more fundamentally convert it to evil then any mere conquest could; it corrupts the souls of it's inhabitants, it reduces the nation to ruin beyond repair, and it drives the inhabitants into an insane crusade that's driven by hunger and that seeks to convert or consume the inhabitants of neighboring lands.There's dozens of ways asceticism could be twisted by evil. Maybe a demon is using an ascetic, and secretly evil, prophet to subtly twist the message of a religion, the prophet claiming that the mainstream religion has faltered and has grown corrupt and that they should be doing things THIS (subtly evil and very misleading) way and if those fatcat bishops are so good then why are they in their fancy comfortable churches while he's out in the wilderness. Maybe a evil god doesn't like material posessions distracting it's followers from it's dark mysteries. Maybe a evil demon teaches it's followers that material posessions and comforts show weakness and gives his strength to those who scorn them.</blockquote>

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