Help me integrate The Book of Righteousness and The Hunt: Rise of Evil

[d'Anconia]

Ok,
So, I have both tBoR and TH:RoE and I am really intrigued with the pantheons set forth in both. What I really want is the structure and level of detail of TBoR combined with most of the "Catholic Church" like qualities of the Pantheon in Gothos.

The main thing that I want to portray with the pantheon from TBoR is the political power that is the Pantheon in Gothos. Most of this translates pretty well, except for one thing, the inquisition the Gothos Pantheon is pursuing against the Pagan faiths. Obviously you have the Church hunting down worshipers of Asmodeus and the various demons and devils out there. However, I would also like to incorporate the inquisition of the older, more mystic, but not necessarily evil faiths, as is portrayed in the Hunt. For example, witches in Gothos are considered by the Pantheon to be heretics and should be turned from their evil ways or destroyed (even though many of the witches are not evil). Here is the crux of the issue, How do I incorporate all of the various "minor" faiths and beings who are worshiped and fit that into the entire TBoR Mythos, which I would like to stick as close to as possible.

Also, just out of curiousity for those that have TH:RoE World book and the Quenissential Witch, which do you prefer and why. Thanks for the help!

 

[JoeGKushner]

You'll have to let us know how this comes along. I'm running a Scarred Lands campaign now, otherwise I'd offer to help. I love the fact that both religions use the Pantheon.

One aspect though that might help in BoTR is that there are cults and you could use them as ideas on how non-standard religions that are 'good' might flourish. Don't forget that one of the goddesses in BoTR doesn't even control her own church.

 

[MeepoTheMighty]

I have TH:RoE but haven't read it yet. However, my homebrew is going to focus on similar concepts to yours. Essentially, my (very rough) timeline looks something like this:


1st Era: Polytheistic worship of many gods (mostly BotR gods). Governments are mostly limited to small kingdoms.

2nd Era: Asmodeus does something-or-other to gain a great increase in power. The other gods have to combine their forces in order to fight a war across the planes against Asmodeus and his diabolic allies. Anarchy reigns supreme on Earth as millions die in wars against evil. Asmodeus is eventually "defeated" by a divine champion who holds the combined powers of all the gods. However, in the fight, this champion is mortally wounded and is forced to lie dormant for a couple millenia. Effectively, this means that divine magic is cut off, since the slumbering champion holds all of the godly power in his dreams.

3rd Era: As knowledge of divine magic disappears from Earth, the legends become distorted. Eventually, the champion becomes the only "god." His church, while unable to cast spells, is secularly powerful, and becomes the basis for a large Imperial government. Imagine mixing equal parts Roman Empire with Renaissance-era Catholic church, and you have a good idea of the government of the empire. Though wizardry exists and is tolerated, sorcery is seen as a tool of the devil, and a formalized Inquisition exists to hunt down practitioners of sorcery, diabolism, and witchcraft.

4th (current) Era: Naturally, Asmodeus was never killed, but has been slowly regaining his power over the millenia. He eventually reemerges, fully ready to launch his bid for world domination. A handful of heros manage to recover some sort of artifact which reawakens the slumbering champion. As divine powers return to the lands, people begin to rediscover the worship of the original pantheon of gods. The clergy of the Imperial Church, however, are still left without divine magic. They refuse to believe that other gods exist, and launch into a full-scale Inquisition against pagan churches.

I figure a good time to set the campaign would be 100 years or so after the reawakening of the old gods. I can see a lot of adventures revolving around the discovery of old temples and ancient artifacts - who knew that old family heirloom was really a major relic? The influx of divine magic would create wonderful political situations - what happens when a group of people get nationalistic about the worship of their god and attempt to rebel against imperial authority?

There's a lot of things still left to be decided, but I really like the idea for the campaign world. One of these days I'll stop being lazy and actually start writing stuff down.

 

[Mystic Eye]

Hi there,

The challenge you will have is really about alignment. You can always have the BotR pantheon have their own inquisition and have the self policing force of the strictors. The thing that makes the Church united in Gothos unique from "most" campaign setting religions is that it has its base in a LN alignment. Meaning that it is true unto itself and follows its own laws strictly. Every one else is fundementally wrong. Like many faith in our world the Pantheon views you as part of the church or going straight to hell with no middle ground. This gives them the freedom to pursue what they "see" as evil without risking the power granted from their gods.

It is its roots in the LN alignment that allow the guilt free attitude about dealing with "heretics and Blasphemers" and think they did the right thing. Like any good inquisition they do allow folks to convert or prove their good nature (with the later usually resulting in death) but if folks refuse to convert then the LN alignment position gives the priests of the Pantheon ability to take action.

So, while you may have various alignments in the church, its head, the leaders and most hardcore followers, are LN in nature. In the Pantheon, the gods of the Church united range from CG to LG but the head of the church and the inquistors are all LN. This is the simple way to divide the church, give people the ability to choose a CG or LG god (or pagan faiths) and still have the terrible inquisition. This also gives you tons of great role playing opportunities within the church as the good aligned priests will always be at odds with the pracitices of their LN counterparts.

The best way would be to put a ruling body over the whole thing and make sure the top dog of the gods is LN.

Don't forget we are putting out a larger books surrounding the Pantheon and Pagan faiths soon. This will probably be helpful to you, even when combining the BotR with it.

Just my tow cents.

 

[JoeGKushner]

How about an appendix with some 'official' ideas of combining the two? There are many bits that look like they could easily be slotted into the Hunt from BoTR and Green Ronin always seems to be on the lookout for adding their material to other settings.

Come on, you know you want to. After all, you've already got Freeport there.

 

[d'Anconia]

Ok, so how about this:

The Great Church in BoTR is much larger than all of the individual churches of gods. The primary form of worship for the masses is through the Great Church. People tend to only go to individual churches/clerics for specific needs, go to Maal to deal with the death of a love one etc. Make the primary alignment of the Great Church LN (not sure if that is already the case, I don't have my book with me at the moment). That takes care giving the church the "moral authority" to pursue whomever the feel is a heretic without concerns if they are truly "evil". They are evil in the eyes of the Great Church and that is all that matters. However this gives rise to another problem - how the paladins of the Great Church are going to react to this. Obviously at least some of the LG clerics of the church will have problems with this, but they could be viewed as a minor group of dreamers who are out of touch with the real world. How would the Church deal with a major order within it disagreeing with them about the inquisition. I guess The Hunt Paladins of the Pantheon would have the same delimna. So, how would these paladins respond to the Great Churches Inquisition, and how would the Church view them if they opposed it?

This still doesn't deal with the minor "gods" issue - can anyone come up with a way to integrate minor powers that are not a member of the pantheon into BoTR's mythos. I could see dealing with this by using the rules provided for heretical cults in BoTR, but is there another? Just trying to approach this from all points of view. Thanks for the feedback guys, this is the first time I've posted seriously here, and it's kinda cool seeing some of the more well known people replying to a lurker like me (well, I guess I'm sort of an x-lurker now)

 

[Asathas]

The campaign I'm currently running is based on real world Earth in 1514 AD and I'm using the BotR deities.

Here's the main changes in the world (and BotR) to make it work:

Creation story follows as it does in BotR with the single change being that they made the Compact at 1 AD... thus BC is Before Compact and AD is After Departure.

The Catholic/Christian churches have been replaced with the BotR Great Church.

Judaism has been replaced with a faith that worships only the Unnamed One and considers the deities of the Great Church to be the servants of the Unnamed One. (curious how well that one seems to work out)

Now... for Islam (and please keep in mind that this is no way intended to imply, suggest, or in any way malign the Islamic faith) I have the faith consisting of worship of ALL of the deities including Asmodeus. The Great Church views this as heresy and thus we have the Crusades.

The Spanish Inquisition is currently ongoing with the focus being on rooting out jews and muslims (and of course any nasty devil worshippers).

There are other changes I made (the introduction doc is about 20 pages) but this covers the big changes relating to religion and BotR and making it work in a world with religious crusades and inquisitions.