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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9387515" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Going back to the beginning, let's see what we get. If it absolutely must be one per slot (a stance I personally disagree with, but it's what was requested)...Sun: Sarenrae. The Sun, forgiveness, spring, (re)birth, restitution, laxity.Moon: Sehanine. The Moon, autumn, healing, sleep, celebration, illusion, love/lust.Storm: Kord. Storm/rain, strength, achievement, zeal, intoxication, hooliganism.Life: Melora. Nature, ocean, wild(erness), bounty, freedom, savagery.Death: Raven Queen. Death, darkness, winter, fate, ambition, betrayal/defection.*Undeath: Vecna. Undeath, tenacity, individuality, secrets, theft, corruption.Order: Asmodeus. Order, defense, construction, tyranny, slavery.Chaos: Bane. Chaos, victory, versatility, conquest, bloodshed, murder.Skill: Erathis. Skill, discipline, strategy, art, arrogance, despotism.Wealth: Tiamat. Wealth, charisma, patience, vengeance, avarice, cruelty.Valor: Bahamut. Justice, hope/luck, travel, glory, impudence, intrusiveness.Magic: Corellon. Magic, summer, beauty, wood/forest, lies, vanity.Knowledge: Ioun. Knowledge/memory, enlightenment, prophecy, fatalism, pretension.Oblivion: Gruumsh. Oblivion/forgetting, collaboration, destruction, consumption, resourcefulness.I have attempted to heed the "make the evil deities worthy of SOME worship" thing, while still keeping them pretty evil, and likewise making the good deities still not absolutely 100% squeaky-clean. The evil ones are not deities that a good person would happily gain favor from; at their absolute best, they're like Egypt's Sutekh/Set/Seth, someone you pray to so they'll turn their baleful eyes upon your enemies. You pray Asmodeus will look kindly on your buildings and lay waste to the walls of an enemy city. Vecna is probably the closest this pantheon gets to a god nobody sane would willingly worship--and he "earned" his divinity by hook and by crook, as it were, so it's not so weird that he'd be the one outlier. Likewise, Gruumsh is almost a likable god, representing an almost Shiva-style "destroy that which needs to be destroyed so something new can take its place" position...but he's also the patron deity of bandit hordes and colluding cartels.I consider "tyranny" distinct from "despotism" for the same reason I consider "order" different from "justice." Tyranny is hegemonic, hierarchic, almost mechanistic; despotism is simply autocratic rule. Both Erathis and Asmodeus like societies that have clear rules and structure, but Erathis is okay with an autocrat who eliminates an ineffectual and deadlocked legislature so long as it makes the wheels of society turn, while Asmodeus would hate such a thing and call it destruction of the social order. The two of them would both hate the Galactic Empire from Star Wars, but for entirely opposite reasons. She doesn't care that the Senate is gone and such, but the resulting self-destructive government is beyond the pale. He doesn't care that the Sith government is rending its own society by ruling through fear and abuse, but the weakening/dissolution of the Senate and the foolish, wasteful use of the Death Star on Alderaan (which immediately led to a massive surge of support for the Rebellion) would be utterly unacceptable.This makes for 14 gods, most of which are relatively "good" (Sarenrae, Sehanine, Kord, Melora, TRQ, Erathis, Bahamut, Corellon, Ioun) but definitely not always nice, while the remainder are "evil" (Vecna, Asmodeus, Bane, Tiamat, Gruumsh) but not always harmful and sometimes even helpful.*One man's defection is another's betrayal: it's all dependent on whose side the observer favors.</blockquote>

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