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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6288117" data-attributes="member: 4937">Well, do think about it.  It's going to have a major impact on how rational and reasonable you can portray a doctrine of free sexual expression.Let's drop it then.  I was using shorthand.   I can get there without it.Let's examine DiBella herself, particularly in her iconic representation as a nude human female, her arms bent sharply at the elbows, reclining backwards, with her hands above her head, and flowers replacing her hands.   Well, the first thing that ought to be obvious about this portrait is that this is not the deity of male-female equality.  A person whose hands are replaced by flowers is not someone who can do any rough or hard work with her hands.   Indeed, I think that it is reasonable to suggest that if you have flowers in place of hands, you can't really do any work at all.  You can't hit.  You can't grasp.  You can't manipulate anything by strength.  You are helpless and dependent on others to protect, provide and care for you.  Flowers are literal sexual organs.  The only thing you are presenting the female form as good for is sex.  Moreover, the body posture of back bent backwards, arms bent at the elbows, and hands placed above ones head is the female rape submission posture.  So what power is in this deity?  Eros.   DiBella has the power to inspire eros and desire.  The posture that her idols represent is the ideology that a rape victim has power over her rapist, because her eros took control over her attacker and made him act.  It is an ideology of sexual power; of sexuality as a tool of control and manipulation.    I don't really know how much of that was conscious by the team that developed the Elder Scrolls, and how much of that was just the result of following their intuition, but I do know that ideology is straight up Aphrodite.Now, in terms of creating a pantheon, there is nothing wrong with portraying that ideology.  Lots of real people have believed in that ideology, and lots of real people today express aspects of that ideology even today.  It can even be expressed in a form that is parallel to modern feminist empowerment - for example, in that vein of feminism where women disrobe and talk about taking back their sexuality, they are talking about reclaiming the power of eros.  The general ideology something that's possibly worth exploring.But I think it clear that if you intend to express the deity in a way that is more unequivacably 'good' as most modern players would understand it, you're going to need to embody her in some form other than one of submission with hands replaced by sexual organs.  For example, you asserted earlier that as you conceive her she abhors rape, and she disapproves of betrayal.  I suggest you either give up on portraying her as unquivacbly 'good', or else you are going to have to make some sort of short list of things she considers 'sins' and which are never acceptable regardless of your personal choices.  If that list is to convey 'goodnesss' in both the D&D sense and in the common sense understanding of goodness in modern Western civilization, it's going to have to be guidelines that ensure eros is used in a way that healthy and improves wellbeing for all involved.Good luck.  Making something that does what you want it to do is always fun.That seems reasonable given the general ethos involved here.   However, if you are to consider Im-Tinar good, it should be clear that some requests - those that don't improve the health and well-being of those being transformed - would be denied.   If on the other hand, Im-Tinar is a goddess of Eros who employs slaves as sacred prostitutes in her temples and doesn't consider that 'wrong', then modifying someone to be a more sexual object either against their will or against their interests doesn't necessarily offend her in the slightest.  Likewise, if someone comes in and wants to be multilated so that they can be better degraded or otherwise out of feelings of low self-worth, that's fine as well.  Indeed, that might even be considered laudable - the recognitiion that ones entire worth is in inspiring eros and in accepting that as a choice might be considered 'correct'.  At some point, complete lack of dogmatism becomes CN - there is no evil, there is no good, there is only self and violition.  Now, honestly, I consider Im-Tinar as CN to be the obvious way to take her, and the way I would take her or something like her as the most interesting edition to my pantheon.   The reason for that is that if Im-Tinar is CN, I can have CG, CN, and CE factions and sects, worshipping Im-Tinar without contridiction and that creates a really interesting scenario for the players.I think you are on one 'correct' track here, depending on where you want to go.  However, she doesn't have to have her own standards.  If she really is idealized non-dogmatic, and almost by definition deities are idealizations of the things they represent, then its quite possible that Im-Tinar believes everything beautiful and has no standards.  She could be both the goddess of beauty and of ugly.   Her ultimate doctrine might be everything should inspire eros, and its only the weak and unwise and as of yet not transcendent that fail to see this.  If she is non-dogmatic, she probably allows different sects of worshippers to believe that she has a certain particular standard but the deeper mystery would be that there is no standard.   She might be worshipped even under multiple names, with the different sects believing that the more extreme sorts are heretical while never understanding that for Im-Tinar there is no heresy, only choice.</blockquote>

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