Church making question

[Zahhak]

I know that most DnD users tend to shy away from dealing with religion in DnD outside of divine magic, but my group is apparently going a different way. Specifically, we're in the middle of making a church with (apparently) my character as god. The thing is, one of my fellow cultists/bodyguard is suggesting we come up with a more indepth theology then what we have. I cannot come up with much more, and google and wikipedia have both failed me in this regard, so I was hoping someone here might have some suggestions.

I figured knowing something of the basics of the cult's theology would help: essentially, it is the worship of the process of birth/death/rebirth (a plant dies so a cow can eat it, which dies so a wolf can eat it, which dies to feed more plants; a civilization dies to feed a new one). The cult is based around destroying the world completely to allow for a new one which can "feed" off of the corpse of the old one, making me automatically god. Or something. My character is kind of insane.

Some other things I've thought of:
1. Would be opposed to the undead, since they are basically outside the above process
2. The cult would be neutrally aligned, seeing as how everything dies eventually.

We're kind of going down the anti-dungeon path, or atleast that's where the characters are taking the campaign.

Anyways, suggestions?

[Chronologist]

I have a few suggestion, if you're interested.

First, consider the dogma of the religion. I see it as something like "Everything dies. Everyone is reborn. The cycle is absolute. Do not stray from it - accept the inevitability of your existence. Know that you serve a greater purpose than yourself - your death allows others to live, and their deaths serve your life in turn."

This tends me to view the religion as True Neutral - it's fundamentally about balance. It's not benevolent or malevolent in any way, it simply IS.

True Neutral makes it a prime candidate for Druids, which fits the motif, and allows for a variety of alignments for Clerics and other believers. Neutral Good worshippers might focus on the cycle of life, and the utility and necessity of farm animals, building a sense of community through meals and harvesting. Neutral Evil believers might practice cannibalism, consuming the flesh of their enemies in order to grow stronger. Lawful Neutral and Chaotic Neutral characters might have rigorous, or more individual, beliefs on the role of an individual in a community - after all, the strong survive and consume the weak.

The religion also presents a number of issues. You pointed out their hatred of Undead, but they might also share a similar distaste of Aberrations, Elementals, and Outsiders, who exist outside of the natural order of things. Essentially anything extraplanar would be somewhat shunned. In addition, they wouldn't offer Raise Dead or similar spells at their churches - after all, resurrection magic, that which directly intervenes with the cycle of life and death, would be taboo.

For organization structure, I can see it as less of a Cathedral-style religion, and more of a grass-roots Pagan sort of belief. It's fairly widespread, it's present in several different races and countries, but worshipers are generally rural, and perhaps prone to worshipping other deities as well, so long as they don't oppose or overlap with your deities's tenants.

For Domains, I'd go with Death, Gluttony (from Spell Compendium), Community, and maybe Undeath (killing undead, from Ghostwalk) or some other domain which has Banishment on its spell list - you want your Clerics to be able to tell Outsiders and Elementals to get the hell out of your Plane.

I hope that helps.

Chronologist

[JoshuaZ]

Obvious issues are: How do you feel about other deities and religions? Does your religion believe that this feeding has occurred before? Is it cyclic with other beings or is this a new thing? What theologically justifies doing it? What will your followers get out of it?

[Zahhak]

Some of these get into the specific world we're playing in.


"Everything dies. Everyone is reborn. The cycle is absolute. Do not stray from it - accept the inevitability of your existence. Know that you serve a greater purpose than yourself - your death allows others to live, and their deaths serve your life in turn."

Love it, probably taking it wholesale.


Neutral Good worshippers might focus on the cycle of life, and the utility and necessity of farm animals, building a sense of community through meals and harvesting. Neutral Evil believers might practice cannibalism, consuming the flesh of their enemies in order to grow stronger. Lawful Neutral and Chaotic Neutral characters might have rigorous, or more individual, beliefs on the role of an individual in a community - after all, the strong survive and consume the weak.

This is stuff I haven't thought of, but puts spins on things that would make it easier for me persuade some followers. Thanks.


The religion also presents a number of issues. You pointed out their hatred of Undead, but they might also share a similar distaste of Aberrations, Elementals, and Outsiders, who exist outside of the natural order of things. Essentially anything extraplanar would be somewhat shunned.

I think I'm going to have to do some research on this, as I'm not 100% on the nitty-gritty of the lifecycle of extraplanars.


For organization structure, I can see it as less of a Cathedral-style religion, and more of a grass-roots Pagan sort of belief. It's fairly widespread, it's present in several different races and countries, but worshipers are generally rural, and perhaps prone to worshipping other deities as well, so long as they don't oppose or overlap with your deities's tenants.

Well, the stated goal is to destroy the world, so I don't know if any real openness would happen. I described this as a cult because I am thinking of this to be rather like a cross between the cults of Vecna and Tharizdun: mostly mages seeking ancient forbidden knowledge, performing human sacrifice, and planning the end of the world.


Obvious issues are: How do you feel about other deities and religions?

Something I didn't mention is that part of the campaign setting is that all of the gods disappeared 500 years ago. I'm not sure if the DM just wanted to play in that kind of world, or it'll have some long-term implications, but that's the way it is. Divine magic users are basically treated as agnostic clerics.


Does your religion believe that this feeding has occurred before? Is it cyclic with other beings or is this a new thing? What theologically justifies doing it? What will your followers get out of it?

Yes, "it has always happened because I said so", the red wood wont return itself to the wheel of life and death on it's own, and we will be gods in the new world.

[Kane0]

The dead gods drifting in the Astral Plane could make handy 'proof' of your theology and its core belief, as the Githyanki have their largest city sitting on top of one.

[Zahhak]

Well, like I said, this isn't the normal DnD World, so I don't know if there are even Githyanki in this world, and I'm not 100% on the cosmology of it either.

[Kane0]

In that case, any graveyard of the Gods will do, so long as they serve a useful purpose to the present generation of gods/mortals.

[Zahhak]

After talking about this with the DM, there is no "graveyard". The gods may not even be dead. They just disappeared. :smallannoyed:

[Mewtarthio]

After talking about this with the DM, there is no "graveyard". The gods may not even be dead. They just disappeared. :smallannoyed:

Well, that just means you lack a dramatic gesture, but it's hardly crippling. Just declare that the gods are dead, and, if they come back, then they're clearly heretics and must be burned.

The important first step of any cult is to isolate your converts from the rest of society. Your theology has to have something in it that emphasizes loyalty to the group, dismissal of nonbelievers, and severe social repercussions for dissent. Once you've got that, you can feed your followers whatever you want.

You say you want to recruit mages seeking lost knowledge? The obvious first step is to acquire some lost knowledge. Mages like power, so make sure that your lost knowledge lends itself to showy demonstrations. After that, you just need to set it up so that new acolytes don't get access to the lost knowledge until they've "proven" themselves, at which point they're allowed to go to the Sacred Repository of Lost Knowledge located in some far-off, isolated compound. And don't let them get immediate power, either; you want them to stick around and study with their fellow cultists for months at a time. If the lost knowledge is too easily absorbed, then throw in some purification rituals before they can enter the Inner Sanctum of the Sacred Repository.

The theology of your religion, then, needs to have some sort of excuse for imposing these policies. You're already trying to destroy the world, so everyone should expect a bit of secrecy from you. The cycle of rebirth theme lends itself well to spiritual rebirths, as well. You could make those "purification rituals" tie into a symbolic death and rebirth of the self, which is meant to reflect the greater death and rebirth of the world that you seek to bring about. Hm... You could even tie in shapeshifting magic (or scarification) to transform your acolytes and make the "death and rebirth" motif that much more powerful... and to make reintegration into normal society that much harder.

[Hanuman]

Cults/religions are infectious ideas, not ideals.

You need to make this thing go viral, so work on that first.


Good lies in good timing is really the key, it's only as difficult as magic of your quality is common. If you can animate a giant stone statue and no other mortal can, then, well, there you go.


Alternatively, turn down the intelligence of the audience by going out to pagan societies and evangelizing to them. Troglodites are easy prey for this.

[Kane0]

Oh, you could look into the Doomguard faction from Planescape for ideas too.

[Yora]

The modarate wing of the Doomguard follows pretty much that direction. The basic philosophy is that everything dies. The extremist wing sees that as a reason to destroy everything as fast as possible. The moderates go the route that the creation of anything consists of breaking down existing things and reassembling them into new things. But once a mountain has been quarried and you used the stone to build a castle, you can only break down the castle to make smaller houses out of intact stones, but you can never restore the mountain. You can grow plants from dead plants and animals and you can grind stones to dust to make mortar, but the process is never perfect and you always end up with less than you started.
To the moderates, burning down a forest is stupid. Simply cutting the trees and building farms has the same effect, just slower.

[Moriwen]

So what I would say is this: Religions are weird. Make this your mantra.

What if they don't hate the undead, but worship them? Or think that because nothing could possibly escape the cycle, the undead must be imaginary, and it's sacrilegious to acknowledge their existence?

Churches always have parties within them. These parties usually look exactly the same to outsiders. Come up with the most trivial issue you can think of, and make there be a huge rift over it. (Maybe they dispute over what order the steps in the cycle should be named in--is it birth/death or death/birth? Or, is this the only way the universe could be, or the only way THEIR universe could be?) People who disagree shoot each other nasty looks, won't speak to each other, burn each other at the stake.

On a different note, how do your normal worshipers incorporate this religion into their day-to-day lives? It's not all grand gestures, beliefs, going to the temple. Maybe they always sleep on their left side. Maybe they swaddle their babies differently. A religion doesn't last long if the believers can't liveit.

[erice924]

What happen to the question Going to church can it make you observe?

[ReaderAt2046]

I would suggest that the symbol of this group be the circle or the wheel, and especially the orobourous (the serpent eating its own tail, especially appropriate in this context). Also, I would expect this cult to have a great emphasis on balance and acceptance, and not a lot of inclination to change anything. Basically, I'm picutring something kind of similar to Hinduism, but if you want to go another route, that's fine.

[Zahhak]

Well, that just means you lack a dramatic gesture, but it's hardly crippling. Just declare that the gods are dead, and, if they come back, then they're clearly heretics and must be burned.

We actually just got something that is apparently going to give the characters the impetus to become insane death worshippers that we can use, because it apparently explains what happened. Freaking wonderful.


I would suggest that the symbol of this group be the circle or the wheel, and especially the orobourous (the serpent eating its own tail, especially appropriate in this context). Also, I would expect this cult to have a great emphasis on balance and acceptance, and not a lot of inclination to change anything. Basically, I'm picutring something kind of similar to Hinduism, but if you want to go another route, that's fine.

What we're apparently doing is making two groups: the NG face of the church that is as you described, and the NE minor cult. The two are going to be unrelated officially and have fairly different theologies (the NG is as you described, and the NE 'Death Bringer' cult sees things as "death provides strength for the living" sort of Social Darwinistic approach). They are going to be used differently and secretly, by a small group who is manipulating both (that would be us).

So, there is still the broad issue: how do you make a church in DnD?