New Gods

Silverglass · Sep 15, 2004

Any comments?

Emiricol · Sep 15, 2004

I like your idea regarding worshipping a portfolio. It does indeed let us introduce credible ancestor/totem worship without messing with the gods list (which I am solidly opposed to doing). We would merely have to explain why a CE tribe could warship portfolios of Protection and War, which are domains of Adenan. For example.

I dislike the idea of saying all dead reside in Underworld. It's always been sort of a clearing house for the gods to come get their faithful, which is an important part of the religion. I don't think it'll kill anything to make that change, but we'd have to explain just *why* a person would bother worshipping a god if, in the end, none of it mattered in the everlasting afterlife.

I am utterly unconcerned with overlapping portfolios, since two gods with a shared portfolio would simply be relevant to different aspects of that portfolio. I don't think there's a lot of shared portfolios anyway, though, due to the method we used to create the gods, but I could be wrong. Again, not a concern of mine though.

Memnus · Sep 15, 2004

Emiricol said:
I dislike the idea of saying all dead reside in Underworld. It's always been sort of a clearing house for the gods to come get their faithful, which is an important part of the religion. I don't think it'll kill anything to make that change, but we'd have to explain just *why* a person would bother worshipping a god if, in the end, none of it mattered in the everlasting afterlife.

IIRC, the ancient Greeks believed exactly this - all souls traveled to Hades after death. Fortunately, the Underworld was a big place, with different parts for different rewards or punishments. Following a god won't get you out of the Underworld, but it will get you a spot in it that's more to your liking.

I'm not as well-read on our theology, though, so I'm not sure how much of a change this would be.

DMEntropy · Sep 15, 2004

Sorry, I have been slow to post on this. I am definitely FOR portfolio worship. I am against messing with our pantheon.

What exactly will we need to change/clarify to make this work?

Emiricol · Sep 15, 2004

That wouldn't be much of a change. We'd have to detail where the gods live, but I'm happy with moving further away from the Great Wheel cosmology in any case, if we do something like that.

Silverglass · Sep 20, 2004

As to the dead staying in the Underworld the write-up (which was posted before) states that the souls of the worshippers of a deity get to travel to that deities plane (by default I assumed that all deities have a home plane) with the exception of Domina's whoshippers who go to the are of the underworld that she inhabits and Murrghyn's worshippers who pass back into the world for rebirth/reincarnation.

The worshippers who would stay in the underworld would be only those who worship only a portfolio, this gets round the problem of a "chaotic good plane" like Felicitas's being populated by evil creatures who worshipped the Luck portfolio. So each deities home plane would be populated by their servants and the souls of those who worshipped them as an actual deity.

As written the Underworld has a non-physical aspect called "Reverie" which is like a "personal afterlife" for each soul so the faithfull worshippers of a portfolio can congregate there. The design already encompasses the possibility of a separate area for each cult that could exist. Most of Naeron's actual worshippers inhabit the physical underworld which is pretty much the model for any deities home plane.