How to make 'Elder Evils' sympathetic.

[Inevitability]

A big point of a world I'll be creating soon is that there are no 'gods' in the typical sense of D&D. Instead, there is a group of ancient, mysterious creatures who, long ago, raised humans from being no more than monkeys to sentience.

Those beings were like standard gods in many ways. They asked for worship, prayer, and offerings, and rewarded devoted followers with clerical power. However, it became apparent they were not gods during an event known as the 'Coming'.

Basically, when enough mortals worship a single of those beings, their combined faith can allow it to enter our world. The first Coming resulted in the complete annihilation of a continent and it being replaced by an icy, barren world (the 'god' who was called is the ice and snow covering all of the continent). The second and so far last Coming turned an area of lush rainforest the size of Australia into dead, blighted land before being sealed into this world's feywild (which is another plot point).

Now, this would all be nice and well if I made those beings Ye Olde Elder Evils, who have to be destroyed or hindered at all cost. However, I don't want this to happen. I want there to be reasons for people to still, after this destruction, worship them. I want there to be debate on if it is good or not to worship. And most of all, I don't want those beings to be inherently evil. I want them to be different, but not evil or malign.

How would I do this? Any help is welcome. I know this is difficult, and I apologize in advance for it.

[Pokonic]

Have them have personalities that are, ultimately, mostly human, filtered through a guise of nearly omnipotent power.

Think of, rather than a typical deific 'family', the gods are basically act like they're part of the same casual social circle; they're all mostly amicable about each other, because if they're not friends, their either friends of friends or younger relatives.

The local god of Justice and Marshal Goodness doesn't actually hate the local god of Chaos and Carnage and general evil nasty things, because while the latters a big jerk he's also the godly equivalent of a twelve year old playing Call of Duty, and Mr. Good God feels that he should have tried to be a better role model for him in the first place. In mortal terms, Mr. Good God's church is heavy on the redemption side of dealing with evil, while Little Evil God promotes a lot of demon-interaction and generally terrible things, mostly because demons are, at the very least, entertaining, and promotes vigilantism and general anti-authority messages.

The incident with the snow could be seen as the local god of ice and snow, isolated from the rest of the nature gods because of his stifling portfolio that interferes with the others focusing more on plants and animals and such, trying to figure out what makes them tick, because he's lonely. His main sphere of influence is up in the north, where the snow doesn't melt; besides having a little trouble understanding this 'seasons' thing, he also misunderstood what effect his snow would have on everyone else; eventually, the big high nature god assumed he was having a tantrum or something and let him have the whole continent, if he just stayed away from everything else, which made Mr. Snow God sad, but convinced him that the rest of the nature gods are a bunch of jerks, anyway.

The rainforest destruction, on the other hand, was a total miss-communication. The local god of death is basically a weird guy who happens to be helpful and generally respected by everyone else. However, he can screw up, because he's a little 'off' due to his general portfolio, because gods are supposed to be immortal, timeless aspects, but he deals with mortality on a daily basis. Such as, for example, manifesting fully before his cult for the first time because he appreciated the effort, but underestimating the effect his presence would have on the world around him.

When he did realize that he accidently wiped out a continent, he immediately got the nature gods to shift the place over into the feywild, so the place could recover faster. The nature gods, while naturally annoyed, accepted that he made a mistake, which naturally dismayed their worshipers, who were concerned that they weren't going to do anything after the fifty foot skull made out of stars showed up.

[Genth]

Imagine living your entire life, countless hours of consciousness within a cool, comfortable, dark place. Nothing to bother you, nothing to abrade your soft skin, and just quiet contemplation. Pure knowledge of everything- everything being nothing, brings you unimaginable comfort, and you rest in your dark, cool, comfortable place, in true harmony. Then suddenly everything is bright, and light, and loud. A million, billion voices screaming in your ears, a million, billion tiny cuts against your skin. You lash out to stop it, but as you feel something break beneath your fingers, the voices only get louder. You can't understand, can't know anything, you're both blind and seeing everything at once. It is agony.

With that, you take the first small step to understanding the Suffering One. We worship not to add to the cacophony, but to cancel it out. Our silent prayers taking place in softly lit churches give the Sufferer respite, and allow ourselves to get a glimpse of the perfect harmony that can exist once existence is no more. We kill and sacrifice not to be cruel or to overpower others, but to quieten the world. Our acolytes, assassins to the less educated, do not speak and ensure that others are silent as well...

________________


Does that help?

[Yora]

Sounds to me like relatively ordinary nature spirits. However in your world, they should stay in the spiritworld, as the physical world is not meant to be directly visited by them. For example, in our real world, the sun is a very important source of life and energy that affects everything in Earths nature. But it is very distant and we recieve only a small, regular quantity of its power. If you would bring even just a small part of the sun to Earth, it would completely destroy the entire world with fire and radiation. Similar, the sea is vital for people who live on the coasts. It brings them food and is a major part of their everyday life. But only as long as it stays at its place. If it is suddenly moved up just 10 meters or so, it causes massive destruction, killing thousands of people.
The Spirit of Cold is a vital part of the ecosystem of your world, but it normally interacts with the physical world only indirectly from the other side of the border that separates the spiritworld from the physical world. Creating very small openings in the border can be very useful for all kinds of magical creations, but if you allow the raw power of the primordial spirits to rush into the physical world uncontrolled, it's just total destruction.

[Psykenthrope]

Imagine living your entire life, countless hours of consciousness within a cool, comfortable, dark place. Nothing to bother you, nothing to abrade your soft skin, and just quiet contemplation. Pure knowledge of everything- everything being nothing, brings you unimaginable comfort, and you rest in your dark, cool, comfortable place, in true harmony. Then suddenly everything is bright, and light, and loud. A million, billion voices screaming in your ears, a million, billion tiny cuts against your skin. You lash out to stop it, but as you feel something break beneath your fingers, the voices only get louder. You can't understand, can't know anything, you're both blind and seeing everything at once. It is agony.

With that, you take the first small step to understanding the Suffering One. We worship not to add to the cacophony, but to cancel it out. Our silent prayers taking place in softly lit churches give the Sufferer respite, and allow ourselves to get a glimpse of the perfect harmony that can exist once existence is no more. We kill and sacrifice not to be cruel or to overpower others, but to quieten the world. Our acolytes, assassins to the less educated, do not speak and ensure that others are silent as well...

________________


Does that help?

This is awesome. Do you mind if I make use of it for my own campaign?

[DoomHat]

Like Genth, I suggest making the "Elder God's" the victims rather then the persecutors. They're simply trying to defend themselves.

The "God's" do not desire worship and never courted it. Mortal kind was an accidental byproduct of an action one of them took which has no comprehensible parallel to anything we mortals do or experience.

The act of worship does not inspire divine favors, it parasitically steals and re-purposes vitality from them. We are like a disease. Every miracle a mortal priest performs causes one of them an injury like an ant bite. We're individually smaller then gnats to them, so all they can see is a hideous rash forming on them.

The cataclysms are the result of them attempting to treat their illness with the celestial equivalent of antiseptic. Lessor terrors and otherworldly disasters are just them scratching at the effected area. So called "demons" are just antibodies from their immune system.

The horror could be stopped if only people would stop praying, but most nations have become dependent on priestly miracles and the churches won't abandon their material and political power easily.

[Psykenthrope]

Like Genth, I suggest making the "Elder God's" the victims rather then the persecutors. They're simply trying to defend themselves.

The "God's" do not desire worship and never courted it. Mortal kind was an accidental byproduct of an action one of them took which has no comprehensible parallel to anything we mortals do or experience.

The act of worship does not inspire divine favors, it parasitically steals and re-purposes vitality from them. We are like a disease. Every miracle a mortal priest performs causes one of them an injury like an ant bite. We're individually smaller then gnats to them, so all they can see is a hideous rash forming on them.

The cataclysms are the result of them attempting to treat their illness with the celestial equivalent of antiseptic. Lessor terrors and otherworldly disasters are just them scratching at the effected area. So called "demons" are just antibodies from their immune system.

The horror could be stopped if only people would stop praying, but most nations have become dependent on priestly miracles and the churches won't abandon their material and political power easily.

This is also very good.

[LordotTrinkets]

Sounds to me like relatively ordinary nature spirits. However in your world, they should stay in the spiritworld, as the physical world is not meant to be directly visited by them. For example, in our real world, the sun is a very important source of life and energy that affects everything in Earths nature. But it is very distant and we recieve only a small, regular quantity of its power. If you would bring even just a small part of the sun to Earth, it would completely destroy the entire world with fire and radiation. Similar, the sea is vital for people who live on the coasts. It brings them food and is a major part of their everyday life. But only as long as it stays at its place. If it is suddenly moved up just 10 meters or so, it causes massive destruction, killing thousands of people.
The Spirit of Cold is a vital part of the ecosystem of your world, but it normally interacts with the physical world only indirectly from the other side of the border that separates the spiritworld from the physical world. Creating very small openings in the border can be very useful for all kinds of magical creations, but if you allow the raw power of the primordial spirits to rush into the physical world uncontrolled, it's just total destruction.

I think this one is my favorite of the lot, of course, I think that the question of why mortals still worship the gods needs some better answering. Assuming one of these to be correct, and mortals knowing about it, they'd obviously stop because they know they're hurting their beloved 'creators'. Not knowing these reasons doesn't help either (I think that idea #1, big unhappy family kind of falls into this category automatically). It seems to me that a different reason needs to be given in order for worship to continue.

So here's my thought, several of these 'gods' honestly and genuinely WANT to help their worshipers. Maybe some prophecy or agreement or even some grand plan of theirs states that one of them will descend into the material world and initiate the next step of evolution among the faithful. The only real problem with the plan is that they don't know WHICH of them is supposed to do this. They were just as surprised as their unsuspecting victims when their first two attempts to enter the world had such catastrophic results (using your idea as the reason, Yora).

Wanting to keep it at least as a partial secret, these beings have dropped several hints of their plan to bring forth this golden age in their holy texts. Thus, resulting in ample reason to trust the 'gods' while simultaneously raising the question of 'Are we sure this is such a bright idea?'

The gods continue to try and find their chosen one, the mortals still have reason to worship their gods.

[Yora]

Encountering the gods, or even their servants, in their true form tends to be disastrous in lots of religions. The gods still care and send their servants, but generally take steps to make sure to use only as much of their true power as the physical world and mortal creatures can handle. I think the idea that gods are terrifying and too much for frail human minds and forms to handle is actually more of the default in human culture. The nice old man who has a casual conversation is a much more recent thing.
Also, while the gods generally care for people, they did not create the world to be a pleasant home for humans. The world does not exist for people. People exist because the gods have some kind of purpose for them in their creation. I think throughout most of human history, the question "why do gods allow bad things to happen?" wasn't even something anyone would ask. The universe is not about us. If a god wants to help humans, that's really nice for the humans and they can consider themselves lucky. Because neither the gods, nor the world exist to please humans. That's not their porpose. That gods even bother with us and giving some occasional help to deal with our problems is nothing they have is something really nice of them. And of course you would want to show them how very greatful you are for that and not make them think you don't appreciate it.
It's not so much that the gods would punish you if you break the rules. The main reason to worship them is to beg for more of the free gifts, which they really don't have to keep giving. That's the original meaning of God's Love. He doesn't have to save souls from hell, but he's jumping through a lot of hoops and dealing with a lot of trouble to do it anyway out of pure kindness. (Of course, that gets a bit complicated once you start to assume the same god created and controls everything and made all the rules in the first place.)
Praise the gods, because the one thing that would be worth than their wrath would be their indifference.

[Genth]

This is awesome. Do you mind if I make use of it for my own campaign?

Please do! Lemme know (via PM) how it's received!

[Benthesquid]

One of the things that doesn't come through in a lot of Lovecraft pastiches is that, by and large, the inconceivable cosmic terrors aren't, in the long run, a lot better off than humanity. The Great Race of Yith is fleeing across centuries, Cthulhu is himself an insignificant gnat compared to Azathoth, etc.

So... maybe the reason they're coming to the Material Plane is because they don't have much of a choice. Their own world is collapsing. They're each trying to prepare Earth for their coming as well- the worshipers of each should get prophecies and powers relevant to the effect that their 'god's' arrival will have on the area.

So- I worship Flarg the Broiler, and have spent my entire life preparing to ease the way for Hir arrival, which will scorch the air and blacken the earth. Myself and my extended family, perhaps our whole culture, are prepared for this arrival, and in the meantime, the essence of Flarg's roasting power that Xi lends us makes it a lot easier for us to live in the Arctic environs.

The only issue is that the guys on the next peninsula over worship Thuxuxuitixu, of the Ten Thousand Poisonous Vapors. And if their guy manifests before ours, then it's game over, man, game over. So we don't take too kindly when Thuxuxuitixuian missionaries canoe on over. On the other hand, they're much better healers than we are, and are in need of the crops we're able to grow year round by providing heat. There are strong reasons for us to stay in contact and trade, and after all these centuries, most of us don't think that either of the Elder Things will be manifesting anytime soon. Plus, we can both agree that the worshipers of Yoth, Who Breathes out Darkness, down in the south are total creeps.

[DoomHat]

\So- I worship Flarg the Broiler, and have spent my entire life preparing to ease the way for Hir arrival, which will scorch the air and blacken the earth. Myself and my extended family, perhaps our whole culture, are prepared for this arrival, and in the meantime, the essence of Flarg's roasting power that Xi lends us makes it a lot easier for us to live in the Arctic environs.

The only issue is that the guys on the next peninsula over worship Thuxuxuitixu, of the Ten Thousand Poisonous Vapors. And if their guy manifests before ours, then it's game over, man, game over. So we don't take too kindly when Thuxuxuitixuian missionaries canoe on over. On the other hand, they're much better healers than we are, and are in need of the crops we're able to grow year round by providing heat. There are strong reasons for us to stay in contact and trade, and after all these centuries, most of us don't think that either of the Elder Things will be manifesting anytime soon. Plus, we can both agree that the worshipers of Yoth, Who Breathes out Darkness, down in the south are total creeps.

This is amazing world building. Brings to mind a very 'Frazetta Painting brought to life' kind of world. Ripped from the pages of Heavy Metal Magazine. I'm spinning me gears as to what sort of campaigns you could run in such a world. It wouldn't be much different from any other middle~low fantasy world, except the Cults of the Hideous Elder Things mainstream and excepted throughout the "civilized" world.

The technology would probably be low over all, and few cultures would see any need for big fancy structures like castles, given that everyone is expecting any one of a dozen cataclysms any day now, so why bother.

[arkham618]

Like Genth, I suggest making the "Elder God's" the victims rather then the persecutors. They're simply trying to defend themselves.

The "God's" do not desire worship and never courted it. Mortal kind was an accidental byproduct of an action one of them took which has no comprehensible parallel to anything we mortals do or experience.

The act of worship does not inspire divine favors, it parasitically steals and re-purposes vitality from them. We are like a disease. Every miracle a mortal priest performs causes one of them an injury like an ant bite. We're individually smaller then gnats to them, so all they can see is a hideous rash forming on them.

The cataclysms are the result of them attempting to treat their illness with the celestial equivalent of antiseptic. Lessor terrors and otherworldly disasters are just them scratching at the effected area. So called "demons" are just antibodies from their immune system.

The horror could be stopped if only people would stop praying, but most nations have become dependent on priestly miracles and the churches won't abandon their material and political power easily.

This. Mortal "worshippers" sap the vitality of the Elder Gods, causing discomfort and malaise. The occasional cataclysm is an attempt by one or another incomprehensibly alien extraplanar being to purge itself of parasites. Mortals continue to pray, despite a liminal awareness of the risk, for the same reason modern societies continue to burn fossil fuels: their civilizations are so thoroughly dependent on "miracles" that they would collapse overnight if suddenly deprived of them. There is probably also an element of denialism, by which religious and secular authorities assert that accounts of past cataclysms are exaggerated and/or fabricated by alarmists seeking to influence policy.

[Citrakayah]

How I do it, is I make it so that ultimately the Elder Evils are perfectly happy to play nice with mortals, it's just that we aren't their primary concern. That ice god wants to cover the entire world in ice, yeah, but he doesn't do it because he wants people to freeze, he does it because he really likes ice. If you were on that continent when he appeared, you'd get the ability to cope with the cold, or get teleported someplace more comfortable, because while the ice god might be a jerk for wrecking your home, he'd really quite prefer to not inconvenience you that much.

And he still gets worship in areas because he's patient, and if you need ice to preserve food he's happy to help. He doesn't need the world to be covered in ice right now, since he's immortal, and he supposes he could settle for less--just like someone who really likes the color green could deal with the entire house not being green--but when given the opportunity to ice someplace over he takes it.

[Bob of Mage]

Okay so what do the gods themselves even think of the "coming"? Is it just as bad for them as thier followers? Did they even see the first two coming?

What do the gods feel about the mortals? Are they just useful tool, lesser partners in a divine scale plan, toy to fool with or beloved childern?

How openly do they talk to their followers? Are there hearlds that show up at important times? If a follower want can they visit thier god's home with high level magic? Are there other options for gods to worship?

If they are like normal gods in all but form you could be an epic quest around the gods trying to fix the issues with the "coming". Depending on if they want the gods could want the PCs to ease the "coming", or reverse and prevent more from happening.

The mortals might not know what is really happening so they might treat things like they would in a normal D&D context. If they do know they might be so used to it that they don't know how to, and are unwilling to stop worshipping. In the second case it could lead to wide spread controls to stop the "coming". Maybe only so many worshippers per god, and any beyond that would be hunted down and killed. Great fodder for stories there.