I had a player express interest in seeing a list of deity options available for his chaos cleric so I put together a list based on a bunch of ideas I've been sitting on. Here it is, adapted from the handout I added to the hallowed archives of our game's email thread:
The Burning Eye
Purview: Madness, paranoia, delusions, psionics, and corrupting knowledge.
Other titles/incarnations: The Eye of Terror, the Fear, the Red Gaze
Symbol: An eye aflame, usually with a pinprick red pupil encircled by a blue iris.
Boon: +10%/level chance of having psionic powers and you get to test every time you level up. +5% experience if you have at least one Psionic number on your sheet.
Constraint: Between adventures, must spend at least 1 day/level tending to your manias, nursing migraines, and doing similar activities that prevent you from more productive ventures.
Rintrah
Purview: Wrath, rebellion, discord, vengeance, and conflict.
Other titles/incarnations: Abaddon, Breaker, the Bloodied One
Symbol: A bloody fist, typically emblazoned on bronze.
Boon: +10% experience from combat
Constraint: Offenses against you cannot be forgiven.
Clopan
Purview: Fortune, trickery, absurdity, and mirth. Also associated with insubstantial signifiers and imperfect representations.
Other titles/incarnations: Lady Luck, Old Quicksilver, the Fool
Symbol: Any trinket or object of value the bearer deems a token of good luck functions as a symbol of Clopan. The major cult of Clopan employs the image of a two-thumbed hand (like the gonzo fist) clutching a coin.
Boon: +5% experience from carousing
Constraint: Must never back down from an earnest wager.
Purview: Mutability, transience, mutation, and oozes.
Other titles/incarnations: Changer, Juiblex, the Great Glistener
Symbol: Green slime, usually in a small vial worn around the neck.
Boon: +5% experience when you have 3 or more mutations.
Constraint: Must not maintain a fixed identity (followers interpret this differently; some do everything in their power to diminish their ego, others invent a new persona every few months, etc.)
Orcus
Purview: Ruin, entropy, decay, and undeath. Ruler of Sheol, the psychotropic ur-dungeon at the bottom of creation.
Other titles/incarnations: The Rotting One, the Goat, Lord Ruin
Symbol: Goat skull
Boon: +1 to rebuke undead rolls
Constraint: Must sacrifice a creature of hit dice equal or greater than yours before you can level up.
The Queen of the Night
Purview: Darkness, the occult, witchery, and beauty.
Other titles/incarnations: The Lady of Darkness, the Silent Queen, the Occulted One.
Symbol: Unicursal hexagram
Boon: Extra 1st level spell slot. Can use magic-user scrolls in addition to those for clerics.
Constraint: Must keep as much about yourself a secret as possible. For every intimate detail someone knows about you, they get +1 to saving throws against your magic.
Idnach
Purview: Predation, instinct, brutality, and might. The mother of monsters.
Other titles/incarnations: Tiamat, Angrboða, the Great Serpent.
Symbol: A claw or fang marked with the eight-pointed star of chaos.
Boon: Natural weapon. Your unarmed attacks deal 1d4 damage.
Constraint: Must eat a portion (typically the heart, but it doesn’t matter) of every mortal creature you kill.
Notes
- There are several reasons why I wanted to make these.
- Chaos is cool, and Chaos Lords are very cool. Outlining the main Chaos deities (for surely there are more) gives me the opportunity to define what chaos is for my campaign—chaos is madness, chaos is wrath, chaos is mutability, and so on. Chaos for my campaign is not so much like the Ruinous Powers from Warhammer, which represent an antagonistic force so terrible that even the most cruel and inhuman alternatives can be justified. Yes Chaos are the bad guys, but I wanted to provide conceptual space for chaos to be a benevolent force as well as the villain, and not just in edge cases.
- These provide neat frameworks for thinking. With the seven themes of chaos come seven potential cults, seven different evil high priests, seven potential classes of demons, mutations, artifacts, etc. That's a pretty deep well to draw from. Also hopefully they are compelling to the players. First and foremost I want them to be excited to play around with these guys.
- More defined deities reign in Chaos-aligned PCs so they don't just play chaotic stupid every time. This hasn't been too much of a problem for our game so far, though the campaign is still young and there have already been a couple entertaining yet headscratching moments.
- I wanted to make the boons rather minor, and I think I succeeded. Some people think small static bonuses are boring, but I appreciate them as a tool to suggest the presence of a modifying factor without swinging the balance of the game too much.
- I like the term "constraint" more than "restriction" for Chaos clerics. "Restrictions" feel too much like a Law thing for me.
Image sources, in order:
1 Talon Abraxas
2 Albrecht Dürer
3 Yoshitaka Amano
4 Benny Marty
5 Todd Lockwood
6 Talon Abraxas
7 KANEKO Tomiyuki