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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6538672" data-attributes="member: 2067">Part of my schooling is as a student of religion and culture, so I can tell you there's quite fine examples of gods who define goodness and justice doing stuff that looks a lot like this, both in religious texts and stories, and in the traditions that surround them.Like, you wouldn't think that controlling fiends, for example, would be much of a thing a good deity would be into, but the wise king Solomon in the occult tradition was said to build his temple with the help of fiends that he had bound into service. That even makes some logical sense - if the force of Good is the true power in the world, the fiends must obey it as well. A celestial warlock who has bound fiends is forcing those demons and devils to act toward goodness and peace (which is part of where the danger comes from - a warlock who doesn't do this correctly is not going to be facing a happy demon!). Necrotic damage? Curses?  The Plauges of Egypt! Madness? One of the things Muhammad was afraid of when speaking with angels. Fear? Appropriate response in the presence of some great divinity! Casting people into Hell and calling on the spirits of the dead? That's basically what happens in the Book of Revelation! It would likely look a lot like hermeticism, alchemy, occultism, etc., that has existed in the Real World.Seriously, there's evocative archetypes to cull this stuff from. Think of most charismatic religious practices (snake handling, seizures, speaking in tongues) or of mystery cults of the Greek gods (this cave is your rebirth!) or, again John Frickin' Dee, the Ur-Magician. Heck, even various religious figures - prophets of all stripes have preached forbidden, disruptive, and uncomfortable truths (it's part of what makes 'em prophets!). Plauges and boils and frogs and death are the weapons of Good as well. turning sticks into snakes?! Gnosticism and spiritual alchemy and....all sorts of stuff. It's not clerics doing this. Clerics are concerned with the ministrations of the faithful, the establishment of the religion, the official church hierarchy, they heal, they protect, they treat. They fight in defense of others. They are temple priests, learned scholars of their faith, leaders of the umma, centers of their community.Warlocks are the ones spreading divine plagues and mystery-cults. They are the ones concerned with revelation and divine retribution and (occasionally unwilling) prophecy. It is not the mainstream churches that know such unspeakable truths, to hear the voice of the gods reverberating in their skulls...it is these lone wild mad visionaries.To be a cleric of a good god is to be a priest, faithful, devout, and kind. To be a celestial warlock is to be a force for divine retribution, a prophet, a revolutionary, a seer of things unseen, a speaker in the tongues of the angels, a master of secrets man was not meant to know (because they are too close to the true reality of the divine).</blockquote>

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