Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Marandahir" data-source="post: 9850912" data-attributes="member: 6803643">Record of Lodoss War's B/X D&D setting famously had its deities all dead from the War of the Gods. But they still have an active hand because fo the faith of their followers, and because a particularly powerful Cleric could use their body to open a door to that deity's resurrection or at least to carry out divine intervention (basically an I-Win button during major battles, but the only Clerics we ever see powerful enough to pull this off while still retaining their sense of self and coming back, are Neese the Elder, Flaus, and Neese the Younger. I don't think Melissa does it in Rune Soldier Louie, but I may be misremembering, or she might in the novels that I haven't read. In any case, the Lodoss stories treat this act of divine intervention as basically suicidal last resort. It's just that the 3 heroes we care about and see do it all somehow survive their acts (though I'd note that Neese the Younger's version of this is trickier because the BBEG is also trying to use her to open a door for the CE Goddess of Destruction Kardis, while she's a priestess of the CG Goddess of Creation Marfa and tries to open a door to Marfa instead). And there's also a handful of deities that opted out of the war of the gods, that live on vampirically using the bodies of people over in the Crystania continent. There's a separate module / light novel / anime series about Crystania, but again I've never seen it. I just know the most evil of them steals Ashram's body as part of a refugee deal for Crystania to take in the Marmo and people of Kanon that he sailed off with after RoLW. I really like the idea that the Gods are dead, but that doesn't mean their wills aren't carried forth by the people who venerate them. it's almost a form of ancestor worship, or at least got a more Shinto-esque veneration tied to them. And this makes sense for Lodoss too because Lodoss Island is the part of the continent of Alecrast that was essentially Kardis' body, cut away from the corpses of the other gods at the end of the war so as to contain most of the evil god's power in Lodoss.</blockquote>

Verification