The Punishers are a group of planar barmies who used to be all paladins, LG priests, or petitioners of various LG powers holding the integrity of one's body in the highest consideration.
The founder of this sect, Formigoni, a ranger worshipping a LG power from a remote prime world once met an addle-coved bard claiming that Baator was a place of punishment for sinners (which any basher in the know knows it is NOT). This bard, one Dante Alighieri, claimed that each layer of Baator had a definite purpose, being the place where a peculiar kind of sinner got punished.
In particular, Dante said that a forest on the seventh layer held the souls of those who were violent with themselves. The souls, he claimed, were imprisoned in trees whose leaves were eaten by Harpies and whose roots were gnawed by bitches.
Formigoni took upon himself the task of discovering the dark behind this tale. He formed a party of like-minded adventurers, managed to attain the 7th layer of Baator, and explored it thoroughly -- alas no forest was to be found.
Scholars believe that's what drove him and his fellows barmy. Through their connections with nature lovers all around the multiverse, they managed to get hold of particularly resistant trees that they planted in Baator and which grew there. Also, they started dabbling in magicks so as to be able to find spells enabling them to keep a body's soul in one of those trees.
However, this not only attracted all kinds of perverse torturers and madmen who wanted to try and capture souls in this way (including a group of Sensates who wanted to be experimented upon), it also ensured that Formigoni and his followers soon became most evil and corrupted by Baator.
Eventually, the fiends let them have their forest and establish themselves as the Punishers (after having toyed for a while with the idea of trapping them in the trees). The Punishers'd go out of Baator, seek "sinners" (actually poor sods on the verge of committing suicide or berks who'd mutilated themselves in some way), bring 'em back to their forest and trap their spirits in the trees. Trained, vicious rooks and ferrets'd then torture 'em by pecking and gnawing the trees.
One day, however, word got into Baator of a sect from Mechanus known as the
Flesh Mongers, indulging in self-mutilation and actually promoting it.
From then on, the Punishers'd found their aim: eradicating that sect and
putting all its members in the soul-book (Punisher cant to describe the
operation of trapping a soul in their forest).
Sect eligibility:
Any lawful planar can join the sect. LN bloods, however, quickly become
LE, whereas LG bloods turn LN, and later LE.
Sect benefits:
Punishers are recognised as such by baatezu and are usually left alone
minding their business in Baator.
Punishers develop an instinct to seek Flesh Mongers and can sense 'em in
a radius of 500 m.
Sect hindrances:
As former "sinner" killers, Punishers are deeply disliked in the evil
planes (except Baator) where they used to go hunting for "sinners". Thus
any Punisher adventuring in any other Lower Plane than Baator gets
attacked on sight by its inhabitants.
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