Malar, Sivanus and Melikki. Not to mention half the elven pantheon.
Tempus became the god of war taking the portfolio from Garagos who became a demigod, so it is possible for the losers of divine battles to survive.
That is a more difficult of a position to prove. Sure, one can argue that the creation is influenced by the author, but it's a bit more difficult to argue that Umberlee reflects Greenwood's personal perception of the sea.
That is just not true at all. There are plenty of evil gods of myth/religion
I would say that how evil gods are frequently presented in D&D typically don't reflect how wicked deities of real world historical cultures are presented. Evil deities of D&D probably are more indebted to the likes of Arioch in the Melnibonean series.
Why does anything need to be proved? We are talking about metaphor and emotional response, which falls under Art, not Science.
"Wicked" deities are usually how they are portrayed by the opposition (e.g. Ba'al in the bible, Hecate in Shakespeare). Kali was a god of destruction, but that recognised that destruction was a necessary part of the cycle of life, enabling rebirth.
Cogent arguments with evidential support are still commonplace for discussing art, Paul.
I’m not talking about any opposing views here. I was referring to the views of deities within the worldview of the religious cultus itself. The Babylonian goddess Tiamat, for example, was vilified within the Babylonian epic “Enuma Elish.” The Canaanite deity Yam was vilified in the Ugaritic Baal cycle, but it’s not as if the Canaanite peoples of Ugarit were vilifying the deity of another religion. Wicked deities do exist within the contexts of their own cultures and nations.
