Quote Originally Posted by Max_Killjoy View Post
Good catch -- they're not just vaguely Sumerian / Akkadian, they're based on digging through online dictionaries and translations to find words that relate to the concept and "sound right". I wanted words that sounded very old and different, and evoked an "out of the fog of protohistory" feeling, but weren't just randomly cobbled syllables.
Noice. I should probably try that sometime.

I really need to dig out Hero Wars again myself. I can't say enough good things about the almost hypnotic 'draw' of the setting, where there's a frequent blend of real-world parallels and exotic recombinations, and alighting one a single sticky thread of culture-description gets you rapidly tangled in a vast web of mythology and politics.

It's take on divinity is unusual as well- (IIRC, the Gods are both omniscient and omnipresent but lack consciousness, learning or agency- they sort of 'merge' with the metaphysical fabric of the world and become a locus of power and insight that ethically like-minded folks can draw on. Not sure how that sits with your own ideas, but thought I'd mention it.)
Oh the Dalkhu-worshipping cults, certainly. I'm just having trouble fitting the concept into the broader overall religious practices. Perhaps only in times of great desperation, or associated with one special astronomical event, or something very specific based on a part of the "mythology" that I haven't written yet. That is, if it's included, it's not going to be of the "and on this day, we sent to the gods blood from 400 strong young men" variety. I simply can't help seeing routine human sacrifice as a sign of a broken culture, or should the gods actually be real... a sign that those gods should be shunned rather than venerated.
To be fair, the heyday of the practice in the RL Old World was probably well past by the 4th century, given the rise of the self-abnegating manichaean superego-religions. Any state or tribe that still practiced would be something of a throwback, or saving it for special occasions.

I will raise two points in it's defence, though- (1) Sacrificial rites are great at instigating drama, especially when integrated directly into spellcasting, and in theory this might tie in with the 'moral mileage may vary' nature of polytheistic worship that you seem to be aiming for. (2) Human sacrifice occupies roughly the same 'space' as slavery, fundamentalism, or patriarchy- a generally repugnant and ferociously touchy but at-one-time pervasive subject that's hard to gloss over entirely.

I know you're trying to avoid posing a conveniently-labelled Civilisation of Evil Hats, so for context I'll say that, e.g, Aztec practices had significant overtones of 'death before dishonour', population control and voluntary apotheosis, aside from nonlethal forms of bloodletting and self-mortification. (Also massive death-toll inflation for propaganda purposes, both from European sources and the Mexica themselves.) Don't get me wrong, the vast majority of victims were exactly that- unwilling casualties of a predatory blood-greased war machine. But that's hardly unique to the place and time, and there's no law saying the PCs have to like it.