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Most evil gods and fiends demand sacrifice. When they say sacrifice, they mean the sacrifice of a living, intelligent creature. Commonly, the victim is a umanoid, but dark powers might demand the sacrifice of anything from a medusa to a giant to a beholder. The main criteria are that the creature be alive and have an Intelligence score of 3 or higher. The sacrifice must be made in a ritualized manner. It’s fine for a blackguard to say that he is dedicating every foe he slays to Vecna. But in truth, Vecna appreciates and rewards his followers for victims killed in a ceremony and at a place dedicated to him. This means that the ritual takes time, and it probably involves extra articipants and unholy trappings (for examples of sacrificial gear, see the executioner tools and other equipment in Chapter 3). In a world suffused with magic, evil gods pay attention when someone makes a living sacrifice to them, and they often reward their followers for doing so. In some abstract sense, the sacrifice adds some small mote to the god’s overwhelming power, and in return the evil deity is sometimes willing to grant a boon or a blessing in return.