So far I found several religious purposes for sacrificing people:
>So that they serve their master in death as in life (Egypt, China, Inca, etc)
>To avert/prevent really bad shit like droughts, famines, crop failures, devastating wars (Middle East, Germanic people, India)
>To make the sun go up tomorrow, for it needs to replace blood it lost in battle with evil things (Aztecs)
What justifications do blood cults use in your games?
I hate those people. My god hates those people. Fuck those people.
Most Gods derive power from worship, but there are other means — for somewho are too loathsome to appeal to all but the most twisted, they can draw power from fear, pain, and hatred. They perform the miracle of transubstantiating the victim's vital essence into magical power to work their will.
Blood Magi don't use intermediaries, rather most creatures have a few grams of magical energy in their body by default, they just use blood the fluid as a medium to tap and concentrate it, enriching their own blood with magical energy.
that's not really a sacrifice, just a genocide
Not if you do it on an alter with some degree of ritual.
for good fortune.
to cleanse yourself of sin by killing someone else in your stead.
the act of killing could be seen as worship for some evil gods, others could see the souls themselves as tribute
No, sacrifice means that you give something that you value.
>What justifications do blood cults use in your games?
To fuel their magic powers, so they can wage a war of genocide against the rest of the world, take salves, and sacrifice them to fuel the magic power, so they can wage a war of genocide against the rest of the world, take salves, and sacrifice them to fuel the magic power, so they can wage...
*slaves
We still refer to the Aztecs as sacrificing people to their gods and I don't think they had friends.
George Bataille 'The Accursed Share' is a great read if you want to understand Aztec sacrifice, Potlatch, and similar activities in pre-modern civilizations.
Pre-modern societies are not 'Enterprise' societies. They might use coinage, but the fundamental purpose of work is to give a sacrifice. Where as we pour our profits back into industry, creating a positive feedback loop, the Aztecs destroyed their surplus in ecstatic ritual.
Souls are a tasty treat for foul beings of cosmic entropy and a fuel-source for brief but immense arcane energy for unscrupulous sorcerors.
It's possible to extract the soul from a living individual, but it's usually more cost efficient (and even pleasurable for otherworldly kinds) to gather souls through ritual sacrifice.
Most ceremonies resemble that of the Aztecs, removing the hearts and skins of the victim. The soul is symbolically extracted with the heart, whereas the flaying is purely for aesthetic purposes. That being said man-leather is a rare commodity.
Nice one.
You missed removing criminals from society.
If they need to be executed anyway, may as well keep the gods happy while you're at it...
I missed sacrificing criminals and war captives, yep, 'coz I'm interested more in sacrificing own citizenry and making them okay with it.
You forgot
>In order to absolve humanity of all its sins (Christianity)
Because Anda Cawa of the First Tribe is the inadvertent creator of humanity. He sought to tame the great Thunder Horns and their guardian spirit, the Celestial Bull came down from the stars to do battle with him and kill the First Tribe.
Anda Cawa fought the Celestial Bull and was wounded his blood spilling into the soil and man arose from it. When he realized what had happened he turned to use his body as a shield against the Celestial Bull to keep it from trampling them. It was then that the first humans realized that if they return the blood that brought them to life back to him he'll be strengthened and can fight back.
These teachings have been subverted by the Church of the Pearl Mother who twists the old stories of the shaman with their guns and the swords and the books.
That's a one-time case, and it was self-sascrifice, irrelevant
Nice. Pretty similar to aztec myth.
It's part of a setting I've been working on. Essentially the Pearl Mother is a Catholic/Christian stand in and when they started unifying under a theocratic government they conquered and assimilated the tribal plains people who hold this belief. One of the Kings married the princess of a tribe they got on their side and basically rerwote their own holy books to include Anda Cawa as the husband of the Pearl Mother and scrubbed a lot of the old lore that was traditionally passed down by word of mouth.
Some of their traditions were mixed in with the Church traditions and vice versa. Basically I was trying to create a fantasy version of the Santa Muerte
Sure they'd sacrifice prisoners of war, but Aztecs considered warriors to be valuable and important people--so obviously they're worthy sacrifices. They conducted warfare in a ritualistic fashion that was more focused on capturing enemies for sacrifice than killing them.
Also, they'd collect children's tears in a bowl and then drown them in sacred wells to honor the rain god. They'd flay people alive on the temple steps to honor the god of corn. Young men from the nobility would be selected as living idols of the god of darkness, would be treated as the god and party it up for a year, before being sacrificed to him.
The Aztecs fucked up a major alliance at least once by sacrificing the daughter of the local king who wanted an alliance with them. The king offered his daughter in marriage to one of the chief priests, and a few days later when they all sat down for negotiations the king saw that priest doing a ritual dance while wearing his daughter's skin. So apparently there was a misunderstanding involved.
The last two are the same. The sun not going up again is "really bad shit".
A one time thing, and in vain.
Spoken like somebody who never cursed the sun while trying to sleep after a long and joyous night.
To empower their God-King, who unbeknownst to them requires the constant empowerment to keep the rest of their pantheon - which is composed entirely of powerful demons - from going berserk. The God-King uses the power from the sacrifices to essentially bind the demons to his will, which he first did in ages long past to save his people from said rampaging demons. It's all around a shitty situation, but I feel like it's a decent setup for an Aztec-themed empire.
Unsurprisingly, the followers of the monolatrist not-Catholicism do not take well to the practices, and are engaged in trying to end it. The fact that the God-King has repeatedly refused to even attempt to explain the situation, opting instead to try and get the church's paladins and clerics as sacrifices, has not helped matters.