Nicely nasty ideas, Roger! The ritual is a good idea, as is the re-writing of the myths from the ogrish perspective. It raises an interesting question as to whether such nasties' myths would be self-consciously evil ("gather round, children, and I'll tell you the story of how Urspeth FiendFriend poisoned Waha's well…") or, as here, self-righteously revisionist ("we are the true over-men, usurped by these inferior copies, fit only to be our fodder…").
As regards the Other Side, the whole question of where
chaos gods reside is still (to me, at least - heavy hint
for anyone able to enlighten me to do so!) unclear. I'd
prefer to think that Cacodemon now roams and preys as he
pleases, and therefore could be anywhere on the God Plane,
in nooks and crannies between established realms. He
promises no afterlife - indeed, I'd say that part of the
very foundations of 'Cacodemonism' would be "get what you
can now, forget the future" - so that his worshippers
either (as in the RQ version) become part of primordial
chaos or (as I'd prefer) have their spirits consumed by him
for sustenance. After all, he has a small worship base on
which to rely, so needs everything he can get from them!
(It also fits in with the whole nihilistic ogre take on
life.)
I don't think I'd take 'skills' to mean 'skills taught' - the latter implies structure and hierarchy, but it is more a case of what sort of skills would a Cacodemonist have or aspire to. In this context, I'd say:
Physical Skills: Create Disguise, Impersonate, Intimidate, Eat
Mental Skills: Know Cacodemon Myth (this needs to be somewhere!), Lie, Know Others' Myths (for the Steal Affinity Feat - always improvised versus a specific foreign cult, the more esoteric or alien to the Cacodemonist, the harder the test)
Another thought that just occurred to me is that Cacodemon
might work very well as an animist tradition, with the
cultist acquiring and integrating different spirits
(explaining the Chaos Features), including Deception,
Stealth, Eating and Dissention Spirits. Steal Affinity
Spirits could each 'hold' one use of one feat. Then, the
Cacodemonist would not so much summon a Fiend as Incarnate
as one. Cacodemon would therefore become a roamer of the
Spirit Plane.
It's worrying how interesting one can find such an unpleasant bunch!
Mark
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