How would you worship a good/neutral god of Death? What would be considered a sin or a virtue to such a god?
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God of Death
How would you worship a good/neutral god of Death? What would be considered a sin or a virtue to such a god?
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I would imagine it would be like the worship of the greek and roman pantheons. When having a feast and many cattle is being killed you tkae the finest beast of the group onto a pyre as a holocaust/burnt offering to the deity. They would spill wine onto the pyre to offer that as food as well but the god of death in a more modern imagination wouldn't care for that.
Animals sacrifices everyday, many animals and maybe people on holy days or when times are dire. Being a good/neutral death god the people could be criminals or you can go the Carthaginian route and sacrifce your children who you love darly to show how much you vaule your god. Since a sacrifices power and worth stems from how greatly you value the sacrifice, hence why it is called a sacrifice.
Would a death god have a concept of 'sin"? all come to him in the end, maybe necromancy since it steals the soul away from an afterlife
I would imagine necromancy and trying to prolong your life would be sins to a god of death. Maybe only unnatural extensions to your life would be a sin to a "good" god of death, and any extension of your life would be a sin to a "neutral" god of death. Maybe saving life in general could be a sin.
A lot like this.
>reddit
How is he wrong? That's a god that is all about death, sacrifice, afterlife, etc almost exclusively. Even worship rites are ritualized death scenes and the major symbol of the religion references the death of the god-figure. At least he called it good/neutral, you fragile b***h.
That's literally what Christianity is you stupid pleb. It's a religion that worships death as a positive thing. Christ is literally a figure who DIED for people's sins so they could go to heaven after death. And his death is worshipped. Not only that but you symbolically consume his blood and flesh as a firm of communion. How that anything but "worshiping a good God of death?" If you're a Christian then you're embarrassing as you hardly understand your own religion.
The Abrahamic god is an omnigod not a god of just death.
But death is part of his domain. It still doesn't contradict the fact that Christianity is a good base model to look at if you want to create the idea of a religion based around a "benevolent god of death."
>Death = Good
>Would largely be based around sacrifice and martyrdom (like Christianity)
>Death would be viewed as the ultimate gift.
>Death would be seen as a positive fate that awaits us all.
>Death would be revered a better fate our current existence, with life serving as the trial to judge how we exist in death.
All of these are LITERALLY Christianity. To get upset at oriole calling it "a religion of death" is utterly ignorant, and fricking embarrassing if coming from a Christian themselves.
My issue is that you are saying Death = Good when it is not actually and never treated as such. The core tenants are "live a life of good and you will be rewarded after death." Death itself is not something to be sought out and very much a thing to be avoided. Martyrdom is not about dying it is about maintaining your "goodness" even when confronted with a nasty death. This is why suicide and executions are not good things.
That may be the intent, but its not what the rules say. The problem is that Christianity in specific (by which I mean, to a degree not present in other other Abrahamic faiths) tells its worshippers that your life ONLY matters insofar as it determines your afterlife. This is why there are so many christian sects and cults that split off and argue about the precise rules and regulations of what would deny you the best afterlife, because thats the only part of the religion that actually matters. And even then you still end up with christian suicide cults because skipping the line and going to heaven NOW is the obvious logical conclusion of their dogma. You are about to bring up that suicide is a sin and will get you sent to hell, but that was PATCH NOTES. They had to add it to the rules that suicide was super bad and wrong because int he early days of christianity the suicide cult option was becoming a real problem for the faith because there was no rule yet that said it was a bad thing.
Even nowadays, every couple decades you have a big revival of rapture cults in America because the idea that Jesus will come back and kill literally everyone is something to be *looked forward to*.
Christianity is unambiguously a death cult. Simple as. Its just one that you are used to and don't consider weird.
>Within Christianity, death is bad, but Jesus saves you from that
This is the Christian view of death, but it is not a fair summation of how Christianity treats death, especially compared to other religions. Admittedly, all real-world religions are somewhat preoccupied with death, but Christianity is really preoccupied with death. Jesus consistently downplays the fleeting nature of mortal life, in contrast with the eternal splendor/agony of the afterlife, he's telling you that you shouldn't compromise your "goodness" to prolong your life because it is quite simply a bad trade. But also he doesn't just say that once in passing, he says it a lot, because he is constantly preparing his (radical dissident) followers for martyrdom.
That said, it's possible to have a non-death god who says "Mortal life is just a trail and the afterlife is more important", and it's also possible to have a death god who doesn't say anything like that. But then there's the other stuff, the fact that the conceptual underpinnings of the Christ are all about human sacrifice, the fact that Jesus's biggest miracle was bringing a dude back to life, the fact that salvation is framed as a kind of spiritual resurrection leading to everlasting spiritual life. This is a death-aligned religion.
A god of everything can say anything. A god of everything could say that your highest purpose is to dream sweet dreams and enrich the Metadream. A god of everything could say that your highest purpose is to eat good food and have lots of sex so that your life is fully lived. A god of everything could say that you need to beat back Rome at any cost and pour gold down the throat of any fricker that says otherwise. Every religion has a narrative, and 'I serve the biggest god" is just a (cheap) part of that narrative, it isn't the whole thing.
Christianity preaches that the world is shit but if you lead a virtuous life the next world will be better. The second coming of Christ heralds the end of our world an that is a good thing. But please remember that suicide is a mortal sin, taking the easy way out will condemn you for eternity.
A core part of Christianity is the conquering of death, at least spiritually. It's not celebrating Jesus dying, it's saying that Jesus died for (You). It's why His resurrection is a huge holiday instead of just His death.
What he said. Jesus died so that his followers could ascend to Heaven after death.
Burial Rites are sacred.
I don't want to be that guy, but look at the worship of Arkay in TES. Arkayan priests perform maintenance of burial sites, the rites and rituals of burial, as well as grief-counseling to the family and friends of the deceased. A proper burial rite protects the remains of the dead from being raised by necromancers, and the more badass of the bunch dedicate themselves directly to the destruction of the undead and necromancy as a whole, as things that are dead should stay dead.
Just because you worship the God of Death doesn't mean you have to be the dealer of it.
Check out Morr from Warhammer Fantasy. They act a lot like suggests for Arkay, in general it's "Frick the Undead, Frick the Necromancers, be nice to the bereaved, respect the departed and the graves"
Played a Grave Cleric in a DnD game recently, and when it came to sins I tended to go for "If you're fricking with the cycle of life and death, it's a Sin." So, Undead, attempts at Immortality, anything that involves fricking with souls, etc. Casting things like Raise Dead or Resurrection are okay, because you're using Divine Powers to do it, and if your Death God has a problem with it the spell will fail, or your God will damn well let you know about it.
I was going to say that this looks like the God of Slop, but then I looked it up and apparently someone actually drew and released this for public consumption. lol. lmao even.
Anyway, death gods should never be evil. But they should be scary. Because death is neutral, but very scary.
Counterpoint: evil beings crave conceptual dominion over death, and sometimes they get it, at least in part.
Imagine some older death god says "You can hold my portfolio for 1,000 years while I tour reality, then after those years are up you die." And the big lich says "Frick yea I can't wait!" So mortals get really used to having an evil death god, but then something like 980 years in the evil death god changes alignment because he's afraid to die and he starts changing his whole dogma.
>But they should be scary
How do you make them scary without going too far then?
I'd say it would be like computer programming or the Old Testament Yahweh. Very little wiggle room in terms of rules.
What do you believe is the distinction between "very scary" and "evil"?
Maybe start by defining what you believe "evil" is.
In my setting there are multiple gods of death, each of them portrayed and worshipped in his own way.
One is a tall old man with long beard, staff, hourglass. Dressed in white. He's a patron of passing away naturally. He's prayed to when you want to finish your businesses on earth before death.
One is a old woman in black cloak, her face always obscured with a veil. She holds a lantaren. She's a patron of lost, forgotten and missing. People pray to her when they hope that someone lost may yet be alive. Lighting candles is a form of worship.
Yet another is a god of violent death. He has a head of a beast, holding a sword in one hand and the other hand covered in blood. His color is obviously red. People give him blood offerings asking for strength or to be spared.
There's a god of disease. A bloated carcass cloaked in yellow, and a bag of seed he spreads around. People pray for him to stay the frick away and for his seed (the disease) to never sprout. Wishing for him to come to your enemy is just about the worst thing you can do.
There's also one for dying out in the sea, and many other minor ones, who have their own cults following them.
Temples are rather rare and usually dedicated to many gods at once. There's lots of individual shrines tho.
If death is provedly not the end, then there's nothing to fear for it.
Even actual human sacrifice isn't that scary when you're simply sending a few of yours to a date with God. They'll be back next gen too.
There's no fear of losing (You) since you'll just get a new body next cycle and even more naturally evolved as well.
Death god actually facilitates biological progress and evolution this way.
Unironically just Catholicism.
Well, besides picture related, what are some preexisting death deities, mythological or fictional, that handle being Good or Neutral well that we can use as inspiration? There’s a couple that have been mentioned already, like Arkay from TES and Morr, but there’s got to be more.
Pluto and Hades are generally portrayed relatively friendly. Hades is the most friendly towards mortals out of the Olympian family.
Cold and stern, certainly, but never malicious or otherwise truly negative. Hades WOULD become quite angry, and his wrath was certainly one to behold, towards anyone who tried to steal away the souls of the dead from his realm, or those that would try to cheat death.
However, his sense of justice and honor was absolute and unerringly true. If he sat in judgment, even the other Olympians took his judgment as unquestionable.
Secondly, the cultus of Hades had intense links to, out of all other Greek gods, the cultus of Dionysus, god of wine, joy, merriment, and all such matters, as kind of a mutual opposites kind of deal.
Yeah, his reputation was also better in Rome because as Pluto he was also the god of wealth, IIRC.
Both in Greece and Rome. In Greece they avoided speaking the name 'Hades', for fear of attracting his attention. So they used a few nicknames, the most popular one of which was 'Plouton', 'the rich one', for all the mineral wealth of the earth was granted by his will. That evolved into the name 'Pluto' as used by the Romans.
Worth noting that, while nominally positive, Hades still isn't LIKED. People don't want to die no matter how you spin it, so even if you have a death god who is a neutral/lawful dude, they're still gonna try really hard not to attract his attention. There were very few cults of Hades.
Oh certainly, a death god should never be liked. Respected, certainly, feared, most likely, but not liked.
Go back, literary lord
There's plenty of good concepts of Death:
>Death is unavoidable and happens to everyone. Everyone is equal. Death is proof of Justice in the universe, and Clerics of Death are those who pursue justice, freedom and equality to all living beings. They fight evil and hate necromancy and undead, as they cheat the natural order for power and destruction. They also preside over funerals. (That's a Lawful Good take on it).
>Death is a challenge to all living beings: do your best with your limited time, provide and take care of others and yourself. Evil is a waste of precious time. Spend your living moments rejoicing, doing good unto others, preserving and protecting, building and cultivating. (That's a Chaotic Good take on it.)
>Death is a gift for the living. A place of peace and healing where all unresolved issues of life are straightened, where all pain ends and where all truth is revealed. Those moved by evil are cast back on the mortal world, to live again until the lesson is learned. Once gone, those who finish healing move along to transcedence beyond destiny and causality, truly free -- to something so entirely different that even the other Gods know nothing about. (That's a Neutral Good take on it.)
Assuming that they're good or neutral, what other domains would work well for a god of Death besides something like Justice or Rebirth?
The harvest, time, anti-undeath, undeath if your setting is cool with undeath for whatever reason, natural cycles in general
>undeath if your setting is cool with undeath for whatever reason
Presumably they'd also be the god of necromancy in such a case, but what are some reasons that they might be cool with undeath?
I like how the Greeks worshiped Hades
What about it, exactly?
>What about it, exactly?
Seconding this please.
In primitive and agricultural societies the gods of death are often associated with fertility. Persephone and Demeter were probably aspects of an ancient mother goddess.
And it makes sense. Things die, sink underground and become fertilizer for new life to sprout.
Death and fertility are connected the same god should oversee both
When you die, you enter this god's domain and she gives you a place to rest while the sea washes away your memories and cleanses your soul of the experiences of your life. Eventually, when it is ready, it is released to become a new life and you get to experience the world again. No judgement, no punishment, just an easing of burdens and renewal and seeking new happiness, the transition between one life and the next being watched over and guided by a merciful god that wants you to live a rich and fulfilling life because when your memories become part of the sea the good should outweigh the bad.
So the god uses mortals to experience the world. Still seems kind of pointless if they just forget everything.
Its the least worst option, honestly. An afterlife would be fricking awful to experience. i don't think you understand how long *forever* is, trapped in some realm with all these other dead fricks with nothing new to experience save whatever stories people who died after you did care to share.
Imagine the highlight of your existence being someone who died centuries after you did recounting the plot of "Star Wars Episode 22: A Jedi In Time" because you are bored out of your skull and crave novelty.
And thats assuming a neutral afterlife. A judgemental afterlife is even worse. A good person who goes to heaven and gets an eternal reward will become a total shithead after getting smoke blown up their ass for 500 years about how good and virtuous they are. They already passed their entrance exam, they can't flunk out now.
Meanwhile, anyone that gets sent to the hell dimension... There is no amount of bad you could have done on Earth that justifies an eternal punishment. By definition. Infinite punishment for a finite crime will always be cruel and unjust.
Better that some part of you lives on in a new form but you personally don't have to put up with it.
There are two gods of death I can think of from history
Cathars - 13th century cult. They believed that the real world is hell (ruled by the evil god of the old testament, they had this god offerening the world to Jesus when he was in the desert for 40 days, meaning it was his to give) and if you died you escaped it. They apparently were just like normal christians of the time, but looked forward to death. They were eventually wiped out by crusaders in the 13th century for being heratics.
Various Aztec and Mayan Death Gods. Worship involved ritual cannibalism, beheadings and the wearing of the skin of favoured sacrificial victims, Regular ceromonies were performed in which victims had their hearts cut out and burnt in offering to the god to prevent the world from being destroyed. Does this make the sacrifices a good one?
I guess a Good god of death would prohibit necromancy and make worshippers hunt undead/necromancers on sight.
Have you heard the good word of our lord and saviour Humakt?
What about a Neutral god of Death? I doubt that they even care about necromancers.
Well for neutral angle, death is the great equalizer. Bad, goof, poor, wealthy, weak and strong. All have to go through death's gates.
For virtues, I would guess good death? Courageous, wise or other such thing, making your death leave a positive impact in the world.
A mixture of Hades from Hades, and Hades from Hadestown
I've vaguely heard of those, but I haven't played Hades or seen Hadestown. What did you take from each?
Literary Lord? More like Large Language (model)
Their personalities really, the looks of the first, the way the underworld is set up for both, the fighting style of hades, and the musical/ singing voice of the latter. So he's much more benevolent than most death gods
>the fighting style of hades
Again, I haven't played the game, so I'll take your word for it. Any hopes for Hades 2, for ideas regarding death gods and/or underworlds if nothing else?
Ask ChatGPT.
There were many Gods of death in historical pagan religions.
Id say they would be feared as respected for their powers over the fate of human souls but also worshipped in a solemn way as well for their powers over the cycle of death and rebirth, something esoteric of sorts.
The God of Death is just making sure motherfrickers go through the afterlife properly.
If motherfrickers don't obey the natural cycle of life and death, you get shit like zombies and undead.
The God of Death fricking hates punk-ass necromancers, stealing their souls and shit.
Two primary Gods of Death, Brothers "Reaper Man" and "Damocles".
Reaper Man weilds the scythe and protects those who die "the straw death". Is the father of the first Angels, who reward those who die Exalted Deaths. He lives on the largest moon.
Damocles is the "Memento Mori", who weilds the sword "Story's End". Hunts those who disrupt the cycles of life, and punishes illegal efforts of immortality. Is the father of "The Writers of Fates" demigod priesthood, who approve individuals for Resurrection from sanctioned temples.
Good death god variant #1:
>likes memorializing the dead, remembrance, creating things to honour the dead
>worshiped via proper funerals, mourning rites and respecting taboos (stuff like not speaking ill of the dead, not building on burial sites) - whatever works the best for your setting, whether it's cremation or burial or whatever
>encourages and rewards destruction of undeath, necromancy and grave defilers
>particularly values you hunting down those who cheated death for the longest stretch of time (liches, creatures who made pacts with demons and the like)
>is actually dead himself so the clerics never get miracles
Good/neutral death god variant #2:
>upholds some kind of order or balance of forces in the setting
>transactional - will accept a sacrifice to bend the natural flow of life or death; does not consider death itself sacred like God #1
>dishes out divine healing or divine harm depending on the context
>helps with the creation, control and destruction of undead, as long as it helps the ultimate goal
>s actually dead himself so the clerics never get miracles
How exactly would that work, does that mean that things like judging the dead and giving clerics their spells are basically automated or what?
>helps with the creation, control and destruction of undead, as long as it helps the ultimate goal
And what might this goal be?
Hades, literally hades.
So he's the only good death god worth mentioning? What's wrong with the others?
Death is as much a beginning as it is an ending.
Causality. Inevitability is the greatest magic of all.
>Sacrifice to god of death
>God of death shares your sacrifice with your relatives
How does that work? Does he hand it out to them personally or what?
virtues
>performing proper burial rites
>honoring family's ancestors
sins
>necromancy
>grave robbery
>summoning spirits
>not honoring your dead relatives
boons
>promise of swift death
>good
Killing is a sacred and deliberate act that should not be done casually or excessively and with great respect for the act.
Neutral
All death is inevitable and natural so it’s all kosher, but stopping death with magic will seriously piss him off.
>but stopping death with magic will seriously piss him off.
Do healing and anything related to undeath then.
Healing is perfectly fine to the God of Death because it doesn't extend someone's lifespan unnaturally. In the end, he still gets his due. Using magic to slow or halt the aging process though, that would seriously piss him off, as would attempting to turn yourself into a lich, vampire, or some other sort of immortal being.
>Good Death
Prevent undead from being created, punish necromancers, ensure that the dead are respected.
>Neutral Death
Dead is dead, and should be respected. Punish necromancers - but also punish people who return to life, even by holy means. No morality or selfishness will get in the way of death's inevitability and eternal rest.
I posted this in a previous thread on making non-evil Necromancers, but my current DnD character worships the Lawful Neutral Goddess of Death Wee Jas, though specifically worshiping a more Lawful Good aspect of her.
Essentially she worships the aspect of the Natural Death. To her sect, dying is a sacred thing done at the end of a long life, surrounded by friends and family, and followers should strive to keep people alive until they reach their natural deaths as much as possible. End of life care is very important, as is funeral and burial rites. Euthanasia is also carried out with solemn attitudes and done only when there is no way that person can be saved.
Extending one's life unnaturally is seen as a sin, so liches and vampires are hated and hunted down when possible.
I tied my character's philosophy to Buddhism a lot, with an acceptance that all things will eventually decay and die, and that fighting against the natural entropy only leads to misery and suffering. Change must be accepted, and what bigger change than the change from being alive to being dead?
Something my character often says to explain her faith is "Wee Jas doesn't trip us, but is there to catch us when we fall."
The first thing you need to stop doing is designing gods "of" whatever.
Well, everyone said it already, it seems, but let me chime in one more time.
My non-egyptian, yet coincidentally jackal-headed guys are pretty much a cult that worships a good Death. So, as follows...
They absolute hate pretty much anything that is undead with one exception: spirits of ancestors might be seen as benevolent and rightful manifestations that exist because Death lets them to come from the afterlife to assist the living. Anything else - zombies, liches, whatever - is anathema to them and must be destroyed. Necromancers are their greatest enemy.
They follow burial rites to a point. All bodies must be burnt down, with funerary dances, embalming and the like.
All pursues of immortality are viewed with distaste, if not outright heretical. Magical acts that actually resurrect the dead to a full, proper life are regarded as very selfish and, of course, rather heretical as well.
Even medical assistance have its limits for these guys. To keep someone gravely wounded from dying would require the highest of their cult to order to do so. In fact, it is always an order that comes directly from the Death they worship through visions... or so they say.
Magicians of the cult are mostly trained as psychopomps, and they actually do guide souls of the dead into the light.
Their churches are almost constantly burning bodies, so there's a lot of smoke around their holy buildings. And their cities are usually necropolises.
The Death they worship overall is regarded not only as Death, but as The One Who Opens The Ways, among other titles. For example, another important title would be the Judge, the one who is always fair, and everyone is equal before him.
They do not go full out berserk, because they see life as necessary step for everyone, as a trial, route to death, which should not be ended before the Death itself deems the person ready for the afterlife.
Something along those lines.