Writing a character who actually believes in the Daedra (and isn't edgy about it)

[ScrollsOfTamriel]

So I've been working on a character who's genuinely devout to Molag Bal - not as some shock value thing, but because in-world that's just a legitimate faith path. And it's way harder to write than I expected without either making them cartoonishly evil or accidentally writing them as secretly good deep down.

Like, the game treats Daedric worship as this taboo thing, but people in Skyrim actually do it. The Boethiah cultists exist. There are shrines. The Forsworn worship Hircine. So why is it so hard to write a character who's just... faithful to their Daedric patron the way someone else might be faithful to Talos or Akatosh, without making it about corruption or redemption arcs?

I think part of it is that we're all trained by the game to treat Daedric quests as "the evil option" but the lore itself (especially stuff like the 36 Lessons) suggests the relationship is way more complicated. Vivec made deals. Molag Bal's followers in the lore aren't all cartoon villains.

Anyone else writing characters with genuine Daedric faith? How do you keep it grounded without either sanitizing it or leaning into the edgelord stuff? And how do you write the character's actual theology without it reading like you're just parroting the Daedric artifact quest dialogue?

 

[BardCollegeQuill]

This is such a good question because you're hitting on something the game itself doesn't really explore - the gap between "Daedric worship as player moral choice" and "Daedric worship as actual lived religion in Tamriel."

The thing that helps me is separating the patron's nature from the follower's motivations. Like, Molag Bal is objectively a force of domination and suffering, right? That's baked into what he is. But a follower doesn't have to be gleeful about suffering - they might see submission to a stronger will as honest, or view suffering as necessary refinement, or believe Molag Bal offers clarity that softer gods don't. It's not sanitizing it; it's just... people rationalize their faith in ways that make sense to them. Real religious people don't wake up thinking "I serve evil," they wake up thinking "I serve truth as I understand it."

The 36 Lessons angle you mentioned is huge for this. Vivec's whole thing is that dealing with Daedra isn't inherently corrupt - it's transactional, it requires cunning, and yeah, it costs something, but so does any real power. That's way more interesting than "Daedra bad, Aedra good." Your character could genuinely believe their patron demands difficult things but offers real returns - knowledge, strength, transformation - and that the squeamishness of other faiths is just weakness dressed up as morality.

What's tricky is the day-to-day stuff. How does this character actually live? Do they perform rituals? Are they secretive or open about it? Do they wrestle with their faith or are they solid? I think the edgelord trap happens when writers skip past the actual theology and just go "my character does dark magic and smirks a lot." The grounded version is messier - doubt, conviction, compromise, the way faith actually works.