Evil Deities & Their Followers

[Kae'Yoss]

Why wouldn't an evil deity genuinely reward a character who served him?

Exactly. They will reward them. They'll do so for selfish reasons (if I reward this guy for being a prick, Other pricks will also worship me, and I get more God Points. Muahaha), but they will do so nonetheless. Everything else would just be bad PR.

I'm not sure I see nihilism in the faith of Shar, for instance

She's all about nihilism. Her ultimate goal is to undo creation so she has her peace again.

While many sharrans follow her for power, others do so because they really hate all Creation and agree with destroying it.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Eberron has a nice take on this.

People don't venerate the evil gods so much as they 'pay tribute' in order to avoid that god's ill attention.

That's hardly new. The Realms always had their deities that were not so much worshipped (except by the true believers, all of them fanatics) as appeased.

Prime example ich the Beach Queen (well, almost that) Umberlee. If you go to sea, you'll pray to Umberlee, make some small sacrifices - even if you're a LG Paladin of Tyr or something. If you don't, you'll be a LG Paladin of Tyr on the bottom of the ocean.

 

[Keeper of Secrets]

For me, lots of it comes down to shortcuts and (misplaced) ideas of power. A good god wants you to help others and learn on your own and work hard for success. An evil god will be willing to let you take what you need, empower yourself and consider yourself as powerful, justifying your desire to subjugate and dominate those around you. It is an oversimplification and does not apply to all evil gods but I think the basis is there.

 

[roguerouge]

Essentially, you're asking why people get into and stay in abusive relationships. There's a few notable differences about an intimate faith-based relationship as opposed to a physically intimate relationship, but, consider the parallels.

1. Because I deserve it: This works both ways. The selfish narcissist thinks that nothing is more important than what they've convinced themselves they deserve; certainly your pain comes second to their own. On the other hand, those who have been abused survive these relationships by rationalizing that abusive relationships are what they deserve.

2. Because Shar really loves me. It makes me feel special. False, of course, but imagine how seductive that would be with a god, instead of a seductive partner. Especially when they provide you with spells.

3. Because you hope that they will change. While abusers (gods, men, or monsters) will usually promise to change during the honeymoon stage, it is rare for an abuser to change while still in a relationship.

4. While you are not the cause of the abuse, it's less scary if you're to blame, because then, at least, you're in control. So you hope that by acting better or more in line with their demands/commandments, you'll make everything good again.

5. It's not so bad and everybody does it. False, of course, but possibly true to that person's life experience.

6. They draw a link between love and violence. Again, violence begets violence. Its damage gets passed down by generation. People who were abusers were very often abused themselves. This is sad, and worth a paladin's pity, but also damning, as nobody knows better the damage such behavior can do and not everyone who was abused becomes an abuser.

7. Hopelessness: The idea of being happy without your current deity may seem impossible now.

8. Gender ideology. You're falsely made to believe that it's your biological fate to be treated this way.

9. Embarrassment and shame often keep people in an abusive relationship, with gods or humans, for quite some time.

10. Financial dependence. All of your professional contacts are with this god. Where else are you going to get spells? Plus, you've made all these enemies. You need those spells. If anyone good finds out about your relationship with this god, they'll drop you socially, attack you, arrest you. Where else are you going to go?

11. You feel you have a lack of supportive relationships. The good guys will never believe you, you fear they'll smite you, and everyone you care about you've alienated or left to be with this all-consuming god.

12. Fear: This all-knowing, extremely powerful god will be ANGRY if I leave.

13. You're in the hands of an angry god, but at least you're not alone.

14. You're loyal. It's your best trait. It's what makes you feel good about everything you've done and you've stayed that way despite everything that has been done to you.

15. GUILT. With gods, we're dealing with world-class manipulators pulling the guilt-trips of a lifetime. Evil deities are world-class sociopaths.

16. Can you say, self-medication? Dependency on drugs or alcohol can play a part in staying in abusive relationships.

Given all of this stuff, please consider the awesome courage that it takes for someone to admit that their life's become unmanageable and their relationship intolerably abusive and to seek change. The miracle isn't that so many people get trapped and stay trapped in their abusive relationships with gods and men. The miracle is that so many people get out.




Source:
http://www.crisisconnectioninc.org/teens/whytheystay.htm

 

[sckeener]

I've always been a fan of the Egyptian gods and one of the structures I always liked was good people could worship evil gods. Shekhmet brought diseases, but people worshiped her to prevent them. The evil version of Set was worshiped to fight evil. Demons were called to fight Demons.

What I take from that for Forgotten Realms is people know a little bit about the major gods and goddesses and when they are feeling a certain way they identify with that god....say if they suffer a horrible loss they might identify with Shar...

I can image a teenage daughter losing her twin sister searching any where for answers to her loss. The parents wanting to help, but she feels that they just don't 'get' her loss. She mopes around until a charismatic stranger comes to village and he seems to understand her loss. Eventually the stranger teaches her to embrace loss...that loss teaches.

Admittedly in my version of the story it would be more like a scene from SAW...namely that the stranger kidnaps the daughter and teaches her about true loss...and if she survives she might make a good Shar priestess.

 

[JRR_Talking]

Something I go with in my homebrew is the idea that the Gods need followers for their power. Without any followers, a Deity has nothing at all.

Faith Lends Substance

its the way the Gods work in Micheal Scotts Culai Trilogy (the tales of Paedur the Bard)

 

[Lurks-no-More]

(more thoughts)
I think it was Milton who had one of his character's say "better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven" or some such. Such sentiment apparently resonated with an audience who otherwise accepted the Christian conceptions of both Heaven and Hell. I don't know much about the time period/literature - but to me it could be an example of the sorts of places that human nature can lead you, and not necessarily to the Lawful Good planes.

Yup. If you're a selfish, rotten sort of a person with an anger management problem, which is going to appeal to you better: trying to reform and go against your (initial) nature, so that the gods of Good will smile upon you; or bowing down before the gods of Evil, and going about much as you already did?

And I think part of the problem you might be having is fundemental to the alignment system itself. It's hard to imagine large groups of people identifying themselves as evil. "Evil" is something that is overwhelmingly used to label other people in the real world AFAICT and yet in DnD it's considered the norm that someone can detect alignment on themselves and say "oh look, i"m evil, how about that". History, thus, has it's limitations in terms of how to design a fantasy world to deal with this issue.

Yeah. It's always important to keep in mind that although Good and Evil (the capitalized alignments) exist and are most definitely objective, it's an entirely subjective matter as to which is better. So, to an Evil person, Evil is good and Good is bad; for a Good person, it's obviously the opposite.

Edit: About the three FR deities mentioned in the initial post: Shar, Cyric and Talona.

Shar's the goddess of darkness, loss, sorrow and forgetfulness; I'd think most of her worshipers and clerics start off as desperate, depressed people who are just trying to forget some overwhelming sorrow or pain. As far as evil gods go, she's not very malignant (unless you care about the Shadow Weave), though she is malicious.

Cyric's more like a god for the psychopaths: the ambitious, vain, self-centered people with a superiority complex. His followers probably start off a bit unhinged to begin with, and only get worse.

Talona... well, she's a literally malignant deity, probably appealing to rather pathological cases most of the time. She is, appropriately enough, a much more minor deity than either Shar or Cyric.

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

I don't think being evil and/or worshipping an evil deity automatically means your soul is damned to torment for all eternity when you die. If you served well, it's likely you'll be promoted to a higher form of demon/devil in the afterlife. For many, that's a reward in and of itself.

Sure the odd follower will be screwed over, but people wouldn't worship evil deities if there wasn't some form of payoff. That could come in the present or in the afterlife, but bribery can be a very effective tool to gain followers.

I don't think the view that anyone who worships and evil deity gets screwed over when they die is an accurate one. Maybe if you sold your soul for some boon during your life, but not if you were a faithful follower (who was successful!).

Just take a look around in the real world. Most people will sacrifice long term pain for short term gain. I actually think it would be pretty even in terms of who would follow good and who would follow evil, with most probably falling into the neutral category. In fact, I think D&D reverses real-world alignment in that good and evil are much more prominent in D&D whereas in real life I would argue that neutrality is the prominant alignment and good and evil are in the minority.

 

[Faraer]

Lots of very good answers above.

How precisely do deities like Shar, Cyric, and Talona attract and maintain large groups of worshippers, after all?

They don't: these are relatively small cults devoted to 'psychological' niches of dedicated worshippers. For instance, 'Talona, like most chaotic evil gods, is more feared than worshiped and is propitiated to avoid her attentions, not to draw them' (Faiths & Avatars). Worship is only one contributor to godly power in the Realms; and remember that evil deities get a lot of appeasement worship (see here), and we may also surmise about the effects of human (etc.) sacrifice.

And furthermore, how would such organizations integrate themselves into societies and civilizations with success?

Usually underground and behind the scenes rather than overtly, in a complex web of covert influence, in which these cults are expert: infiltration; sponsorship of certain merchants, adventurers, and thieving guilds; fostering intrigue; rumour-spreading; magical dominance; etc.

Knowledge of the other planes and where the spirit departs to after life would be a known, codifiable fact for such people.

In the Realms there is no certain knowledge of such matters except in the vaguest terms; folk believe what they've learned culturally. Evil gods, especially, lie when divined to; the returned dead are unable to describe the transcendent experiences of the afterlife; even planewalkers don't know much about the experience of dead souls, and they can't prove their various reports, which, as has been said, aren't obviously negative to the kind of people we're talking about.

 

[Pyrex]

Then there's the Cleric of Vol I'll be playing in an Eberron game starting up shortly.

He's all about brotherhood and family; and protecting said with ruthless lethal force (not to mention animating your sorry corpse afterward). Oh, and achieving eternal "life" and what he sees as a spark of divinity by becoming free-willed undead (should the game last that long his ambition would be to become a Lich)

A very "if you're not with me you're against me" attitude to be sure, leaving him squarely NE serving an [Evil] power structure.