Zyphus (ZIE-fess or ZAI-FUSS)

“EVERYONE YOU LOVE, EVERYTHING YOU CARE FOR, MAY BE TAKEN FROM YOU AT A MOMENTS NOTICE. THE YOUNG, THE BEAUTIFUL, AND THE RICH—ALL ARE PREY TO THE INDIFFERENT, CLUTCHING HAND OF CHANCE.”

—LETTERS OF HARSH TRUTH

  Zyphus is the malignant god of accidental death. A bitter enemy of the goddess Pharasma, he is worshiped by small cults throughout Golarion. These groups foment tragedy and bring about accidents in the hopes of strengthening the power of their god. His unholy symbol is a pick made from a human skull, rib, and femur.  

History

    Followers of the Grim Harvestman believe that the god arose from the first maddened soul to die a pointless death. It is written that since that time, every mortal that dies in the same meaningless way is destined to be absorbed by Zyphus after death. This puts him in direct competition with the goddess Pharasma, and his followers believe that once he has acquired enough souls he will be able to engineer the death of Pharasma herself. Cults of Zyphus believe that even though the deaths they help arrange are not truly accidental, these souls are still dedicated to strengthen their patron.

Home

Zyphus' divine realm is located in a massive field of open tombs within Bloodrot, Urgathoa's home in Abaddon. He originally received it through a deal with Charon, and the daemons largely leave him alone.

Relations with Other Religions

    Zyphus is a minor player in the games of the gods— more of an annoyance or inconvenience than a true threat. His constant predations on souls intended for other deities is like a single mosquito in a large formal ball—unpleasant and noisy, but difficult to eradicate without detracting from the overall pleasant atmosphere. His most important relationships are with three deities, each for a different reason. Pharasma is his chief adversary, and Zyphus is the enemy she doesn’t want to acknowledge; she either can’t oppose him directly or is playing at some millennia-long strategy to eliminate him. Urgathoa is his mentor and comrade, with overlapping interests and proximate realms. Zyphus is also trying to form an alliance with minor goddess Naderi, hoping to turn her evil so she accepts his nihilistic view that chance can steal away a loved one at any time. Because Zyphus’s realm is in Abaddon, daemonic cults occasionally have peaceful contact and cooperation with the Harvestman’s mortal followers, though his clergy are still waryof the fiend-worshipers.  

Planar Allies

A great number of divine servants of Zyphus are ascended mortal priests who reputedly lived long lives and died peacefully in their sleep. In addition to his deadly herald Gravedragger, powerful followers of Zyphus use greater planar ally to call temerdaemons to their service to destroy and corrupt those around them.

Enkaytho:
This olive-skinned, frumpy priestess has a brilliant mind for debate and insults. She can turn into gray smoke (as gaseous form) at will, and often pretends to be a vampire to unsettle and fool her opponents. She has a soft spot for animals and prefers payment in items that can be used to pacify, heal, or train animals.

Iron Shade:
This short, sallow, formerly human priest looks like he has a little orc blood in his ancestry, and is beset by nervous tics. He can transform from his normal shape into a skeletal one at will, at which point he gains undead immunities and is easily able to pass as a common skeleton, skeletal champion, or even a lich. He acts especially uncomfortable around children, and prefers defensive items and those that provide information about the future.

Church of Zyphus

Zyphen cults are widespread, although never large in numbers. They worship in abandoned graveyards that are no longer under the protection of the Lady of Graves. His symbols are often found on arches or vaulted roofs of active graveyards as well but, used in this way, they are meant to ward off the Grim Harvestman. Recently, Zyphen cults have been active in Taldor. Zyphus has dictated no official text, but approves of his followers using the Letters of Harsh Truth, a collection of revelations about the folly of the gods, the dominance of chance, and how mortals should accept their inevitable and random deaths.  

Temples and Shrines

Zyphus’s church doesn’t build permanent temples. Instead, his worshipers hold court in graveyards or mausoleums that have fallen from other deities’ favor or that otherwise are no longer hallowed ground. Many graveyards have carvings on gate arches, vault roofs, and even gravestones to ward away Zyphus’s attention, and the god’s followers go out of their way to deface such marks to instead welcome him. If the cultists intend to use that facility in the future, they may renovate it or reconsecrate any dead buried there in Zyphus’s name. Zyphens rarely build facilities of their own, preferring to make use of existing spaces. They place deadly traps around their sites of worship to harm the unwary, often in ways that mock the site’s former deity.

Shrines to the Grim Harvestman are typically stolen and defaced headstones or bouquets of twigs and bones left at the sites of meaningless deaths. If such a death occurs at a building that is later torn down or demolished, cultists bury these tokens in the earth, or—if the site is being rebuilt— within the foundation or under the doorstep of the new structure so the land remains cursed with the lingering memory of that death.  

A Preists Role

A priest of the Grim Harvestman is expected to evangelize, converting others to the cause through either harsh words or harsher lessons. Because those lessons usually involve deliberate “accidents” that cause injury or death, Zyphen priests must pursue these activities in secret to avoid retaliation or arrest. When speaking with folk who have suffered loss, the priest acts much like a guide or counselor, explaining that life is random, capricious, and unfair, and that accepting this fact makes living more bearable.
City-bound priests often take menial jobs where they can subtly sabotage buildings in dangerous ways, such as painting a building with a mixture of varnish and lamp oil, weakening support struts in theater balconies, or using wet sand instead of mortar for stone walls. Rural priests place steel shanks in grain mills to create sparks, replace hunters’ bug-repelling oils with ones that attracts predators, or pour impurities into molten ingots or contaminants into wells. Although Zyphus grants the Plant domain, that aspect of his power is mostly in regard to how plants feed on dead things. As a consequence, there are few druids of Zyphus, but his priests with the Plant domain usually work with or around plants in some capacity.
Some priests are skilled at crafting innocent-looking but secretly defective items for high-risk professions, notably weapons and armor for city guards and adventurers. Such items appear normal, but actually have the fragile quality. If the item fails because of this flaw, the bearer is likely to die and be unable to return to the priest with a complaint about inferior merchandise. Other priests work undercover in hospitals, quietly dispatching sick or injured patients—making it seem they’ve take a sudden turn for the worse—or administering dangerous experimental “medicines” that not only fail to treat the problem but sicken or kill the patient.
Because their agenda is so dark and hostile, few priests admit openly to their faith or publicly fill the role of a priest in their communities. Instead, they hold some other mundane profession, and either keep their divine spellcasting hidden or pretend to be of a different faith altogether. Brigh and Torag are common choices for this purpose because of their religions’ shared focus on crafting, and Pharasma is a favorite because of the overlapping interest in death and the opportunity to perform blasphemies in the name of the Lady of Graves.
Zyphus’s clerics are usually trained in Knowledge (engineering), Craft (alchemy, carpentry, stonemasonry, or traps), or Profession (architect, engineer, or miner). Depending on their other interests and work, they could have ranks in Bluff, Heal, or Sleight of Hand.
Though Zyphus and his followers are indifferent about the creation of undead (for example, it’s uncommon for a Zyphen cleric to act strictly as a necromancer), his priests have a tendency to rise as bodiless undead after their deaths (usually as allips, specters, or wraiths) to continue their work in the mortal world.
The cult of the Grim Harvestman is organized in independent cells, each of which treats a city or region as its sovereign territory. A cell is led by a powerful leader who has a reputation for many kills—all cultists, even from other cells, respect these leaders. Priests of high enough rank are called Harvestmasters. Unlike solitary members of this religion, those who join a cell usually remove themselves from civilization and devote their full attention to orchestrating small accidents and disasters to feed their master’s will. A few cells overtly assault the established order, planning and executing large-scale disasters such as ferry sinkings, fires that obliterate whole neighborhoods, and building collapses. Such cults usually have the resources to procure powerful magic to aid their work, creating traps with spells such as fabricate, move earth, create pit, stone shape, and so on.
Most priests wake, pray, eat, then get to work. Most also pray before sleeping, hoping to ward off a sudden death in the night. Some are frantic in their activities, worried that they’ll die before accomplishing their goals. Others are slow-paced and lazy, knowing that death will probably take them when they least expect it, regardless of their actions. Formal dress for the clergy is a helmet or mask in the shape of a skull or a face with pale, distorted features. Preferred colors are black or dark grey, and skulls and bones are common decorations.
Zyphus doesn’t care about mortal marriage or families— his followers may take spouses and have children, but are keenly aware that they might lose these people at any time. As a result, most in the church are either extremely committed to their loved ones (and more enraged at their deaths) or coolly remote with their emotions (the better to survive the grief ).

Holidays

The major holidays of this informal church were created to mock holidays of the Lady of Graves.

Day of Gritted Teeth:
On the fifth day of Pharast, followers of Zyphus go out of their way to inconvenience or harm the devout of Pharasma, committing petty acts such as defiling corpses or muddying roads in front of religious processions.

Sinking of Lost Souls:
Especially brave cultists single out and attempt to drown a noteworthy priest of Pharasma during her church’s Procession of Unforgotten Souls. Several cult cells usually coordinate their efforts on such tasks, for they fear retaliation and desire to spread the blame as much as possible.  

Aphorisms

Zyphus’ worshipers are fatalistic and practical, and their common phrases are direct and to the point.

Not Today—I Have Work to Do:
This is a brief prayer spoken in the morning, asking Zyphus to not claim the supplicant that day, for she serves his cause and it would delay his goals if she died too early.

  Let the Grim One Judge You:
This is a threat that the listener will suffer a fatal accident (orchestrated either by a mortal or via the direct intervention of the god) and her soul will be sent to Zyphus rather than its intended destination. It is often used as a rebuttal to someone winning an argument or prize from the speaker, implying that the victory doesn’t matter because death will come soon.  

Holy Text

Zyphus has dictated no official text, but approves of his followers using the following tome to guide their actions.   Letters of Harsh Truth:
This book is a collection of revelations about the folly of the gods, the dominance of chance, and how mortals should accept their inevitable and random deaths. It includes specific responses to various mortal sufferings—death of a loved one or a beloved pet, loss of a limb, blindness, and so on. A Zyphen priest created the original using automatic writing, and priests often quote it verbatim for the attack letters they send to strangers.