Editing Blood of Vol (section)

==Not Your Average Evil Cult==
So, with the blood magic thing, and the undead everywhere, and the faith's popularity with necromancers, you're thinking that the Blood of Vol is your classic evil cult, right? Well... yes but no - subverting alignment cliches like that was kind of Eberron's thing.

See, thing is, whilst Vol herself is evil and she is using the religion to muster dupes, the leadership of the faith isn't completely under her control, and the average member of the church is very much ''not'' evil. After all, it's an observable fact in Eberron that Dolurrh, the [[plane]] of the dead where almost every soul goes upon death, is a really shitty place; it's a dreary, misty limbo where the souls of the dead slowly lose their memories and then ultimately fade away into nothing. It's not exactly an evil reaction to learn this and decide "nope, what else is there?" And the Blood's relationship with the undead is very different to, say, the [[Whispering Way]]: unlike your standard necromancy cult, the Blood of Vol does ''not'' worship undeath or pursue it as their goal. They have a necro-utilitarian viewpoint, believing the bodies of the dead are empty shells with no particular holiness inherent to them - which is, after all, a reasonable view when you know the souls of the dead are dissolving into nothing in Dolurrh - and thus animating corpses as [[Walking Dead]] is just creating a tool, one that can potentially save a lot of lives or effort. Free-willed undead who are loyal to the Blood of Vol are viewed as sainted martyrs; the aim of the Blood of Vol is to achieve ''true'' eternal life, and undeath, with its myriad losses of the subtle aspects of life (like enjoying pleasure), is seen as a poor substitute. So, the sapient undead of the faith are viewed with equal parts respect and pity; they have cheated death, but sacrificed life, and thusly cut themselves off from achieving ''true'' divinity. They are respected for having the courage to damn themselves so they can continue to offer wisdom, guidance, and protection to their living flock, but the whole point of the Blood's teachings is to NOT end up like them. Sapient undead NOT affiliated with the church are seen as the potential predators and threats that they are - while they are aware that not all sapient undead are evil and might give some sapient undead not affiliated with the church the benefit of the doubt, they're not idiots and won't hesitate to destroy them if they endanger the community. One interesting point is the fact that Erandis Vol's dragonmark no longer works because she is undead - this fact is likely the origin for their belief that Divinity is in the blood and that undead can not become truly divine.

So, yeah, they're creepy and they're spooky, but they're very much not evil - in fact, their underlying philosophy is surprisingly positive and optimistic, teaching that life is sacred and all who live hold the spark of divinity. Vol herself and her immediate underlings are exploiting the church, but the Blood of Vol itself is not evil. Even back in 3e, it was slapped with a "Lawful Evil" alignment mostly because all necromancy spells carried the Evil descriptor, and even though Eberron stated that church alignment & faithful alignment didn't have to be the same, that meta-rule still stuck.