Dread Gods

The Dread Gods are eldritch serpentine deities from a lost antediluvian age that continue to speak to monstrous priests in the current era. Driven from the Celestial Realms after the Sundering War and weakened by the worship of younger gods, they constantly call for sacrifices to keep up their strength and power. In return for the relentless blood tithe, their followers are granted hideous boons. Although they have no missionaries in any conventional sense, they occasionally compel individuals to further their dark agenda. Those who have been touched by their influence, whether by miasmic visions of death or by the violent handiwork of the faithful, are often driven insane.

In a psychological sense, the Dread Gods represent the primal urges and instincts that cause an individual to kill.

The Dogma of Blood and a Creation Myth

"Before Tiamat was split to form the earth, before the sun scorched the wastes, before the genesis of the lesser races, there was a time of monsters and Gods. The Dread Gods are the few who survived the war in the stars, just as the monsters living today owe their ancestry to the violent genocides of our early history." - Yaga Xoshawv

The Tradition of Miasma teaches that before the current era of the lesser races, the world was a primeval place of death, violence, and revelry. The Old Ones, the first of the divine beings, had a loose and shifting pantheon of chaotic entities and the Celestial Realm was in pandemonium. At this time, the lesser races (elves, men, dwarves, etc.) were subservient to the monstrous races (trolls, orcs, goblins, etc.) that used them for fodder and sport. Women used men to satiate their lusts, to build their arching cities, and to solve their petty conflicts. This is the Natural Way, according to the cultists.

The greatest of the Old Ones were the goddesses Tiamat, Shub-Niggurath, and Leviathan. Tiamat was the weaver of reality, continually shifting perception and disrupting the physical laws. Shub-Niggurath, the divine whore, created the first of the mortal races and impulsively pushed all sorts of strange life into existence. Leviathan was the most terrible, swallowing whole planes of existence as an afterthought. Life was nasty, brutish, and short.

Then, without warning, the Old Ones were no more. The Celestial Realm was void of chaos and existence had been chained to order and regulation. Tiamat was split asunder: her torn flesh became the soil and her bones the mountains; her demonic blood soaked the river beds and her vicious mind became the clouds. Shub-Niggurath was wrought, and the vita that spilled from her became the known forms of life. Leviathan was the last slain, and the cavernous space she left became the gateway to oblivion.

The only Old Ones to survive the Sundering War were the Dread Gods, masters of carnage and killing. They fled from the Celestial Realms severely weakened, taking refuge in the torpor of the Miasma. While their worship has been driven to the fringe of religious activity, their insidious power still permeates the domains of reality they rule and is harnessed by those who survive the brutal initiations of their cults.

Elohanna

A goddess of flame and cruelty, she grants her followers blood-lust and an unfeeling disposition in war. She seeks the destruction of civilization and the obliteration of tame society. Her dogma appeals to Gnoll priests, whose ill-tempered dispositions are already well suited to her purpose. Her hard-core cultists are easy to spot due to the fetid sores covering their bodies and their uncontrollable rage.

The Great Black

A god of multiple forms, his most common avatar is that of a great winged wolf known as the Black Beast. He is a god of the hunt, reveling in the sport and competition of war. Violence for The Great Black is done for violence's sake. However, of the Dread Gods, he is the only one with a Code of Conduct for his followers. The Great Hunt is a cult formed for his purposes, and his followers are keen for any challenge but bear the awful scars of self-mutilation that His worship demands.

The Code of the Hunt:

• The young, old, and unarmed shall not be killed, for there is no sport in this.
• After an unsuccessful hunt, it is required of the Faithful to scar their bodies with ink to remember their shame.
• No challenge can be refused.
• Cruelty has no place in the hunt. Thusly, a kill must be swift and clean.
• Never hunt solo; the Great Hunt exists to provide sport, camaraderie, and competition among the members.

Fie'est

The subtle snake, Fie'est is a favoured deity among those monster elements who shape-shift to infiltrate human society and assassins. For the followers of Fie'est, the purpose of killing is to emotionally experiance the death of the fallen and make prophecy. They prefer to do their sinister rites under cover of darkness, and lean to the shadows rather then make their presence known. Some Fie'est cultists gouge out their eyes in order to heighten the emotional rush from killing.

Ares

Wrongly interpreted by pinkies to be a human deity, Ares is the most accessible of the Dread Gods. His dogma is one of victory, self-improvement, and strength. War and killing for the followers of Ares are a chance to prove their individual skill and continue to advance their technique. A solemn and reflective cult, they tend to be quiet and withdrawn when not fighting, but when engaged in combat become loud, boastful, and energetic.