Azura’s followers are dreamers, mystics, and those who look for signs in the stars and shadows. Pilgrims build simple shrines in wild, liminal places — mountaintops, seashores, and crossroads at twilight — where her presence feels closest. They favor ritual offerings of flowers, gems, or moonlight reflected in water, hoping for guidance in visions and dreams. Among the Dunmer, Azura is revered as one of the Three Good Daedra, but in other lands she attracts outsiders, wanderers, and seers. Storytellers can portray her worshippers as quiet but fervent, offering omens and prophecies that shape events, whether or not they are understood.
Boethiah’s cultists are rebels, assassins, and ambitious leaders, drawn to his creed of overthrowing the powerful through cunning and strength. Rituals often involve combat, treachery, or ritual sacrifice, proving devotion by destroying one’s master or rival. Boethiah attracts disenfranchised nobles and warriors alike — anyone with ambition burning in their chest and no patience for imposed order. His worship is violent but philosophical: every betrayal justified as strength rewarded. In storytelling, his cults are catalysts for coups, civil wars, or sudden betrayal at the heart of alliances.
Vile’s worshippers are often desperate mortals seeking quick solutions — wealth, beauty, influence — and willing to trade something they don’t fully understand. His shrines are small and intimate, places where bargains can be whispered and sealed with trinkets or drops of blood. Cultists can range from merchants and politicians to beggars and criminals, all united by their hunger for gain. Vile encourages contracts and clever wordplay, leaving his followers tangled in the consequences of their own greed. For storytellers, his cultists embody temptation — helpful allies who demand terrible payments once the debt comes due.
Mora’s worshippers are seekers of knowledge, from ambitious mages to scholars who delve too deep into forbidden texts. They perform rituals of ink, blood, and sacrifice, offering secrets in exchange for greater ones. Many worship him in solitude, obsessively recording what they uncover, while organized circles of cultists hoard and protect libraries of hidden lore. Worshippers often descend into madness, their bodies covered in eyes or marks that reflect their patron. Storytellers can frame them as unsettling allies or foes, dangling truths that could shatter the world if revealed.
Followers of Hircine are hunters, warriors, and lycanthropes who revel in the primal bond of predator and prey. His cults organize great hunts in forests, plains, and even city outskirts, pursuing quarry with ritual reverence. Many initiates bear the gift or curse of lycanthropy, binding them directly to his service. Hircine’s followers prize honor in the hunt, condemning cowardice but celebrating cunning. Storytellers can use them to bring raw, primal conflict — a chase through wilderness, or a beast prowling beneath the civilized veneer of Tamriel.
Malacath’s followers are the scorned and downtrodden: Orcs, exiles, and those betrayed by their kin. His shrines are simple, often piled stone cairns or crude altars where oaths of vengeance are sworn. Rituals involve trials of endurance, tests of loyalty, and the spilling of blood to seal a vow. His cults are tight-knit, bound by shared suffering and the promise of Malacath’s harsh justice. Storytellers can frame them as tragic but dangerous: communities hardened by bitterness, ready to lash out at the world that cast them aside.
Dagon’s cultists are fanatics of fire, chaos, and revolution, dreaming of a world remade through destruction. Their shrines blaze with bonfires and blood, sacrifices burned to ashes as proof of devotion. Followers come from oppressed classes and ambitious warlords alike, united by the promise of tearing down the old order. Their rituals are violent and theatrical, often marked by storms or firestorms summoned in their Prince’s honor. Storytellers can unleash them as harbingers of catastrophe — mortals who burn everything to create the world they imagine.
Mephala’s worshippers are spies, assassins, and manipulators, thriving in shadows and webs of deceit. They build shrines in hidden chambers and sanctify their devotion with blood spilled in secret killings. Cultists are drawn from noble courts and back alleys alike, bound by their love of intrigue and manipulation. Their rituals are theatrical lies, elaborate games of seduction and betrayal meant to please their Prince. In storytelling, they embody plots within plots, their every act a layer of deception concealing deeper schemes.
Meridia’s followers are zealots of light and purity, sworn enemies of necromancy and the undead. Shrines gleam with crystal and flame, their rituals involving the burning of corpses and vows of service shouted to the heavens. Many are healers, paladins, or fanatics who impose Meridia’s vision of purity on all around them. Though radiant, her cultists can be tyrannical, quick to condemn anything they see as corrupt or impure. In stories, they serve as both protectors and overzealous inquisitors, radiant and merciless in equal measure.
Bal’s cultists are slavers, tyrants, and sadists, those who revel in control over the weak. His rituals are brutal acts of domination: binding souls, breaking wills, and enthroning cruelty as law. Worshippers often form secret cabals within noble houses or criminal syndicates, using their power to enslave body and spirit alike. Vampires in particular gravitate to his worship, seeing him as their true progenitor. Storytellers can present his followers as the darkest of mortals, embodying tyranny, abuse, and the annihilation of freedom.
Namira’s followers are beggars, outcasts, and those who embrace filth, decay, and degradation. Shrines are built in caves, sewers, or ruined places, decorated with bones and rot. Rituals include acts of cannibalism, self-mortification, or wallowing in filth as signs of devotion. Followers see themselves as liberated from mortal shame, embracing what others fear and despise. In stories, they bring body horror and revulsion, yet also reveal the resilience found in embracing life’s ugliest truths.
Nocturnal’s worshippers are thieves, tricksters, and assassins, honoring her with offerings of stolen goods and whispered oaths in the dark. Her shrines are hidden in caves or ruined towers, marked by shadowy symbols that shift with the moonlight. Worshippers are bound not by hierarchy but by shared reverence for secrecy and luck, trusting in Nocturnal to cloak their deeds. Rituals are simple — a stolen coin left in offering, or a blade consecrated in darkness. For storytellers, they bring mystery and subtlety, moving unseen in pursuit of fortune or vengeance.
Peryite’s cultists are rare but unsettling: they embrace sickness, plague, and decay as natural order. Shrines are often decorated with bones, ash, and diseased effigies, their rituals involving the deliberate spread of illness among themselves or others. Worshippers may be healers gone mad, ascetics who seek balance in decay, or zealots who see themselves as custodians of nature’s harshest truths. Their faith is strict, regimented, and eerily calm, embracing cycles of suffering as divine balance. In storytelling, they embody pestilence and inevitability — reminders that no society escapes the balance of life and death.
Sanguine’s followers are revelers, drunkards, and hedonists who turn indulgence into worship. Their shrines are taverns, cellars, or hidden halls where endless feasts blur into chaos. Rituals are wild celebrations of excess: drink, lust, violence, and reckless abandon, often ending in ruin. Many are ordinary mortals who fall into Sanguine’s orbit through a single night of indulgence that becomes a lifetime of worship. For storytellers, they embody joy tipped into danger — allies or foes whose pleasure-seeking masks a descent into destruction.
Sheogorath’s worshippers are the mad, the eccentric, and those who thrive in chaos. Shrines are filled with bizarre offerings — cheese wheels, broken tools, or nonsensical symbols — and rituals involve unpredictable acts of madness or cruelty. Followers range from harmless fools to violent maniacs, united only by their patron’s love of unpredictability. They often cloak violence in humor, laughing as they commit atrocities or deliver riddles that hide dangerous truths. In stories, they are wild cards, adding absurdity, horror, and brilliance in equal measure.
Vaermina’s cultists are alchemists, mystics, and visionaries who seek to manipulate dreams and memories. Shrines are adorned with sleeping effigies, incense burners, and strange dreamcatcher-like charms. Rituals involve drinking potions that plunge the faithful into shared nightmares, offering their fear to Vaermina. Worshippers are often secretive, working quietly to erode the minds of their communities through sleep and memory manipulation. In storytelling, they are subtle horrors, eroding sanity and identity until nothing remains but fear and emptiness.
⚖️ Storyteller’s Note:
Daedric worshippers are not uniform cults but reflections of their patron’s nature — some open, some secret, some ecstatic, some terrifying. They exist in every culture and class, from nobles to beggars, from lone hermits to organized circles. these worshippers can be allies, enemies, or unsettling background figures.