The Lawgiver

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The Lawgiver
Alignment	Lawful evil
Divine Rank	Unknown
Pantheon	Ravenloft
Portfolio	Law, Fate, Judgement, Obedience, Order, Rulership, Tyranny
Domains	Bindings, Curse, Death, Evil, Law, War
Home Plane	Demiplane of Dread
Worshippers	Vaasi, Hazlani
Favoured Weapon	Whip, Flail

The Lawgiver is a deity worshipped in the domains of Hazlan and Nova Vaasa in the Dungeons & Dragons setting of Ravenloft. His clerics say that to speak his true name would strike a mortal dead, so he is only called the Lawgiver, the Iron Tyrant, and the Black Lord. His church enforces the rigid stratification of Vaasi culture, to the point where they frown on intermarriage and don't fraternize with fellow clergy of different social status. When the Lawgiver fell silent during the Grand Conjunction, a schism grew in his clergy; some believe that he was incapacitated or even killed, and that all they worship are empty lies. The official church stance is that the silence was simply a test of faith and heresy is ruthlessly purged.

The Lawgiver was originally Bane, a deity from the Forgotten Realms. Terms of the licensing deal between White Wolf and Wizards of the Coast meant that White Wolf couldn't directly reference IPs from any other D&D setting, so Bane got a name change. His church is expanded upon in the Ravenloft Gazetteer volumes I and V. The Church of the Lawgiver preaches strict social stratification, harsh laws, and absolute obedience. The human form is considered perfect, with demi-humans being cursed, the disfigured being shunned, and body modification being seen as willful degeneracy. Arcane magic is considered evil, being the poisoned "gift" of the religion's Satan figure, Mytteri.

The Lawgiver's faith is henotheistic at best; other gods are seen either as servants to the Lawbringer (Erza and Hala, for example, being his concubines) or as lies. The irony here is that the church of the Lawgiver is in actuality one of the weakest churches to get its own writeup. It is only worshipped in two Domains; one of which, Nova Vaasa, is so poor and squalid that even Barovians look down on it, and in the other (Hazlan), it's a purely political move and everyone knows it. Hazlik, Darklord of Hazlan, enforces the Lawgiver's worship to reinforce Hazlan's slave culture, but your average citizen probably practices at least something the Lawgiver would consider a sin (the Rashemani consider tattooing to be the cornerstone of beauty, and Hazlik himself is a wizard). The church has gained no other footholds, because even in the Demiplane of Dread nobody wants to worship an asshole.