Who Is the Most Evil God in D&D?
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- Опубліковано 21 лис 2024
- There are many gods in the Dungeons & Dragons setting of Forgotten Realms, and like with many real-world ancient mythologies, these deities express various aspects of existence. A number of these gods are cruel, callous, or outright malevolent. Here I dare to take on the quest of determining which Forgotten Realms god is the most evil of them all. Which one is the most unnatural, the most wrong, the perpetrator of the worst atrocities that cause the most suffering to those who least deserve it.
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BG3 did a real good job making Shar feel really, truly, damned evil. Even with the dead 3 there she stood out as being just a nasty piece of work.
They did an excellent job, though I think it is shown better elsewhere.
She was basically the bbeg of the Sundering book series, and she screwed over Shade Enclave (where she was the only premited diety) in some pretty major ways in 3e-4e.
Indeed!
She is. The dead three are so far down on the scale of evil gods compared to Shar its not even funny. They're playing checkers. Shar literally wants to destroy mortal reality and return all existence to absolute darkness. Notice she never even acknowledges the Netherbrain threat. It's beneath her. She let Viconia die for having the audacity to presume that Shar she be involved in this conflict.
To be fair she's been doing this WAY, WAY longer than they have. She's older than Jergal!!
It’s crazy because when I first played shadowheart made her out to be a good person but the more you play the story the more you realize how truly evil she is
I love how Shadowheart from BG3 made it seem like being a Dark Justiciar is the coolest thing ever but then once you meet an actual Dark Justiciar, he turns out to be total loser and this is later revealed to be the norm for Shar worshipers, barring the ones who were brainwashed since childhood. They barely make a living as con-artists and spend their days blaming everything on Selune rather than confront their problems like actual adults
At least when worshiping evil deities like Bane or Lolth, you're eventually rewarded with positions of power
Sounds like some IRL folks lol
He is dumb for plot not a loser, Kedric has all the hallmarks of a successful man and did an extraordinary job at basically everything he does prior to the player turning up. He is a bit of an edgelord (his ears are pointy so he can’t help it) but he did manage to resurrect Isobel eventually so you could say he got what he wanted anyway. He significantly lost at something once in his prior life and that was due to a very large combined effort while in literally everything else he tried he had great success. Just because someone is a meanie or immoral doesn’t mean they are a loser; it just means they are a meanie or immoral. He did also cover a significant section of land in shadow cancer for like 300 years so it did give him something.
@@orangutanenthusiast5631I don’t think they were referring to Ketheric Thorm if that’s who you meant, I think they meant the Dark Justiciar you find in the Trial of Shar if you kill enough of the rats. Forgot their name, but dude was definitely a momma’s boy (for Shar), bit psychotic, and not exactly the badass warriors of darkness Shadowheart has been talking about. Ketheric turned his back on Shar as well.
@@IamAwhiteMEXICAN yeah that guy was a bit of a loser
@@orangutanenthusiast5631 ketheric was never a dark justiciar
Jergal is the most evil because he keeps judging me for doing literally anything
"ah, thou hast taken a bosom companion."
"I see thou hast no maiden"
"Thy haven't an ounce of game"
And look ugly while doing it
“Thou loins hath becometh dryer than mine”
Cyric and Shar were so evil they made Mask go "okay y'all f*cking suck" and switch to Chaotic Neutral in 5e.
Technically he went (very) chaotic neutral from neutral evil in 3e with his functional revival/prophecised reincarnation with Riven (the Zenth killer for hire turned adventurer), was even in the splat books with his followers, altars and boons being chaos aligned and accessible to both good and evil characters instead of only the 3 evil aligned options.
4e just forgot about it till someone figured it out mid Shars spooky night time plot and then retroactively scrambled to make sense out of it with a bad romance fic.
Tharizdun.
Even Lolth and Vecna were like "ahh hell no. He went to far."
Tharizdun would be the most evil, but this video is just Forgotten Realms gods.
Lolth was just mad she hadn't thought of it first. And couldn't pull off what he tried to do.
@@esperthebard I thought Tharizdun WAS in Forgotten realm, no? And yeah when I saw the title of the video he was the name that jumped in my mind first. Like a god so mad and so evil ALL other gods keep him locked up and kill anyone trying to free him.
Tharizdun is probably the most evil entity or force in Forgotten Realms, considering the lengths and depths of his evil canonically transcend both law and chaos (he's beyond neutral evil, he's the personification of evil itself), but he's not technically a deity anymore. He's one of the great old ones, like Cthulu and Dendar the Night Serpent.
Who's Tharizdun?
I still believe Shar is the most evil, especially after that book you can find in the crypt in BG3 tells the story of a Shar worshipper who was never claimed by her goddess once she died. Shar preaches the value of forgetting, and so she will even forget her followers once they die.
That’s also why I can never do an evil run. I can’t consign Shadowheart to that fate.
Yeah, her "evil" run, and at least one other companion's, aren't paths to having power and agency themselves. They're paths to continuing to swallow lies and become nothing more than a disposable tool, while thinking themselves exalted.
I can see that, however Bhaal's goal/view of murder just for the sake of murder makes him more evil in my eyes. Shar has a clear, concise end goal - the destruction of everything/elimination of order, Bhaal just loves killing people because it's fun, and i'd say there's dudes more evil than that
Don't shy away from it, I did an evil campaign where I was genuinely almost ignoring Shadowheart.
But when the time came, I stayed silent. Much to my surprise she went the good path anyway.
I'm just about to finish my first Durge playthrough, I haven't gone full-blown evil but I've dabbled in it. I killed Isobel to get the Slayer form and told Shadowheart to kill the Nightsong. Just make sure you let her take over the House of Grief before you finish Astarion's quest. If she's in charge of the Sharrans, she'll fully support Astarion becoming an ascended vampire.
Then I killed Orin and told Bhaal to piss off. I miss my Slayer form, it was so much fun to use.
@@samvimes9510 Kinda funny hearing someone do all the evil choices for the companion plotlines but then pick the ‘good’ ending of the dark urge plotline by rejecting Bhaal and losing your status as a bhaalspawn. Redeemed dark urge surrounded by all the evil friends he made evil.
Withers: “the goodness in your heart allowed me to revive you from death.”
Dark urge, who caused a massacre at last light and ruined the lives of all his companions: “uh, yeah sure.”
Lolth was a celestial goddess turned in demon goddess. And she's more about chaos than anything else, even helping Drizzt just for the chaos of it all
That's just cap from Salvatore to handwave why Drizzt maintained drow racial powers after he persisted as a character for 4 editions of the game.
Lolth is not a chaos god; the real reason Drizzt has those powers is cuz Salvatore wanted his boy to be cool and the powers where grandfathered in.
@@IrrelevantUserOfNamethat's cap from you, considering that as a creator of stories in the Forgotten Realms, guy has more say so than you ever will ☠️
@@hellzonefirebrigade3056 They can change and retcon as much as they want, doesn't mean I won't call out the spirit and reason for those changes. Drow now apparently get a bad rap for a "minority" that follow lolth and its ALWAYS been so. I suppose its cap to call out this change is chiefly because of modern identity politics trying to "defend" the dark skinned matriarchy and undermining decades of the most interesting writing the settings seen?
Lolth's interpretation has changed to suit the whims and convenience of new writers a number of times. I'm not inclined to care that Salvatore wants to say she supports a virtuous male, different from her in every way for the lols, when her only defining trait is a narcissism that refuses to acknowledge or elevate any thing different from herself.
@@IrrelevantUserOfName you claim you won't accept it when the reality of the matter is dude is thinking on a higher level than you and you aren't even aware of it. Lmao. Who are you to say what's sane, logical, or reasonable for a multi dimensional being? What's normal for the spider, is chaos for the fly👍
@@IrrelevantUserOfName I don't disagree that Drow should remain evil, with the few minor exceptions like Drizzt, however to claim Lolth wouldn't help Drizzt is just outright asinine. She's a Demon. Who doesn't think like we do. So maybe she would. Maybe she wouldn't. Who are we to say? 🤷
so, no one talk about BOOOOAL?
the god BOOOAL is FALSE long live MAHKLOOMPAH
Lloth is a goddess, a Demon-Goddess, but did in fact start as a regular Goddess, dont forget that
Originally Araushnee of the Seldarine
True very true.
Yeah this gets to be more important when you talk about the good gods (especially her daughter) but I do agree - saying that she's just a demon is doing a disservice. Especially because she did lose godhood only to overthrow an actual demon-god so she could steal his portfolio and realm in the abyss
Yeah, she's not really a demon. She's a "demon"-goddess based on her association with The Abyss. Just like Tiamat isn't a devil.
@@MonsterPrincessLala I think that's changed in newer editions. She used to be a goddess turned demon, but now she's retained goddess status even after her banishment. She just also adopted the portfolio of a demon when she took over the demon web. So she's a goddess with an expanded demonic portfolio.
Off topic, but I feel like she should have retained her artisan portfolio. She IS a goddess of spiders and is known for her skill as a weaver, and Drow make the best clothing with art being prized in their culture. It's kind of weird they stripped her of that imo.
Side note Bhaal is alive but demoted to a Quasi-diety as of the adventure "Murder in Baldur's Gate" where the Bhaal spawn from the BG games gets attacked by the other remaining Bhaalspawn and it isnt clear who wins the fight because the survivor turns into a bhaal monster and goes on a rampage before the players kill it, causing the last of Bhaals divine energy to return and this revive him
Bhaal’s always pulling strings watch him return even stronger than before. Dude is so unbelievable Evil it’s unreal
I don’t know this part… so is it canon that Gorion’s ward rejected Bhaal’s throne then?
@@asherandai1000yea, and then he becomes the Grand Duke of BG, before the aforementioned battle with Viekang, who alongside with the Ward are the last two remaining Bhaalspawns. After they both die, Bhaal influences Rilsa Rael (Guild’s kingpin, who wants revolution), Ulder Ravengard (Flaming fist marshal, who becomes a duke to protect the city by getting rid of competition), and Torlin Silvershield (duke, who wants emergency powers to get the Guild out of patriar’s hairs). Canonically, Torlin spreading most chaos and violence out of the three, unknowingly winning Bhaal’s competition of becoming his Chosen. He is stoped by the adventurers and his body is later recovers by Red Wizards to be experimented on. You can actually find Chris Perkins giving speech as the returned Bhaal in one of Acquisitions Incorporated PAX events.
@@Sav-C-Bin huh… so is SoD not canon then? Or did they resolve Skie’s murder somehow?
@@asherandai1000 canonwise, none of the games are canon. The canonical story is the novelization by Philip Athans loosely based on the games and almost unanimously hated by fans for a very weird take (like the Ward being a seasoned mercenary jerk, Khalid being evil, all companions dying at the end, etc.) The books were released in 1999, so naturally SoD never happened.
That being said, I believe WotC try to ignore the “cannon” in the book as much as possible, basically taking only the Ward’s name and appearance from there. So the Skie situation may or may not have happened. My explanation would be that Ward found evidence that Skie was murdered by Irenicus (maybe even found the dagger, containing her soul, and returned it to Silvershields). In BG3 there are some lines that he protected the city from mind flayers even as a Duke, and in the adventure where he dies, he is considered a noble hero by the citizens.
It's ironic how, given the immense debt that D&D owes to J.R.R. Tolkien, that death is assigned to the portfolios of the evil gods in D&D, but in Tolkien's legendarium, death is only evil to evil people.
Death Domain is currently controlled by Lawful Neutral Kelemvor, and his Seneschal Jergal.
Because to a materialistic person, death is the ultimate evil because it removes you from the world.
While to a christian like J.R.R Tolkien, death is a gift for the same reason.
DnD truly greedily devoured all surface-level aspects of Tolkien from orcs, elves, halflings, tr/ents and dragons, while having none of the spirit.
Not quite.
The role that Gods of Death typically fill for passing is handled by neutral Gods, such as Jergal, and represented by the grave domain for clerics that specifically handle the sensitive role of living passing away.
The Death Domain Gods are mainly Gods that seek to exploit, abuse, and defy Death. The reason so many are evil is because many of them were prior mortals who lived as powerful necromancers, in which their ascent to godhood was just another destination on their path to seek immortality and power.
You realize that the "God of Death" in the Forgotten Realms is actually Lawful Neutral, right?
@@SamBrockmann The current one is. The previous one, Myrkal, on the other hand? Dude was a real asshole.
Lloth IS a goddess, she was the wife of the chief elf god until she tried to kill him. Just living in the Abyss does not remove deific status. Her true for IS that of a Drow.
She was turned into a demon as part of her banishment, but you are correct that she did retain her divinity.
Its important to note that Lolth was a Celestial, she was a part of thr Elven Pantheon, but she schemed against Corellon and he banished her.
Bane is easily my favorite tho. There's just so many more things a DM can do with a LE deity rather than a CE Deity
Most definitely! If I remember correctly, he is also the most worshipped god amongst Thayans.
Agreed. I am a fan of the Lord of Hate.
Gives a great in for plots around the Zhentarim, too. And Manshoon, all... several dozen still IIRC, of him. :P
Yeah that's because CE is basically psycopath muderhobo, whereas LE works methodically and you can even see their reasoning at times.
Honorable mention: Garl Glittergold.
He knows what he did.
Hahahahah
#justiceforkurtlemak
What did he do ?
@@Nox-eg3rq Banished the Kobold God to an Endless maze, After centuries of being the Jerry to his Tom.
#Kurtlemakdidnothingwrong
Found the Kobold
I think Cyric is being a little undersold here. Not in his rankings, but I remember him getting up to so many more examples of heinous shit in the book series chronicling his bid for power. Dude didn't just not care for the rules of the gods, he actively manipulated and exploited them, as well as anyone who thought they could ally with or manipulate him to their own ends.
Alas my knowledge of FR lore is limited, and I had to do a fair amount of researching just to make this video. But my intention was that Cyric was the second-most-evil god in this video.
@@esperthebard If that were the case then you'd have to have Shar much, much, much further up the list than you did well ahead of Cyric, because she didn't simply "plot with him", she utterly manipulated him into killing Mystra and left him to be the fall guy for it. Nor was this the first time that Shar killed one of the Mystras (there's been 5 in total and it's implied she's manipulated circumstances to kill at least one other Mystra). Furthermore, Shar is also the goddess of the Underdark, she secretly killed one of the god's of the Underdark and stole his profiles/power in secret--no one--not even his followers knows she did it as she continues to give his clergy spells and whatnot deluding them into thinking he's still exists. BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE, she didn't simply create the Shadoweave, the Weave itself existed literally because of her, it's how she had such influence over it to crate the Shadoweave in the first place. During one of her battles with Selune, Selune mustered as much power she could to try to finish off Shar once and for all, but in the end only managed to mortally wounded Shar, and what she "bled" from that wound was what wound up being the Weave and the first Mystra was born from that; intrigued by it Shar studied the Weave and then forged the Shadoweave which was more than just a "dark side" to the Weave, but an alternate method of tapping into truly dark magics that the Mystras otherwise denied truly evil entities through the Weave, but Shar by her choosing allowed them to utilized with the Shadoweave, thus making her basically responsible for god knows how many atrocities that otherwise may never had been committed if she hadn't allowed such being use such magic. BUT THERE'S EVEN MORE THAN THAT, Shar literally created the Shadowfell, an alternate mirror reality of literal death, decay, and entropy where the most heinous and evil entities known to the entire multiverse calls home, Shar literally created that. The title of "Goddess of Darkness" that she holds is literally darkness in the metaphysical, metaphorical, conceptual, and literal and all their concepts... And all that is still only getting to a dash of what she's all about... tch tch... Sold my girl short, man. XD
Cyric wasn’t the most evil, he just had the most plot armor.
The Avatar Trilogy is a great series that deals with Cyrics rise during the "Time of Troubles" and his hatred for Kelemvor and Midnight that he adventured with@@esperthebard
Yeah I don't know much about Moander, and he sounds horrific and terrible.... but I'd say there's still good ground to stand on, and argue that Cyric is worse.
One of the old SSI Gold Box Forgotten Realms games back in the early 90s had a segment where you traversed Moander's sleeping body in the Astral Plane as an overland map and went to different "dungeons" that were inside him. You had to deal with monsters made from his body, and you'd get displaced by his heartbeat.
Yes, Pools of Darkness was the game. The second image in the section on Moander in this video is the map from the game.
He is known at Wahtzee , god of Pinkertons , disregarding ogls , and AI art.
I’m so glad you didn’t cop out and make Tharizdun the most evil. Although I would think Azmodeus would have been less evil than Shar but hey.
I was surprised he didn’t make it on the list, but I suppose it’s fairly reasonable. He’s kinda less malevolent and sadistic and more just so unimaginably insane that he wants to blow everything the fuck up.
Tharzidun should probably be the most evil god, because he is the one deity that the other gods decided to get together and Exile from thier reality to a new ' Phantom Zone' to contain his destructive madness..
At least Asmodeus honours all the deals he makes (even if it's by force)
At least Asmodeus will claim your soul if you die in his service
At least Asmodeus won't consign the entire universe to primordial nothingness.
Shar does all of these things, and more, for no other reason than spite
He omitted Tharizdun mostly because Tharizdun is a Greyhawk deity more than anything else (unlike, say, Lolth, who initially premiered in GH but is more iconically at home in FR, mostly through Salvatore's books). The Elder Elemental Eye is probably Tharizdun on Oerth, but is Ghanadaur in Faerun.
@@quicksilvertongue3248 Tharizdun has active worship and cults in the Forgotten Realms.
Good list. I'd argue that Shar is still the worst, as the epic levels of evil and darkness she's put into FR is probably larger than any other in pure volume. Many of the others have been worse in specific acts or in short periods of time, burning out quickly. But Shar has been there since the beginning, and has really had her hand in every bad event. But it depends on your era, and how you judge things. Great work!
That's a fair point!
She's the ultimate nihilist. It's easy to see why she always has so many followers.
I knew of Lathander, and then a few obscure deities in D&D, but didn’t actually start getting into most of the deities until recently with Baldur’s Gate 3.
It’s honestly pretty wild, and I really like how deities can cease to exist, come back, then cease to exist again. It gives a lot of openings for campaign ideas to me to run for players.
No matter what people says about Shar.
They people are knowing at last, how to build nice temple (and has a nice outfit for the statue^^)
Shar? Would.
Shar is so evil, even when initially finding shadowheart nice and cute, I was about to instakill her once she revealed being a worshipper of shar
Actually based
Holy based, suffer not the worshipper of the goddess of cuckholdry
I for one welcome the death of the universe Shar is based
lol. BG3 was my first foray into D&D lore and I remember at the beginning of the game being like “oh cool a Goth deity for my goth girlfriend.” But by the end of it absolutely hating Shar.
See I had no idea who Shar was. So I was like "Well, live and let live." And then I found out who she was and what she stood for, and I devoted my entire game to freeing Shadowheart lol.
one point i must make: loth is not evil for being a spider horror. if she was a beautiful drow lady that would not make her any more or less evil. after all beauty does not denote goodness or virtue, or illmater would be evil too.
also she's not really a demon like most demons are demons. she's a demon like tiamat is a devil or dragon. it may be her typing for spells and effects, but she's first and foremost a god.
She's actually a demon. Lolth started as a goddess, had her divinity stripped from her and was turned into a tanar'ri, then became a goddess again.
Depends on the setting.
Forgotten Realms: Shar, the most nihilistic goddess of the Realms who wants to undo the entire world.
Krynn: Probably Morgion
Greyhawk: Without a doubt Tharizdun
Eberron: The Keeper
Kingdoms of Kalamar: Probably the Rotlord
Since the Mystara and Athas settings don't have gods the question is irrelevant for these settings. For Planescape the question is also irrelevant because of the nature of the setting.
With regard to Greyhawk, I'd argue that Tharizdun, for all his malevolence, is sealed away and has to work through cultists. Nerull and Incabulos, however, are free and active - Nerull is feared even in the planes, while Incabulos is apparently despised even by deities of other pantheons.
@@LordMortanius All true, but Tharizdun was so evil, powerfull and destructive that a number of other gods - evil ones included - had to band together to defeat him. And even they couldn't destroy him so they had to seal him away. It's a very similar situation to Rovagug in Pathfinder actually.
While Nerull and Incabulos are both without a doubt evil to the core neither of them has the power of Tharizdun or his intent to undo the entirety of all existance. Gods that want to end all existance are worse than gods of murder or rot.
@@HH-hd7nd True, I'd just say that Nerull and Incabulos are more immediate threats, while Tharizdun is basically an Eldritch Abomination with many aliases, spreading his influence through both the Material and Outer Planes like an insidious virus (Elder Elemental Eye, the Dark God).
Heh, I posted above a list of reasons why it was hard to classify the most evil god for Eberron since the ambiguity of the gods means everyone could interpret them differently, but I completely forgot about the Keeper. Yeah, I can't imagine a way to paint that guy sympathetically unless you watch Wall Street and think Gordon Gekko is a hero.
Moander actually still exists in 5e. He's a Great Old One warlock patron.
I would say Bhaal is WAY worse the Shar. Bhaals followers literally are insane finding pleasure in murder. And his spawn are CRAZY doing murderous acts to get Bhaals "love"
By that logic Loviatar is worse because she'd rather keep you alive to torture you endlessly.
But at least they feel something. Shars numbness and nothingness while still ensuring followers feel empty enough, bitter enough, and knowing there’s a void in their heart is truly horrifying.
Before my campaign crashed to a halt due to player conflict, I was running Shar as a BBEG in my Epic 5e campaign. She had several lesser powers under her thumb, including the god Mask, her son, the "Dread" Three, consisting of Bane, Bhaal and Loviatar instead of Myrkul, the Yuan-Ti deities Merrshaulk and Dendar, a powerful Fey called Shadowsong, and a Planeswalker named Cyndrael. Shar's goal was to return the world to void by awakening an Outer God who was believed to give the world shape in her dreams (a la Azathoth in Cthulu Mythos), and all of Shar's champions had been bested by the players and their allies.
Shar's main plot was to collect the "7 tongues of Am Dhager", Truespeakers whose combined song could end the world, and infect them with an eldritch disease called "Black Tears", which was based on the Sea of the same name in Brutal Legend, but acted like The Corruption from Adult Swim's Learning With Pibby short. Shadowsong was a servant of the Outer God and thus controlled the Black Tears, and attempted to convert two of the Tongues of Am Dhaeger, a 20 year old dhampir and 16 year old faith healer, but the vampiress broke free and even used her song to empower the party enough to slay Loviatar, permanently. The faith healer girl had a massive existential meltdown as her healing powers started driving people to mindless violence and she became scared to touch people.
Mask's goal was to capture the daughter of the goddess of magic, who was under the guise of Celestine, and turn her into a host for Shar to possess, empowering the Shadow Weave to let her defeat her twin sister, who in my setting was the goddess of fate, Lunariel, and her pantheon, which included Celestine, and the Queen of the Dead, Kalresh, alongside her husband, the Insane God going by the name Chaos. Mask split Celestine's daughter into 7 shards and trapped them inside sentient weapons, and the party had to reclaim them, he was defeated by the party Rogue, who successfully stole from Mask, thus succeeding the God of Thieves.
Bane, Bhaal, Loviatar and Merrshaulk's duties were to spread widespread destruction to keep the other gods occupied, empowered by the Black Tears, they were incredibly powerful, and it took every god in the Elvish pantheon fighting him at once to wear him down. While they caused the distraction, Dendar's job was to instil madness through nightmares and awaken the Dead Planet, Atropus, to create a Violet Sun, causing all dead bodies in the sunlight to rise and attack the living. An unexpected side effect was that every dragon on the planet, regardless of alignment, entered a blind rage under the purple sunlight and began laying destruction to wherever the Black Tears were concentrated, one of the main areas hit by the Dragonrage was the High Elvish kingdoms, who were under siege by Bane's forces in retaliation for Loviatar's capture and murder by the party.
Cyndrael was the secret mastermind behind all of this as he is a multiversal destroyer of worlds, and was the one who told Shar about the "One In Between", whose dream manifested all, and he even had the Demiurge Overdeities overthrown by weaker gods in ancient history just so nobody could stop him. He didn't want to just assassinate the world, he wanted it to be as long, slow and brutal a demise as possible. He maintained a guise of planar arms dealer, providing magic and soldiers equipped with high-tech magically-infused gear to the highest bidder. One of the player characters was his genetic experiment scientists, a Drow turned into a half-Drider, half-Marilith, who sought to sabotage Cynder from within, and was about to give the party secret instructions to find his lair, slipped between the Material and Ethereal planes and warded from the gods' knowledge. One of his favourite tricks when the party did battle him unexpectedly was to temporarily send them to the Far Realm and see if they could handle the eldritch horror, but his weakness was that he was overly protective of his pet dragon, and once she was taken from him, his mastermind planning gave way to spite and rage, which would've given the players an opportunity to poke through his seamless illusions.
I’m a little surprised that Gruumsh and Maglubiyet don’t at least get mentions (though I may have missed them as I’m like half asleep right now but can’t find sleep) as they are pretty evil too. Not the most evil but at least almost as evil as Lolth
I had to narrow the list down to the most evil ones (as best as I could figure) because there are just so many FR gods.
@@esperthebard fair enough cause yeah most of these guys on the list are eviler
But Gruumsh and Maglubiyet don't at least get mentions? What about Ilssensine? (Old god of mindflayers)
@@chaosrex1487 Gruumsh and Maglubiyet (and Ilsensine) technically aren't even true FR deities. They're multispheric powers that just have presences in Realmspace, and are not unique to the Realms.
@@esperthebardyou could also argue that are not FR dieties, since their deific status is not tied to FR specifically.
You could make a weaker arguement that Loth also don't belong here, since she was a diety before she even knew that FR existed.
Asmodeus definitely does, since he got his divinity from a blood magic ritual and the FR diety that it's target.
Really like your videos. I'd put Bhaal as the most destructive evil deity, since he has a lot more influence than most chaotic evil deities while still being a force of chaos and mayhem. Lolth is extremely vile, possibly among the most vile of deities. Even the other gods of evil despise her; her only allies are her two sex slave servant god (one of which is also her grandson). Of those two, one hates her and the other would be glad to see her dead. However, in truth Lolth is a minor player on the divine playing field who struggles to keep her subrace worshiping her. Her petty tyranny over the drow would have lead to their destruction except that she cannonly has to micromanage them into not genociding each other every 10 years or so. Hell, her favorite sacrifice is one of her OWN priestesses! And if there's a blood tie from the sacrifice to the one performing it, even better! Lolth will never be a major player outside of drow culture. Too shortsighted.
I'd love to hear your take on Kobold Press's Midgard setting, though I doubt you're familiar with it.
Well said about Lolth. She's too caught up in her own webs, you could say. I'm not familiar with Midgard, and in general, I have mixed feelings about the Kobold Press products I've looked at. Definitely some great ideas in there, but the execution often is wonky (not that official D&D doesn't suffer from similar issues, of course).
You realize that Bhaal is currently a Quasi-Deity, weakest divine rank there is? Lolth absolutely dwarfs him in divine power. Which is probably why Dead Three work together, they are very, very weak individually.
Lolth is apparently Divine Rank 15/16, on the cusp of achieving Greater Deity Status. She has conquered entire worlds, slain gods, and frequently consults entities older than the gods themselves, and has incorporated planets and species she has invaded into her Demonweb Pits.
Bhaal has never conquered planets. While this is something Lolth does every other Tuesday.
@@matiasluukkanen7718, LOLTHITE PROPAGANDIST!
While I like the settings, Mystara and Ravenloft are probably off the table, because one has too many "gods" and the other too few, but Ravenloft darklords pre-5e would be interesting
I do think that they lost some lore in the process of being more Inclusive. As an example, I don't care that the Dr. Frankenstein stand-in is a woman now, but it does bother me that she's 20 instead of 40, and all the cloning & manufactured monster lore that used to go with that domain has been drastically watered down to 1, single creation of hers, instead of potentially hundreds. Also wish they'd kept the big, geological map that included ALL the Domains in relation to one another, especially the Sea of Sorrows.
yeah there were a lot of changes in modern ravenloft I've heard about but not read as I wasn't and am not into 5e. Their excuses for the changes were hollow and meaningless. They could have easily made more domains but instead they made changes to established ones. @@agentchaos9332
Vecna would probably be most evil for Greyhawk. Ditto for Exandria, since he's a force there. I dunno about Dragonlance.
Eberron would be tricky, since the existence of the gods and their exact nature is a matter of faith. Anyone who believes in the Sovereign Host believes in the Dark Six, and vice versa, but the question is whether you embrace or shun them. The Devourer is the embodiment of every aspect of nature that the hippies don't want you to know about, but whether something is attributed to the Devourer or one of the Sovereigns depends not on the thing but its effect. Typically the Devourer is associated with storms and Arawai with gentle rains, but when those gentle rains continue and cause floods, that is the Devourer, and in regions that depend on monsoons and are adapted to them, the heavy rain is a gift of Arawai. The others of the Dark Six are also interpreted differently by different cultures. The Mockery is seen as the god of the ugly parts of war, of betrayal, terrorism, and dishonorable combat. But many weaker creatures and cultures who must wage asymmetrical warfare see him as the Sovereign of Victory. The Shadow is seen as the god of black magic, ambition, evil secrets, and the literal and metaphorical maker of monsters, the parts of Aureon's being that he purged from himself when he mastered magic. But to followers of the Cahzaak Creed, Aureon is a petty tyrant who wants weak sheep to rule over, and the Shadow generously gives his gifts to those who would receive them.
@@agentchaos9332 The biggest change I noticed was the Vlad Dracula stand in (no, not Strahd) also being a woman, but instead of being an inept conqueror surrounded by superior enemies and also being a sexist, she's facing a perpetual zombie apocalpyse.
The Luminous Being is the most evil. Aka Ao's boss we see at the end of the Waterdeep novel. Since he's basically the in universe equivalent of the DM and there are DMs out there far worse than any deity, lol
The Luminous Being is just Ed Greenwood, btw
As you pointed out that's a stand-in for the DM, which could be any alignment, but most often unaligned, or true neutral. If the Luminous Being was evil, their would be no good in the cosmology. But technical argument aside, I think you just need a nicer dm😂
@agentchaos9332 Considering how it's described as a bunch of qualities opposing in one, I've always just thought of it as a gestalt of every DM. I've luckily been blessed with nothing but great DMs currently, though the two groups I frequent are very different in vibes.
The DM usually seeks for Good to win.
luminous being is basically everthing in the verse and more
Depends on how you look at it. Lolth used her own daughter in a regicide attempt. BTW Tiamat also has the domain if destruction. Umberlee is Neutral evil but generally she is indifferent. More like a force if nature than a malevolent being.
I have a hard time seeing The Ocean as intentionally evil. It simply exists. Too much good can come from it.
@@abcdefghij337 she is not the ocean, she has dominion over it.
you meet representatives of many of these in Baldursgate 3. Those you don't can be found on Magic the gathering cards, including Bhaal, Myrkul and Bane. Loth the spider queen is made into a planeswalker in magic the gathering. Vecna is also there, there are "body parts of vecna" cards, like one is hand of Vecna. Asmodeus and Zariel are cards too.
Since playing BG3, I vote for Shar as the most evil deity. The sheer amount of sadistic, nihilistic malignancy, the coldness and pettiness she exudes is breathtaking. The Dead Three are much more "classically" evil, almost boring.
SPOILERS FOR BG3 (ESPECIALLY SHAdOWHEART) Yeah I did a full evil run of BG3, with Laezel, Shadowheart and Astarion as my party, went completely in with dark justicier Shadowheart and becoming chosen of Shar and Shar convincing her to kill her parents and then be cool about it cause her memories could be wiped, after revealing that she had honed her skills of torture on them seemed just as, if not more evil than any of the classically, murderous evil my embracing Bhaal durge was doing (though it was my durge that told shadowheart to kill her parents and Astarion to ascend so maybe not), Laezel I let go because why let her power go to Vlaakith when I can control her myself ;)
Compared to the other gods, Shar is tame.
The dead 3 are much more focused on the few concepts they represent though each of them as well as several other entities took aspects that Jergal used to be
That’s just to say the original and true god of death Jergal represents everything withers can do as well as everything the dead three and others can do but since each of them just took a piece of his powers they’re limited on what they can be
My most evil DnD dieties are Shar being the most evil, in the sense of unrivaled sadism, emotional-psychological torture, and manipulation, Lolth the most evil for arguably being the most degenerate and ruthless, and Bhaal being the most evil in the sense of sheer malic and destruction. They are my top 3
I'd argue that Shar is actually the worst. The others want to corrupt, dominate, or otherwise control the setting, but Shar is pure entropy. What she desires is an end to everything, to be replaced by eternal nothingness, which in my book is worse.
Not to mention that she doesn’t even offer any rewards for her followers. The book you can find in the crypt in BG3 where Withers is reveals that a Shar worshipper was left unclaimed in the City of Judgement after she died. All Sharrans will ultimately be forgotten by their goddess, which is, to me at least, far crueler than the rewards of any other “evil” gods like the Dead Three.
she sad
While fucked up, I think bringing about nothingness lacks the malice of wanting to dominate and actively snuff out happiness
I'd argue it's Cyric, not a god we hear a lot about in modern DnD but he's pretty much the embodiment of chaos and evil. While Shar does embody suffering and pain, there's an underlying sense of peace and closure to her domain. Cyric isn't like that. Cyric wants everyone dead because fuck you. He's a mad, psycopathic, irredeemable, powerhungry god who has no upside.
@elderdankspawn3973 yeah I think people aren't realizing that while selfish, Shar has her reasons for wanting destruction of everything, murder just for the sake of killing someone will always be more malicious/evil than trying to achieve unmaking the universe, Shar *is* the embodiment of the nothingness that existed before creation and just wants to return to that, if in the end nothing exists everything else is rather inconsequential. Also, the complete elimination of the universe means all good is gone yes, but so is all of the evil and pain and suffering. Shar is too far too complex in her history, motivations, and goals to be considered the most evil imo (not that complex goals can't be evil, it's a lot easier to justify what Shar wants than what certain other dieties goals are)
Malar to me, is one of the most sadistic and evil gods. One could be say he is just a dark aspect of nature, but the glee he takes in the most heinous and cruel acts is terrifying.
I'm a fan of Tempus, learned a lot about him when I was looking for gods to worship in Balder's Gate 3. I think it would be cool to see more videos about the gods, their domains, where they call home, their philosophies, what their believers are like, basically the general "culture" around each one. Understandably there's likely little about ALL of them, but it's nice to paint a picture about what a life of worship under specific gods may feel like. Could help players get a good starting point in what making a Cleric of X or Y may be like.
GARAGOS IS BETTER THEN TEMPUS!!!
In fact I have created 6 different lvl 1 characters in case I found a regular group to play with.
Anyhow, 1 of my characters is: A Female Chaotic Neutral Astral Elf Anthropologist background Paladin planning Oath of Conquest, and she plans to build a new Pantheon of Deities after she Conquers and creates a new Queendom, her planned primary War Deity is Garagos. She wants to restore him to full power and essentially subsume both Tempus & Red Knight incorporating their power into him. Her primary Death Deity would be the Raven Queen and with that wants to help her subsume Myrkul and all other Death/Undeath Deities into her power.
@@morrigankasa570 That's one ambitious elf! Guess even bloodthirsty evil demigods have their fangirls.
@@nogitsune4452 Yep she is ambitious. Part of her reasons for that is this.
She grew up in a "Crossroad" of sorts in the Astral Plane between the Feywilds, Material Plane, and the Astral Plane. She slowly became old enough to be independent/adult enough to go out on her own (she aged albeit slowly because of the slight influence of energy between the Planes and it took so long that neither her nor her parents know their actual ages). Anyway, once she was that old she carefully ventured onto the Material/Mortal Plane and stayed in a Moon Elf village on the edge of a Savannah/Desert type place. She slowly became friends with most of the people in the village and would carefully ventured into an old abandoned ruin near the village partly consumed by the sands of the Desert/Savannah. She would also go back home to the Crossroads at times with countless books/documents she gathered from the Village & traders passing through it. Each time she went back home then returned to the Village there would be large gaps of time unknown to her specifically. However; the last time she returned to the Village she saw it had been attacked/burned/destroyed by some Unknown Person/Persons. It made her extremely Angry & Sad since the Villagers where her friends. So she vowed to find out who had done it to the best of her ability and to Conquer whoever did this as well as other amounts of territory. Then she would rebuild the Village as the heart of her Queendom/Empire. She informed her parents of that Vow and the reasons behind it even showing them the Destruction of the Village. Her parents also got angry at the Destruction since though they weren't as close to the people as their daughter, they still cared somewhat about the Villagers. So her parents promised to help her as best they can which includes finding the traces/last wisps of power of various Lost/Weakened/Dead Deities and providing their daughter the best Starting Gear/Equipment possible.
Finally, my character pities all "Shorter-Lived" Races and views them as nearly hopeless because of the countless books/documents she's read and her observations of the Material Plane. To her it seems the only decent Races that can have a reasonable impact and cultural survival are Elves or Dwarves or Gnomes. To her it seems Humans and most other Races are always changing their culture/dying rapidly (despite many of her observations lasting many decades but due to her longevity/strange detachments from Time seems rapid/short to her).
The 2e books Demihuman Deities, Faiths and Avatars and Powers and Pantheons cover you. Those books cover the Faerunian pantheon, the Mulhorandi pantheon, the Unteric and Chultan pantheons and the nonhuman pantheons worshipped in the realms, and provide detailed information on the clergy, holy days and ceremonies, favored animals and creatures, formal raiment, etc.
Any video about the gods of Athas would be an excellent for the first day of the 4th month of the year.
I once heard about a horror novel that had a monster composed of dead bodies and it got larger as it killed, rampaged the cities and countryside. I wonder if that influenced the creation of Moander or vice-versa.
18:05 Am I the only one who admires the clean linework, crisp colors, and unintentionally cute eyeballs?
Bhaal seems to be loosely based on Baal, a Canaanite deity that's been quite literally demonized by the Christian faith.
and rightly so.. Baal's followers ritually sacrificed children and still do.
Yeah but Baal seems to have been demonised for kind of a good reason. It’s worshippers sacrificed people sometimes children sooo…
besides the name, there's little resemblance. Sure, worshippers of Baal did sacrifice children occasionally, but Baal was a god of fertility and rain, who defended humanity from an evil dragon of floods and the god of death. He was not a bloodthirsty god of murder, no matter how cruel his worshippers might have been.
Christians have done worse sooo...
"Demonized"
Please read historical sources and you see what Romans, Greeks and Jews wrote about the cult of Baal (Lord) Hadad/Moloch. Those are chilling, repulsive stories.
Jewish prophets were repeatedly saying in their warnings in scrolls of Qumran and Old Testament; "People, sacrificing your children to the Tophet of Fire is fucking evil! God will turn away in disgust if you do that."
Jewish People: "Nah, these cults are lit!"
The very fact that the priests of Baal had special drums designed to drown the screams of the newborns/children sacrificed tells everything you need to know about their lord.
The very fact that priests of Baal who intercepted Greek ship had tradition of flaying "most beautiful" man aboard and making ritual sails of his skin, is also quite telling.
Christianity did only one thing, recognized that obviously abominable and evil spiritual entities are demons, astral criminals in-hiding, feeding on human souls they manage to ensnare.
And they are apparently trying to claw their way back into unguarded hearts and ignorant minds by whatever means necessary.
My favourite is "Meh". God of indifference.
He has by far the most followers, but they just can't be bothered...
Been waiting for this kind of video forever!! But I was so sad that Loviatar wasn't even an honorable mention 💔
Either way, your videos never cease to inspire, Esper!
Especially watching this 6 days before christmas, that intro was chilling
Well done
Great video! Saw some things that in the Tiamat slide that I think I can provide an alternative angle on. Most of the people that worship Tiamat in FR are Humans or humanoids that trick dragons into servicing them, which could be the reason for Tiamat's domain.
Also, in the *Starlight Enclave* book (book 47 of the Drizzt series, don't blame anybody for not getting that far) it is revealed that pristesses of Lolth Can have the Knowledge domain, indicating that the listed domain in the rulebooks might be the most common or preferred domain of clerics of that particular diety.
19:46 and it sounds like Moander (if he's alive again) actually gets off the couch once in awhile
@esperthebard As someone who has played Curse of the Azure Bonds and Pools of Darkness, fighting his cultists and even walking on his dead corpse on the astral plane, I'm very glad to see you include Moander on this list. And right on the top!
I would put Lolth higher. You know she is bad when even other devil deities calls her insane for how much she is tortuting her own followers.
I haven't watched all the way through yet, but I think starting off by qualifying tiers/magnitudes of evil would have been a good idea.
I attempted to do that in this video: ua-cam.com/video/ugPTfqgv1NE/v-deo.html
I remember reading the novels in the early 90s that detailed how Cyric murdered Mystra and became a god. He was a rogue (or rather, a Thief, as the class was called back then). Like all of the Forgotten Realms novels, it was mediocre, but still entertaining enough to finish (well, I was a teenager...). I did not like the Forgotten Realms novels as they often felt like they were full of Mary Sues, but that was more for the different "Harpers" series. I read Spellfire and did not want to read any more Forgotten Realms books after that.
Nice. Now do the goodest of the good gods in Forgotten Realms!
Did I miss Loviatar? Talona? Pain and Poison at least deserve an honorable mention next to Moander.
1000%! And they detest each other which is amazing 😅
Hoard of the Dragon Queen - our party was supposed to prevent a cult from bringing forth Tiamat... we ended up becoming dragon priests and doing it ourselves.
Lol
Bhaal isn't dead- he's back-, and Bane arguably proved himself more evil than Bhaal back in the Avatar crisis (where both met their first deaths) after sacrificing all of Bhaal's followers for power (because Bane was running out of his own followers after sacrificing too many of THEM).
Mystra never aided Cyric on his ascension to power- in fact, she tried desperately to thwart it, and became his arch-enemy immediately after.
Lolth is also a genuine deity who only became a demon because her ex-husband cast her into the Abyss after she tried to murder him, and she's proven herself to be one of the most sadistic, unstable and cruel of all deities with how she runs Drow society out of spite.
Sorry, but a lot of this seems pretty outdated and not the best researched.
Hey Esper, I got one for you, the original evil from Mystara, The Egg of Coot. It's a Dave Arneson creation, he used a H.P. Lovecraft monster, the Ugga Naach. I'm going to use Star Spawn Emissary stats, just because it comes in two forms a lesser and greater. You have to defeat the lesser form to get to the greater form, sounds like an Egg to me.
It slammed into the world as a comet nearly destroying a race of barbarians and changing the land scape forever. He pollutes the ground and water and even people minds with it's psionics. What God ever presented itself in such a fashion. Pure evil nothing is safe the ground, water, plants, animals, all humanoids and not just the pretty ones. Doesn't matter if you're good, neutral, evil you are not safe. You are just another thing to be corrupted.
Thanks Esper for the video you have a wonderful day!
Ah, one of my absolute faves in terms of fluff and background info. I inhaled the "Avatar" novel trilogy back then and looked out for all kinds of source material. Great to see the 2nd edition pics in the beginning of your video! Our group back then had quite some "fun" with Cyric and his followers. Gotta love this insane bastard :D
You should do a video on who is the most good God in D&D next 😁
Shar is just a petty Goddess lashing out at the world because she's mad at Selune.
Awesome video! I wasn't familiar with Moander before but it's really interesting to learn about him.
For me Lolth is a close second just for how treacherous, manipulative and sadistic she is. Drow societies that worship her seem so hellish and rife with suffering, especially given she thrives even on one of her most loyal priestesses getting betrayed by another Lolthite and sacrificed in her name.
No matter how devoted you are to Lolth, to her you are still just a worthless plaything to deceive, exploit and torture.
2nd edition and books (novels) have him in it as well
Lolth is the most terrifying to me because while she feigns that she cares about the drow, she actually is just using them to get to Corellian, she is the very model for the crazy X
@@calmman32 and a PC game. "Curse of the Azure Bonds", one of the classic "Gold Box" series of games, came out in 1989 (based on "The Finder’s Stone" Trilogy of FR novels).
I liked Moander so much (having encountered him for the first time in detail in the 2E book "Faiths & Avatars"), that when I made my homebrewed setting I lifted some stuff from him when making one of the gods of the setting. Ison, my settings version, was NE rather than CE (befitting the "Evil Druidic Cult" motif I gave his followers) though he kept the corruption, rot, and decay portfolio (but added disease). His Druid followers could be detected when Wildshaped due to their forms possessing signs of illness and/or decay.
Faiths and Avatars to learn about Moander. Tymoras Luck mentions him as well.
With just the sheer number of gods who practice trickery, I was half expecting Yakub to appear here as well
Well, if you want to skip alignment and go for type, you can go for Bardic and other artistic gods (given your title).
You can call it "Esper's Guide to Gods who Rock"!
Some say Bill Wilkerson's "spider queen" was used by TSR after a loss in a module contest in the late 70's that later became Lolth...maybe
I was waiting for the pun "oh my god"
From all you said about Asmodeus: "He corrupts people and uses them and other evil people in his army to defend the realms from obliteration by the Demons." That's not as bad as trying to dominate everything and everyone under the cruel leadership of Bane, or promote murder at the scale of Bhaal.
Orcus. Demon lord who gained godhood.If you move he hates you. His dominion includes undead, but he hates undead as well. He doesn´t really have that many worshippers, since he quite often kills them for because they exist. Even gods feared him. He wants static stagnant world. He only tolerated undead, yet hated them as well. He created first of the ghouls and the death knights.
"Orcus was wholly misanthropic and self-absorbed with his hatred of all things a nihlistic and brooding being who sought to put an end to all hope. He cared for nothing save himself-not even his devotees and undead servants-and focused only on spreading the evil and agony that resided within him. "
The first death knight was created by Demorgorgon. Given that Orcus was a mortal necromancer-priest before he became a tanar'ri, the usual undead culprits (liches, vampires, etc) are unlikely to be his creations. There definitely are undead he pioneered (visages, devourers), but the standard ones are unlikely to be associated with him. Even his creation of Doresain is a recent invention.
@@LordMortanius I think there are sources that say differently. Meaning we are both right.
I vote Cyric for the total amount of chaos caused, the fact he wanted to convert all the other Gods to worship him, and how he saw other Gods as just angry voices in his own head
Everybody is saying Shar, which is full sure valid but for me it’s always gonna be Bhaal dude is just so over the top mustache twirling evil it’s amazing, even being related to him drives you insane with his evil
Wut? I mean agree that Bhaal is undersold here and I would say he is by far the most evil… but moustache twirling? Try blood soaked horror incarnate with a side order of the most brutal suffering imaginable, all seasoned with the incoherent ramblings of utter chaos. The time of troubles literally started because he subjugated Bane and Myrkul and told them to steal from AO for him (unconfirmed at the time and later retconned to absolve Bhaal of responsibility).
Tharizdun. That's my fav uber bad diety, goes way back, and worthy of a half hour
I think the Drow Spider Queen would be a top choice.
Thanks Esper, my man. I was hoping you would do one on this exact topic!
I'm surprised you didn't mention the goddess Loviatar, the Maiden of Pain.
Yeah she..doesn't get talked about. Partly because she was never popular in the first place, and now recently because she's massively NSFW and everything that WOTC doesn't like about drow lore applies to her her too
@agentchaos9332 I just figured she would show up on a list of the MOST evil, since she is objectively more evil than Bane. However, she is an intermediary deity, as opposed to a greater deity like Bane, Cyric, and Bhaal.
@rowanchurch702 I mean if we're going by Power/ divine rank then it should be Shar
@@agentchaos9332 I was more meaning that he only talked about greater deities. If we go into intermediary and lesser deities, the video would be much longer. Trying to stay out of the weeds as it were.
@@rowanchurch702 Is Tiamut classified as a Greater deity now?
Great video! I'm playing with Planescape and having these kinds of lore videos is most excellent.
Never grade evil, less you pick side with the lesser of your foes, evil is evil, smite is righteous!. Great video as always keep em coming, would love to see more gods and settings explored. Also would love to see you make more monsters custom of your own design or recreate anew older well known monsters , deities, demons , gods and the likes!
I recently started playing Baldurs Gate 3 and absolutely love it. I had no idea that all of the lore in the game was actually from DnD because I've never played it. Pretty cool though
You should do a list of the most evil Greyhawk deities. It was the OG D&D setting after all, and the default for 3rd Edition.
Btw, what book did the art for the priests at the beginning of the vid come from?
Greyhawk had great gods. Hextor was a favorite of mine
I believe those pics came from AD&D 2nd edition Faiths and Avatars, or Powers and Pantheons, or Demihuman Deities. They were all detailed sourcebooks that had similar artwork. Good books if you want detailed history of everything from before the Spellplague.
Talos should have gone in the list too. I would argue he is more evil than Bane. At least Bane tries to structure evil around himself, which gives those who live beside him some kind of safety.
Talos doesn't. "Talos can see nothing but a world that must be destroyed", as Mystra says. He is a huge all-powerfull psychopatic manchild, who cares only about destruction, savagery and chaos. He may similar to Shar to some extent in his apocaliptic delusions, there is an important detail.Talos comes as such a menace, that most of his power was granted by people, who are TERRIFIED by him and tries to please this maniac not to attack them but rather someone else. And this was enough to help him achieve the GREATER DEITY status, whithout any additional pocket dimensions, which Shar obtains for example.
I think that says everything you need about how much of a monster he is.
I'd be interested in Ebberon's gods. I never had a lot of exposure to them.
They don't technically have gods. Kind of what makes the setting unique. There's a few beings, entities & forces with Godlike powers, & the Clerics get their power from somewhere, but deities in the traditional sense don't exist in ebberon
Compared to other settings Eberron, in my opinion, offers the most robust treatment of religion. The Church of the Silver Flame worships something like the Force in Star Wars but with a deeply Catholic aesthetic. The followers of the Blood of Vol believe their divinity lies within and seek a true undeath rather than vampirism or lichdom. Elves worship their ancestors who, in the case of one culture, have the best of their ancestors preserved as liches (using positive vs. negative energy-that’s also part of Eberron’s cosmology-they don’t need to consume souls, for example) so they can continue to guide their people. Warforged (sentient constructs built to fight in war) often worship a higher form of themselves called the Lord of Blades. One race, the Kalashtar, don’t really worship, but share a psionic reverie where they meditate on what they call The Path of Light. You can worship demons or their lieutenants. The most popular religion is the worship of the Sovereign Host or their mirror, the Dark Six. It’s decentralized and I suppose a DM could decide if they’re really real, but Keith Baker, the setting’s creator, leaves it as an open question. For the worshippers of t op he Nine Sovereigns seeing their gods would diminish them-it’s faith that makes their existence meaningful to us. You can also be an atheist, agnostic, deist, etc. in Eberron
tl;dr The people of Eberron believe in gods and priests wield divine magic, but unlike FR, where gods walking the earth is irrefutable historical fact, there is no unambiguous proof that they exist. And several of its religions aren't theistic.
Cool video, esper! Sudenote: When it comes to gods outside of FR, I would say Tharizdun from greyhawk and Khyber from eberron are most evil. Tharizdun created th' abyss, meanwhile Khyber created ebberon's version of th' far realm, created ebboron's fiends, and tiamat is her daughter.
Bhaal is the great value brand version of Khorne
You know, there is a whole arc that starts in 1372 dr, same age of neverwinter nights, narrated in the war of the spider queen series, that explains how lolth kind of "ascended" and became a greater deity, and her plane shifted out of the abyss becoming a whole new dimension. It's not in the abyss anymore, and she's not a "demon" so to speak, even if to me she seems pretty demonic
I think Shar is the ultimate evil, keep the videos coming they are great
Yeah in older editions if I remember correctly she once tried to eradicate all of existence and all light consequently that's her biggest goal. so yeah she deserve to be higher Lolth as well considering all of the horrible things she does to her own subjects on a near daily basis and what got her in the abyss in the first place her attempted assassination of Corellon yes 5e doesn't talk about it but it should be mentioned because I think it makes a lot More sense than in Mordenkainen's tome of foes which is told from his balance hyperfixated true neutral bias because Corellon is a Chaotic good deity at his core disrupting balance and equilibrium even if it is for a good cause so Mordenkainen might by rather prejudiced against his kind.
Yes, i agree
@@docbaker3333 Not many talk about shar ultimate goal, and lolth kind of act like lilith trying to crush their husbands
Seems this video should be straight up titled "Most Evil God in Forgotten Realms" since, in all of D&D, the Greyhawk pantheon, alone, is home to big league nasties like Vecna, Tharizdun, and Iuz.
Bhaal is my favorite because in bg2 and 3 i am basically demigod thx to him being my father 10/10 would worship again but... Lolth dialogue option are so good tho especially a cleric of Lolth
Fr playing as a Bhaal spawn is insane yes but very fun and interesting would play as a Bhaal spawn again 10/10
I love how Tiamat is one of the iconic forms of the Dark Goddess: Takhisis in Dragonlance.
The most evil god in the universe is something my stomach didn't agree with.
You eat many things o dragon, what could it have been?
@@esperthebard Don't remember, but the results of eating it was mentioned in this video.
Can't say she's the MOST evil but I find Loviatar, Goddess of pain and agony to be very unsettling yet intriguing. She has this restless, morbid, and sadistic curiosity about mortals and their relationship to pain, proselytizes that pain is sacred and the only path to enlightenment despite being incapable of pain herself.
Prior to watching: Lolth? Gotta be Lolth.
While watching: oh, I forgot about Tharizdun. But that's Greyhawk, right? IDK my money's still on the spider queen.
Indeed Tharizdun is Greyhawk, and he's definitely the evilest.
@@esperthebardhe has active cults and worshippers in Forgotten Realms and has made himself a problem in Faerun too
I would have figured that Shargaas would get a mention, since he's basically just Orcus in terms of his goals and ambitions for reality.
Ah dang, I didn't come across him during my research. There are just so many freakin gods in FR, especially when you have to consider the pre-Spellplague vs. the post-Spellplague arrangements.
Any reason Myrkul didn’t make the list?
Probably because he has very little power/influence. He was (if I am remembering correctly) originally a Mortal along with a couple others who managed to encounter the first/original God of Death. That Original God was tired and wanted to "die" as much as a God can. That Original God divided his Domain between the 3 of them. So they became Quasi-Deities, over time they all grew in power but Myrkul was still the weakest.
Finally, Myrkul is mainly just about Death & Undeath which in and of itself isn't inherently Evil.
@@morrigankasa570myrkul, bane, and bhaal were those who defeated the death god. After the fight they had to play a game of bones to decide how they would divide the power. This goes way back to 2nd edition FR source book.
@@AdryanBlantz That's it, I forgot the names of the other 2. But I don't think it was a defeat in conventional sense. If I remember the rest correctly the original Deity was tired of being a Deity with responsibilities and wanted to eternally rest.
Welp. Now I know whose cult is going to be the villains of my next campaign.
The God of 80s grifter televangelism, it almost canceled and killed the setting!
It is no match for the 80s god of glitter.
@@poilboiler Which was all but destroyed when the Buddha Kurt Cobain reached Nirvana!
What no Loviatar? Goddess of hurt, maiden of pain?
No clue what his name was, but there was this evil chaos god who sent a flood to wipe out his creation.
I might be mistaken because it's been awhile but the trickery domain from tiamat comes from her history when she fooled the untheric pantheon and basically brought about their end.
4:32 BOOBIE
11:18 "Oh boy, here I go killin' again!"
In the words of a certain gold throned parody:
“That is like asking what kind of brain cancer I prefer. I am too busy frothing and screaming to answer.”
7:25 what is up with that booty spider picture 🤣 the artist was definitely down bad when he drew this.