Evil faiths local to Ravenloft?

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Merudo
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Evil faiths local to Ravenloft?

Post by Merudo »

I was wondering if evil faiths exist in Ravenloft with clerics that are granted divine powers.

Do the Dark Powers provide any divine spells to some who worship them? If not, is there some sort of evil deity (Vecna for example) that have a following within Ravenloft?

One of my player would like to join a campaign as a Barovian cleric, and I was wondering if such thing even exist.
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Re: Evil faiths local to Ravenloft?

Post by nothri »

1. The dark powers grant spells to worshipers of Gods that exist nowhere else and would be labeled false otherwise. The Wolf God and Zhakata come to mind. But the Dark Powers themselves are not worshipped as such mostly because no one really knows what they even are.

2. The Cult of the Morninglord is one native Barovian faith. Relinquish is a evil god also native to the region. Other faiths include Hala (goddess of witches and hags), the Lawgiver (Church of Bane, but with unique mythology due to separation from the god), Ezra (our lady of the mists, a native Ravenloft faith and allegory from Christianity in various forms- has one lawful evil sect at least)
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Hell_Born
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Re: Evil faiths local to Ravenloft?

Post by Hell_Born »

Evil faiths in Ravenloft, off the top of my head, include:

The Wolf God, a deity of werewolves and wolves from Verbrek.

Zhakata, a god of hunger and cruelty.

The Lawgiver, a god of "strong rulership" that actually is a thinly veiled god of tyranny and repression.

The Darkonese sect of Ezra is Evil due to being a fire-and-brimstone apocalyptic cult. I think I read somewhere that they force people to convert to Ezra with threats and violence, but I don't know where. I know they're violently monotheistic and attack priests of other faiths, though.

The Eternal Order is an apocalyptic faith from Darkon that preaches the need to supplicate the dead, who will one day destroy the world.

The Spider God is a hedonistic and cruel faith (lawsuit-friendly Lolth) from the Gazetteer V.

Perhaps the most useful to you, Gazeteer I includes Erlin, the Gundarkite god of cruelty, mischief and death, whose worship is experiencing a revival in Barovia due to the oppression of the Gundarkites by their Barovian conquerors.
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tomokaicho
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Re: Evil faiths local to Ravenloft?

Post by tomokaicho »

Your Barovian cleric can worship, and receive spells for any deity that he believes to exist. As long as he genuinely believes the deity to exist the Dark Powers will respond by provisioning spells.

Its safe to say that none of these deities exist. Even the religions modeled on those from outside Ravenloft are different enough that they would be considered heretical and blasphemous to a newly arrived person to Ravenloft.
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Re: Evil faiths local to Ravenloft?

Post by Mistmaster »

That is a way to see it; In my Ravenloft all Deities are pretty real.
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