Some excellent suggestions from Peter and others on hiding evil. My 2
cents worth.
- communal living means the people you live with are likely to be in
on your religious practices. That means people worshipping evil gods
must all be doing it (or afraid to tell on those that are)
- the size of steads mean people in the stead are likely to be in on
your strange practices (see above)
- in a city or town the greater anonymity may help you conceal
yourself, and there will be more people around with strange practices.
- in all cases you holy sites are likely to be remote.
- the 'wild' areas around your tula are the haunt of bandits and
hermits, some of who practice 'evil' religions. If you don't patrol
regularly, some parts of your tula will be occupied too. Gargarth,
Than (headhunters) and Cacodemon (ritual canabilism a la Exiles) may
be found here, corruptions of Heortling practices (or according to
their adherents the old ways from the Hidden Kings war and the
Darkness). When Orlanth was dead in the darkness people turned to
these ways, when the magic fails - will you.
- the travelling foreign merchants all have strange ways.
- in remoter areas Malia may be given propriatry worship. After all
where was the healer when you needed one.
- those ruins are haunted - no one goes there.
- those no goods over the hill claim they worship Orlanth, but we
know they consort with evil, why only the other day...
Ian Cooper