Death Priests (CBN)

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: When Our Lady of Pain discovered her sister had left the Land of the Living and taken refuge in the World of the Dead, her wrath and fury were boundless. She descended to the Land of No Return, through the caverns and lower regions known only to the spirits, until she reached the city of Erkalla itself, ruled by Cyric, the King of the Dead. And Loviatar approached the gate of the city, known as Ganzir, and pounded her Flail of Tears on the door, demanding to be let in, but her command was unanswered, and her screams resounded through the streets of Erkalla:
: "Gatekeeper, I am here at Ganzir before the Walls of Erkalla. Open these gates for me! I am Loviatar, Maiden of Pain, Mistress of Sorrow, and I shall smash down this door if you do not open it! I shall crack open the bolts with my Flail of Tears and sunder the iron with my Scourge of Despair. I shall release all the dead from city of Erkalla, and they shall climb up the stairs of the earth. I shall raise up the dead, and they shall eat the living: the dead shall outnumber the living!"
: And the Gatekeeper appeared, and he opened the door, but he would not let Our Lady pass:
: "Mighty Loviatar, Maiden of Pain, you cannot enter Erkalla with your symbols of Power. Leave them with me, and then you may visit the King."
: Our Lady of Pain saw the truth in his words, and at the gate of the city, she stripped off her talismans. She gave up the Flail of Tears, surrendered the Scourge of Despair. She unwrapped her Robe of Severed Hands, and coiled up her Whip of Countless Afflictions. She unwrapped the spiked wire from her hair and plucked out the needles from her nails.
: And at last Loviatar was finished, and the Gatekeeper escorted her into Cyric's dismal palace. And the King of the Dead saw Our Lady humbled, and in his throne room of glory, he heard her complaint. Cyric made his voice heard like a gavel of thunder, and he spoke loudly his judgment, with the following words:
: "I am Cyric, Lord of Erkalla, and I welcome you to my pale domain. You have no power here in my most ancient city: over the dead only I am King. I have heard your request and will honor it. When you leave, your sister shall accompany you. But each winter she will come back and visit me, and I shall return her to your side in the summer."
: Our Lady of Pain heard his pronouncement, and she left gladly with her sister beside her. Thus Loviatar ascended from the netherworld, resuming her just punishment of Man.
: —"Loviatar's Descent into the Netherworld," recounted in the Nycoptic Manuscripts
Long before magicians learned how to practice the Art, priests were worshipping Death in its varied forms. In Eastern societies, Death was personified as an active agent in the world, symbolized by the rise and fall of a river, in the fury of a raging tempest, or in the jaws of the crocodile. In Hindu, Death was revered as Kali, the Black Mother, goddess of Murder and Destruction. In Nordic society, Death and Pestilence were personified by Hel, another feminine deity.
In other cultures, Death was merely an impersonal event, not an active force, and the important necromantic gods were those that presided over the spirits of the dead in the Afterlife. Nergal (from Mesopotamia), Yeh-Wang-Yeh (from China), Arawn (from Celtic Europe), Mictlantecuhtli (from Mesoamerica), Osiris and Anubis (from Egypt), Hades (from Greece), and Pluto (from Rome) were all gods of the Dead, charged with ruling the netherworld. In particular, the Egyptians—whose society was fairly obsessed with death—had an entire pantheon of deities who were associated with the dead: gods of Embalming, Entombment, and Final Judgment in the Underworld.
Modern fantasy has further enriched the concept of the death priest. Clark Ashton Smith, in "The Charnel God," describes the worship of a ravening Ghoul God by the name of Mordiggian, a creature who feasts upon the remains of the dead. Robert Bloch explored this same theme in "The Brood of Bubastis," in which he describes the cult of a ghoul queen as a perverted form of Bast, the Egyptian cat goddess of pleasure. These writers were expanding a fictional religious cult of incomprehensibly evil extraplanar powers, founded by H. P. Lovecraft in the 1928 story "The Call of Cthulhu." Since then, countless authors have contributed to the fictional cult of Cthulhu, creating numerous evil deities of Death and Madness.
Given the potentially wide range of necromantic worship, the death priest deserves special attention set apart from the discussion of wizards in previous chapters. In this chapter, we basically present an addendum for the Complete Priest's Handbook (CPrH) that includes updated information about necromantic priesthoods.
The information in this chapter can also be used to flesh out the religious background (if any) of necromancer wizards. Finally, we briefly mention a few religious secret societies that might include priests as well as necromancers. These secret societies will be further discussed in Chapter Seven.