Paizo, $19.99, ISBN 978-1-60125-506-8
Fantasy, 2013
Chronicles of the Righteous presents a bunch of goody-goody empyreal lords for PCs to worship, and let’s face it, the only thing we would care is to see whether any of them could give our PCs lots of awesome powers.
Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how one looks at it, getting those powers, or boons, requires a daily obedience. An obedience is something the PC will have to do to get those boons and “recharge” them like they are a mobile phone the coming day.
Now, do bear in mind that the PC needs to do this every day if they want to keep getting boon-ed up, and there is a possibility that going too long without performing the required obedience may get them to fall out of favor with their deity.
With that in mind, people, here are the worst obediences a PC has to do to remain in their deity’s good graces, ranked in descending order from “Are you kidding me?” to “WHAT THE HELL?!!”
ANDOLETTA WANTS HER WORSHIPERS TO CUT DOWN TREES & WASTE FOOD (PLOT TWIST: SHE’S SUPPOSED TO BE A NATURE-LOVING GOD OF COMMUNITIES)
Obedience: Weave basket from willow branches while praying, and fill the basket with food, money, and crap to be given to the poor.
This doesn’t sound bad at all… until you remember that it has to be done every day.
How many willow branches does it take to weave a basket again? How many willow trees must die to appease a bunch of basket-weaving zealots every year?
Then there is the issue of a church of Andoletta sending heaps of baskets of goodies to the local orphanages or shelters every day. Considering that worshipers of Andoletta typically live in rural areas where the number of poor people tend to be smaller than, say, those in urban areas, there is a real possibility of too many free goodies being sent to these places and going to waste!
Still, I suppose at least this one has some good intention behind it, unlike the rest of the nonsense that is coming up next.
SINASHAKTI HATES PEOPLE THAT SLEEP PEACEFULLY. WORST NEIGHBOR & COMPANION EVER
Obedience: At dawn, light a candle and then laugh uproariously until the force of the laughter blows out the candle.
Imagine traveling with a worshiper of this cray cray azata. You’ve slain two ogres, you have a throbbing headache and a twisted ankle, and all you want is some rest. Then, at the break of dawn, you are rudely awakened by some lunatic cackling and squawking at the top of their voice.
Someone’s so going to get killed. Still, this one isn’t so bad, as perhaps the person insane enough to worship this joke of a god can cast a spell to keep the sound of the laughter contained. There is no clause stating that the laughter has to be heard, after all.
So while this one is dumb, it may not be an obnoxious kind of dumb like the next one.
PICOPERI’S WORSHIPERS ARE DOOMED TO DIE ALONE WITH NO FRIENDS & LOVED ONES
Obedience: Play a practical joke on an unsuspecting person.
Imagine doing this every day.
Imagine having to put up with this person that plays practical jokes on you every day.
Whoever worships Picoperi isn’t long for this world.
Clearly, that god hates his own worshipers and the act of worshiping him is the biggest prank he plays on them!
VALANI WANTS YOU WASTE A LOT OF MONEY IN HIS NAME, THAT GREEDY SCUMBUCKET
Obedience: Burn items worth at least 50 gold pieces.
That’s right, you have to waste at least 50 gp to this azata yakuza of volcanoes every day.
Do the math: that’s about 1,500 gp a month. Are we sure this azata isn’t secretly a dwarf?
Unless his worshipers have a career that give them an excess of 1,500 gp a month to contribute to global warming and climate change, these people are going to start looting and stealing things and generally cause problems all over the place.
The irony here is that Mammon, the Archdevil of Greed, only requires his worshipers to count coins in a bag while recalling all their past thefts and money embezzlement and dedicating their misdeeds to him. So who is the true god of greed and waste here, hmm?
CHADALI WANTS HER WORSHIPERS TO TRIP AND DIE, THAT SADISTIC CREEP
Obedience: Get lost in a strange place or blindfold yourself and take 200 steps.
Believe it or not, this stupid azata empyreal lord has safety as one of her portfolio. So, if you worship her, you have to run off to a strange place and get lost every day. Failing that, you have to blindfold yourself and “wander boldly” for 200 steps. Considering that you need to do either of this every freaking day, what are the odds that you will fall, hurt or cripple yourself, get arrested for trespassing, etc?
The only reason this stupid obedience isn’t ranked any higher up the dumb-oh-dumb list is because there is no addressing a possible loophole of casting a spell that lets you look through the blindfold. Considering that Chadali seems determined to make her worshipers the next victims in a hillbilly gore movie, though, she probably doesn’t approve.
TANAGAAR IS WAGING AN GENOCIDAL WAR ON RATS & MOUSES AND IS USING HIS WORSHIPERS AS TOOLS OF WAR
Obedience: Find and watch a mouse or rat from a maximum distance of 30 feet, without being noticed by the rodent, for 100 breaths. Then, catch the rodent and release it at some hunting ground of owls.
Never mind the logistic of finding a rodent every day for this purpose—the worshipers of this archon POS would have each caused the deaths of up to 365 rodents a year. If there is a whole church of these rat-hating zealots, the whole country would be out of rodents in no time.
I know Tanagaar is a big stupid owl, but by the grace of Hanspur, get your own food, you lazy POS.
VILDEIS—PSYCHOTIC SISTER OF ZON-KUTHON THAT CLAIMS TO BE LAWFUL GOOD
Obedience: Cut this Angel of Sacrifice’s holy symbol onto your skin or a willing participant’s, and rub ashes on it while praying to Vildeis.
This won’t be so bad if you don’t have to do this every day. Soon, you will end up a walking bag of scars and people will mistake you for a scarred monk. What happens when you run out of real estate to scar yourself down the road? Do you have to scar over your scars? Is that even helpful in any way or does the so-called Angel of Sacrifice just likes to see her worshipers pointlessly mutilate themselves in her name?
I suppose her worshipers can always cast mass suggestion to get people to “voluntarily” get branded with this sadistic hag’s holy symbol, but that’s not a lawful good deed, is it?
Appropriately enough, the only place where worshipers of Vildeis will be right at home in is Nidal, because Vildeis may claim to be a lawful good angel, but looking at how she runs her worshipers on suicide missions all the time when they are not committing self-mutilation left and right, this bitch is the perfect mummified bride for Zon-Kuthon. They’d get along perfectly, although Doloras may feel left out as a result.
Still, at least this angel’s obedience only harms her own devoted worshipers. Believe it or not, another so-called lawful good angel far outdoes her in terms of being an outright genocidal psychopath. Ladies and gentlemen: meet Ragathiel.
RAGATHIEL—THE ANGEL OF VENGEANCE IS THE WORST POS EVER
Obedience: Slay a proven wrongdoer in Ragathiel’s name, the wrongdoer must have committed “evil” or “unlawful” deeds.
Oh boy, where do I even start? There are some dumb obediences here, but this one makes my mouth fall open so wide that you’d think the great Tychilarius is going to pop out of it.
Firstly, this means that you have to slay someone every day. Think about it: in a year, you would have slain 365 people. In two years, your kill score is up to over 700 just from this obedience alone. In 10 years, you would be one of the greatest serial killers ever. What would all that killing do to one’s soul and sanity?
Also, where would one find so many “evil” people to kill? I can imagine that, as the number of fresh sacrifices to this so-called angel dwindle, his psychotic worshipers will use the “unlawful” part of the obedience to start sticking their blade into pickpockets, jaywalkers, and little kids playing truant from school. Before long, a church of these zealot psychos will be running around slaughtering everyone else in the neighborhood over the smallest unlawful deeds.
What the hell are the people at Paizo thinking with this crap?!!
