Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Kapre 04-19-07, 11:02 PM	The question/challenge in brief: I'm looking for a religion or cult that the general population, which isn't apart of this group, for one reason or another says "Leave or we'll drive you out." Restrictions: This can't be an evil cult, I want somthing that 'Good' aligned people can/will follow. Spring-board / Why: I'm starting a campaign where a major amount of the action will surround a new village being founded in the wilds. This populus of this colony will have taken this oprotunity as a compromise with the ruling government to avoid bloodshed or riots. I'm currently leaning toward a monothiestic cult which won't give up proselytizing, and have worn out their welcome that way; but I'm open to any god or cult home-brewed or other wise which may fit my needs.
MagusBlack 04-20-07, 01:29 AM	Evening Glory (Neutral) Her followers might seem to be strange but they're all good people (ecept for me and a few others, and we're that way so others dont have to be) and the ideals of the Evening Glory can improve the lifestyle of any commoner...or fighter, wizard, or whatnot. Death to the clerics of Pelor.:devil:
Kapre 04-20-07, 01:48 AM	Cool. Is this a home-brew? or is she from a specific setting? Either way, a little more information would be really helpful, these guys are going to be kinda central to the later part of the game. So if you could link where someome posted about her, or what book she's from; I'd apreciate it. Thanks
alien_valentine 04-20-07, 03:17 AM	Perhaps the TN nature deity of your campaign setting. Obad-Hai, Silvanus, or whichever would be appropriate. This would make sense as you are trying to set the campaign around the formation of a new village, something that no TN nature deity, especially Silvanus, would take very kindly. Aside from that, if you have access to the Fiendish Codex I, you could take a good aligned deity, and then design a church or cult of that deity that is being corrupted by a liltu, detailed in that book. This would make for an excellent plot twist, and would probably confuse the living daylights out of your PC's when they go to negotiate with a supposedly good aligned church and get attacked by demons when negotiations breakdown.:D But then again, I'm a very conniving and evil DM so this may not be something you want to do.
Kapre 04-20-07, 03:30 AM	Perhaps the TN nature deity of your campaign setting. Obad-Hai, Silvanus, or whichever would be appropriate. This would make sense as you are trying to set the campaign around the formation of a new village, something that no TN nature deity, especially Silvanus, would take very kindly. Aside from that, if you have access to the Fiendish Codex I, you could take a good aligned deity, and then design a church or cult of that deity that is being corrupted by a liltu, detailed in that book. This would make for an excellent plot twist, and would probably confuse the living daylights out of your PC's when they go to negotiate with a supposedly good aligned church and get attacked by demons when negotiations breakdown.:D But then again, I'm a very conniving and evil DM so this may not be something you want to do. I think you misunderstood me. I have 'established society' with 'unpopular cult'. The cult isn't evil or anything, but for one reason or the next 'good honest folk' don't want to have them around. The king can't justify persecuting them, so to prevent a mini holy/civil war he makes a deal with the leaders of 'unpopular cult' to have them spear-head a colonization effort. Win-Win-Win, he get's to expand, (what ruler dosen't like that?) they get to go live in peace, (which is what they want) and the average populus never sees them again, (which is what they want too). Ofcourse, just because and area is uninhabited dosen't mean it's <i>uninhabited</i>, so your idea about the nature dieties totally works, but what I'm looking for is who/what does the 'unpopular cult' worship and why don't people like them. And, like I mentioned, my current idea is monotheism, and they're unliked because of feverent conversion atempts, (They're steeling our children!) and so forth.
JulesCARV 04-20-07, 03:37 AM	What's considered acceptable in the established society you have, and what's the predominant religion? Do most people worship Pelor? Boccob? St. Cuthbert? What's the government like? The economy?
Ashen_Child 04-20-07, 07:00 AM	In real life i could probably give a few examples, but that would be against the COC The main reasons majority groups hate minority groups tends to be that the latter is highly insular and secretive. Any group of people that tend to keep to themselves and actively hide what they do is going to have people accusing them of eating babies and the like. All the more so if they're actually LG. Like i said, i could easily rant off dozens of real-life examples (including some major modern day religions) but that's not necissary. Summary: If they act like a 'cult' they will be hated regardless.
WombleHunter 04-20-07, 07:52 AM	St Cuthbert. They just won't stop preaching about the right way to live and how you should hunt down corruption to smite at every turn. Look guys, we're just trying to make a living, ok?
michel andre 04-20-07, 08:16 AM	Evening Glory (Neutral) Her followers might seem to be strange but they're all good people (ecept for me and a few others, and we're that way so others dont have to be) and the ideals of the Evening Glory can improve the lifestyle of any commoner...or fighter, wizard, or whatnot. Who is Evening Glory?
Khael 04-20-07, 10:27 AM	Evening Glory, Goddess of eternal love, from Libris Mortis. Sounds good until you read the fine print: Eternal love above and beyond death. In other words when the cult leaves, each family will have likely taken their preserved/embalmed dead family members too, maybe going so far as to bring the dead ones into the loving embrace of eternal life. Or reanimating them as everyone tends to call it. But those undead won't be used for slaves, they'll still be family, so it quite likely should a PC attack a wandering zombie, the party wind up fighting several villagers, come to save 'Henry's great-great-grampa Stoolie'. Of course they might just limit themselves to saving spaces tio the table for the preserved bodies or similar, but the point remains the same. Also that last practice might give a fairly good idea as to why they were 'kicked out'. Beyond preaching about love eternal of course. Not the most likely group to be kicked out for preaching though, but they'd definately be usable for a sense of 'something being only just wrong with em'.
jareddm 04-20-07, 03:24 PM	Blood of Vol might also be good. Not the millitant branch associated with the emerald claw, just the common people who believe that after death, there is no afterlife whatsoever. There's nothing but..well...nothingness. They respect those who are capable of staving off death(vampires primarily), but wouldn't go around killing people. If anything, they would never even think of damning someone to an eternity of nothingness.
alien_valentine 04-20-07, 04:16 PM	Perhaps I'm thinking to far into this campaign, but I just got a couple more good ideas. Iuz, although CE, often forms cults and often impersonates other deities. Perhaps you could have this cult be the result of a theological schism in the predominant church of your campaign. This cult believes that they are simply worshiping X deity in a different way than others, while in reality they are worshiping Iuz. Pholtus might also be a good choice. As a LG deity who teaches his followers to never back down in the face of anything, this might lead to quite the interesting story. As fervent prostelytizers, they would quickly aggravate the king and the more powerful churches. Also Pholtus abhors compromise so the king would be quick to order them out, and the Pholtians would likely obey, but would be very unhappy about the whole thing. Finally, Trithereon, as the deity who sponsors coups against tryannical regimes, would be shown no love by any lawful government. No sane ruler would be entirely comfortable with an established cult of Trithereon in his demense, as this is usually the precursor to rebellion. All these deitys are found in the Complete Divine, by the way.
JulesCARV 04-20-07, 04:27 PM	Blood of Vol might also be good. Not the millitant branch associated with the emerald claw, just the common people who believe that after death, there is no afterlife whatsoever. There's nothing but..well...nothingness. They respect those who are capable of staving off death(vampires primarily), but wouldn't go around killing people. If anything, they would never even think of damning someone to an eternity of nothingness. Kapre did specify a non-evil cult, and the Blood of Vol is, in fact, evil.
Kapre 04-20-07, 04:51 PM	What's considered acceptable in the established society you have, and what's the predominant religion? Do most people worship Pelor? Boccob? St. Cuthbert? What's the government like? The economy? Acceptable, in this case, is really just a religion that leaves non-followers to go about their business. I'd imagine that a large amount of the human pop. would worship someone along the line of Helm, being a table favorite. The government is a kingdom, so fudal, with dukes ruling smaller areas, and local government being determined by how close to the local lord they are. Somthing that I did not mention specifically, because I didn't think it was significant, is that this campaign isn't scheduled to start until summer break; so any background changes can be made to suit any premises I like. The secretive angle is good, that makes it easier to get the PCs involved if they know what these folks are about, while the rest of society has a general mistrust leading to their volentary semi-exile. Also I didn't know that about St. Cuthbert, but searching out and destroying curruption dosen't seem like a good motivation to go out in the wilderness... but starting a new government without curruption does, so that may work. And Trithereon, I don't know anything about him, but if they're all about tearing down tyrants, going where there are no tyrants dosen't sound like their ideal place. Thankyou all for the great suggestions so far, keep it comming.
Millennium 04-20-07, 05:02 PM	You might want to look up the modern church of Aumanator from Forgotten Realms, who also got some attention in Lost Empires of Faerun. He would lend himself very well to this sort of thing, and while you might not want to actually use the churches of Aumanator and Lathander, they could serve as a good source of inspiration. Summary: Aumanator was an ancient LN sun god. Over the past several millennia, his church was subsumed into the church of Lathander, the modern sun god, who is LG. However, there are some in Lathander's church who believe that Lathander is just another aspect of Aumanator, who will ascend to primacy again soon. The church tends to brand them as heretics, but Lathander himself hasn't said anything one way or another on the matter. If you're in the US, you might want to look at the histories of the pioneers. There are a couple of religious groups who migrated westward over the course of American history, and their stories could serve as some interesting inspiration. I can't name names here without violating the CoC, because some of these groups are still active today, and I'm not sure it's really fair to call them cults anymore given how long they've been able to survive without their founders. But again, I mention them only as a source of inspiration, so whether or not they are or were cults doesn't matter; the ideas can still be applied to a cult in your campaign.
Damior 04-21-07, 07:29 PM	In my setting Ive got the deity for this kind of group. Riagnik, LN deity of Kobolds and Secrets. So secretive that not even its clerics know much about it, even if it was the original creator of kobolds or not. Recently, a group of Riagnikian clerics have moved into a remote farming community. The villagers resent them, both for the fact that they are kobolds, they are from out of the area, and for their suspicious activites, such as sneaking through the wheat fields at night up and down the rows of crops for unknown reasons. The clerics are searching for some long forgotten artifact to bring it to a more secure location, but they have told no one.