Erythnul cult initiation pledge [Archive] - Wizards Community

Erythnul cult initiation pledge [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
JulesCARV
04-16-07, 03:00 PM (Just a little flavor thing. Any ideas on how it could be improved?)

I, ________, pledge my body and my soul to Erythnul the Many. I swear to follow him in this life and beyond, and to always serve the chaos and evil for which he stands.

I know the mantle of the Slaughterer, and the duties entailed therein. I shall purge mankind of weakness, corruption, and deformity, culling the herds of humanity, leaving only purity and strength surviving.

I shall receive no gratitude for my sleepless vigil. Those I strengthen and purify shall regard me with hatred and disdain. Yet I do not ask for any gratitude or recompense. I carry out my duty only in the hopes that some generation as yet unseen will live in a world free of corruption and weakness.

If the Many chooses to grant me any of his power, insight, or resource, I swear that I shall use it to purge the worthless and the undesirable. I shall not let mercy infect my heart or help those who deserve death out of any personal bond of affection, bloood, or loyalty.

I, ______, do hereby take upon myself the mantle of the Slaughterer, now and forever, until I am no more in body or in soul.
Henchcritter
04-16-07, 03:18 PM I, ________, pledge my body and my soul to Erythnul the Many. I swear to follow him in this life and beyond, and to always serve the chaos and evil for which he stands.Oke, any real wordt badguys that see themselves as evil or chaotic. None as fat as I know. Therefore why should any D&D badguy? Therefore I suggest the following:

I, ________, pledge my body and my soul to Erythnul the Many. I swear to follow him in this life and beyond, and to always serve the freedom for the strong, for which he stands.
Way more insidious.

That is my only mild point of criticism on a job well done :evillaugh .
JulesCARV
04-16-07, 04:07 PM Thanks for the input, Henchcritter.

I suppose I just think that the alignment of Erythnul would be known and not easily denied. People have detected the alignments of clerics of Erythnul who didn't have Undetectable Alignment up (i.e., any cleric of Erythnul below 3rd level). Now, Erythnul-worshippers have no problems lying, and in places where good is considered preferable to evil, they might try to impersonate being good, but if they do so, they'll say something like "we're clerics of Pelor," not "we're clerics of Erythnul, but Erythnul's really a neutral good deity."

Now, Erythnul worshippers needn't be alignment-obsessed. They probably think about slaughter more than they think about being chaotic evil. (after all, Moist von Lipwig was chaotic evil (at the beginning of Going Postal at least), but Erythnul cultists would never want him as a worshipper, because he had nothing to do with slaughter.) For that matter, Pelor worshippers probably think about protecting people, helping the poor, and healing the sick more than they think about being neutral good. However, I think that saying that they pledge allegience to Erythnul and to chaos and evil serves to acknowledge that their primary allegience is to a deity, Erythnul, but also they have some allegience to the CE alignment, even if secondary, since in D&D allegience to deities also means, to a lesser extent, allegience to an alignment.

Still, you do have a point. In a setting where alignment is largely metagame, it would make sense to talk about "freedom for the strong" than "chaos and evil." Maybe they could be variants., used in different circumstances.
Henchcritter
04-16-07, 04:38 PM Take it futher. Any cleric with a bit of knowledge the planes knows that there are planes and you somehow can be aligned to those planes. But that does not mean the terms good and evil need to be used.

If a Pelor cleric, you would call good indeed good and evil evil. But suppose you are really a cleric of Erythnul. Oke, you can kill the weak and are free to do as you like. Not only is this the only proper way but the divine will of your god. Being weak is a deadly sin.

Now how would you see the lawful good plane (as we call it as players) through the eyes of that character. Not only is it not allowed to kill weaklings but must cloth and feeds them. And society demands and enfoces this. In short society is parasiting on your gains to feed the weak instead of letting nature takes is course. Isn't that a corruption of nature and your deities will, can things be more evil?

The abyss is not a nice place, but at east it encourages freedom. And demons, you understand them. The fact they function much like your temple makes them good tools. In short a plane that functions like nature and has useful tools, can you call that evil?

In short a fanatic CE character will judge LG is oppressive and unnatural, any LG character has a stench from that plane that can be sensed. CE will be regarded is right and feel so.
Prak, the Mad
04-16-07, 05:01 PM to quote one of my favorite mini-tirades on alignment and evil seeing itself as evil:

Godliness isn't Goodliness

Whatever religion you personally have, the religion in D&D revolves around a set of gods both Good and Evil of equal strength and importance. Most modern day religions have however many gods they worship be of sufficient goodness that they are at least worthy of respect – so it can be hard to remember that in D&D the gods as a whole are precisely zero sum on any issue. Being "divine" doesn't make you Good in D&D, it just makes you more. If you're Good it makes you more Good, but if you're Evil it makes you more Evil. Clerics detect strongly of whatever alignment they have, but there's nothing Good about priests as a whole. Turning your back on the gods isn't a bad thing in D&D, it's a perfectly valid and neutral choice. If Ur Priests are to have any alignment restriction at all, it should be the same as Druids – stealing from the gods is a profoundly neutral act, not Good and not Evil.

There is no Salvation or Redemption in D&D

All of the major religions of our world that utilize the concepts of Ultimate Good and Ultimate Evil use the concept of Redemption (that people have a state of innocence that they can lose and perhaps regain through atonement) or Salvation (that people have a state of inherent unworthiness that they can overcome). D&D, despite having a spell called atonement actually has neither of those concepts. The atonement spell actually dedicates (or rededicates) a character to any alignment, Good or Evil, Law or Chaos. Baby kobolds are not born into original sin and baby elves are not born in a state of grace, D&D doesn't even have those concepts. Creatures with an alignment subtype (most Fiends, for example) are born into that alignment and are only going to stray from it if subjected to powerful magic or arguments. Everyone else is born neutral.

In D&D, creatures do not "fall" into Evil. Being Evil is a valid choice that is fully supported by half the gods just as Good is. Those who follow the tenets of Evil throughout their lives are judged by Evil Gods when they die, and can gain rewards at least as enticing as those offered to those who follow the path of Good (who, after all, are judged by Good Gods after they die). So when sahuagin run around on land snatching children to use as slaves or sacrifices to Baatorians, they aren't putting their soul in danger. They are actually keeping their soul safe. Once you step down the path of villainy, you get a better deal in the afterlife by being more evil.

The only people who get screwed in the D&D afterlife are traitors and failures. A traitor gets a bad deal in the afterlife because whichever side of the fence they ended up on is going to remember their deeds on the other side of the fence. A failure gets a bad deal because they end up judged by gods who wanted them to succeed. As such, it is really hard to get people to change alignment in D&D. Unless you can otherwise assure that someone will die as a failure to their alignment, there's absolutely no incentive you could possibly give them that would entice them to betray it.

I think that followers of Eruthynul would call themselves evil...
jimpaladin
04-17-07, 08:42 AM I agree with Prak up to a point. He talks as tho' those without a fixed alignment ala Monster Manuals etc are considered "neutral". If that is the case then everyone would see themselves in the best possible light. No one will say "Look at me I'm CE." That is a metagame classification for that creature/pc etc. Rather like in real life, the people who are "evil" just see themselves as more evolved or smarter/crafter that the rest of the people. I mean give your money to the poor if it makes you feel better I would rather spend it on me I earned it. Or look at these idiots, they left their car/house unlocked, lets see what they have that they mustn't need anymore. Ignoring or overcoming moral values is what a neutral pc does on a regular basis. Not some grandisoe idea of LG or CE or TN for that matter. I know it's ramblin'
JulesCARV
04-17-07, 04:32 PM Well, I didn't really mean to turn this thread into an alignment thread. As Henchcritter pointed out, you can always get rid of the "and to always serve the chaos and evil for which he stands" phrase if it doesn't make sense in your setting. It's mainly about the initiation pledge.
awaken_D_M_golem
04-18-07, 04:40 PM Erythnul's followers strike me as somewhat Frat-boy-ish with a demented and evil twist. "We'd rather go to war, so for the moment lets haze the pledges." Smack. "Thank you, may I have a healing."
"Not until you go beat up those Gnomes over there." Heh. He ain't getting healed.

{ ... insert devious smiley ... }
Henchcritter
04-18-07, 05:41 PM Well, I didn't really mean to turn this thread into an alignment thread. As Henchcritter pointed out, you can always get rid of the "and to always serve the chaos and evil for which he stands" phrase if it doesn't make sense in your setting. It's mainly about the initiation pledge.That's why I refrained for further commenting on it.

I belief you plan to let PCs get close to the temple of slaughter and not present them as mere expendables. Therefore it is wise to think how these villains see themselves. It's your world, cannibalise our opinions in a coherent version of the temple in your world. I belief you won't get much more responses, your oaths pretty much covers it. You did your homework pretty well from what I can judge.

One last oath. I did oath, rituals, songs and other stuff like that which seemed insignificant for my groups in the campaign. Seemed, in the end my players were often as pleased with the background of my world as they were with their character. In short: I suggest as a gm you take an oath to keep putting this kind of efforts into the background of your world. Your players and your world deserves nothing less.

Well, I just thought one part your oath did not cover: inner temple politics. I suggest something like this:

I ____ hereby take the duty to strengthen the slaughterer by cleansing any weaknesses in his church. It is my duty and pride to cull the weak from my lord's temple, from the lowliest initiate to the highest high priest if that must be so. In the same way it falls on my lord's followers to end my misery should I ever fail or betray my lord.

Something like that should really bring out the CE in the temple. This oath should remind anyone hearing it after taking it that they signed their dead sentences if the get weak knees.
The Ubbergeek
04-18-07, 06:35 PM It's not true that5 there is no salvation (or fall) in D&D...

Characters can change in alignement, they are not static. They are also humane, with free wills...

And rarely, even outsiders change....
JulesCARV
04-20-07, 02:34 AM Erythnul's followers strike me as somewhat Frat-boy-ish with a demented and evil twist. "We'd rather go to war, so for the moment lets haze the pledges." Smack. "Thank you, may I have a healing."
"Not until you go beat up those Gnomes over there." Heh. He ain't getting healed.

{ ... insert devious smiley ... }

I like this idea.
Mirtek
04-20-07, 01:34 PM I don't think that Erythnull's church has many (if any) official rites. They're a really chaotic bunch and rituals certainly vary from one cell to the next.

Some might have pledges and oaths (some traditional, some changing every second day) and some may have none at all.
Millennium
04-20-07, 05:08 PM Perhaps something along these lines might also work: "I swear to follow him in this life and beyond, and to always serve his cause and purpose, called 'evil' and 'chaos' by the weak and ignorant." This acknowledges that the things Erythnul stands for are called Chaotic Evil, and that the supplicant understands this, but believes them to be worthwhile despite these ugly names. It also provides a plausible rationalization for why outsiders loathe Erythnul's cause so much: they just fear beung culled.
revaar
04-22-07, 07:23 PM personally, i think it's not really in erythnul's style at all to have anysort of organized rites or rituals. sure, they might have celebrations or something of the sort, but i don't think many gods that esouse chaos and didorder as thier main ideals would be as organized as your pledge makes it look.

OTOH, if you take out those lines about chaos, it would work very well for hextor i think.
Prak, the Mad
04-23-07, 01:02 PM actually, canon disagrees with you... the ravagers in CW have a very codified initiation rite, and they're basically just erythnul cultists...

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
JulesCARV 04-16-07, 03:00 PM	(Just a little flavor thing. Any ideas on how it could be improved?) I, ________, pledge my body and my soul to Erythnul the Many. I swear to follow him in this life and beyond, and to always serve the chaos and evil for which he stands. I know the mantle of the Slaughterer, and the duties entailed therein. I shall purge mankind of weakness, corruption, and deformity, culling the herds of humanity, leaving only purity and strength surviving. I shall receive no gratitude for my sleepless vigil. Those I strengthen and purify shall regard me with hatred and disdain. Yet I do not ask for any gratitude or recompense. I carry out my duty only in the hopes that some generation as yet unseen will live in a world free of corruption and weakness. If the Many chooses to grant me any of his power, insight, or resource, I swear that I shall use it to purge the worthless and the undesirable. I shall not let mercy infect my heart or help those who deserve death out of any personal bond of affection, bloood, or loyalty. I, ______, do hereby take upon myself the mantle of the Slaughterer, now and forever, until I am no more in body or in soul.
Henchcritter 04-16-07, 03:18 PM	I, ________, pledge my body and my soul to Erythnul the Many. I swear to follow him in this life and beyond, and to always serve the chaos and evil for which he stands.Oke, any real wordt badguys that see themselves as evil or chaotic. None as fat as I know. Therefore why should any D&D badguy? Therefore I suggest the following: I, ________, pledge my body and my soul to Erythnul the Many. I swear to follow him in this life and beyond, and to always serve the freedom for the strong, for which he stands. Way more insidious. That is my only mild point of criticism on a job well done :evillaugh .
JulesCARV 04-16-07, 04:07 PM	Thanks for the input, Henchcritter. I suppose I just think that the alignment of Erythnul would be known and not easily denied. People have detected the alignments of clerics of Erythnul who didn't have Undetectable Alignment up (i.e., any cleric of Erythnul below 3rd level). Now, Erythnul-worshippers have no problems lying, and in places where good is considered preferable to evil, they might try to impersonate being good, but if they do so, they'll say something like "we're clerics of Pelor," not "we're clerics of Erythnul, but Erythnul's really a neutral good deity." Now, Erythnul worshippers needn't be alignment-obsessed. They probably think about slaughter more than they think about being chaotic evil. (after all, Moist von Lipwig was chaotic evil (at the beginning of Going Postal at least), but Erythnul cultists would never want him as a worshipper, because he had nothing to do with slaughter.) For that matter, Pelor worshippers probably think about protecting people, helping the poor, and healing the sick more than they think about being neutral good. However, I think that saying that they pledge allegience to Erythnul and to chaos and evil serves to acknowledge that their primary allegience is to a deity, Erythnul, but also they have some allegience to the CE alignment, even if secondary, since in D&D allegience to deities also means, to a lesser extent, allegience to an alignment. Still, you do have a point. In a setting where alignment is largely metagame, it would make sense to talk about "freedom for the strong" than "chaos and evil." Maybe they could be variants., used in different circumstances.
Henchcritter 04-16-07, 04:38 PM	Take it futher. Any cleric with a bit of knowledge the planes knows that there are planes and you somehow can be aligned to those planes. But that does not mean the terms good and evil need to be used. If a Pelor cleric, you would call good indeed good and evil evil. But suppose you are really a cleric of Erythnul. Oke, you can kill the weak and are free to do as you like. Not only is this the only proper way but the divine will of your god. Being weak is a deadly sin. Now how would you see the lawful good plane (as we call it as players) through the eyes of that character. Not only is it not allowed to kill weaklings but must cloth and feeds them. And society demands and enfoces this. In short society is parasiting on your gains to feed the weak instead of letting nature takes is course. Isn't that a corruption of nature and your deities will, can things be more evil? The abyss is not a nice place, but at east it encourages freedom. And demons, you understand them. The fact they function much like your temple makes them good tools. In short a plane that functions like nature and has useful tools, can you call that evil? In short a fanatic CE character will judge LG is oppressive and unnatural, any LG character has a stench from that plane that can be sensed. CE will be regarded is right and feel so.
Prak, the Mad 04-16-07, 05:01 PM	to quote one of my favorite mini-tirades on alignment and evil seeing itself as evil: Godliness isn't Goodliness Whatever religion you personally have, the religion in D&D revolves around a set of gods both Good and Evil of equal strength and importance. Most modern day religions have however many gods they worship be of sufficient goodness that they are at least worthy of respect – so it can be hard to remember that in D&D the gods as a whole are precisely zero sum on any issue. Being "divine" doesn't make you Good in D&D, it just makes you more. If you're Good it makes you more Good, but if you're Evil it makes you more Evil. Clerics detect strongly of whatever alignment they have, but there's nothing Good about priests as a whole. Turning your back on the gods isn't a bad thing in D&D, it's a perfectly valid and neutral choice. If Ur Priests are to have any alignment restriction at all, it should be the same as Druids – stealing from the gods is a profoundly neutral act, not Good and not Evil. There is no Salvation or Redemption in D&D All of the major religions of our world that utilize the concepts of Ultimate Good and Ultimate Evil use the concept of Redemption (that people have a state of innocence that they can lose and perhaps regain through atonement) or Salvation (that people have a state of inherent unworthiness that they can overcome). D&D, despite having a spell called atonement actually has neither of those concepts. The atonement spell actually dedicates (or rededicates) a character to any alignment, Good or Evil, Law or Chaos. Baby kobolds are not born into original sin and baby elves are not born in a state of grace, D&D doesn't even have those concepts. Creatures with an alignment subtype (most Fiends, for example) are born into that alignment and are only going to stray from it if subjected to powerful magic or arguments. Everyone else is born neutral. In D&D, creatures do not "fall" into Evil. Being Evil is a valid choice that is fully supported by half the gods just as Good is. Those who follow the tenets of Evil throughout their lives are judged by Evil Gods when they die, and can gain rewards at least as enticing as those offered to those who follow the path of Good (who, after all, are judged by Good Gods after they die). So when sahuagin run around on land snatching children to use as slaves or sacrifices to Baatorians, they aren't putting their soul in danger. They are actually keeping their soul safe. Once you step down the path of villainy, you get a better deal in the afterlife by being more evil. The only people who get screwed in the D&D afterlife are traitors and failures. A traitor gets a bad deal in the afterlife because whichever side of the fence they ended up on is going to remember their deeds on the other side of the fence. A failure gets a bad deal because they end up judged by gods who wanted them to succeed. As such, it is really hard to get people to change alignment in D&D. Unless you can otherwise assure that someone will die as a failure to their alignment, there's absolutely no incentive you could possibly give them that would entice them to betray it. I think that followers of Eruthynul would call themselves evil...
jimpaladin 04-17-07, 08:42 AM	I agree with Prak up to a point. He talks as tho' those without a fixed alignment ala Monster Manuals etc are considered "neutral". If that is the case then everyone would see themselves in the best possible light. No one will say "Look at me I'm CE." That is a metagame classification for that creature/pc etc. Rather like in real life, the people who are "evil" just see themselves as more evolved or smarter/crafter that the rest of the people. I mean give your money to the poor if it makes you feel better I would rather spend it on me I earned it. Or look at these idiots, they left their car/house unlocked, lets see what they have that they mustn't need anymore. Ignoring or overcoming moral values is what a neutral pc does on a regular basis. Not some grandisoe idea of LG or CE or TN for that matter. I know it's ramblin'
JulesCARV 04-17-07, 04:32 PM	Well, I didn't really mean to turn this thread into an alignment thread. As Henchcritter pointed out, you can always get rid of the "and to always serve the chaos and evil for which he stands" phrase if it doesn't make sense in your setting. It's mainly about the initiation pledge.
awaken_D_M_golem 04-18-07, 04:40 PM	Erythnul's followers strike me as somewhat Frat-boy-ish with a demented and evil twist. "We'd rather go to war, so for the moment lets haze the pledges." Smack. "Thank you, may I have a healing." "Not until you go beat up those Gnomes over there." Heh. He ain't getting healed. { ... insert devious smiley ... }
Henchcritter 04-18-07, 05:41 PM	Well, I didn't really mean to turn this thread into an alignment thread. As Henchcritter pointed out, you can always get rid of the "and to always serve the chaos and evil for which he stands" phrase if it doesn't make sense in your setting. It's mainly about the initiation pledge.That's why I refrained for further commenting on it. I belief you plan to let PCs get close to the temple of slaughter and not present them as mere expendables. Therefore it is wise to think how these villains see themselves. It's your world, cannibalise our opinions in a coherent version of the temple in your world. I belief you won't get much more responses, your oaths pretty much covers it. You did your homework pretty well from what I can judge. One last oath. I did oath, rituals, songs and other stuff like that which seemed insignificant for my groups in the campaign. Seemed, in the end my players were often as pleased with the background of my world as they were with their character. In short: I suggest as a gm you take an oath to keep putting this kind of efforts into the background of your world. Your players and your world deserves nothing less. Well, I just thought one part your oath did not cover: inner temple politics. I suggest something like this: I ____ hereby take the duty to strengthen the slaughterer by cleansing any weaknesses in his church. It is my duty and pride to cull the weak from my lord's temple, from the lowliest initiate to the highest high priest if that must be so. In the same way it falls on my lord's followers to end my misery should I ever fail or betray my lord. Something like that should really bring out the CE in the temple. This oath should remind anyone hearing it after taking it that they signed their dead sentences if the get weak knees.
The Ubbergeek 04-18-07, 06:35 PM	It's not true that5 there is no salvation (or fall) in D&D... Characters can change in alignement, they are not static. They are also humane, with free wills... And rarely, even outsiders change....
JulesCARV 04-20-07, 02:34 AM	Erythnul's followers strike me as somewhat Frat-boy-ish with a demented and evil twist. "We'd rather go to war, so for the moment lets haze the pledges." Smack. "Thank you, may I have a healing." "Not until you go beat up those Gnomes over there." Heh. He ain't getting healed. { ... insert devious smiley ... } I like this idea.
Mirtek 04-20-07, 01:34 PM	I don't think that Erythnull's church has many (if any) official rites. They're a really chaotic bunch and rituals certainly vary from one cell to the next. Some might have pledges and oaths (some traditional, some changing every second day) and some may have none at all.
Millennium 04-20-07, 05:08 PM	Perhaps something along these lines might also work: "I swear to follow him in this life and beyond, and to always serve his cause and purpose, called 'evil' and 'chaos' by the weak and ignorant." This acknowledges that the things Erythnul stands for are called Chaotic Evil, and that the supplicant understands this, but believes them to be worthwhile despite these ugly names. It also provides a plausible rationalization for why outsiders loathe Erythnul's cause so much: they just fear beung culled.
revaar 04-22-07, 07:23 PM	personally, i think it's not really in erythnul's style at all to have anysort of organized rites or rituals. sure, they might have celebrations or something of the sort, but i don't think many gods that esouse chaos and didorder as thier main ideals would be as organized as your pledge makes it look. OTOH, if you take out those lines about chaos, it would work very well for hextor i think.
Prak, the Mad 04-23-07, 01:02 PM	actually, canon disagrees with you... the ravagers in CW have a very codified initiation rite, and they're basically just erythnul cultists...