Church of Zon-Kuthon
The god’s horrid affection attracts evil sadists, demented masochists, and those whose spirits are so wounded that only overwhelming pain distracts them from their sorrows. When prisoners left to starve in oubliettes cut their own flesh just to remind themselves that they exist, the Dark Prince is there. Jilted lovers who make sick plans to avenge themselves or plot petty cruelties for their unfaithful mate feel his touch upon their souls. Every mother that starves herself because of her dead child, every cult that requires an initiation of pain as proof of sincerity, every teamster who lashes his animals harder to work them faster—all are watched by Zon-Kuthon’s gouged eye.
Fighters turn to Zon-Kuthon to help manage their pain in the midst of battle, and battlefield healers fascinated by vivisection use the god’s power to save lives at the cost of their patients’ agony. Monks and rogues study vital spots that let them incapacitate opponents silently with intense pain. Assassins learn the most painful nonlethal poisons in order to send a strong message to political rivals. Slavemasters learn how to motivate slaves to their maximum output with proper use of the lash. Constables and inquisitors use torture to extract information and confessions. Though it’s rarely wise for them to advertise it, Zon-Kuthon’s faith plays a role in the lives of all these people.
Services to Zon-Kuthon always involve torture, whether performed on slaves, prisoners, or willing members of the cult. The more exquisite the agony, the greater the offering to the Midnight Lord, and particularly skilled torturers can keep a victim just shy of passing out for days at a time, using magic or drugs to keep themselves awake for these extended “prayer sessions.” Clever members choose poetic tortures for members of rival faiths, such as putting golden splints under the nails of Abadaran priests, hatching moth larvae in the eyes of Desnan wanderers, or affixing red-hot iron shoes to the feet of Torag’s smiths (called the Dance of Death). Larger temples may have a “scream choir” of alchemically or surgically altered slaves who can only sing or scream a single note when “played” by a torturer-conductor. Many cult rituals involve the blurring of pleasure and pain, and encourage dangerous or humiliating sex, whether with other cult members or unwilling parties. Necrophilia is not frowned on but is not common, as the undead do not feel pain in the same way that the living do.
Zon-Kuthon’s church has no overarching organizational tenets. Each cell or temple has an understood hierarchy, based on physical or magical power, ingenuity, willingness and ability to endure pain, and similar elements related to church practices. Rather than standard duels, rivals within the church often engage in rites of escalating self-inflicted injuries until one party concedes, can no longer perform, or perishes—these contests also escalate the status of the participants in the eyes of witnesses. There is usually little reason for different congregations to cooperate, as the church rarely has large-scale goals requiring united effort. Rather, the church of Zon-Kuthon seeks to fuel a single tide of horror and bloodshed, content to lap at the edges of society, breaking off pieces and slowly weakening it.
In the church, a superior priest is generally called “master” or “mistress,” and equals and inferiors are addressed by name without a title, though in places like Nidal where the church is prevalent, additional titles such as “over-diocesan” are more common.
Given the specialized interests of the cult, there are few remote shrines, though any place where someone was deliberately brutalized might attract the attention of a Kuthite, even for “justified” violence like burning an evil necromancer at the stake. The faithful may leave offerings at these sites, such as a few drops of blood, an animal skull, a bit of sharpened metal, and so on, until the place gains a subtle atmosphere of suffering and evil.
Because the church’s use of torture relies on suffering as a measure of devotion, most clerics have many ranks in Heal. They can withstand torture for hours without screaming (though they might do so just for the glory of it) and are experts in preserving life in the face of mortal injury. In remote areas or places where magic is scarce, a Kuthite (cleric or otherwise) might gain a reputation as a skilled surgeon, though his gleeful leer as he performs his services without mind for the patient’s pain can be unnerving. With their access to divine magic and mundane skills, a Kuthite is a miracle worker on the battlefield, though the patients might regret the attention. A Kuthite priest living in secret in a community might feel protective toward the people in it, seeing them as his toys and brutally retaliating against anyone who threatens them. For example, if bandits attack a village, the resident Kuthite might hunt down the bandit leader, torture him to death, and leave his body parts as grisly trophies in a circle surrounding the bandit camp.
In places where the darker side of society is tolerated, Kuthites might act more openly and gain a measure of reluctant acceptance. Much as undertakers perform a necessary function that most choose not to think about, representatives of the Dark Prince’s more socially acceptable aspects occasionally appear in civilized areas and might even work significant good, but even these congregations are merely fronts meant to lead the weak toward the true excruciating majesty of Zon-Kuthon.
Aside from the faith’s crusade of pain, high-ranking members of the church of Zon-Kuthon occasionally set their subordinates to specific goals. Murdering individuals whose death is sure to cause widespread grieving, the recovery of artifacts holy to Zon-Kuthon—or that the Dark Prince merely desires—and the provocation of wars and other calamities are not beyond the opportunistic church’s plotting.
Fallen paladins that serve Zon-Kuthon usually do so as the result of continuous torture at the hands of talented priests; it is a rare few that become disillusioned with good on their own and slowly take the heavy-footed path to damnation. Breaking a paladin with torture is a long process, and many such victims manage to call upon a spark of divine power to martyr themselves rather than abandon their faith. Those who survive and fall gain a twisted sort of devotion to their tormentor, a sick, fawning sort of love that is the antithesis of chivalrous devotion. Those priests within the church who manage to turn paladins are highly respected, and thus many low-ranking Kuthites dream of breaking a holy warrior despite the low success rate.
In Nidal, where fallen paladins of Zon-Kuthon are most common, many keep an interest in what they call their Dark Lineage. This stems from three sources: what god they served before joining the army of the Midnight Lord, what paladin order they joined (if any), and which torturer turned them from their former path. The more connections two fallen paladins share, the greater their sense of kinship. There is no animosity between the various levels of Lineage, though in conflicts a fallen paladin tends to side with one whose Lineage is closest.
Fighters turn to Zon-Kuthon to help manage their pain in the midst of battle, and battlefield healers fascinated by vivisection use the god’s power to save lives at the cost of their patients’ agony. Monks and rogues study vital spots that let them incapacitate opponents silently with intense pain. Assassins learn the most painful nonlethal poisons in order to send a strong message to political rivals. Slavemasters learn how to motivate slaves to their maximum output with proper use of the lash. Constables and inquisitors use torture to extract information and confessions. Though it’s rarely wise for them to advertise it, Zon-Kuthon’s faith plays a role in the lives of all these people.
Services to Zon-Kuthon always involve torture, whether performed on slaves, prisoners, or willing members of the cult. The more exquisite the agony, the greater the offering to the Midnight Lord, and particularly skilled torturers can keep a victim just shy of passing out for days at a time, using magic or drugs to keep themselves awake for these extended “prayer sessions.” Clever members choose poetic tortures for members of rival faiths, such as putting golden splints under the nails of Abadaran priests, hatching moth larvae in the eyes of Desnan wanderers, or affixing red-hot iron shoes to the feet of Torag’s smiths (called the Dance of Death). Larger temples may have a “scream choir” of alchemically or surgically altered slaves who can only sing or scream a single note when “played” by a torturer-conductor. Many cult rituals involve the blurring of pleasure and pain, and encourage dangerous or humiliating sex, whether with other cult members or unwilling parties. Necrophilia is not frowned on but is not common, as the undead do not feel pain in the same way that the living do.
Zon-Kuthon’s church has no overarching organizational tenets. Each cell or temple has an understood hierarchy, based on physical or magical power, ingenuity, willingness and ability to endure pain, and similar elements related to church practices. Rather than standard duels, rivals within the church often engage in rites of escalating self-inflicted injuries until one party concedes, can no longer perform, or perishes—these contests also escalate the status of the participants in the eyes of witnesses. There is usually little reason for different congregations to cooperate, as the church rarely has large-scale goals requiring united effort. Rather, the church of Zon-Kuthon seeks to fuel a single tide of horror and bloodshed, content to lap at the edges of society, breaking off pieces and slowly weakening it.
In the church, a superior priest is generally called “master” or “mistress,” and equals and inferiors are addressed by name without a title, though in places like Nidal where the church is prevalent, additional titles such as “over-diocesan” are more common.
Temples & Shrines
Zon-Kuthon’s temples look like torture chambers, and many are actual torture chambers converted for church use. Any typical instrument of torture is a fixture, and sputtering torches or dim smoky candles are the norm for illumination. When worshippers are secretly using a site for rituals, they either bring a representation of the Dark Prince as a centerpiece (often a preserved corpse dressed as the god or a victim to ritualistically disfigure into such an icon), or pray to an empty iron maiden as a representation of his presence. If the church controls the place outright, it has more permanent decorations, such as obscene mosaics that both represent and inflict pain, perhaps with living creatures bound into grotesque tableaus. In smaller locales, the church might be a secret cave or basement where the cultists meet, littered with surgical and torture instruments that can reasonably pass as farm tools or craftsman’s tools in case the lair is discovered.Given the specialized interests of the cult, there are few remote shrines, though any place where someone was deliberately brutalized might attract the attention of a Kuthite, even for “justified” violence like burning an evil necromancer at the stake. The faithful may leave offerings at these sites, such as a few drops of blood, an animal skull, a bit of sharpened metal, and so on, until the place gains a subtle atmosphere of suffering and evil.
Clothing
The church has no official formal garb, though most priests dress in fetishistic versions of their god’s own garments. Body modification and self-mutilation are the norm, and in some cases these experiments are so extreme that worshippers’ flesh interweaves with their clothing to the point that removing it can kill them. Members of the church quickly learn how to keep wounds clean and free of infection, as well as how to conceal them from the public eye. Those whose alterations are severe and cannot pass as normal often disguise themselves as lepers or monstrous half-breeds. Particularly skilled and clever members of the cult have been known to skin their victims, tan them into supple leather, and wear the skin as a disguising garment over their own wounds. Many of the church’s flesh-artists are known for their ability to preserve facial skin so it can be worn like a mask, allowing wearers to pass inconspicuously for short periods of time even under close scrutiny.A Priest’s Role
Aside from rare church-demanded duties, clerics of the Dark Prince have a single goal: bringing pain to the world. In the absence of moral or immoral guidance from their patron, most choose their own paths and use Zon-Kuthon’s gifts to serve their own desires. Their deity is largely indifferent to mortal affairs, but still grants spells in response to the proper prayers. Many clerics of Zon-Kuthon seek power without responsibility and aren’t particularly zealous. In other words, being a priest is a secondary calling to them, leaving them most of their time to focus on their obsessions with conquest, wealth, magical power, and so on. Some join the church because they tire of the conventional delights of a decadent lifestyle and seek the thrill of darker indulgences. Those who zealously join the church are usually mad or damaged individuals with a history of torturing animals. Such unbalanced sadists tend to rise to the highest ranks in the Kuthite church because of their innate lust and desire for pain.Because the church’s use of torture relies on suffering as a measure of devotion, most clerics have many ranks in Heal. They can withstand torture for hours without screaming (though they might do so just for the glory of it) and are experts in preserving life in the face of mortal injury. In remote areas or places where magic is scarce, a Kuthite (cleric or otherwise) might gain a reputation as a skilled surgeon, though his gleeful leer as he performs his services without mind for the patient’s pain can be unnerving. With their access to divine magic and mundane skills, a Kuthite is a miracle worker on the battlefield, though the patients might regret the attention. A Kuthite priest living in secret in a community might feel protective toward the people in it, seeing them as his toys and brutally retaliating against anyone who threatens them. For example, if bandits attack a village, the resident Kuthite might hunt down the bandit leader, torture him to death, and leave his body parts as grisly trophies in a circle surrounding the bandit camp.
In places where the darker side of society is tolerated, Kuthites might act more openly and gain a measure of reluctant acceptance. Much as undertakers perform a necessary function that most choose not to think about, representatives of the Dark Prince’s more socially acceptable aspects occasionally appear in civilized areas and might even work significant good, but even these congregations are merely fronts meant to lead the weak toward the true excruciating majesty of Zon-Kuthon.
Aside from the faith’s crusade of pain, high-ranking members of the church of Zon-Kuthon occasionally set their subordinates to specific goals. Murdering individuals whose death is sure to cause widespread grieving, the recovery of artifacts holy to Zon-Kuthon—or that the Dark Prince merely desires—and the provocation of wars and other calamities are not beyond the opportunistic church’s plotting.
Fallen paladins that serve Zon-Kuthon usually do so as the result of continuous torture at the hands of talented priests; it is a rare few that become disillusioned with good on their own and slowly take the heavy-footed path to damnation. Breaking a paladin with torture is a long process, and many such victims manage to call upon a spark of divine power to martyr themselves rather than abandon their faith. Those who survive and fall gain a twisted sort of devotion to their tormentor, a sick, fawning sort of love that is the antithesis of chivalrous devotion. Those priests within the church who manage to turn paladins are highly respected, and thus many low-ranking Kuthites dream of breaking a holy warrior despite the low success rate.
In Nidal, where fallen paladins of Zon-Kuthon are most common, many keep an interest in what they call their Dark Lineage. This stems from three sources: what god they served before joining the army of the Midnight Lord, what paladin order they joined (if any), and which torturer turned them from their former path. The more connections two fallen paladins share, the greater their sense of kinship. There is no animosity between the various levels of Lineage, though in conflicts a fallen paladin tends to side with one whose Lineage is closest.
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