Wrong. It’s not a human sacrifice. It’s the lingering essence of a person after the corpse has been purified. In effect, you are saying a prayer for the deceased. (Oddly represented in the game by clubbing them with the sacred ankh rather than gently touching it to body. Maybe Mitra worshipers in the Exiled Lands are just a little overenthusiastic about the process. 
)
The lingering essence of the corpse the fake Mitra priest just made by murdering someone.
Besides, both Conan at the bar and the lorestone near the Disjunction clarify that the creatures answering prayers in the Exiled Lands aren’t what they say they are.
I was wondering if we could all stay on subject about the Altar removing corruption and maybe ideas to make Religion altars as fun as the sorcery system.
Rather than remove corruption, this one would rather see Altars improve the thralls in the area around them.
In a manner similar to the thrall pot putting food out for all thralls within a certain area.
The different religions should have different bonuses.
Perhaps they only activate when a certain amount of favour is pumped into them and then a short term benefit is “crafted”.
What sort of bonuses?
Mitra could give increased Armour rating
Derketo could enhance Health and Healing rate
Set for Agility weapon Damage
Ect…
While that’s fairly basic, it’s also easier code wise than the more advanced ideas this one likes.
Also, the religious feasts should be more than just a little better. At least if they are consumed in the area of the altar.
Regarding advanced ideas…
Being near a Set Temple would auto stock archer thralls with the snake arrows, just like the randomly acquire flint arrows, instead snake arrows. Also, those under Set’s guidance don’t take poison damage.
Mitra, in addition to providing increased Armour, could also improve concussion damage for his followers, encouraging less lethal responses to hostility.
Zath would help to clear debuffs much faster due to the obsession with purity, also, perhaps random Zath spiders like those called from the orbs, could appear to attack hostile creatures nearby.
The Yog pit would allow one to eat raw human flesh with no sickness, and that would give bonuses like lasting feasts. Further, give the pit back it’s bugged instant kill ability. Anyone falling into an Abyss of Yog is dead.
This one has a few other suggestions, but they would be far more taxing to code and that’s why this one avoids voicing unrealistic hopes…
1 Like
Actually true.
In the “let’s kill them to save their souls” way.
Set is more tolerant than Mitra.
There is no such god in Howardverse.
You mean the god who represents knowledge, magic, life and power? Yeah, we can cherry-pick divine domains all day.
Yes, he does. That’s pretty much the only case of direct divine intervention in Howard’s books. Everything else comes from the “expanded” lore.
A lot of stuff people on this thread attribute directly to Mitra are actually examples of Mitra’s followers doing stuff. And, assuming that Mitra doesn’t appear as a similar booming god-voice to everyone asking for advice, much (or all) of the religion’s tenets and doctrine may originate from mortal human beings.
In Phoenix on the Sword, the ghost of Epemitreus (a Mitraen priest from the very old times) appears and saves Conan and Aquilonia from doom. Doesn’t sound like a villain. But was saving Aquilonia the will of Mitra, or the will of Epemitreus?
And the Mitraen priest Arus tried to civilize the Picts with pacifism. Naïve, yes. But it seems his heart was in the right place. But once again, we don’t know if Mitra had anything to do with Arus’s folly.
The thing is, going by Howard’s stories alone, gods may just as well not exist, except as fabrications of people. Supernatural stuff goes on all the time, so whoever advised the princess in the Black Colossus may or may not have been a god. Yasmela herself suspects it as being a prank of a priest - and for all we know, it might have been.
“I have known many gods. He who denies them is as blind as he who trusts in them too deeply.”
Yeah, but I’m a little skeptical regarding our favorite barbarian’s definition on “knowing gods”. In any culture with active religions, denying the existence of gods is something most people wouldn’t even consider.
There’s also the question of how to define a “god”. Yeah, most Hyborian Age deities appear to be similar to many ancient Middle-Eastern gods (mainly because that’s where Howard borrowed them) in that they’re depicted as semi-abstract, but somehow bound to the real world. In Black Colossus, Mitra is mentioned as being different because he is everywhere, rather than residing in the stones of the temple or whatever, but he doesn’t claim omnipotence in the way the God of Jews, Christians and Muslims does.
But there are smaller “gods”, or entities claiming to be gods, or worshipped as gods. Like Khosatral Khel, or everyone’s favorite god, the God in the Bowl. It may be that Conan was referring to these lesser supernatural entities when he mentioned as knowing gods.
I think there is a lot of misunderstanding going on here of what the gods are in Conan.
It isn’t entirely correct to think of gods as good or evil, but it also not correct to say they are neither. The gods are beings with their own thoughts and intentions, perhaps beyond the comprehension of mortals.
Set is evil in the eyes of humans, but benevolent to his people, the serpent-men. The knowledge and powers that Set provides to humans is intentionally corrupting and inevitably causes them to bring greater harm to other humans. Set is willing to help humans, so long as in so doing, he causes a net negative to humanity.
Mitra is basically the same, but with his people being humans.
Derketo is Dagon’s consort. Dagon is the patron god of the Lemurians and uses them to create his race of fishmen. Fishmen are human crossbreeds. Bestiality is kind of their thing.
Jhebbal Sag is the god of beasts, and humans are also beasts, but have become too independent for his liking. Jhil, the raven god, and Gullah, the gorilla god, are Jhebbal Sag’s sons.
Ymir likes humans. Particularly their hearts. Delicious. The frost giants are his children and kill humans to harvest their hearts to present to their father.
Yog-Sothoth is the grandson of Azathoth, whose dream is our reality, and the grandfather of the renowned Cthulhu.
Zath is the harbinger of the end of the world, which will occur when he completes his web, which bridges the waking world with the Dreamlands. The “Zath” that Conan killed was likely just an avatar of Zath.
None of the gods physically manifest in the game, what is summoned are avatars. Avatars are creations of the gods to carry out their will - though they are not merely puppets and may sometimes not carry out their duties as faithfully as they should.
However, one must assume that the avatars in the Exiled Lands are even real. When Conan doubts these are real gods, he is implying that none of the real gods have any part with what is going on in the Exiled Lands.
The Exiled Lands are not a real location in Hyboria, they exist in an alternate plane outside of space and time. Conan’s monologue implies he suspects something like this, and The Outcast definitely suspects it, but the avatar of Dagon outright states it when you go to the Sunken City.
Possibly the Exiled Lands and all of the “gods” in it are just pieces in a game of Nyarlathotep. None of the religions have to be true to their god, because the real gods are not present in Nyarlathotep’s game.
It is still speculation as to exactly how much influence Nyarlathotep has, but the demon in the Staff of the Triumvirate, which manipulated all of the events of the Exiled Lands, is an avatar of Nyarlathotep, and the tentacles in the sky from the Portal to Yuggoth are Nyarlathotep opening a gateway between worlds, so Nyarlathotep is clearly quite involved.
Alas, this is the essence of ANY religion. And in the real world too.
yeah some good ideas there, with god bubble gone maybe it can help defend your base in other ways, its fun to raid to a base and should stay fun, but its even better when its a real challenge, the Altar could spawn something / things / magic ? to help protect your base maybe?
So it could work like this if you have an altar and someone starts doing damage to your base it will start this timer and will spawn more and harder npc’s that come attack the invader, my friend told me that payday has something like this in the mission etc… just an idea, the Religion Altars should be a ton more fun then they are now, especially with things like the new purge, im not saying the person who designed the altar and stuff is bad, i’m just saying someone who is heavily into the altars should be able to say to their freind hey look at this stuff that i can do or this thing that i have that is really cool and feel good about having that thing and you can help out your clan mates too.
Its like there is this missing gap between the very low level stuff you can get and the Avatar that you can spawn at the end.
Im sure they will get around to it, must be alot of work to do, maybe something for Xmas if im lucky lol.
And Seriously why are you dudes going on about which god is good or not, like why does a god have to be good all the time?
I just don’t like all the moral equivocation on the topic. Especially when it comes off as people just blindly attacking anything having to do with religion or gods or faith in general. It’s a bad faith argument to make such proclamations as all gods being equally evil or that there are no gods that can be considered good or evil.
The dance of corruption and morality.
These are muddied topics that are somewhat unrelated.
Corruption can absolutely come from doing truly horrific things, but it also comes from radiation that haunts dismembered constellations… er, exposure to the Outer Dark.
As many (if not all) of the Gods available in the Exiled Land are explicitly creatures of the Outer Dark, having their worship remove corruption is paradoxical…
However, the term corruption is loaded
It is very easy to associate it as a moral state which is removed by “good” forces.
That has been suggested a few times on this forum in the past, that priesthood in the game should work like being a Cleric in D&D, explicitly of the Light or Life varieties, with holy wards and healing spells, even turning undead.
Lorewise, Mitra’s priesthood likes to present him as an omni-benevolent and wise entity who fights against evil.
Conveniently enough, Mitra seems to agree with the Aquilonian priesthood holders as to who is evil, just ask them.
Mind you, it takes some extreme mental gymnastics to portray, say, the Yog or Set cults as anything other than murder happy maniacs whose only goal is personal power at the expense of any enemies they can render into the past tense along the way.
Howard himself took a rather dim view of organized religion. Much as he did hegemonies and legal systems in general, bureaucracies in specific. And it definitely shows in his writings.
This game bases it’s lore tightly (but not exclusively) on Howardian works.
TLDR; This forum is somewhat quarrelsome by nature and religious morality is extremely low hanging fruit for a row.
Thank you ! Religion should have more to than corruption though.
As it stands now the alters are mainly item dispensers that make moving remote control toys with low battery life and diminished power from when they were released aka- they did damage by moving and the attack was more powerful buy slow (miss that).
Oh I entirely agree. I think the altars would be a great place to add some rituals that grant buffs in an area to the faithful and debuffs (curses) to those who are enemies. Which would add to the new purge system as well as have some PVP elements.
Do you refer to Dagon? 
As for gods of the Hyborian Age, why not? I mean look no further than Yag-Kosha. Sure, you can argue he was not a “god”, but then what is a “god”? He has survived on the earth since even before the Thurian Age and though the rest of those members of his race which had been exiled on Earth with him had passed away but the time of Conan’s days he had been worshiped as a god for countless generations in Khitai. Would you find him to be so horrific to interact with? He was after all a pacifist and certainly he would not corrupt you (in fact it was the human wizard Yara who enslaved and tortured Yag-Kosha, and stole him from his jungle home in Khitai to the Tower of the Elephant after all). Sure, that is simply one example but the point remains.
Not everything that was worshiped as a “god” was in fact a “god”, or even immortal. Even Yag-Kosha, which I mentioned above, was killed by Conan (at Yag-Kosha’s request mind you). In fact Zath is listed as a Demi-God and is likely the child of the child of the Spider-god Omm. So, was Zath truly a god or simply worshiped as one?
After all Thog was even called a god but was clearly a demon which Conan fought and even wounded considerably.
Well, this is part of the topic. The point to all of this discussion is to point out that the “gods” in the exiled lands would NOT be removing corruption at all. If anything they would be ADDING corruption, which if you are trying to become a sorcerer would be helpful.
I could see something similar to this. Such as if you have a maxed out Alter to Set, then any thralls (fighters, bearers, dancers) of specific factions (relic hunters, Stygians) get a bonus to their attributes while within a specific radius of the alter thus making defense around the alter stronger. Ymir boosts Nordheimers. Derketo boosts Lemurians. So on and so forth. Maybe even the religion armors and weapons (which desperately need to be overhauled as it is) could give a flat bonus, but a slight increase to their respective factions?
The rest of your ideas @LostBrythunian are not bad at all, honestly anything would be better than what is currently in the game 
Same can be said…
Again, see what I wrote above. What some people called and worshiped as gods are simply demons, or aliens or whatever. So it all boils down to, what IS a god?
SOME of them. Not MOST. Some are distinctly Nordic (Ymir). Some are distinctly Celtic ( Morrigan, Dagda, Macha, Badb), some are clearly of Hindu origin (Hanuman, Kali). So no, not most are Middle-Eastern, though there are certainly a good many examples there as well.
As for the issue of Mitra, yeah he is not supposed to represent the Abrahamic god. He is LITERALLY supposed to represent MITRA! You know, the actual god MITRA. 
I refer to any god that has a religious altar the players can craft and use as a crafting station.
Ayesh, damnation by faint praise.
This one jokes.
Recently this one has tried to be more practical/pragmatic about what can be integrated into the game. With the loss of the God Bubble, previous enshittification of the feasts, and what the cluck did they do to the Avatars, the religion aspect of the game is quickly venturing into why bother terrain.
Derketo and Zath have an interesting Lingerie store.
Even then, only pieces of the Derketo stripper suit are exclusive.
How tragic.
This one would prefer if each of the religions:
- Offered a unique appearance (not just pallette swap) full outfit and worship/supplication emote for thralls to practice around the shrines.
- Either had a decay timer on their harvestable or didn’t.
One of this one’s deep dark feels is that the next Age, after War will be an Age of the Gods, and we will see religions in game treated with the same sagacious and thorough eye that the combat/raid/purge readjustment was.
Then we would truly see how far we can stretch that anything that would be hypothetically better than what we have now.
May this one share a pet peeve with you?
It’s such an annoying bit of discordance that this one frequently gnashes teeth about.
Oh yes by all means. For on instance, there were no Lemurians left in existence by the time of the Hyborian Age (those who survived the sinking of Lemuria were enslaved and after such a long and brutal enslavement lost all memories of being Lemurian and upon successfully revolting and overthrowing their “masters” they became the Hyrkanians). Furthermore Derketo was not even worshiped in that region of the map what-so-ever. BUT! Since in the game that is where the Derketo trainer is located and all of the derketo everything is, that is the only reason I suggested that.