Cleric of Blood of Vol

[Azlodin]

Hi all,

A player wants to pursue the Blood of Vol as the source of their cleric powers, but not in an evil way. How exactly would this work, especially when the campaign settings don't allow Evil PCs?

[Malifice]

Hi all,

A player wants to pursue the Blood of Vol as the source of their cleric powers, but not in an evil way. How exactly would this work, especially when the campaign settings don't allow Evil PCs?

I had a CN Necromancer who did the same thing.

Why must they be 'evil'? I thought Eberron was pretty subjective about alignments (allowing evil priests of good faiths etc).

[genderlich]

The Blood of Vol has always had the interesting aspect of looking like a quirky group of people who just really like the concept of blood magic and ancestry (and sometimes undeath as a path to divinity/immortality) and are not considered evil by the majority of everyday Khorvarians. It's only the upper echelons of the church that know about it being led by an obscenely evil lich queen, so theoretically, a low-level cleric might have signed on for the blood philosophy stuff, and hold onto that as a core tenet of his faith even after learning the truth.

[Coidzor]

I dunno if they messed it up in an Unearthed Arcana, but Clerics of the Blood of Vol should be capable of being of any alignment, much like Clerics of the Silver Flame.

If you want to run an Eberron game or an Eberronish game, you'll probably need to go with an interpretation of necromancy as not necessarily Evil or at least not overwhelmingly evil.

Not all clerics of the Blood of Vol would be necromancers anyway, though. I could easily see a Life Cleric being part of the Blood of Vol, for instance.

[Warwick]

The Blood of Vol is basically a cult of self-improvement in terms of its actual tenets. Necromancy being evil seems more like a cultural taboo than anything - many necromancy spells are completely innocuous, and even the harmful ones are no less objectionable in principle than a fireball spell. Hell, some of them are downright beneficial (e.g. Spare The Dying).

Plus, Eberron pretty much ignores a lot of alignment conventions.

[Regitnui]

The Blood of Vol believes in the 'Divinity Within'; that blood is the source of life, and through it you can achieve Divinity. The fact is, that hoping that some 'god' will save you from the wasting away of Dolurrh is not only pointless, but stupid. The undead within the church are those who have given up their chance at divinity (they've lost their blood, after all) to assist the living worshippers to do better, and guide them along the path.

Out of context, a cleric with the life domain is entirely possible within the Blood. The Blood isn't about death, but glorying in the essential power of the individual and their life.

Were I you, I'd play your cleric like an advocate of one of those ridiculously mystic self-help books, like the Secret or the Monk who Sold His Ferrari. You're offering people a better life, if only they weren't to entranced, fooled, or brainwashed by other 'religions' to see it.