The Book Of Kinda Evil Darkness (A Book Of Modestly Evil Gods)

[ArlEammon]

I want a few Ideas for evil gods, or at least slightly, and how they would work in a setting.

A few examples are a dark god of honor whose priests are knights working off an impossibly long list of rules, a god of head aches before bed time, and a god of taxes.

Not horrifying gods of evil like a god of murder, massacre, etcetera, that's too evil.

[Eldan]

Take evil gods and make lesser forms of them? Take a god of storms, make a god of Unpleasant Weather, etc.

[brian 333]

The City of Lahnkmar has minor gods who defend the city when the priests call upon their help. After the city is safe, they go on a killing spree before they retire, just to make sure the priests don't call them repeatedly or for petty problems.

Oten is a god of rain and agriculture. She requires ritual blood sacrifices of young men whose bodies are quartered and planted in unmarked graves in the fields. The young men must be perfect, because if Oten finds any fault or blemish, she sends floods. If the rituals are not performed, she causes drought.

Morak is god of victory. No army consecrated to him has ever lost. At the conclusion of the war, one tenth of the soldiers of each rank in the victorious army, chosen by lots, must do battle in an arena until only one survives. Failure to fulfill this bargain is punished by a plague upon the homeland of the victorious army.

Ghossal is goddess of jealousy. She is not worshipped: she is appeased. A portion of the best of the farmers and craftsmen's work is given, and each year the most beautiful person in each community is required to serve her but performing her many rituals. Failure to appease her results in conflict and competition in the community until the community is broken and dispersed.

Ligurn is god of roads. He answers the prayers of travelers and highwaymen alike. Travelers must bury a pair of boots with a coin in each on the side of the road, while highwaymen must pour out a bottle of wine at a crossroads. Which he favors in any situation is unknowable, but failing to show respect earns his displeasure.

[Metastachydium]

…
Brian, "gimme grisly ritual sacrifices and I will consider not unleashing disasters on you IF they please me" and "you can make other people's lives miserable as long as you randomly decimate your own folks afterwards" are not exactly within the bounds of what I'd still classify as "kinda moderately Evil".

[zlefin]

A god of mean trade practices;
his teachings are a variety of trade practices which are generally legal, but a bit mean and customer unfriendly. Poor return policies, bad customer service; a god of sketchy carnie games (but not outright rigged ones).

Some merchants follow the teachings because they are profitable.

Ofc praying to him, and being in good standing with him, especially with gifts/donations/etc, will cause him to encourage his followers to be a bit friendlier with you (not a lot friendlier, but a bit).

Even his priests have some issues dealing with him, as his own customer service to his priests is likewise a bit iffy.

Honestly it's coming across more comedic; and I don't see a good way to have it work and not be at least semi-comedic.

[Eldan]

…
Brian, "gimme grisly ritual sacrifices and I will consider not unleashing disasters on you IF they please me" and "you can make other people's lives miserable as long as you randomly decimate your own folks afterwards" are not exactly within the bounds of what I'd still classify as "kinda moderately Evil".

Well, you can scale that down, of course. Throwing a sheep overboard before a storm to avoid the wrath of the sea gods probably wouldn't stand out as too unusual in many ancient societies, but that's still essentially divine blackmail.

[Metastachydium]

Well, you can scale that down, of course. Throwing a sheep overboard before a storm to avoid the wrath of the sea gods probably wouldn't stand out as too unusual in many ancient societies, but that's still essentially divine blackmail.

I know quite a lot about apotropaic sacrifices, thank you very much. And there's some difference between "throw a[n insert colour here] sheep overboard" and "you'll reach the next port safely IF YOU IMMEDIATELY THEREAFTER DECIMATE YOURSELVES IN GRUESOME BLOODSPORT (unless you want your home port hit with a plague, your choice)" or "murderize and dismember four of you on each voyage; if I find the victims sexy enough, you might live – for a while". Don't get me wrong, the latter are perfectly good out there Evil jerk deity concepts, just not what I'd think of when seeing qualifiers such as moderate and kind of in front of that Evil.

[ArlEammon]

I know quite a lot about apotropaic sacrifices, thank you very much. And there's some difference between "throw a[n insert colour here] sheep overboard" and "you'll reach the next port safely IF YOU IMMEDIATELY THEREAFTER DECIMATE YOURSELVES IN GRUESOME BLOODSPORT (unless you want your home port hit with a plague, your choice)" or "murderize and dismember four of you on each voyage; if I find the victims sexy enough, you might live – for a while". Don't get me wrong, the latter are perfectly good out there Evil jerk deity concepts, just not what I'd think of when seeing qualifiers such as moderate and kind of in front of that Evil.

Yeh , and I kind of clarify that in the OP.

[Eldan]

I know quite a lot about apotropaic sacrifices, thank you very much. And there's some difference between "throw a[n insert colour here] sheep overboard" and "you'll reach the next port safely IF YOU IMMEDIATELY THEREAFTER DECIMATE YOURSELVES IN GRUESOME BLOODSPORT (unless you want your home port hit with a plague, your choice)" or "murderize and dismember four of you on each voyage; if I find the victims sexy enough, you might live – for a while". Don't get me wrong, the latter are perfectly good out there Evil jerk deity concepts, just not what I'd think of when seeing qualifiers such as moderate and kind of in front of that Evil.

Uhm, not meant as an attack, not sure why you take it that way. Sorry? And obviously there's a difference, that's what I mean. My entire point is that you get from a cartoonishly evil god to a moderately evil one by downscaling the scale of their evil. A god demanding apotropaic sacrifices and threatening destruction if they aren't granted is still evil, even if they don't demand wholesale slaughter. Blackmailing someone for two coppers is still an evil deed.

[Metastachydium]

Uhm, not meant as an attack, not sure why you take it that way. Sorry? And obviously there's a difference, that's what I mean. My entire point is that you get from a cartoonishly evil god to a moderately evil one by downscaling the scale of their evil. A god demanding apotropaic sacrifices and threatening destruction if they aren't granted is still evil, even if they don't demand wholesale slaughter. Blackmailing someone for two coppers is still an evil deed.

Ah, sorry, my mistake. Long day, poor reading comprehension mode: ON. And yeah, petty bully Evil deities are a special kind of hilarious.

Evil God Dude: Gimme your lunch.
Mortal: …
Mortal: You're an Intermediate Deity. You can just, like, have any lunch you want!
Evil God Dude: Yeah, and I want yours. Don't make this hard, I don't have all the day.

[Eldan]

Exactly!

Petitioner: Oh priest, how do we avoid the wrath of Travana, Mistress of the Storms?
Priest: You must sacrifice... one cup of water, or she will devastate the entire coastline!
Petitioner: Wait, one cup of water? That's it?
Priest: Yes! SHe's very specific!

[brian 333]

…
Brian, "gimme grisly ritual sacrifices and I will consider not unleashing disasters on you IF they please me" and "you can make other people's lives miserable as long as you randomly decimate your own folks afterwards" are not exactly within the bounds of what I'd still classify as "kinda moderately Evil".

You can tone it down a bit. I admit I was going a bit hard on the sacrifice thing. But the deities I mentioned were more for broad strokes concepts, and I assumed they would be tweaked.

Example: the god of war might not need a complete decimation. Perhaps a bloodletting, where the fighters can give good effort with bludgeons, and are ordered out of the game when injured.

The idea is to use the parts you like and tweak or discard the rest.

Let me try again:

Ikkihar, the Scorpion God
Those who use poisons appease this deity. In return for her special blessings, she requires periodic ceremonies in which her worshippers place a scorpion in a glass jar and put their hand in it for the duration of a ritual chant. Those who are not stung are considered to not have her blessing, while those who are blessed endure exquisite pain. Sometimes multiple stings lead to disjointed hallucinations which are said to be communications from her. Priests often charge to interpret such visions.

Lorga, god of graves

Not to be confused with the various gods of Death, this deity serves as the guardian of graveyards and burial. He is tall, lean, wears a bent stovepipe hat and long overcoat, and carries a wooden spade. He always appears to have last shaved a week ago.

His priests are undertakers, and they routinely rob the dead of their valuables. They may also bilk grieving relatives of excess wealth by pressuring them to spend more than necessary on funerals, coffins, and ceremonial materials.

While the deity does not like undead, those who offend him by disturbing graves consecrated in his name can be cursed with the Odor of the Grave. This curse will offend living creatures, and may lead some to believe the victim is undead. This will not fool undead, nor will it confuse magic such as Detect Undead or spells which harm or inflict additional damage to undead creatures.

Appeasement of this deity may involve feeding rotten meat to carrion-eating birds such as vultures and crows.

[the_david]

Dol'Ahr.
Lawful Evil god of business, civilization, commerce, greed and money.

The clergy of the church of Dol'Ahr will always be there to help out the citizens... for a price. It doesn't matter what you need, a business contract, seminars on how to run a business, a coming of age ritual for your son, a cure for that nasty disease, or even absolution. The church of Dol'Ahr will provide it for you and bleed you dry.
No sermons are held at the temple of Dol'Ahr. Instead, you can pay to follow seminars on business, financial responsibility and other such topics.
Ofcourse, no temple of Dol'Ahr is complete without a marketplace where you can buy and sell your wares. The temple of Dol'Ahr wants to provide a safe and blessed environment for those who do business. There's even a bank where you can exchange your local currency for that of the church. They can also help you with a loan if you the church to aid you, but can't afford it. All for a small fee, ofcourse.
Entrance fee is 1 copper piece.

Sorry about the punny name. I needed a church that could remove the curses of the Gnomish Machine God, and this is what I came up with yesterday.

[Herbert_W]

There's a difficult balance to strike here. On one hand, we want these gods to be clearly evil. On the other hand, we don't want them to be too evil - and it's not entirely clear where that line is.

It's also difficult to write slightly-evil gods that don't sound like subversions or parodies. Classical evil gods are very evil because that makes them more satisfying to overcome as antagonists. Classical non-evil gods aren't antagonists at all. So, a slightly evil god will either be a downplayed antagonist or a begrudgingly tolerated non-antagonist, and "downplayed" and "begrudging" are not themes associated with classic fantasy.

Is this subversion/parody aspect intentional? Should we lean into it or try to find a way to avoid it?

One way to avoid it would be to, instead of downplaying evil gods, make good gods less good. That could make for a grim and gritty world rather than a parody one. We've already seen a god of healing who offers healing for a heavy price . . . in gold, of course. (What did you think I meant?) That feels like a parody. However, we can also imagine a god of healing who offers healing for a heavy price where "heavy price" really does mean something morally compromising. That feels a lot less like a parody, and more like something classically grim.

I've embraced the parody aspect here since that's what your original examples seemed to suggest, but I would like to point out that it's something that could be avoided if you're going for a more serious tone.


Hragor is a god of petty vengeance. Those who gain his blessing know the names and faces of everyone who has ever wronged them. In exchange, Hragor demands that his followers avenge themselves for every slight, however minor or unintentional.

Small slights may be met with correspondingly small acts of revenge, which may be committed secretly. Hragor only demands that the target endure as much suffering as they caused - perhaps of a different type, perhaps more, just never less. When two followers offend each other, this creates an escalating cycle of revenge that can only end when one relinquishes Hragor’s blessing. It is for this reason that Hragor has few and small churches despite having many followers.

Followers of Hragor believe that he blesses them with good luck when he is appeased through revenge and would curse them with bad luck were they ever to cease to worship him. In both cases, the alteration to one’s luck is too minor to be confidently distinguished from coincidence. (In fact, only the latter is true.)


The keeper is an insane god of secrets who goes by many names. It is not known for certain whether the keeper is in fact one god or several. The keeper asks their followers to keep as many secrets as possible and values all secrets equally, however unimportant. They are just as pleased if their followers conceal what they ate for breakfast as if they partake in a criminal conspiracy. The keeper is especially enamored with secrets that nobody knows - where the few people who did have since forgotten.

Many cults worship the keeper. Each worships them by a different name, and they often come into conflict with each other as they are unaware that they are worshiping the same god. The only thing that every cult of the keeper has in common is that they are so obsessed with keeping their operations secret - not just from outsiders but also from their own members - that they are barely able to function. Cultists conceal their identities from each other and can even come into conflict because they are unaware that they are part of the same cult! Cultists must often search through the hidden places that they know at random in the hope of stumbling across a meeting as the times and locations are secret. Where multiple cults operate in the same area, it is possible for one cultist to accidentally join a meeting of a different cult (and also possible for them to not realize that they have done so since the majority of the proceedings use secret languages that only the speaker understands.)

Most worshipers of the keeper manage to maintain an ordinary life, as doing so is necessary to conceal their interest in the keeper. No worshiper of the keeper has ever been willing (or perhaps has ever been able?) to explain what benefit they might gain by serving the keeper or how they initially learned of them.

Occasionally a worshiper of the keeper will be inspired to keep some secret in a forceful, violent, or disruptive way, such as by burning a library, murdering a scholar, or pouring an elixir of amnesia into a village’s well.


Veesnal is a god of false gods. She both demands that her followers publicly claim to worship gods of their own invention and empowers them to perform (or more often to fake) minor miracles in the names of these gods. Clerics of Veesnal are skilled with illusion magic and often become leaders of churches or cults dedicated to their false gods.

False gods are just as diverse as real ones, if not more so. Any church in your campaign could have secretly been a church of Veesnal all along. However, the majority of followers of Veesnal build religious communities that are suited to their own selfish interests.


Detormor is a god of competition. Unlike most gods of competition, he never blesses his followers directly: instead, he curses their opponents. Also unlike most gods of competition, he requires his followers to cheat. Anyone can invoke him at any time by cheating at a competition while saying a quick prayer. Doing so curses all of the invoker’s competitors in an upcoming competition - save for those who have also called upon Detormor.

Detormor’s mark is a circle with a semicicle inside at the bottom which meets in the middle with a chevron at the top (much like an exaggerated angry frowny face with no eyes and an enlarged mouth and eyebrows). Detormor places this mark near places where large competitions are held as a warning: that you must either cheat to gain his favor or else be cursed, or hope that nobody does.

His curses are only very rarely life-threatening but can be very disruptive to not just the competition but to life afterwards, such as being paralyzed in one arm for one year.


The thousand teeth is a god of predation. He is worshiped mainly by hunters, farmers, and other people who regularly kill animals as a normal part of their livelihood.

He is appeased when an animal is killed in a particularly cruel way which simulates a deer being hunted by a pack of wolves. The target must be allowed to run freely, must be injured, must be worn down, and then killed only when cumulative exhaustion and injury render them unable to move. A hunter might deliberately wound their prey in a way that causes them to bleed out more slowly, or a farmer might slaughter a pig by trapping it in a barn (a large barn, so the pig can run around) and then chasing it while beating it to death.

The thousand teeth prefers quality over quantity - meaning that his worshipers rarely kill more than they would have done otherwise, but do so exceptionally cruelly.

Worshipers of the thousand teeth believe that they and their livestock gain some protection from predators. Many worshipers also keep cats to protect themselves from mice and believe that the thousand teeth grants their cats enhanced hunting prowess.

Although the vast majority of worshipers of the thousand teeth only kill animals, there is at least one gang of bandits who believes that they can gain this god’s favor by hunting and killing travelers.

[the_david]

We've already seen a god of healing who offers healing for a heavy price . . . in gold, of course. (What did you think I meant?) That feels like a parody.

I suppose I meant it as a satire. It's based on priests lining their own pockets, though I suppose I may have gotten some Ferengi in there. And it's also more of a religion than a deity. But the priests are meant to be greedy bastards who are out for your money. I suppose that if they teach people to make more money, than that means that there is some way that it can be beneficial to people and the economy.

[brian 333]

Emo god of teenaged ennui

"I'm so bored!" is the eternal prayer venerating the deity who supervises adolescents. Most deities have learned to leave this god alone because even the most polite and friendly advance is likely to trigger an emotional outburst, which nearly always culminates in an anguished cry of, "You don't understand!"

Those teens who have received the blessings of Emo are marked by the god with pimples. Most often these blessings take the form of the notice of a particular attractive person, entrance into a social clique, or misfortune befalling some hated rival or love interest who rejected, (or never noticed,) the supplicant.

Emo is either male or female, or some other gender, I don't know. What business is it of yours, anyway, you perve? Why? Do you think I'm cute?

Emo likes to party, especially when there are no adults around. Children annoy Emo because they rat out Emo and friends for having fun. While Emo craves attention, disobedience and sulking are almost always the response to any suggestions from adults.

Some very few adults remain devoted to Emo past the age of twenty. These 'cool adults' are usually Emo's clerics. Teens seek to spend time with these enablers because they are far more tolerant of otherwise dangerous and experimental behavior.

[Bohandas]

I want to be a tool; Don't need no soul
Want to make big money playing rock and roll
-The Dead Kennedys, "Pull My Strings"

Down here in Mississippi, there's evil. The Blues Devil live down here. If you wanna be a real bluesman, you gotta sell your soul to the devil.
-Metalocalypse S1E14


Reeyuh, god of the entertainment industry. No matter how talented a performer is, the only way they can ever achieve wealth or fame is to go to the crossroads at midnight and sell their soul and individual identity to Reeyuh. Similarly, no matter how mediocre their talent, a supplocant who sells their soul WILL become successful. Nine out of ten supplicants gradually lose their personal identities and become indistinguishable from each other. The remaining supplicants accumulate some of the personality traits lost by the others until they eventually become completely insane.

[brian 333]

The Librarian

This deity is Lawful to a fault. Its domain is libraries, bookmaking, and books. The deity is worshipped by scribes, writers, librarians, and lore masters.

Clerics and devout worshippers of this deity wear a chain bound about the waist to which is affixed a book. This book is a daily journal into which the worshipper must write their daily activities. The details of the day can be very trivial in the sedentary life of a librarian, but they must be dutifully recorded.

The deity communicates with its clerics by writing in their journals. When Commune spells or other direct appeals are made, the cleric desiring a reply must provide a special quill and bottle of ink which are consumed by the spell.

The home plane of this deity is a maze of shelves filled with tablets, scrolls, books, and other forms of preserving knowledge. In this virtually silent realm the spirits of the most devoted followers of this deity. Each spirit has a chain and book, and they all appear to be maintaining the apparently unending stacks of books.

The only physical manifestation of this deity is a large book which appears to be a wizard's spell book. The pages fill with the deity's words; it never speaks.

Those who seek the favor of this deity donate large sums to build and maintain libraries. Those who seek knowledge must donate books which equal the value of the knowledge sought.

The deity punishes those who offend it by inflicting a Confuse Language curse on the offender. Spoken or written communications will appear to be gibberish to the offender, whose spoken or written attempts to communicate will appear to be gibberish.

One way to offend this deity is to speak above a whisper within a library. Another is to deface a book. But its most powerful curses are against those who burn books. These offenders may find entire kingdoms rise up against them.

[ShadowShinobi]

^ Interesting, but this just comes off as a god of knowledge/learning. I don't see how he's even modestly evil.

[Eldan]

Speaking of knowledge, as part of a short-lived homebrew campaign, I had an evil-ish god of knowledge who sadly didn't actually come up in the campaign. I liked him, though.

The god and his sect were dedicated to finding and securely disposing of genuinely dangerous knowledge. While also trying to securely study it to find out what the dangerous knowledge actually was and how to recognize it. Dangerous true names, breaches between dimensions, summoning of global-level dangerous entities, etc. Evil-ish because genuinely very ruthless about it. Inquisition types. Some justified, some not, dependent on individual morals.

[Anymage]

I'm not sure I follow.

"Dark gods of honor" can be functionally integrated into society, but they're still evil. There's space for functional evils in a campaign world, and possibly even necessary evils, but those don't necessarily equate to "modestly evil".

Then there are things like the god of hangovers or stubbing your big toe, who are jokes. Unless you're building an animistic setting where everything conceptually possible has some functionary in a divine bureaucracy devoted to it, but even then these gods will only show up onscreen as jokes. There might be value to mischievous spirits of minor annoyances. People might well even try to do things to stay on the good side of those spirits, to ward off bad fortune. You're wildly unlikely to find priests to gods of misplacing your keys or the milk going bad, though.

[Grim Portent]

I'm not sure I follow.

"Dark gods of honor" can be functionally integrated into society, but they're still evil. There's space for functional evils in a campaign world, and possibly even necessary evils, but those don't necessarily equate to "modestly evil".

Then there are things like the god of hangovers or stubbing your big toe, who are jokes. Unless you're building an animistic setting where everything conceptually possible has some functionary in a divine bureaucracy devoted to it, but even then these gods will only show up onscreen as jokes. There might be value to mischievous spirits of minor annoyances. People might well even try to do things to stay on the good side of those spirits, to ward off bad fortune. You're wildly unlikely to find priests to gods of misplacing your keys or the milk going bad, though.

A single god of minor misfortune and temporary maladies could work, roll all the little bad things into one guy/gal/celestial octopus. Toe stubbing, chronic non-fatal illnesses, losing things, little emergencies that make you lose your savings so you can't take that trip you wanted. No one thing gets focused on, they're just a god of general misfortune that people make small offerings to or reference when frustrated by some minor thing. Kind of like a god of boundaries, but it's all the stuff that makes people miserable but isn't war, famine, pestilence or outright death.

Drop a heavy box on your foot, breaking a toe? Curse the name of [BLANK]!

Wife runs off with the milkman, taking your savings? Curse the name of [BLANK]!

Drop your winning gambling ticket down a well? Curse the name of [BLANK]!

Toss a coin into the bowl on the shrine of [BLANK] as you walk past it in the street, or you may get mugged on your way home from the pub that evening.

That sort of thing. A city might have a minor priest who caters to the rites of this sort of god, a way to ward off general problems that don't fall under the purview of a greater god, and having a spiritual figure to work into curses can be good for flavourful dialogue, especially if you don't want people referencing greater evils in casual conversation.

[Bohandas]

A lawfulmevil god of necessary evils, and a chaotic evil god of foregoing those necessary evils and letting everything fall to pieces

[brian 333]

Vecket, god of curses
In every culture there are words which are used to call the attention of this demigod upon someone or something. Curses come in varying degrees, and because of the capricious nature of this deity, the intended result sometimes backfires.

Everyday curses:
These tend to be common words which are viewed as vulgar by society. They often invoke flatulence or bowel issues, impotence, infertility, or cognitive dysfunction. They are, at best, temporary, and are the most likely to backfire and affect the one issuing the curse. Backfires can be mitigated by using humorous or original curses. Repeated use of expletives are more likely to backfire.

Minor Curses:
These curses are magical spells, from cantrips to spells such as Grease or Ray of Enfeeblement. These spells have a limited duration and effect, and only backfire in very rare situations.

Major Curses:
The effects of major curses require magic or certain conditions to be met to remove their effects. Spells such as Curse or Geas are example of this kind of curse, and these curses only backfire when cast by an incompetent caster from a scroll or item.

Greater Curses:
These curses are potentially permanent in nature, such as Level or Ability Drain.

[Morphic tide]

Lawful Neutral deity with the (3.5) Domains of Community, Law, Nobility, Plant, Protection, War, and Wealth. Would be ideal for proper monolatry if it weren't for the wonderful combination of mining, farming, and leadership being in the same portfolio also carrying forced labor that makes attempts at such a lightning-rod for almost everyone on the Chaotic side, most of the Neutral Good, and still no small part of the Lawful Good in the world. Eventually getting to stuff like corvee, copyhold, and land-bound peasantry, but they are hardcore reformists about it. Big-time vested interests get the *insert Deity Favored Weapon* for getting in the way, but the underlying market goes through waves of health and safety standards and supply-side attacks that eventually turn them into work agencies mostly handling debtors and criminals.

The point here is being a great big hammer to beat "Law can in fact oppose Good without needing Evil" into people. They don't immediately shut down slavers, but have a quite well established process for reforming such systems so that while still terribly oppressive by modern standards, it's enough less so they stop being Always Evil.

[brian 333]

Ka'elin - Weather Deity

This deity is lazy and capricious, known for sudden and intense rages, the reasons for which are often forgotten even as the deity rages.

Sometimes Ka'elin can be appeased, on other occasions this deity holds grudges for generations. Sailors, travelers, and farmers make offerings regularly knowing that the deity may send bad weather anyway, but they hope to be spared the worst.

Clergy of Ka'elin have been known to accept competing offers, promising rain to one village and dry to another, certain that their prediction will be correct in one place or the other.

Ka'elin's temples tend to be shrines open to the sky, tended by locals who seek the god's favor. Clerics typically roam and adventure. Domains include Air, Chaos, Travel, and Weather. When Gust of Wind or Call Lightning are available in a Domain they are considered one level lower.

There are places which, for whatever reason, Ka'elin favors. These places are blessed with good weather and mild seasons. However, Ka'elin's wrath and enduring grudges have laid low mighty empires.

Sacrifices are things of value to the people worshipping, or seeking to appease, Ka'alin. In ancient Su'uvia, the blood of eighteen youths was sown in the fields every spring. (They were not killed, only bled until they passed out.) In the Al Chakna Desert, nomadic herders sacrifice the last quart of the water from the last rain. Sailors sacrifice coins, and so on. And they all do so knowing that Ka'elin may not notice or even care.

[Deepbluediver]

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "modestly evil"; that strikes me mostly as being some flavor of incompetent such as "wants to hurt people but can't" or "is quick to take offense but then also quickly forgets about it". Either that or negligent/ignorant; like a god of magic who loves to see people casting spells but doesn't care what you do with it, so his followers might be everyone from a virtuous mage to a wicked necromancer to a bumbling apprentice who just got their hands on WAY to much power for them to handle and accidentally fireballed the farmer's market.

In the short run though, what about a goddess based on Echidna, from greek mythology? This is something I thought up for a campaign setting, but she's basically the "mother of monsters". She was once a companion/coworker of the setting's main creator-god or something like that, and was responsible for creating animals and such. Then she either got jealous of all the gifts and attention lavished on "mankind", or was corrupted by an outside force, or gets royally pissed off when one-to-many of her children were slain by heroes, etc. And so she isn't exactly against humanity but is more against the GODS of humanity, and just coincidentally by extension the PCs.

She's not Lolth-levels of evil, cackling in delight as her priests torture a baby to death, but at the same time she has no concern about creating things that will rampage across the landscape destroying small villages indiscriminately. So on the one hand she's like "don't ***** at me because you're too weak to fight off that hydra" but on the other hand she always gets upset whenever one of her precious babies gets put down by some uppity hero. But on the OTHER other hand, there's a thousand more where that come from so she'll just try again and maybe get them on the next go-around. And any one of her offspring could accidentally put its foot down in the wrong spot in the middle of the demi-liches ascension-to-godhood ceremony and ruin that because she simply does not care and isn't allied with anyone. And she loves all her children but there's also WAY to many of them so most simply get neglected and have to sort out their own path in life.

Her worshippers are any kinda monstrous race or random cult or barbarian tribe that values physical might, but they won't ever come up with plans to destroy the world or build an empire or anything like that. It's all just very short-term and localized, and people are in it strictly for personal gain.

Anyway, I called her "Sarsina" but feel free to think up whatever name you want.

[MetroAlien]

god of Memories:
those blessed by this deity are obviously rewarded with great capacity for remembering things.
On the flip side, in order to sustain his power, this lesser god needs to feed on the memories of mortals. The very normal everyday phenomenon people call "forgetfulness" is in fact caused by this deity.
He takes memories out of people's heads to feed on them. The more important the memory was to its owner, the more sustenance this god gets from it. While most acts of forgetfulness may seem innocuous, it can also cause great disaster.
Think of the farmer's wife who forgot to lock the window, letting a wolf into the house to steal her infant child.
Think of the king's general who forgot to send an important missive, causing the deaths of dozens of soldiers in a failed assault on the enemy.
Acts that earn this god's favour include erecting statues and memorials to commemorate events or people, uncovering forgotten ruins, or simply teaching new things to others.
Usually, in order to answer a devotee's prayer, this god will cause somebody somewhere to forget something as equivalent exchange.
Of course, worship of this deity can be used offensively: just ask that your enemies lose themselves in amnesia. But you better have a lot of brownie points built up, if you decide to do so...

trickster goddess of cursed treasures:
this naughty deity leaves various trinkets for adventurers to find in dungeons, caves, jungles, etc...
However, all her trinkets are invariably cursed.
Sometimes, she lays curses on treasures that were lost "naturally". Sometimes, she deliberately causes treasures to be lost only to curse them later. Rarely, she will plant an original treasure of her own specifically for the purpose of messing with a group of adventurers.
There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason for her actions. She simply enjoys the thrill of watching adventurers struggle with her creative efforts.
Once the curse has been triggered, the goddess may appear in front of the unlucky one to taunt them, or negotiate a sweet deal to lift the curse.
It isn't entirely clear what needs to be done to earn her favour, thought there are many superstitions among the adventurer guilds all over the world. Some veteran adventurers swear that walking with butter in one's shoes for a whole day before delving into a dungeon will protect you from the trickster goddess's pranks.
On the contrary, it is known that those who have earned the goddess's displeasure may find themselves losing precious possessions or discovering that family heirlooms tucked away in the back of the closet have been cursed.
One high-profile case involved an advisor to the emperor who was cursed with a contagious undead plague when he went to fetch something from the treasury. Guards and servants fell victim to the curse until the entire palace was left vacant for months while the empire's best exorcists struggled to reverse the effect. In the end, the emperor had to sacrifice 5000 heads of cattle to invoke an intervention from another deity.

The oblivious goddess:
this deity has taken the shape of a young woman who seemingly lives a normal life in an unassuming town.
However, she seems unaware of her own divinity, causing many strange occurrences in her surroundings, from extra-dimensional invasions, to paradoxes that bend both space and time, to unnatural cataclysms.
Curious and stubborn, she fixates on anything or anyone that has caught her attention this week, causing great misfortune to the object of her obsession and turning upside down the lives of those around.
Whenever anyone tries to point the oblivious goddess to the obvious signs of her divinity, she refuses to listen, gets irrationally angry and summons divine penalty on their heads, laughing at their bad karma.