Title The Midnight Lord,The Prince of Pain
Portfolio Envy Pain Darkness Loss
Alignment Lawful Evil
Worshipers Sadists, masochists
Worshiper Alignment LE,NE,LN
Domains Darkness, Death, Destruction, Evil, Law
Subdomains Catastrophe, Devil, Loss, Murder, Night, Undead
Favored Weapon Spiked Chain
Symbol Chained skull
Allows creation or rising of undead: Yes
Favored Animal(s) Bat
Sacred Colors Dark gray, red
Obedience
Persuade a creature to allow you to inflict a small amount of pain on it. This can be as subtle as thin needles under the skin or as overt as a lashing with a whip— whatever the subject agrees to. If you can legally procure an individual, such as through legalized slavery, you may use a purchased subject instead. If no suitable individuals can be located, coil a spiked chain into a nest and kneel on it, letting your weight sink your knees into the spikes. Whip your own back while chanting praises to Rajuk. Gain a +2 sacred bonus on saving throws against spells that deal hit point damage.
Dogma
Rajuk is a twisted, cruel, jealous god who defiles flesh to bring pain and misery. He represents ever-present pain, emotional darkness, consuming envy, and debilitating loss. Unrepentantly evil, he finds only brief joy in the pain he causes others. His very existence is a corruption and parasite upon the world. His alien mind constantly seeks new ways to oppress, humiliate, demoralize, and destroy others. While his true goals are incomprehensible, his stated desire is to flay every living thing until the entire world is an intertwined mass of bleeding flesh writhing in pain-wracked ecstasy. He whips the minds of serial killers, guides the hands of torturers, and plays the
nerves of the suffering like a master bard.
Rajuk offers no great wisdoms, no promises of universal truth, no guarantee of rewards in the afterlife. His strange mind sees little difference between this life and the next, and he tortures living flesh and dead souls alike
with hideous pleasure and delicious pain. It's possible that this bleak nihilism may be part of some more elaborate master plan incomprehensible to even his greatest priests, but so far the method and message is that existence itself is pain. His faith is lawful, following the natural hierarchy of the strong preying upon the weak, whether for food, entertainment, sex, or proof of dominance.
Rajuk's direct intervention in the lives of mortals is usually brief and ambiguous, with the price often outweighing the benefit. A slave under the whip who prays for relief might experience sexual pleasure
but find the pain is heightened. A craftsman who seeks perfection in his work achieves it only after his obsession drives away all he loves. A count who prays for help against invading ores may gain the help of a cruel warlord who takes over the ore lands as his own and becomes an even greater menace. Despite these hidden poisons, depraved or despairing mortals continue to pray to Rajuk for help, and he has countless minions devoted to listening for these requests, watchful for those who might be tempted by the Dark Prince's umbral embrace. Rajuk's true appearance varies, and there is no consistent depiction of him, but the overall image is
easily recognizable. His flesh is pale and bloodless and
Rajuks favored weapon is the spiked chain, a versatile tool both in battle and in the deepest dungeon, and as a result his symbol is a skull with a spiked chain threaded through the eye sockets. Most of his priests are
clerics, but there are several orders of corrupted paladins who inflict pain in his name, and certain primitive tribes worship him under the tutelage of adepts. Rajukis called the Midnight Lord and the Dark Prince. His most recognizable servants are erinyes, kytons, and hellcats comprised of unfathomable darkness.
The Church
The god's horrid affection attracts evil sadists, demented masochists, and those whose spirits are so wounded that only overwhelming pain distracts them from their sorrows. When prisoners left to starve in oubliettes cut their own flesh just to remind themselves that they exist, the Midnight Lord is there. Jilted lovers who make sick plans to avenge themselves or plot petty cruelties for their unfaithful mate feel his touch upon their souls. Every mother that starves herself because of her dead child, every cult that requires an initiation of pain as proof of sincerity, every teamster who lashes his animals harder to work them faster-all are watched by Rajuk's eye.
Fighters turn to Rajuk to help manage their pain in the midst of battle, and battlefield healers fascinated by vivisection use the god's power to save lives at the cost of their patients' agony. Monks and rogues study vital spots that let them incapacitate opponents silently with intense pain. Assassins learn the most painful nonlethal poisons in order to send a strong message to political rivals. Slavemasters learn how to motivate slaves to their maximum output with proper use of the lash. Constables and inquisitors use torture to extract information and confessions. Though it's rarely wise for them to advertise it, Rajuk's faith plays a role in the lives of all these people.
Services to Rajuk always involve torture, whether performed on slaves, prisoners, or willing members of the cult. The more exquisite the agony, the greater the offering to the Midnight Lord, and particularly skilled
torturers can keep a victim just shy of passing out for days at a time, using magic or drugs to keep themselves awake for these extended "prayer sessions." Clever members choose poetic tortures for members of rival faiths, such as putting golden splints under the nails of Avasir's priests, or affixing red-hot iron shoes to the feet of Kadmus's smiths (called the Dance of Death). Larger temples may have a "scream choir" of alchemically or surgically altered slaves who can only sing or scream a single note when "played" by a torturer-conductor.
Rajuk's church has no overarching organizational tenets. Each cell or temple has an understood hierarchy, based on physical or magical power, ingenuity, willingness and ability to endure pain, and similar elements related
to church practices. Rather than standard duels, rivals within the church often engage in rites of escalating self-inflicted injuries until one party concedes, can no longer perform, or perishes-these contests also escalate
the status of the participants in the eyes of witnesses. There is usually little reason for different congregations to cooperate, as the church rarely has large- scale goals requiring united effort. Rather, the church of ZonKuthon
seeks to fuel a single tide of horror and bloodshed, content to lap at the edges of society, breaking off pieces and slowly weakening it.
In the church, a superior priest is generally called "master" or "mistress," and equals and inferiors are addressed by name without a title.
Temples and Shrines
Rajuk's temples look like torture chambers, and many are actual torture chambers converted for church use. Any typical instrument of torture is a fixture, and sputtering torches or dim smoky candles are the norm for illumination. When worshipers are secretly using a site for rituals, they either bring a representation of the Midnight lord as a centerpiece (often a preserved corpse dressed as the god or a victim to ritualistically disfigure into such an icon), or pray to an empty iron maiden as a representation of his presence. If the church controls the place outright, it has more permanent decorations, such as obscene mosaics that both represent and inflict pain,
perhaps with living creatures bound into grotesque tableaus.
In smaller locales, the church might be a secret cave or basement where the cultists meet, littered with surgical and torture instruments that can reasonably pass as farm tools or craftsman's tools in case the lair is discovered.
Given the specialized interests of the cult, there are few remote shrines, though any place where someone was deliberately brutalized might attract the attention of a Rakian, even for ''.justified" violence like burning an evil necromancer at the stake. The faithful may leave offerings at these sites, such as a few drops of blood, an animal skull, a bit of sharpened metal, and so on, until the place gains a subtle atmosphere of suffering and evil.
Taboos
You thrive on those actions others view as taboo, and thus the idea has little significance to you. To turn from your god in thought and action is to invite his displeasure. To follow his precepts is sweet agony. Any further distinctions are unnecessary. You punish those who get in your way, and expect nothing different for yourself.
A Priest's Role
Aside from rare church-demanded duties, clerics of the Midnight Lord have a single goal: bringing pain to the world. In the absence of moral or immoral guidance from their patron, most choose their own paths and use
Rajuk's gifts to serve their own desires. Their deity is largely indifferent to mortal affairs, but still grants spells in response to the proper prayers. Many clerics of Rajuk seek power without responsibility and aren't particularly zealous. In other words, being a priest is a secondary calling to them, leaving them most of their time to focus on their obsessions with conquest, wealth, magical power, and so on. Some join the church because they tire of the conventional delights of a decadent lifestyle and seek the thrill of darker indulgences. Those who zealously join the church are usually mad or damaged individuals with a history of torturing animals. Such unbalanced sadists tend to rise to the highest ranks in the Rakian church because of their innate lust and desire for pain.
Because the church's use of torture relies on suffering as a measure of devotion, most clerics have many ranks in Heal. They can withstand torture for hours without screaming (though they might do so just for the glory of it) and are experts in preserving life in the face of mortal injury. In remote areas or places where magic is scarce, a Rukian (cleric or otherwise) might gain a reputation as a skilled surgeon, though his gleeful leer as he performs his services without mind for the patient's pain can be unnerving. With their access to divine magic and mundane skills, a Kuthite is a miracle worker on the battlefield, though the patients might regret the attention. A Kuthite priest living in secret in a community might feel protective toward the people in it, seeing them as his toys and brutally retaliating against anyone who threatens them.
For example, if bandits attack a village, the resident Rajian might hunt down the bandit leader, torture him to death, and leave his body parts as grisly trophies in a circle surrounding the bandit camp. In places where the darker side of society is tolerated, Rajians might act more openly and gain a measure of reluctant acceptance. Much as undertakers perform a necessary function that most choose not to think about, representatives of the Midnight Lord's more socially acceptable aspects occasionally appear in civilized areas and might even work significant good, but even these congregations are merely fronts meant to lead the weak toward the true excruciating
majesty of Rajuk.
Aside from the faith's crusade of pain, high-ranking members of the church of Rajuk occasionally set their subordinates to specific goals. Murdering individuals whose death is sure to cause widespread grieving, the recovery of artifacts holy to Rajuk or that the Midnight Lord merely desires and the provocation of wars and other calamities are not beyond the opportunistic church's plotting.
Holy text
Rajuk's holy book is Umbral Leaves, and is usually bound in and made of flayed human skin. It contains all known fragments of lore and prophecy spoken by the god's prophets. The words are scratched into the surface of the
leather and stained with blood to make them readable (rather than being painted or inked onto a flat surface). Older copies may have notes trying to interpret some of the more ambiguous phrases. The collection of quotes is extremely disjointed, and no two copies have the exact same order, sorting them by date, topic, or seemingly at random. Through the ravings of madmen, these comments tell the god's story from his own perspective, speaking of the exhilarating knowledge he discovered beyond the stars.
Holiday
Rajuk's church has few holidays, but regular meetings usually take place on the night of the new moon.
The Joymaking: One bizarre cult belief is that the less flesh a person has, the more concentrated the sensation of pain and pleasure is in that remaining flesh supposedly a legless man experiences greater pain
and pleasure than one with two good legs. Privileged members of the church can arrange to have all their limbs amputated and all unnecessary flesh removed (eyes, ears, tongue, lips, and so on), leaving only a writhing head and torso that must be fed and cleaned by others.
These "Joyful Things" are the most envied of the faith, as their entire existence is devoted to limitless pain and pleasure. They are normally kept in secure places belonging to the church, where any member of the faith
can torture and violate them. The Joymaking holiday has no set date or frequency-a member of the cult who has enough privilege and wealth to deserve and afford this attention may call for the Joymaking ceremony at any
point. All available members of the congregation then eagerly convene to assist in the removal of the honored member's limbs and nonessentials in sections over the course of one night. Often the removed pieces are eaten by the others present in the hopes of gaining an echo of the Joyful Thing's luck and sensation.
The Eternal Kiss: This holiday takes place on the first new moon of the year. A victim is chosen-usually an enemy of the church but sometimes a favored member of the cult-and pampered luxuriously for a period of 11 days with exotic comforts, fine food, erotic companionship, and so on. The eleventh night's attention begins as normal, and then suddenly shifts to physical and emotional torture using whatever creative methods the cultists can devise, from fire to blades to poison to drowning and countless others. The cultists use magic to keep the victim alive as long as possible, often pulling the victim's entrails out and using them for divination (called anthropomancy), looking for signs of Rajuk's will. Very rarely, the suffering victim speaks in tongues, conveying phrases in other languages that can be pieced together into a prophecy.
Relations With Other Gods
Ages ago, Rajuk was Callin, Twin Brother to Callie. Little is known of his original powers or the extent of their relationship, but at some point they argued, and Callie abandoned Xilrin for the far dark places
between the planes. Callie grieved for her lost brother, but was more horrified by his return. The church of Callie contends that before he left, the siblings shared custody over what is now her portfolio, yet during his travels in the void, some unfathomable entity found and possessed the young god, driving his original self into a tiny prison within his own essence.
This alien presence filled the void of Dou-Bral's godly power with twisted versions of the things he used to watch over and protect-beauty became mutilation, love became misery, music became screams and the art of creation became the craft of torture. When Callie reached out to her lost brother, he pierced her hand with his black nails. Again the siblings quarreled, and he responded with violence to her tears and pleading. Only after she wrested Dou-Bral's weapon, a golden glaive, away from Rajuk did they reach a tenuous peace of silence and avoidance. For countless centuries, Callie has tried to find ways to make her brother remember who he is-all with little effect. Rajuk acknowledges that he an Callie were once siblings but has nothing else to say on the matter.
Today, Rajuk has little to do with other deific entities. He has no desire to create alliances, no need to wage war, and no interest in playing diplomat between rival powers. The only deity seemingly safe
from Rajuk's sick intentions is sister Callie, though her followers have no special protection against him or his, and she limits their contact to brief visits in person with powerful defensive magic at the ready.
Rajuk's evil nature and vile practices make him a target for goodminded faiths, though he is as likely to ignore attacks on his minions as to retaliate. From time to time agents of Asmodeus strike deals with his lieutenants and in some areas they act as vassals for Rajian warlords and leaders. while the diabolists may see this as proof of the Archfiend's superiority, most Rajians believe the Dark Prince is simply biding time and laying a trap.
His faithful see those who follow other gods as insects, and scoff at their pitiful attempts to prove their lives have meaning and purpose. While their lord may refrain from attempting to harm Callie, his followers see no need to extend that courtesy to her faithful, and may especially enjoy creating canvases from the stretched skins of the Eternal Rose's worshipers.
Dark Knights of Rajuk
Dark Knights of Rajuk are torture's sadists and enjoy bringing pain to others
- Pain is weakness leaving the body i shall never surrender to my weakness in this life or the next.
- I shall expose any weakness the enemy has physically to ensure victory
- I shall instruct, mentor and assist any of my brothers and sisters that require instruction on how to bring the midnight's lord hand onto their prey.
- I will never incapacitate myself to the point to where i cannot bring forth my master's will, nor should i do the same to those that currently are of use to me.
- My enemies will die a slow and painful death by my hand unless there are pressing matters at hand, every cut, every stab its a glorious gift to my lord.
The following content has been adopted from the god, Zon-Kuthon, created by Paizo. Due to the game's individual setting, races, names and locations may be altered or removed entirely. Please recognize that these gods are not canon to the world of Golarion, so any comments, complaints, or concerns can be directed to the game's admin staff for further inquiry and answers. Thank you in advance.
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