Help me with religion ideas IMC

[NightsEnd]

I want to base my pantheon around the Earth, Sun, and Moon.

What I have:

Each of these Divinities have no consciousness, they are just pools of power that can be tapped into by those that know how (clerics, druids). The earth can only be accessed by druids, and the sun and moon only by clerics. I'm pretty content with the earth/druid side of things, which brings me to my point:

What I'm needing help with:

I would like to separate the two types of clerics, by granted powers and themes, but I need ideas on what to differentiate the two by. I'm not too keen on just using the simple sun/good vs moon/evil theme, as I would like clerics of any alignment to be able to choose either deity. An idea of moon/chaos vs sun/law occured to me, but I'm just looking for any other options. The two powers need not be polar opposites either. The next step then would be assigning domains/granted powers to each deity, including whether they should get the turning ability.

So, if you have any ideas on what to theme the Sun deity and the Moon deity around please post them, and if possible some ideas for your theme's domains and granted powers.

NightsEnd

 

[las]

Fisrt id give them the proper domains sun, and moon (from FR). That whud give a very big differnts. As there whud be two kinds of god those with the sun domain and those with the moon domain.

 

[Stormprince]

Think about what attributes you want to associate with the Sun/Day and with Moon/Night.

In one campaign, I had the sun goddess being a very strict Lawbringer type, the 'Burning Eye of the Sun'. She was the epitome of Law, Truth, and Strength (and thus also War, Death, etc). She sought to eternally banish the Darkness, period, believing that Evil festered only in Darkness.

Conversely, the Moon God was a far gentler type, given to Dreams (and thus Illusions), Healing, Magic, etc... He preached that understanding and accepting the Darkness was the only way to defeat Evil...

Both gods also had their own darker aspects:

The Sun Goddess went to such extremes of Lawfulness that she, and her followers, were fanatics in destroying anything they believed to be tainted by the Darkness (much like the Whitecloaks do in Robert Jordan's books)...

The Moon God, because of his connection to the tides and the weather, was too close to the Darkness, and thus could be just as vengeful and unforgiving as his twin.

Basically, I tried to cover all possible spectrums with these two gods, which made worship both easier, and more difficult *chuckles* I ended up throwing in quite a few demon cults and making it a more Desert-Arabic type setting, just because I liked the idea of Righteous Zealots wearing white turbans and caftans riding down enemies of 'Light' beneath the glaring desert sun...

Christopher

 

[Tonguez]

The Sun is a swirling ball of gas undergoing chaotic fusion

Sun = Chaos/Life/Day/Growth

The Moon is a gentle stable presence in the sky which goes through regular cyclical change

Moon = Lawful/Change/Night/Entrophy

 

[Stormprince]

Okay... now, are the churches of the Sun and Moon inclusive...

By that, I mean.. are the Sun and Moon Churches overseen by a single Patriarch (Matriarch, etc) each, with various divisions within it, or does each aspect of the Sun and Moon have completely different Churches and idealologies? Can clerics multiclass between Churches (ie, be a paladin of the sun and priest of the moon)? Are the two churches allies? Or are they one complete 'entity'?

 

[sepulchrave]

Classic stereotypes for Sun and Moon are:

Sun = Active, masculine, assertive, logical, spirit, Yang, virile, fire, gold, constant, etc.

Moon = Reactive, feminine, receptive/absorptive, intuitive, soul, Yin, fertile, water, silver, changeable etc.

Problem is that the Moon's symbolism overlaps with the Earth's quite a lot...

 

[NightsEnd]

las:

While I wouldn't mind creating/granting a Moon domain to the Moon priesthood, I don't feel the FR Moon domain is what I'm looking for. Especially when compared to the Sun domain, the FR Moon domain seems set to a specific campaign. IMC, were-creatures will be very rare, I might not even introduce them.


sepulchrave:

One of the problems I'm running up against is how to define the Moon, and yet not have it mirror the Earth's domains.


Stormprince:

Your example is what I am currently coming up with, and one which I may yet use. I'm just fearing that it would make the religions too simple.

What I was toying around with (if I go the Sun/Law-Moon/Chaos theme) was the church of the Sun would have a rigid structure set up, a patriarch up top, and various factions (probably based around alignment or politics) throughout. The church of the Moon wouldn't have any visible structure set up. Perhaps the more powerful being followed mostly. Under this setup, the Sun priests would usually be found stationed at one church, where the Moon priests could be found wandering from areas to areas. Both religions would be separate entities although they would get along well, at least outwardly. They are both more closely related than they are with the Earth religion.

Anyway, since the deities aren't possessing consciousness, the clerics could just be another form of "wizard", one which draws power from the (inert) celestial bodies. The differences between the Sun and Moon wouldn't be ideologies, but more their strengths and weaknesses in domains/powers. If that is the case, perhaps the only hard requirement for the clerics to be able to tap into this power would be alignment or the knowledge how. Has anyone tried anything similar?

NightsEnd

 

[Stormprince]

Well... I know in one series of books I read, all magic-users (who were a combination of priest/mages) were divided into two distinct groups - Men, who all trained under the Sun, and women, who were all trained by the Moon. This was based on the images of the Sun's power being masculine, the Moon's power being feminine, thus men-sun/women-moon worked for that setting.

Basically, you need to settle upon a similar distinction - what draws one person to focusing the energy of the Sun and another to drawing on the energy of the Moon?

Christopher