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Kid Jake
2014-09-04, 11:09 PM
I'm fooling around with a homebrew fantasy setting using the Warriors and Warlocks supplement for Mutants and Masterminds and my players have been tossing some interesting character concepts at me, one of them being a Paladin-styled Deathknight that does unpleasant things for noble reasons. We've batted around some ideas for his order and I'm trying to make it a complex and ambiguous organization, but I'm worried it might be getting a bit convoluted, so I'd like to get a second opinion.

So far, these are the main tenets:


-Death is not to be feared, but accepted as a necessity. It provides relief to the sick or infirmed, rest for the weary and closure to a life well-lived. The acolytes of the Death Cult function much like Hospice, easing the pain and fear of those on death's door and comforting their families.

-Everyone has an appointed time to die and it's important that they keep to this schedule or their spirits may become lost and confused. Those who are sick or wounded before their time are tended to the best of the Cult's ability, and the Cult is known for producing skilled healers and surgeons. Those whose time is at hand, but may yet waste away for months or years to come, or are simply too ill/injured to tarry until their allotted time are euthanized and receive the necessary prayers to guide their spirits to the halls of Death.

-All death is sacred. From the holiest saint to the vilest criminal, the last hours of a man's life must be treated with somber reverence. Once laid to rest, the dead must be left in peace and all grievances should end at the grave.



-Just as dying before your time may lead to your spirit becoming lost, overstaying your welcome in this world may bring ruin. Those who for one reason or another miss their appointed time to die may miss their only chance to find peace in the next world and even more disturbingly, may draw the attention of envious spirits who resent their prolonged life. As unpleasant as it is, sometimes people must be forcibly culled and led to the next world for the sake of their own eternal soul and the safety of their neighbors.

-Undead are a constant and terrifying threat, a threat that rapidly snowballs if left unchecked. The presence of undead disrupts the natural order and lures more spirits into the cycle of torment. Spirits rapidly become vengeful and lash out against the living, oftentimes using the bodies of the recently dead to aid their rampages. The Death Cult performs exorcisms and other rituals to deal with or bind confused spirits and lead them to the next world; they also desecrate (I use this word because if anyone outside the cult did these things it would be considered abhorrent) corpses; severing tendons and breaking bones as part of their funeral rites in such a way as to ensure that wayward spirits can't use them as vessels, or at least can't get MUCH use out of them.

-The dead must be looked after to dissuade spirits or grave robbers from disturbing their remains; the Death Cult maintain and tend the various cemeteries and mausoleums.



-The Death Cult are skilled executioners who are called on to carry out sentences, they are also (erroneously) said to be able to see the truth in a man's heart and are usually consulted before sentencing a man to death. Truthfully though, while most are excellent judges of character, they base their judgments more on if it is the accused's allotted time to die rather than worrying over guilt or innocence.

-Murder is the most despicable of sins. To take another's life before their time, especially with unnecessary violence, is the most unforgivable of offenses to the Death Cult. The violent nature of the crime taints the Death Ritual, severing a life before its time (especially in a state of fear or anger) often produces undead and the tragic and senseless loss of life causes people to resent and fear their beloved god's gift. Whether it is the murderer's time or not, those of the Death Cult meet swift justice to anyone who profanes their domain. Not out of a petty sense of vengeance, or as a punitive measure; but to prevent it from happening again.

-The willing creation or use of undead by a necromancer is abominable to the Death Cult since their very presence pollutes the world around them, torments a soul for selfish reasons and defies their master's decree that the dead must be left to rest and all things must end; however they're nothing if not pragmatic and in times of extreme desperation they can call on such creatures for temporary aid, so long as they destroy the bodies, show true penitence and perform all the necessary rites to lay the spirits to rest once their immediate time of need is at an end.


Any thoughts on the direction I'm taking it in or general ideas on how to develop the idea? He intends on being a traveling warrior-priest of the cult, so I'd like to give him a solid foundation to build his character on.

Geostationary
2014-09-05, 12:02 AM
How do they know when your time's up? There being a "proper" time to die is important, so presumably they have a way to tell the proper and improper times apart. Additionally, their sometimes turning a blind eye on necromancy (even if temporary) seems rather out-of-character. Also, with the funerary practices- are these things people generally know about? Like if the PC were to go through the rites and disabling of the corpse, people wouldn't freak out unduly over it? Otherwise, it looks solid enough.

If you've ever read the Abhorsen series, this kind of makes me think of it. If you haven't, the Abhorsen is basically the person who uses the tools of necromancy to keep the Dead dead.

Kid Jake
2014-09-05, 01:05 AM
How do they know when your time's up? There being a "proper" time to die is important, so presumably they have a way to tell the proper and improper times apart. Additionally, their sometimes turning a blind eye on necromancy (even if temporary) seems rather out-of-character. Also, with the funerary practices- are these things people generally know about? Like if the PC were to go through the rites and disabling of the corpse, people wouldn't freak out unduly over it? Otherwise, it looks solid enough.

If you've ever read the Abhorsen series, this kind of makes me think of it. If you haven't, the Abhorsen is basically the person who uses the tools of necromancy to keep the Dead dead.

Once they've attuned themselves to their god's will they can see a sort of aura about people. Basically it would start at a light blue for somebody in the prime of their life and grow darker as their time dwindles until it becomes black. Black is the sweet spot, the time for a good death and a long rest. After their time has passed their aura takes on a reddish hue that grows more pronounced as it goes on, increasing the odds of attracting malevolent spirits the redder it gets. Since the god of death gets to you when he has the time, rather than first come first served, one person may stay in the blue for 60+ years while another hits the red mark before they're ten if an 'unscrupulous' healer nurses them through the plague meant to send them to the next world. ((In mechanics terms it's just an application of Supersenses.))

The necromancy thing is hypocritical and I haven't got a great way to justify it IC yet, but I know he wants to occasionally make corpses do his bidding and I thought I'd toss him an ingame precedent for saying "It's only evil when someone else does it." Maybe something about corpses used in this manner are considered martyrs of the cause who suffer for the greater good or some such? Or maybe the events that drove him to adventuring have just made him more open to heretical practices in the pursuit of his faith.

The rituals are kept secret to soften their image and spare the common man the gory details and unnecessary anxiety. It'd be pretty traumatic to watch the nice young man that stayed by grandma's bedside for nearly a week providing a shoulder to cry on and comforting words just start sewing, slashing and smashing grandma's body after she's gone so she can't come back and eat anyone.


I haven't read Abhorsen, but it sounds interesting. I might look into it for more inspiration.

LokiRagnarok
2014-09-05, 02:35 AM
Seconding the Abhorsen suggestion.

Also, look up "Tibetan sky burial" sometime. It seems to go into the direction for the burials you intend.

Overall, your ideas seem pretty consistent.

Couple questions:
* What would a member do if they discovered the black aura upon themselves? Can they even do so?
* What about mindless undead (e.g. Roy's bone golem)? As far as I understand, those are not souls bound to a body, but magically animated corpses.
* What do they think of suicide?
* I assume the aura appears only on humanoids? What about humanoid immortal creatures if they exist in your setting (gods?)
* Is the aura seeing subject to illusion spells? Could someone layer a literal blue light aura on top of a black aura with e.g. Major Image+Contigency or what have you and thus fool a cultist?

Knaight
2014-09-05, 02:47 AM
For the most part this seems workable. With that said, the actively killing people who have lived too long part pretty much moves the cult out of benevolent territory, and it might help to remove that.

hamishspence
2014-09-05, 03:43 AM
Isn't that exactly what the LN Maruts do?

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/inevitable.htm#marut

"This cult is Neutral, not Good or Evil" might be a good reason for the occasional thing that would seem dubious.

Yora
2014-09-05, 04:12 AM
Shiva and Kali are both death gods and goods of self improvement and being in harmony with the harsh reality of the world. They might be worth looking into.

Kid Jake
2014-09-05, 04:51 AM
Couple questions:
* What would a member do if they discovered the black aura upon themselves? Can they even do so?
* What about mindless undead (e.g. Roy's bone golem)? As far as I understand, those are not souls bound to a body, but magically animated corpses.
* What do they think of suicide?
* I assume the aura appears only on humanoids? What about humanoid immortal creatures if they exist in your setting (gods?)
* Is the aura seeing subject to illusion spells? Could someone layer a literal blue light aura on top of a black aura with e.g. Major Image+Contigency or what have you and thus fool a cultist?

Generally, by the time the black aura shows up it's too late to do anything. The wound has been dealt, the poison's already been ingested or you've had your last piece of bacon. It's mostly meant to signal that it's alright to just let this one die, so if they discovered it on themselves they'd know that something's wrong. The movement into red territory is rare and usually represents someone's extraordinary attempt to cheat death (whether they know it or not).

For this setting I'm going to focus on vengeful spirits as the main cause of undeath, truly mindless undead are rare but would be the result of a spirit that's been dead for so long that it no longer remembers what it was; powered only by rage and envy.

Suicide is considered as serious as murder until it's your time to go, then it's viewed the same as a mercy killing and given the blessing of the cult. If you've somehow managed to accidentally sidestep the death meant for you then it's outright expected of you.

Both fairies and unicorns exist more or less outside the realm of death; fairies even a millennia old still exude an aura that's nearly white it's so vibrantly blue and strangely enough unicorns have no aura whatsoever, which could either confirm their claims to true immortality; or hint that they have no soul to pass on. ((The other two confirmed characters are a fairy and The Last Unicorn, I've already started trying to tie them into each other.))

Not many people know about the aura to begin with, but if you had intimate knowledge (such as from being a cultist yourself) then I could definitely see you being able to disguise your stolen time.



For the most part this seems workable. With that said, the actively killing people who have lived too long part pretty much moves the cult out of benevolent territory, and it might help to remove that.

I guess I should say 'mostly benevolent'. They try to do more harm than good and at the end of the day they're just glad to be the brightest shade of grey they can be in an otherwise crapsack world.

My goal is to make them into an order that people would believably 'court' (because even though Death is impartial, everyone would like to believe they're on his good side) and aid as best they can, but nobody really feels comfortable around them. The best of them have blood on their hands and they regret nothing.



Isn't that exactly what the LN Maruts do?

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/inevitable.htm#marut

"This cult is Neutral, not Good or Evil" might be a good reason for the occasional thing that would seem dubious.


Yeah, they do have a dash of Marut in them.

Some variation of Neutral (probaby LN since their mantra is basically "Trust me, just do as you're told.") is definitely the way to describe them overall, I just wanted to make sure that their tenets were consistent enough (I have a tendency to ramble) and that their various services in the community would make them a welcome (if uncomfortable) addition to most neighborhoods.



Shiva and Kali are both death gods and goods of self improvement and being in harmony with the harsh reality of the world. They might be worth looking into.

Hrm, it has been a while since I've read up on either; I just might go back over them when I get a chance.

Ettina
2014-09-05, 10:07 AM
The necromancy thing is hypocritical and I haven't got a great way to justify it IC yet, but I know he wants to occasionally make corpses do his bidding and I thought I'd toss him an ingame precedent for saying "It's only evil when someone else does it." Maybe something about corpses used in this manner are considered martyrs of the cause who suffer for the greater good or some such? Or maybe the events that drove him to adventuring have just made him more open to heretical practices in the pursuit of his faith.

Maybe supporters of this death cult, when they're dying, they often offer up their bodies to be used for undead in the service of good? The characters could maybe even meet a dying person who asks for this.

JustSomeGuy
2014-09-05, 10:35 AM
. The movement into red territory is rare and usually represents someone's extraordinary attempt to cheat death (whether they know it or not).


This sounds like it might make for some serious intra party conflict, potentially?

Slipperychicken
2014-09-05, 10:52 AM
Here's a few ideas:


Burial, embalming, and cremation services.
Maintaining graveyards and tombs to ensure the dead rest properly and are respected.
Right to die: Death-cult members cannot deny people their right to embrace death, outside of some extreme exceptions. As a result, many suicidal people go to them for help. This does not endear the cults to locals, as some accuse them of murder.

End-of-life counseling: Since so many people go to them for assistance with suicide, many death-priests have experience dealing with depression, traumatic stress, and other disorders. Priests will typically make an effort to talk people out of it.

Cool prayers about departing for the afterlife, spoken when someone dies.

Someone who misses the appointed time (or uses life- prolonging magic) could still pray for forgiveness and commit ritual suicide to make amends with the death-god.
When someone dies in an unusual circumstance (like a miscarriage or from falling objects), then they come in to purify the site and try to appease the sprit so it doesn't rise in vengeance.

Radar
2014-09-05, 10:55 AM
As far as necromancy goes, you can make it non-evil, if you do away with the common assumption that it binds the soul of the decased person back to their decomposed body in a twisted mockery of life. At the very least you could say, there are many approaches to necromancy. For example, it is a fairly logical assumption that the death god is taking away excess life from the world, so there is room for new life and to balance it out, right? In times of need the death god might rechannel a bit of it back into the world if only temporarily to help his agents (this would be a solid interpretation for mindless undead). You could also make it so, that death god followers, who died, still serve him for a time in order to fulfill such requests from their still living comrades before finally moving on. This way you will be able to explain non-evil conscious undead, but they won't be the same people as those, who's corpse you used.

Grim Portent
2014-09-05, 12:19 PM
You could make the leadership of the cult a mixture of good, bad and neutral individuals and the rest largely being composed of their disciples, with those who fall outside a collection of subsets of ideology being rare.

The good believing it to be their solemn task to guard the rest of the dead and usher the dying to their eternal slumber.

The neutral devoted to maintaining the normal cycle of death in a dispassionate way, with little qualm or concern for the uninitiated.

The evil desiring to stand with one foot in the realm of death and one in the land of the living like wraiths waiting to reap the lives of those who would dare violate their tenets out of cruel desire to see the hope die in the eyes of aspiring immortals.

Between them they would fulfill all the duties of their order, present a varied face to the world, provide options for multiple different character archetypes, room for allies and enemies and best of all: An excuse for gratuitous villainy! :smallbiggrin:


Though I do think your tenets cover the main things that need to be covered to make a death cult morally ambiguous and justifiable.

Kid Jake
2014-09-05, 02:09 PM
Maybe supporters of this death cult, when they're dying, they often offer up their bodies to be used for undead in the service of good? The characters could maybe even meet a dying person who asks for this.

I like that, the holiest of the members undergo rituals to ward spirits away from their bodies and are held in a kind of reserve in case the **** hits the fan and they need to be recalled into service.


. The movement into red territory is rare and usually represents someone's extraordinary attempt to cheat death (whether they know it or not).

This sounds like it might make for some serious intra party conflict, potentially?

Potentially, but the only two characters I know are going to be present so far exist outside the system and resurrection magic isn't really a thing so it shouldn't come up unless it's meant to. Plus my group delights in PVP and love to (sometimes literall) stab each other in the back, so it should work out.


Here's a few ideas:


End-of-life counseling: Since so many people go to them for assistance with suicide, many death-priests have experience dealing with depression, traumatic stress, and other disorders. Priests will typically make an effort to talk people out of it.

Cool prayers about departing for the afterlife, spoken when someone dies.

Someone who misses the appointed time (or uses life- prolonging magic) could still pray for forgiveness and commit ritual suicide to make amends with the death-god.
When someone dies in an unusual circumstance (like a miscarriage or from falling objects), then they come in to purify the site and try to appease the sprit so it doesn't rise in vengeance.


I love the idea of warrior-counselors that drift into town, talk you through your problems and then wander off into the sunset.

He definitely needs a few short, badass prayers he can fall back on both to mark someone's passing and for when he performs his exorcisms.

The way I'm viewing the death god seems extremely bureaucratic, he's never really mad at you for avoiding him; but when you miss your appointment he just moves on to the next in line and marks you off his list as a no-show. The way I envision the prayers for those who've missed their time is basically the death-priest making a new appointment.

Yeah, a good portion of their duties is just praying people through to the next side.


You could also make it so, that death god followers, who died, still serve him for a time in order to fulfill such requests from their still living comrades before finally moving on. This way you will be able to explain non-evil conscious undead, but they won't be the same people as those, who's corpse you used.

I like that, much like the stable of prepared bodies there's a group of spiritual ascetics who hang around as long as they can to render aid where needed.


You could make the leadership of the cult a mixture of good, bad and neutral individuals and the rest largely being composed of their disciples, with those who fall outside a collection of subsets of ideology being rare.

Between them they would fulfill all the duties of their order, present a varied face to the world, provide options for multiple different character archetypes, room for allies and enemies and best of all: An excuse for gratuitous villainy! :smallbiggrin:


There's always more death in the world than death-priests to deal with it (by its nature, it's an unpopular cult that few want to devote themselves to) so they're mostly overworked loners who only occasionally call on each other for help, but I will include wildly different motivations for joining.

Once the game starts there's only going to be about a dozen of them left after a near genocidal attack by the BBEG that caused hundreds of premature deaths (including most of the cult itself) and threw the whole system out of whack.

Millennium
2014-09-05, 02:14 PM
Here's my thought. The organization as a whole sounds LN, but I see considerable room to sponsor paladins and other such warriors.

You stated above that suicide is expected among knights in this order once their proper time arrives, but not one moment sooner. This, then, could be the death knight's origin: he was once a member in good standing of the order, possibly even a paladin. But he killed himself before his time, and this is his punishment. He must continue to serve the order as an undead creature, until the moment when his true appointed time comes. To aid in his sentencing, he was enchanted to have an aura like that of a living creature. When it turns black, he may depart in peace. But for now, his aura is blue.

Of course, this leaves open the question of why he killed himself in the first place, but that's the kind of thing that backstories are for.

S@tanicoaldo
2014-09-05, 02:21 PM
Ixtab is the Yucatec Mayan goddess of suicide.

Since for that culture suicide was a positive way to die.

Cazero
2014-09-05, 02:36 PM
About necromancy : as you said, a dead body must be left to rest, to respect the deceased. But if your priest were to ask nicely, a dead man might allow him to use his now useless body for some emergency task, and with the soul consent, there is nothing inherently wrong about it. Regular necromancer don't even know how to ask, wich means they don't care about soul consent. The fact a specific soul might actually agree with the necromancer's use of his body becomes meaningless.

braveheart
2014-09-05, 02:43 PM
Necromancy by the cult could specifically be punishing those who were against the order by pulling their souls back to the mortal plane, or the option mentioned above where a person volunteers to serve the order after their death. In either case, the cult pulls willing/designated souls to be used in the mortal plane, while other necromancers pull random souls from beyond without disgression

LibraryOgre
2014-09-05, 03:17 PM
The murder stipulation seems odd, in light of the fact that they, themselves, serve as executioners. They may be able to see someone's time to die and therefore know that it is right to kill them, but why aren't murders among those things that may just be the means of someone's time to die?

Kid Jake
2014-09-05, 03:47 PM
He was once a member in good standing of the order, possibly even a paladin. But he killed himself before his time, and this is his punishment. He must continue to serve the order as an undead creature, until the moment when his true appointed time comes.

That could be an interesting concept, I'll mention it to him.



About necromancy : as you said, a dead body must be left to rest, to respect the deceased. But if your priest were to ask nicely, a dead man might allow him to use his now useless body for some emergency task, and with the soul consent, there is nothing inherently wrong about it. Regular necromancer don't even know how to ask, wich means they don't care about soul consent. The fact a specific soul might actually agree with the necromancer's use of his body becomes meaningless.


Necromancy by the cult could specifically be punishing those who were against the order by pulling their souls back to the mortal plane, or the option mentioned above where a person volunteers to serve the order after their death. In either case, the cult pulls willing/designated souls to be used in the mortal plane, while other necromancers pull random souls from beyond without disgression

I like that, the difference between 'good' and 'bad' necromancy is basically the difference between borrowing your neighbor's lawn mower and putting it back when you're done and just stealing it tossing it in a ditch once your lawn's cut.



The murder stipulation seems odd, in light of the fact that they, themselves, serve as executioners. They may be able to see someone's time to die and therefore know that it is right to kill them, but why aren't murders among those things that may just be the means of someone's time to die?

That was something I considered, but my reasoning is that it's a case of 'Do as I say, not as I do.' The death-priests consider themselves capable of making life/death decisions for other people but don't appreciate when others do it without their training. 99% of murders may be preordained as part of the natural order of things, but the 1% that aren't often produce vicious undead* and a corpse from a good death that doesn't have the necessary funeral rites performed on it is always a waiting vessel for lost spirits.

So basically the cult is willing to kill people for doing their god's work because they're not properly sanctioned and don't know how to clean up after themselves. It's like the world's most ham-fisted union.

*When I mention undead, I don't mean shambling zombies that walk in circles until they stumble across someone; I'm talking about devious creatures basically outright immune to conventional damage that purposefully seek out the living to share their misery.

Seward
2014-09-06, 03:48 PM
We did something like this once with a society oriented around lawful neutral.

In essence, your body was the property of the state after you died, a resource used for things like menial labor, cleaning out sewers and such (low level priests controlled chain-gangs of controlled skeletons for any task that didn't require much skill but would benefit from many hands putting in tireless hours).

The state gave you educational opportunities, a fair bit of health care, useful (and not menial unless you were a cleric able to control undead) work, but had high taxes and yeah, you didn't have the right to be raised or do anything with your body after death except turn it over to the state.

The continent it was on had a severe black onyx shortage because agents of this society had mined, traded, stolen, whatever, all they could get their hands on, and considered it a strategic resource.

They never wasted their undead resources on things like wars, but the fact that they had a population of skeletons roughly the same size as their live population had to be a deterrent, as well as the fact that they had vast catacombs of not-animated bodies+stockpiles of black onyx for emergencies.

Obviously such a society had to have a lot of priests per-capita and was rather odd in a number of other ways. I believe Command Undead was also pretty much a required spell for wizards when they hit level 3, and their training and upkeep was also subsidized much in the same way as that of the priests in exchange for a significant time commitment spent wrangling undead.

Slipperychicken
2014-09-06, 04:43 PM
That was something I considered, but my reasoning is that it's a case of 'Do as I say, not as I do.' The death-priests consider themselves capable of making life/death decisions for other people but don't appreciate when others do it without their training. 99% of murders may be preordained as part of the natural order of things, but the 1% that aren't often produce vicious undead* and a corpse from a good death that doesn't have the necessary funeral rites performed on it is always a waiting vessel for lost spirits.


Even if someone tries and fails to properly perform funerary services, I imagine that would be low enough severity to warrant a wrist-slap and warning at most, especially since the cult could remedy it without too much trouble. After all, if they punish people for that too harshly, then nobody will report when they screw up and leave wights running around. Besides, their hearts are in the right place -at least they aren't doing it on purpose.

Mono Vertigo
2014-09-07, 07:19 AM
One more cue:
Death is not just about the inanimate who stop moving. Death is about more than the end of a life (particularly in settings where resurrections and afterlives are both present); it's the end of an existence. Be it a living being, or a society, or an idea, everything dies eventually. What changes, fundamentally, dies in a way, before it can be reborn as another. The death of innocence, when you grow up, is also the birth of maturity. Both can't coexist at once.
Death is unavoidable. Even if nobody deliberately or violently destroys your society or mindset, it will still evolve over time. When the new one is born, the old one is dead. A person who's brought back from the dead (without any catch like "came back wrong" or "undead bloodsucker" or anything) is still not quite the same as the person pre-mortem, due to their experience with death and the afterlife.
The only things that constantly avoid death in all forms are static, unchanging. Their opinions, their whims, their personality never change over centuries. If they exert their will on others, you end up with a contagion of stasis. And even then, one may consider perfect stasis a sort of death - but not a good one; that'd be the death of life itself.
Death and life are intertwined. Death gives room to life of any sort. Remove the concept of death, and you remove the possibility for growth and evolution.

(Long story short, your death cult, in order to be considered benevolent, does not necessarily have to focus on ending lives properly. It can also arrange the end of traditions, reigns and other forms of status quo, without resorting to literal murder. Not that it's going to please many, of course.)

Starchild7309
2014-09-07, 06:41 PM
Not sure if this will be helpful, but in the Song of Fire and Ice Series, Game of Thrones....There is the House of Black and White, which worships the Many-faced God. They are assassins, but also give the gift of death to those that seek it. Its an interesting Dogma you may be able to incorporate in your build.