Church of Lamashtu
Lamashtu’s church is scattered and lacks an overall hierarchy. It is rare that two priests come into conflict, as they recognize their shared devotion as well as the hostility they face from those outside the faith. When conflict is inevitable, the priests compare scars, number of offspring, and malformations to determine which is superior. Magical power is the last element compared—a less experienced priestess with six children can have higher status than an older one with fewer surviving children. Conflict among tribes that worship Lamashtu is just as rare.
Services to Lamashtu include howling, screaming, branding, bloodletting, childbirth, and sacrificing humanoids or animals. The use of music is limited to a throbbing drumbeat that sets the tempo for the ceremony’s events. Services usually take place at night or underground, though an auspicious labor or a particularly long and painful birth might inspire a ritual no matter when it occurs.
The use of intoxicants is a common part of Lamashtan rituals, which often devolve into an orgiastic excess of food, sex, hallucination, and violence. The Demon Queen’s followers ritually eat hallucinogenic plants and poisonous animals to alter their perceptions of the mortal world, sometimes causing permanent mental changes and insanity—though in most cases, the substances only cause vivid dreamlike or nightmarish visions. Cultists have also been known to poison others with these materials in order to sow chaos. Though most cultists are too crude and direct to formulate complex attacks against the psyche, particularly devious members have been known to harass and demoralize opposing groups (such as monk orders and religions that espouse physical beauty) with horrifying campaigns of torture and humiliation intended to break their enemies’ spirits. Communing with the Demon Queen typically involves an animal or beast for her to possess and some sort of meat sacrifice for the creature to eat.
Lamashtu’s worshipers often perform ritualistic self-mutilation to prove their devotion to her, wearing their scars as trophies until the lucky day when she graces them with some kind of deformity (which is then displayed with reverence). A rare few use primitive surgery to make these alterations, but most are just masochists with a high tolerance for pain and crippling injuries. Those that wholly abandon their original appearance to become more bestial are highly respected for their physical sacrifices, and gain power and favor in the goddess’s eyes. Adventurers tell of at least one pink-skinned gnoll chieftain who speaks like a human nobleman raised in a great city.
Pregnant cultists can pray for Lamashtu’s blessing, transforming their unborn into monsters that claw their way free of the womb, leaving behind horrific scarring that the faithful view as signs of devotion and piety. In these ritual births, magical healing is shunned as it prevents scarring, though nonmagical healers are typically present to give the mother a chance of surviving. Because they can bear children, female cultists rank high in Lamashtu-worshipping communities. Bearing many monstrous children is an ambitious goal for cultists, (especially as some of Lamashtu’s spawn are too deformed or fragile to survive long), but success brings with it the deep respect of other worshipers. Barren women tend to have low status within any Lamashtan tribe and often try to make themselves useful to the tribe in other ways—hunting, raiding, and guarding whenever possible—lest they risk being shunned as Lamashtu’s worshipers consider infertility a curse from the Demon Queen. Some male worshipers of Lamashtu, jealous of the revered position of female clergy members, go to outlandish and repulsive lengths to mimic the ability to give birth, willingly becoming the vessels for rot grubs, xill eggs, vrock swarms, and other terrible parasites.
Assets
Temples and Shrines
The Demon Queen’s church operates on the outskirts of civilization. Most primitive humanoids worship her outside or underground, their gathering places simple affairs, usually with flat, bloodstained rocks suitable for sacrifices or more ornate rings of stones and idols carved with the goddess’s image. Civilized folk usually cannot worship Lamashtu publicly, and thus only construct churches officially dedicated to her in the most depraved lands (such as Belkzen and the Worldwound). More commonly, her worshipers build elaborate hidden shrines beneath cities, in ruins, or in other secret redoubts. In such places, Lamashtu’s faithful pay their foul mistress honor as grandly as secrecy allows. In both cases, Lamashtu’s shrines feature an altar carved with a shallow basin. Some sites built to honor the goddess and where the faithful make regular blood sacrifices to her are blessed with the waters of Lamashtu, foul unholy fluid that bubbles up upon the altar or in specially consecrated fonts. If a creature drinks of these waters, he suffers terrible side effects.Worship
Adventurers
The worshipers of Lamashtu are monstrous, whether in appearance or deep in their souls. Her worshipers wish nothing less than overarching corruption, destruction, and the defilement of all that is beautiful. They are outsiders and rejects from civilized society, often from birth, and see existence as an endless bath of blood and entrails, a constant churn of life rising and falling under the teeth and blades of those stronger, smarter, or luckier. They believe in the propagation of monsters, all sorts of crossbreeds and abominations, and the hot and vicious filth of life. They are the incarnations of vile poisoned fertility. Worshipers of Lamashtu may venture forth and even ally with those outside the faith in order to seek out monsters or great beasts to serve their cult, to blood themselves and prove their strength so that they may return to their tribe and be accorded greater status, or to find parents—willing or unwilling—for their monstrous offspring. War means birth, as the children of submission and savagery grow to loathe and replace their forefathers.Priesthood
A Priest’s Role
Lamashtu’s faith is ancient, yet still very primitive in its beliefs and habits. A priest must ensure the strength of his people’s faith, tend to their physical injuries (especially those whose deformities are a significant hindrance), spiritually guide them through hard times by focusing on the hideous glory of the Demon Queen, and interpret signs of Lamashtu’s favor and displeasure. Her priests use magic, faith, and flesh to soothe disputes and settle arguments—a spell used for compulsion, a threat of torture in the afterlife, or an intimate encounter might be exactly what someone needs to defuse his anger, jealousy, or desire for vengeance. Promiscuity is as much a part of a cleric’s role as healing, and most leave multiple children in their wakes. Marriages or lifetime pairings are exceedingly rare in the cult, especially among uncivilized humanoids; male priests usually aren’t sure how many children they’ve sired and female priests generally can’t identify their children’s fathers. Lamashtu’s priests learn early not to grow too attached to a particular person or thing, as sometimes the best way to settle a dispute is to murder or banish one of the parties. Exposed to deformity at an early age and taught to view it as a sign of their patroness’s favor, they are unblinking in the face of horrible afflictions and willing to get close to people “civilized” folk would consider unclean or unholy— often to a fetishistic degree. Priests are responsible for teaching the young about the Mother of Monsters and making sure they understand her importance in their lives. They eagerly punish reluctant children either with painful physical transformations or by plaguing them with horrible nightmares. The children among Lamashtu’s worshipers often don’t have identifiable parents, and her priests act as disciplinarians and harsh role models, guiding the next generations in the goddess’s merciless ways. Some sects have discovered magical means of impregnating both male and female humanoids, and priests often tend the resulting monstrous offspring, which may require a specialized nursery. Because of such intertwined relationships, most priests have strong ties to their community and are rarely encountered alone. Those traveling solo are usually on a mission or vision quest, the last survivor of a dead cult, or an exile in search of a new tribe. Sometimes these loners hide for a time among lepers and beggars, using their misshapen flesh to blend in and create new converts to the faith. Other priests use their magic and knowledge to infiltrate madhouses in the role of a healer, arranging “escapes” for those who might serve the cult’s purposes. A typical day for a priest involves waking, blessing the tribe’s food, physical examination of themselves and others for new flesh or abilities, some manner of masochistic prayer, performing rites over any pregnant tribe members, and tending any monsters or beasts allied with the cult. A cleric normally prepares spells after the evening’s tribal rituals. The clergy have no official ranks—all are merely priests unless they gather enough fame and power to lead their tribe. A priest with a gift in a particular area might acquire a title appropriate to that trait (prophet, warleader, and so on), but this carries no concrete status within the church. The cult’s association with ferocious beasts often puts druids and rangers sworn to Lamashtu in prominent roles among cults; among the more primitive, they may be the head priest or war-leader. Most priests have ranks in Handle Animal, Heal, Intimidate, and an appropriate Knowledge skill relating to local monsters. Lamashtu began her existence among the throngs of the Abyss, and she retains many connections to that fiendish realm and the perverse spellcasters who seek power from its denizens. Her church welcomes demoniacs (Book of the Damned Volume 2: Lords of Chaos 46), as they offer their patroness as much—or more—zeal as clerics. Their pacts with the goddess are businesslike exchanges of service for power, but the Mother of Monsters does not begrudge the arrangement. To most of Lamashtu’s servants, the distinction between cleric and demoniac is semantic, as they fill the same roles in the goddess’s cults and tribes.Lamashtu’s Antipaladin Code
The leaders of Lamashtu’s children are proud of their deformities and rage against civilization. They seek to tear the blinders from the eyes of the world and show them the nightmare of nature, the writhing and endlessly fecund truth. Their code is one of bloodshed and howling madness. Its tenets include the following adages.- All things are monstrous, and only the weak hide their marks. I show the world as it is.
- I will bring the outcasts in from the cold and teach them the taste of victory.
- I fill the wombs. I birth the children. I teach our enemies why they fear the night.
- I bring madness to the cities, that in their blood and fear they may understand the chaos of the world.
- I will spread the Mother’s seed. If the blind cannot be taught to see, their children can.
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