Why Good Folk Pray to Dark Gods
By Reader Tarina of Candlekeep
Published in the Year of the Worm, 1356
By Reader Tarina of Candlekeep
Published in the Year of the Worm, 1356
Introduction
Among many adventurers, elves, and the clergy of goodly gods, the sight of a person offering prayers to one of the darker gods is a source of confusion and anger. What could drive a person to bow to a god who works only to their ruin? Why would someone pray to a god who commands them to fear, sets fire to their homes, and murders their loved ones? It is the good gods who protect and give succor, who fight for the freedom and dignity of all beings, is it not? The common assumption, then, is that the person offering dark prayers is evil themselves. Blinded by base ambition, they offer their souls to gods of darkness in the hope of sharing in some of their power and gaining dominion over their fellow man. While this is in some cases true, it is ignorant of the great many reasons why a good person might pray to evil. The rich and powerful may have the luxury of dismissing the gods, using their greater resources to offset the harm the darker gods can do, but the common folk rarely have the option. If Auril is not appeased and a village faces a hard winter, the lowest of society die. For this reason, appeasement of the dark gods is very common among the lower classes. Does this mean that the lower classes are evil? No, of course not.
Most folk learn of the gods from our parents and local priests. These lessons typically include tales of all of the gods, from Ilmater the Martyr to Bane the Tyrant, and of the places in which they have dominion. From birth, we are warned against provoking a god in the places where they hold sway. One does not insult Umberlee when preparing to set sail, nor does one besmirch Shar during the darkest of nights when Selûne is in hiding, lest they beset their blasphemers with trouble. These gods are evil, and they are feared, but it is through offering devotion that their wrath may be assuaged. When a plague infests a town, you pray to Talona for deliverance from her sickness.
All the gods are important. It is the power of all the gods, together, that forms the world in which we live. Every god, good or bad, is the exemplar of their purpose, and dangerous when allowed to rule alone. The clergy of all churches, good or bad, are often taken to extremes, and in that extreme become terrifying to all who do not live up to the exacting demands of gods who see only a narrow part of the world. Harmony is found when the gods are taken together, when their gaps are filled by their shadows. The world was created by both light and dark, Selûne and Shar. Existence is found in the center of these opposing forces. The dark gods serve a purpose as surely as the good gods, and only by giving all of them their due respect can the world be kept whole.
Following is a collection of teachings of the darker gods, as I learned them and from what experience has taught me. Many of these beliefs are typical among common folk, though the exact form the lessons take varies from place to place.
Teachings of the Dark Gods
Auril
One of the gods of fury, the Goddess of Winter is a terrifying god for many villages. Winter is a time of death, where crops do not grow and darkness and sickness reign. When winter comes, festivals and tributes to Auril are made in the hope of ensuring an easier winter. Failure to appease her may lead to a colder, longer winter.
Like the other gods of fury, as well as the gods of life and death, Auril also has an important place in the cycle of nature. She is the last of the four seasons, leading into spring. It is her duty to sweep away the old and make way for the new. For this reason, she is also a god of old age. In this aspect she is perhaps even more terrifying, because when we come to our own personal winter, we know that there will be no more springs for us. The old pray to Auril to make their final years good ones, to keep them free of pain and fear, to leave their minds whole, and to ensure that their families will be okay after they're gone. When Auril is given her due, she negotiates with Bhaal and Talona to allow us to pass peacefully into Myrkul's arms when our time comes.
Bane
The Tyrant God, the God of Fear, the God of Control, the God of Strife. Bane is the god you pray to when you face real tyrants in the world. When you are faced with strife, when a warlord comes to conquer your village, you pray to Bane to give you mercy from his wrath, and to bless you with the wisdom to know how to keep your head down until you have the power to escape or challenge your oppressor. When you are afraid, you pray to Bane to give you a reprieve from your fear, which he does by taking away the fears that hold us back and exchanging them with the hates that drive us forward. And when you are a leader, whether that is as a king ruling a kingdom or simply as someone that wants to take control of your own fate, you pray to Bane to give you his power, to ensure that the world obeys your desires and fears your displeasure.
One might believe that the third example leads to the first, and indeed if taken too far, such as by many of those who hold Bane as their patron, it does. Every god, taken separately, is an extreme. If you pray to Bane alone, fear and strife will dominate you: you will be beset by paranoia, fearful of everything that might seek to challenge you, while the fear of those around you drives them to rebel against your cruel tyranny. The world functions best when all the gods are in harmony. A wise leader prays to Bane and Ilmater, Tyr, Torm, Helm, and all the other gods. Bane gives you the power to control your domain, Ilmater teaches you mercy and patience against the struggles you face, Tyr teaches you how to hold others to account for their actions, Torm holds you to your duty and keeps you from self-indulgence, and Helm keeps your eyes open so that you might rule with wisdom. Other gods teach you other lessons.
Is Bane an evil god? Yes, absolutely. But his evil serves the purpose of making you stronger. Do not let Bane rule, but instead learn from the strife and fear he places before you, so that you might become a better person through overcoming it. He is the hand blackened by smoke and soot as he tempers the world through the forge of strife. Spend too long in the forge and you will be too brittle. Spend too little in it and you will be too soft.
Beshaba
The Goddess of Bad Luck, Lady Doom, Tymora's shadow. Tymora and Beshaba are two sides of the same coin. They are the principle of give and take. You pray to Tymora for good luck for yourself and your loved ones, while you pray to Beshaba for bad luck to those who hurt you and others. Beshaba, along with Hoar and Tyr, is a god of justice, the god the weak pray to when the strong do them ill.
The purpose of the gods of luck is to balance fate. While Tymora rewards the unfortunate, Beshaba teaches humility to the conceited. Those who are proud, arrogant, sure of themselves and their success, are her victims. It is her purpose to cast them down and teach them to respect what they have because it can be taken away with one flip of Beshaba's coin. She is a god of the lower classes, not because she withholds her wrath from them but rather because she imposes that wrath equally on the commoner and the wealthy alike.
It is for this reason that common practice in most villages is to invite Beshaba to all public affairs, lest she curse the hosts for their disrespect. A couple who does not offer prayers to Beshaba on their wedding day may find their marriage a contentious affair that leads to heartbreak, or their child born crippled. A fair that does not seek her blessing may suffer accidents or fires. A king who believes himself above the gods shall be cast from his throne. All whose hearts are inflated with vanity, show Beshaba respect or face her Doom.
Bhaal
The God of Murder, the God of Death. Why ever would a goodly person offer a prayer to a god with such a domain? Killing is wrong! And yet, death is a part of life that we all will face. Like Bane, Bhaal is prayed to in the hope of sparing yourself the wrath of a real murderer. When a warlord conquers your village and executes the people, or you are bleeding from a deep wound, you pray to Bhaal to spare your life. When you are a lord faced with assassination threats, you pray to Bhaal to give you the foresight to avoid their schemes. When you are a soldier, you pray to Bhaal to ensure you will make it back from the war alive. Almost all people will have a prayer to Bhaal on their lips when they come to the end. His face is the last one we all see, before Myrkul snatches us away to the beyond.
There are occasionally times where a goodly person might pray to Bhaal to help with the committing of death, though. The headsman, of course, prays to Bhaal for his grim task, as does the butcher. If you are attacked by bandits, or beaten by an evil spouse, you might pray to Bhaal to give you the strength to save yourself from their wickedness. When a tyrant rules the land, you might pray to Bhaal to kill him so that a more just ruler might replace him. And if you are an adventurer, soldier, or even a paladin, you might pray to Bhaal, along with Tempus, Tyr, or Torm, to help calm that part of yourself that knows that killing, even killing an evil person, is wrong.
Hoar
The Doombringer, the God of Vengeance. Together with Beshaba and Tyr, Hoar is a god of justice. Hoar ensures that those who fail to face the consequences for their actions in Tyr's court will find it instead in their beds in the dark of night. You pray to Hoar when you are wronged and lack the power or courage to challenge your aggressor. Hoar will take your prayer and ensure that those who deserve it face retribution, perhaps through negotiating with Beshaba so that some ill befalls them, perhaps taking direct action. In this, he is the god of mercenaries, assassins, adventurers, and all others who fight against another's enemies for coin.
You also pray to Hoar when you are the target of another's vengeance, and in this he is also a god of reconciliation and forgiveness. Hoar's mercy is finding peace with those who you have wronged, and in making amends you pay the price to Hoar that your enemy would have otherwise paid to see you in ruin. Hoar, therefore, is the god of personal justice, the spirit of the law, while Tyr is the god of impersonal justice, the letter of the law. Tyr demands that the laws of the land be followed and, blind, can lack forgiveness or understanding for the personal nature of the crime. Hoar allows for folk to resolve their differences themselves, by granting either his vengeance or his mercy.
Loviatar
The Maiden of Pain, the Goddess of Agony. Loviatar is another god that can be a struggle to understand. Her domain is over such clearly terrible things. Even when you might justify killing as the moral and just thing to do, a good person strives to make that death as painless as possible. So what good does pain serve? Well, pain is a warning. It is a sign that we are in danger. It screams at you when you put your hand in the fire so that you pull it back out, hopefully before you burnt yourself, or if you did, then a lesson to never do that again. Though few of us are grateful in that moment, it would do us well to offer our thanks to Loviatar, not our condemnation, for she tried to warn us.
More often, you pray to Loviatar for relief when you are suffering from great pain. Though Ilmater and Loviatar are at odds, and though their clergy hate each other, in truth both gods are at our bedside when we suffer. On our lips are prayers of mercy to both gods, and they debate over whether or not we should be given it. "They have suffered enough, let them be," Ilmater says, while Loviatar replies, "They need to understand how they got themselves into this state, so that they do not repeat it and find themselves here again." When they cannot come to agreement, Ilmater takes our hurts into himself, suffering for us, through the power of salves and ointments. But when they can, we might hurt a little longer, but it will be less sharp, more bearable, and we will overcome it on our own, becoming stronger for it.
Malar
The Beastlord, the God of Hunting, the God of Survival. One of the gods of fury, Malar is an essential and important aspect of nature. Where other nature gods might favor wider concepts and dismiss the individual creature for the sake of the greater balance, Malar represents the individual, the family, the tribe. He is nature at its most violent, kill or be killed, dog eat dog. You have to fight for your right to live, take from others so that you might survive and prosper. He is the god revered by hunters and butchers who take the lives of other animals so that their own families won't go hungry, and he is the god of street rats, orphans, and refugees who have to fight for their right to live in a cruel world that cares nothing for them.
But though Malar focuses on an individual's right to thrive over wider balance concerns, Malar, like the other gods of fury, does have a purpose in the cycle of nature. Rather than nurturing and caring for other things, as Chauntea and other nature gods might teach, Malar teaches hunting and killing other things. The balance with Malar is found in challenging the strong, because when nature has a victor, everything else is thrown out of balance. Malar fights against civilization because civilization has thrived while wild nature grows smaller and smaller, and so he is also the god of monsters, put on this world to challenge humanity's growing dominance. But while he might be our enemy today, now that we are the strongest and most successful of creatures, grown lazy and fat on our progress, in our youth he was our closest ally as we struggled to survive in a dangerous, wild world. Even then he challenged us, for it's his duty as well to purge the weak, the sick, and the old from the world, but he valued our tenacity and resilience, and looked in pride as we became the hunter instead of the hunted.
You offer prayers to Malar when you are weak but fighting to be strong. You offer prayers to Malar when you are hungry and need to challenge other creatures to put food on your table. You offer prayers to Malar when you care about what happens to your family, not the people down the street, nor whether a forest burns down, nor some greater concept of balance where you're only some small part whose death matters more than your life. He is the god for people that want to live and thrive, and the enemy of those who already do.
Mask
The Lord of Shadows, the God of Thieves. The most common prayer offered to Mask is the one made to protect yourself from those who mean to take from you. But his name also reveals his other aspect, that of the mask. Mask is a god of tricksters, con artists, performers, strategists, and those who live and work in the dark. He is the god we pray to when we want to hide parts of ourselves from others, whether it is for good or ill. This makes him a rather egalitarian god. For nobles, he is the god of courtly politics, hiding daggers behind honeyed words. For the soldier, he is the god of baits, traps, feints, and ambushes, leading the enemy into a false sense of security. For the traveler, he is the god of protecting yourself from robbers and bandits by teaching you how to hide your rich goods from sight, appear like you can defend yourself from attack when you really can't, and how to set up camp where you won't be spotted. For the commoner, he is the god of all the little lies, like putting on a smile even though we are sad, hiding the imperfections in our crafts, or overselling the amount of grain we're giving to the tax collector so we can keep a little more for ourselves over the winter.
Myrkul
The God of the Dead. If Bhaal is the last face we see while we are alive, Myrkul is the first we see after we die. Myrkul takes us to whatever life there is for us in the beyond. If we go to the other gods when we die, then Myrkul is our shepherd, our ferryman, taking us across the river that divides the living world from the world of the dead. You pray to Myrkul when you know you are going to die, so that he might find your soul and get you to where you need to be, or you pray to him when a loved one passes, so that he might do the same for them. If Myrkul is slighted, we might never find our way to where we are supposed to go, left to wander the living world as ghosts or undead, or else swim endlessly in the river of lost souls. Myrkul's priests also tell of his Wall, where those who reject and blaspheme against the gods go to suffer for eternity. Any who speaks ill of the gods beware, lest you find yourself on Myrkul's Wall when you die.
As with many other gods, Myrkul is closest with his direct opposite. Though Lathander and Myrkul hate each other, and their clergies are frequently at odds (especially over undeath), they are both gods of transitions and new beginnings. Where Lathander is spring, Myrkul is autumn. He is the god of our transition from the end of one life and into the next. After we die, our spirits pass on as our bodies return to the earth and we are succeeded by our offspring. He is a god of ferrymen, coffin makers, rangers, and caravanners. His role is not the destination itself, but that which brings us to that destination. Along with Lathander, you give prayers to Myrkul whenever you leave behind your old life to start a new one somewhere else.
Shar
The Lady of Loss, the Goddess of Darkness, the Mistress of the Night. Selûne's sister and one of the twin mothers of the world, Shar is a complicated god. She is bitter and hateful, and favors darkness and evil. But she is also a broken god, who feels betrayed and rejected by her own sister and the world she helped create. Shar is perhaps the darkest god of all, for it is her sorrow and anger that birthed all of the other dark gods. What light is there to be found in a god who hates all light? What does she bring to the world, except misery and emptiness?
You pray to Shar at night and in darkness, when Selûne's light is gone and all that you are left to is the black around you and your own lonely thoughts. But perhaps, that's just it. You are not alone in such moments. Shar is there with you, telling you that it is okay to feel these things, it is okay to feel sad, or lost, or afraid, or hateful. It is okay to not be strong, it is okay to doubt, it is okay to cry. Even when all others might abandon you in your darkness, Shar will be there for you. And when it is too much, when the memories are too hurtful, the emotions too strong, the pain too great, she will help you forget, so that when Lathander's light rises in the morning you can go out into the world, maybe not better, but free and able to heal.
Shar, the mother of all darkness, is the core of this treatise. It is Shar that teaches that it is okay to accept the bad parts of ourselves, and in so doing, to accept the bad parts of the world. This is a lesson Selûne, unlike many of her children, understands: Selûne still shines in the darkness, refusing even after all the heartache to abandon her sister and her sister's children, for Selûne is the god of tolerance and outcasts.
Like with every other god described here, Shar is at her best when she is balanced by all the other gods. Selûne and Shar created the world together. Within each of us is both light and dark. Do not let the darkness consume you, as Shar has, but accept that it is part of you.
Talona
The Mistress of Disease, the Lady of Poison, the Goddess of Rot. Talona is normally beseeched when one is sick and prays for reprieve from their illness. She aligns with Auril, Bhaal, and Myrkul as a god of death, and sometimes with Loviatar for the pain sickness causes and the strength gained by those who overcome it. Talona is a god of apothecaries, healers, cooks, food tasters, headsmen, and gravediggers. She is prayed to any time you need to prepare or consume something that goes inside the body, or whenever you deal with things touched by death.
Talona serves an important part in the balance of nature. Sickness, like winter, is used to clear away the old so that the new can flourish. More than that, though, sickness, like pain, is a sign that there is something wrong, that there is an imbalance. Sickness occurs when you do not cleanse your food before you cook it, when there is overpopulation and resources are scarce, when there are impurities in your spirit, and when you defile the dead. Sickness is a corruption of life, but it's a corruption that appears as a response to underlying problems and has the ultimate goal of purging whatever ills caused it. Left to run its course, sickness kills the corrupt and strengthens the survivors, making the world healthier. When we treat sickness, Talona teaches us to consider why the sickness appeared in the first place, not to simply eliminate the symptoms.
Talos
The Storm Lord, the God of Destruction. The chief of the gods of fury, Talos serves a purpose in nature, as with Auril, Malar, and Talona, to clear away the old and make way for the new. In this, he does not discriminate. He does not purge the corrupt, as Talona does, nor the old, as Auril does, nor the weak, as Malar does. Talos strikes randomly and without reason. For this, he is a hard god to appreciate. He is feared, of course, and the majority of prayers to Talos are made in hopes of sparing one's self from his wrath, though he is unlikely to listen. He is occasionally venerated by those seeking misfortune to fall on those who have hurt them, but those prayers usually go to Hoar or Beshaba, who might negotiate with Talos to bring his fury on behalf of their supplicants.
We have to look at his shadow to see what Talos really is. He is the god of destruction, which also means that he is a god of creation. This is not the static cycle of life and death, nor the purging of the corrupt, but instead a different kind of creation, opportunity. He is a god of trailblazers, inventors, builders, fortune seekers, farmers, and, surprisingly, monks. Talos teaches us to put aside our materialism and petty concerns, which he can destroy in an instant, and look to the future instead, free from the distractions that plague our thoughts, free from our attachments to the old world. A lightning strike that destroys a town is terrible, but it opens the way for something new to be built on top of the rubble. When fire consumes a library, we are compelled to forge our own destiny instead of reading about the tales of those who came before us. A torrent of rain might cause mudslides and flood rivers, but it is necessary to nourish new crops. Talos is impetus, energy. He is the king of chaos. Talos refuses to let us settle into routine, instead teaching us to look at what could be if we only looked forward a little. We will hate him for kicking us out of the house, but in the far future maybe we will give him thanks for giving us the motivation we needed to grow into something more.
Umberlee
The Goddess of the Sea, and one of the gods of fury. What is there to say about Umberlee? She, more than any of the other gods on this list, is recognized as deserving of worship. Those who curse and despise the dark gods frequently make an exception for Umberlee -- if not for themselves, then they will at least understand those sailors who give her prayers. This is because she controls a whole world of her own. Where Chauntea governs the land, Umberlee controls the sea. When we set sail, we offer ourselves into Umberlee's maw, and only with her blessing, and that of Valkur and Selûne, will we emerge from the other side intact. Thus almost all sailors give her tribute every time they leave port, as does anyone who travels by sea. When given her dues, Umberlee may treat you to fair winds, or she might send you to a new land, or a bounty of fish. Along with sailors and sea travelers, she is a god of explorers, fishermen, divers, and anyone who lives along the coast. If disrespected, she may wash you away in a storm or flood, send sea monsters, pirates, or raiders against your ship or town, keep the fish from biting, or leave you lost forever at sea, unable to return home.
Conclusion
Fundamentally, what most of the dark gods are about is challenging us so that we grow stronger, or tearing down what came before so that new life can spring in its wake. They are not a nice part of the balance of the world, but they are part of it. Is that a part that should exist? I can't answer that question. There are dark gods that I do not like, and would prefer to see the world without. There are even good gods who I feel that way about. But the purpose of this treatise is not to make the claim that all of these gods need to exist, only why they exist. Perhaps, someday, we will have a world where some of these gods lie defeated, or a world where some of these gods have learned to balance their darkness with compassion. Until then, though, they are the gods of our world, and they deserve our respect, even if they do not deserve our love.
I hope this treatise has given you a better appreciation for the gods of our world. This writing is not meant to justify the evils committed by these gods or especially by their worshipers, but instead to understand them as having an equal part and purpose in this world. Selûne and Shar created the world together, and so within it, and within each of us, exists both light and darkness. Even as you might fight against evil, accept that it is part of this world and has a purpose. You can never truly be rid of it, but you can steer it towards better ends. Give gods respect for the role they fill in the world, but do not permit their evil. Ban not churches nor prayer, but hold them instead to Tyr's laws, and Tyr's justice. Ban instead the practice of evil ceremonies, murder, and other vile deeds. By doing this, you stave off the wrath of spurned gods without giving the worst impulses of their worshipers life, and so help bring the world to harmony.
If nothing else, then I hope this writing has at least helped you understand those who choose to give worship to these gods. Few are evil. Think not of the clerics, warlocks, and black knights carving out human hearts in dark temples, vile and loathsome, but instead of the common man and woman, praying for an easy winter, or for control over their life, or to give victory to their hunt so they can put food on the table, or to survive an illness or sea voyage, or for the spirit of their loved one to make it safely to the hereafter. They love these gods no more than you but they still pray, because they understand the place of dark gods in society, and the suffering their wrath can bring.
(( Inspired by the big argument Tarina had with Atria and Alarielle a few months ago (and the later IC arguments with others that followed
), as well as a discussion Tarina had with Sirion and Edelgarde about Bane, I decided to have Tarina publish her first written work! Thanks to all those Tarina has discussed this topic with for giving me the idea to have her put her beliefs to text. ))