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The Multitude
Gods of Darkness, Blood, Cruelty, Power, Atrocity, Murder, etc.
Evil, and 8 random Domains.
The Multitude, also called the Demon Ghost Horde or the Thousand Voices, is not a single diety but a vast congregation of evil spirits once human -- incorporeal undead -- that have been imbued with the power to give out clerical magics by the demon Demogorgon, and have since swelled their ranks to become a plague upon the world. Hardly true divine beings, a single demon ghost is well within the capability of powerful mortals to slay, and the adventurers of legend could have decimated their ranks just as a master warrior might tear through a swarm of goblins. Worse, their priests live up to all the worst stereotypes of demon worshippers -- slovenly social outcasts with selfish and petty vendettas, unhealthily obsessive tendances and emotional insecurities that make them easy prey for any experienced demon hunter.
None of this matters.
The Multitude is just that, and for all their lack of concrete superenatural power or the incompetance of their average servitors, their influence is constantly growing. There's just so damned many of them, dwelling in vast cities in the Negative Energy Plane and roaming the howling void beyond, and there's always stupid, selfish demihumans willing to take them up on their offers of power, wealth and petty vengeance. When a cultist of the Multitude dies, he becomes a demon ghost himself, bound to decieve and cow the living into worshipping him or wither away in starvation in the depths of the Negative Plane. The Multitude has worshippers in a suprising number of places, and if they had any degree of organization (or even sanity) in their ranks, they would easily be a political power on the level of the High Guilds.
The holy symbols used by demon ghosts are twisted runes with a strange, alien shape to them; each ghost has a unique rune all to itself. The demon ghosts are utterly and inherently Chaotic Evil, and unlike those true gods of Therya, they don't hide or whitewash that fact in any way. An aspiring cultist has better be ready to stomach what their worship entails. The demon ghosts to not have enough of an established priesthood to have chosen weapons. Most demon ghosts have only one altar, reward their followers with potent, blasphemous gifts and appreuciate the sacrifice of good, friendly creatures who are significantly weaker than the worshipper.
Every demon ghost grants the Evil domain and two other domains. The two additional domains are chosen from a list of eight domains that are sacred to that demon ghost (and are, effectively, drawn at random from the complete list of domains).
Worship: The spirits of the Multitude will accept as sacrifices the corpse of any creature killed specifically to be a sacrifice -- in other words, a creature that was once friendly -- or any good creature. However, what the most glory in is the sacrifice of incorporeal undead -- the specific demon ghost can tear apart and consume the essence of other spirits, thereby increasing its own power. This can be difficult to achieve, since incorporeal undead do not leave corpses. They can be sacrificed by being killed while standing directly on an altar, however.
Good acts anger the Multitude, while evil acts please them. They expect their cultists to not use magical healing, since the same channeling of positive energy which heals living creatures injures the demon ghosts through the sympathetic link between worshipper and diety. Cultists may use magical healing on creatures other than themselves, and may benefit from psionic or natural healing, or vampiric effects such as vampiric touch or regenerative effects such as a ring of regeneration.
Blessings: The demon ghosts offer several forms of aid to anyone who so much as pledges himself to them: healing, purifying the body and smiting enemies. More loyal followers can also gain the following types of aid, in order of increasing favour: replenishment of mana, replacement of lost spellbooks, deflection of especially lethal blows, identification of any items and even resurrection for a truly favoured follower.
The demon ghosts are truly diverse beings, no two alike. As such, the more permanent blessings they grant to followers are very diverse. These usually take the form of inherent magical abilities similar to spells, chosen randomly based on the areas a specific evil ghost has influence over. The more loyal the worshipper, however, the more powerful the granted abilities have the potential of becoming.
Domains: Evil