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ShortQuests -- individual adventure modules! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed to plug in to your game.

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dogbrain" data-source="post: 1213329" data-attributes="member: 14980">Alternatively, one could have each culture with contradictory cosmologies that are all true.  This is (or at least was) a premise behind the Glorantha setting.  Part of Glorantha's back-story was the horror of the "Godlearners", who were powerful Cambellian "Power of Myth" cosmological unifiers.  They had gone through on an enormous project to "discover" the "true" underlying cosmology.  What they actually may have been doing was forcing somewhat similar features into a single, brand new, cosmology.  However, they accidentally destroyed themselves in the process and left the world with a bunch of cosmologies that didn't quite fit together.  The further one got from where the Godlearners had lived, the more different things were.  Likewise, over the millenia would-be "heroes" would likewise try to make their own cultures' cosmologies "universal", thus muddying things more.To confuse matters, an example:Among the southern barbarians there is the great Orlanth, thunder god and king of the gods.  One of Orlanth's great feats was to overthrow "The Emperor" and slay him, then rescue his spirit and essentially reduce him to a deus otiosus.  But the northern sun worshipping empire had no "Orlanth".  However, they did have a trickster figure who accidentally killed their sun god and was forced to restore the proper order of things as punishment.  So, the Godlearners combined the two--but got wiped out before they could finish the job.So, up north, there's this pathetic little clown of a god who grants no wortwhile gifts.  However, if an actual worshipper of Orlanth manages to get up north, he can still get the gifts offered by Orlanth at the shrines to this trickster.  If a northern trickster makes it down south, he gets only the silly trickster gifts--unless he gets shown the "truth" about his god.Of course, the powers that be up north make sure that barbarians don't get the opportunity to spread their "lies".  Since they've made solid cultural inroads south, they are doing a better job of enforcing their version of the Sun among the barbarians.Who has the truth?  Nobody.  Everybody.</blockquote>

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