Mezoamerican gods

[D.Shaffer]

No, literally. Seriously. I'm not making this up. According to the older stories all the Aztec gods died, supposedly in an act of sacrifice to reignite the sun. This is the basis of the claim that humans must repay the favor by sacrificing thier lives.

Depends on the story. the most common one has only one god do it. But you also have stories of previous 'Suns' ruling over different worlds that are destroyed and then recreated under a new sun. In one of these stories, they recreate humans using the bones of the previous people. Yet, it's not like all humans were undead because of this.

I think, rather then taking it literally that they died, that it's more of along the lines of their physical forms dying, or a symbolic death. That's hardly undeath as in DND. Other religions have comparable stories where a god 'dies' but isnt really dead (Or undead).

The skulls and other imagery has more to do with them being a symbol of power and fertility rather then a sign they thought all the gods were undead beings. Aztec religious motifs have a LOT of symbolism going into it. A picture of a god would often be more symbolic of what they represented then a literal description of what the Aztecs thought they looked like.

 

[Relique du Madde]

That's why so many of them are pictured as skeletons..

Not true. Beyond being fertility symbols, skulls/skelitons also are signs of immortality/mortality. The Aztecs and many meso-american peoples believed that skelitons held a portion of the souls of the deceased. The very fact that skeletons remain long after a corpse decomposed was a sign that the spirit surives after death. Thus, since many Aztec dieties have died (at least once), their vary depection as skeletons serves as a reminder to the aztec people that even though their physical bodies are mortal, their spiritual bodies are everlasting.

 

[Hussar]

As Shroomy mentions above, Dragon magazine is starting up a series of Class Acts articles that detail several of these deities. And over in Dungeon, the Savage Tide Adventure Path is thick into the Isle of Dread, whose native inhabitants worshiped these deities. Tlaloc, Quetzalcoatl, Camazotz, and several others are fairly significant thematic elements of the adventures that take place on the Isle of Dread in this campaign.

Y'know, I must be dense. It never occured to me to give the Isle of Dread a Mezoamerican feel to it. I know the original IOD had more of a black magic/voodoo feel to it for me.

This could certainly color how I present the AP to my players. Hrm, must do some research.

 

[Celebrim]

Y'know, I must be dense. It never occured to me to give the Isle of Dread a Mezoamerican feel to it. I know the original IOD had more of a black magic/voodoo feel to it for me.

I got some of that too, especially in the 'Witch Doctor' aspect. But, I felt reading the adventure that it was intended to have a polynesian feel to it. The original setting drew heavily on world civilizations (roman here, viking there, so forth). My assumption upon a seeing scattered chain of islands isolated far from land was that Polynesia was being invoked. The great statues from the former period were I thought meant to recall Easter Island and it's vanished civilization. The great wall and the lost world beyond it, I took as inspired by the island of King Kong - which is not in the carribean but rather in the vaster and more mysterious expanse of the Pacific (as is Ryleh, which is I think also critical to the correct feel of the setting). I typically depicted the surviving descendents of that earlier age as having much in common with the Māori. That the survivors have access to necromancy is easily explained if you know something about the original adventurers true enemy, which I must say is greatly diminished from its original Cthullan roots if the island is just another demon haunted place.

This could certainly color how I present the AP to my players. Hrm, must do some research.

Meso-America is a great source of potential inspiration, but I don't think it has a thing to do with 'The Isle of Dread' and it inclines me to think that the design team behind 'Savage Tide' didn't really get it. I suppose I should read thier stuff before judging it, but I must say it diminishes my enthusiasm for doing so.

 

[Hussar]

*snip*

That the survivors have access to necromancy is easily explained if you know something about the original adventurers true enemy, which I must say is greatly diminished from its original Cthullan roots if the island is just another demon haunted place.



Meso-America is a great source of potential inspiration, but I don't think it has a thing to do with 'The Isle of Dread' and it inclines me to think that the design team behind 'Savage Tide' didn't really get it. I suppose I should read thier stuff before judging it, but I must say it diminishes my enthusiasm for doing so.

Cthulan roots? I gotta dig my copy back out, cos I don't remember much of that beyond the funky temple in the center of the island.

On another note though, remember that the AP's are not an "Expedition to" sort of module. They aren't meant to be a rehash or update of an existing module but an entirely new adventure. The fact that the AP is in Greyhawk, not the Known World pretty much changes most of the background history right off the start. The inhabitants of the island are Olman people (which, thinking about it, does kinda point to the whole Aztec thing :/ ). I just never connected the dots until someone point it out.

 

[Ripzerai]

I got some of that too, especially in the 'Witch Doctor' aspect. But, I felt reading the adventure that it was intended to have a polynesian feel to it.

I was chatting with one of the designers (Gary Holian) on IRC last night, and he confirmed that he had indeed mixed some Polynesian elements in with the Aztec ones and whatever else suited his fancy. The adventure path isn't meant to represent any single real-world culture or be a straight-up real-world pastiche - it's a fantasy culture on a fantasy world which takes inspiration from a number of real-life and literary motifs.

 

[Celebrim]

I was chatting with one of the designers (Gary Holian) on IRC last night, and he confirmed that he had indeed mixed some Polynesian elements in with the Aztec ones and whatever else suited his fancy. The adventure path isn't meant to represent any single real-world culture or be a straight-up real-world pastiche - it's a fantasy culture on a fantasy world which takes inspiration from a number of real-life and literary motifs.

With the original Mystra there was alot of straight-up real-world pastiche, especially in the original presentation. On the whole, I think mixing elements and extrapolating according to the setting is a much stronger way to write than simply saying something like 'this is pre-WWI europe in a fantasy setting' or this is 'ancient egypt'. I tend to be attracted to writing which isn't straight up anachronisms. Changing to a more well realized and original setting than Mystra is or should be a great thing.

There are two things that have happened to the Isle of Dread that represent not taking it in the direction I would have. They aren't necessarily 'wrong', but I consider them a little more trite than the way the story could have gone.

The first is making the Kopru end villains just another race of demon worshipping bad guys, rather than the more alien/Cthullan Mind Flayer/Aboleth style bad guy that they came across to me as. It wouldn't be too bad to have that as part of thier culture, but it seems to increasingly to be consuming all the other aspects and becoming exclusively what the Isle of Dread is about. At this rate, someone is going to think its a great idea to replace the Kopru with Drow. Won't that be awesome? *sarcasm*

Secondly, the description of the natives on the island made it clear to me that they had a religion that was much more primitive than polytheism. Whenever the natives referred to 'gods' they were referring to the Kopru dominated culture of the earlier megalithic era, and hense in my mind primarily to the Kopru itself (and to some extent the leaders of the rebellion against those gods). It made sense to me that after rebelling from the abusive Kopru false gods, that the few survivors would be extremely hesitant to entrall themselves to any other dieties - least of all any diety as tyrannical and abusive as the meso-American gods. Trading the Kopru for Tlaloc doesn't seem like that great of a trade to me. For that matter, trading Demogorgon for Tlaloc doesn't seem like much of an upgrade either. Instead, I think that the 'witch doctors', ancestor worship, and the 'stone chief' represent a culture which has soured on formal religion, and now takes a more animistic and shamanistic approach to life and wants nothing of new gods at all. Tlaloc and his comrades make plenty good foils and villains in and of themselves without demons or mind enslaving aberrations with 'touch this and become my slave' artifacts lying about.