Polytheism

[MeepoTheMighty]

Sounds cool.
What is the nature of the reemerging gods? Are they the typical "Hi I am Thorax God of Insects and War" types or is there something more distinctive about them?

I haven't quite decided yet, but I'm pretty impressed with the pantheon presented in Green Ronin's Book of the Righteous. I don't think I'll be using it full cloth, but there are definitely parts of it that I like.

But yes, I suppose they are of the "I am Thorax, God of Insects and War" variety, though there's a strong internal cosmology that makes it all make sense.

 

[Tuerny]

Anyone else?

 

[Vaxalon]

If you look at the historical polytheistic pantheons, they all have a genealogy to them.

Uranus and Gaea begat Kronos.

Kronos and Rhea (his sister, btw... happens a lot in these stories) begat Hades, Poseidon, Zeus, Hestia, Demeter, and Hera.

Zeus and Hera (there they go again) begat Ares, Eris, Hephaestus, and Hebe. They adopted Aphrodite, too.

Ares and Aphrodite (must be something in the water) begat Eros.

In any case, if you put together this kind of history, you start getting a pantheon that makes sense. The various gods and goddesses start having relationships that can be expanded.

 

[Dinkeldog]

I've got several pantheons in my homebrew. I look at the people that inhabit the region and decide what's important to them, then I decide what natural forces the people might personify. So my primary area has a group of 7 deities under an Earth Mother and her Consort, the Sun. Then deities for Agriculture married to the Huntsmen, the twin daughters of the Earth: Wisdom and Luck, and a non-adversarial God of Night. There are gaping holes, but the backstory includes deities that have deliberately sacrificed their place in this world to keep at bay a Great Evil.

Another pantheon is for a group of mountain and glacier-dwelling people that tend toward barbarism. There is no deity for agriculture, and no mother-figure. The leader of the pantheon challenges his people to valorous deeds and brave deaths. The Maiden of Winter is the Evil Snow Queen-type that delights in causing pain.

The Riders on the plain keep a pantheistic faith with shaman as their holy advisors.

The monotheistic faith developed after the Good aspect of a trio of gods finally defeated the Evil aspect with the aid of a group of adventurers. As the Neutral deity warned, the Good aspect started developing more Evil traits, and eventually cast the Neutral deity out and removed his name from the Holy Texts. The culture involved is a decadent Empire that engaged in religious persecution that forced a splinter group to relocate to where the first pantheon above is.

 

[brymeister]

I use a somewhat odd system in my world (Ugramer) that is a combination of Sumerian and Babylonian mythologies.


Ankha is the goddess of heaven. She created the heavens. Her husband/consort Kielubre created the earth and the aether.

After a time period that is unknown Ankha and Kielubre had a spat and the result of that was that they fought with each other. Ankha fought from the heavens and Kileubre from earth and aether. Neither could kill the other so they both attempted a dark and fell ritual which was to force the other to submit to them. The result was that the ritual went awry and the two deities fused and then erupted into two new beings. Ahnkiel and Ubrekha.

Ahnkiel is the 'head' god of the cosmology worshipped by beings on the PMP. Ahnkiel was created by the fusion of Ankha and Kielubre. He found that new beings had erupted upon the face of Ugramer. These were the first of Elves, Dwarves and Gnomes.

Ahnkiel had sex with one of the first of the Elves whose name was Ewakna. Before she consented to have relations with Ahnkiel, Ewakna made him swear to make her divine. He swore to make her the goddess of the seas, the sky and the earth. She said that he must do this one at a time. He agreed. The result of this union was Wasilka. Some time later Ahnkiel returned and looked for Ewakna in the garden and saw Vasilka instead but he didn't know the difference. Thus Vasilka became goddess of the sky just as Ewakna was goddess of the seas. The result of this union was Takhila. And as you might guess she became goddes of the earth. But after this time Ahnkiel figured out what was going on and cursed Takhila that she would bear a bad seed. The result was Kutta who became the goddess of death. She mated with Ubrekha who is the god of destruction and they had twin boys named Uklha and Oklha. Ukhla killed Oklha and Oklha's blood hit Ugramer and formed the races of goblins, orcs and trolls.

Sorry, I realize this is a bit long so I will stop here.

Bryan

 

[jgbrowning]

hinduism

I'm kinda surprised no one here yet has mentioned the method of dealing with polytheism that hinduism takes (well, at least one particular aspect of hinduism ).

one big god.

many smaller big gods who are in actuality the one big god in different forms.

many, many medium gods who are in actuality the different aspects of the smaller big gods.

and hundreds (thousands?) of little gods who are remnants from an even older, more animistic faiths.

and millions of people who are actually parts of the big god and the entirety of the big god at the same logically-impossible moment.

pick up a book on hindu mythology.. its freaky. but informative


joe b.

 

[Kryndal Levik]

Polytheism Problems

One of the biggest difficulties I have with polytheism is with racial deities; I'm in the process of redesigning my pantheons for my homebrew and, like many "standard" campaigns, I have separate pantheons for each race (human, elven, orc, etc.). On the one hand, I don't want to homogenize my religions by using the same gods with different aspects- that also has a tendency to mess up "creation myths." My other concern with that approach is that you can have followers of the same god (but of different aspects) coming into conflict. For example- would a lawful good god allow his elven and human followers to fight against each other in a race war (justified or otherwise)?

On the other hand, the other approach- truly independent deities for each race- has always seemed very cumbersome. I have about a dozen or so "key" deities for my main human kingdom; if you have even half that for each race, you end up with scores of deities.

How have you handled this in your campaigns? I like the polytheistic approach (using an "integrated" human pantheon/church similar to that which is described in Book of the Righteous), but this racial deity problem has always bothered me...

 

[Greybar]

My other concern with that approach is that you can have followers of the same god (but of different aspects) coming into conflict. For example- would a lawful good god allow his elven and human followers to fight against each other in a race war (justified or otherwise)?

I think herein lies two important things for the world creator (and note that this doesn't have to be exclusively the province of the GM):

1) Myths and History lie
Previous posters have touched on this very well. There should be conflicts in your creation stories, 'cause my grandpa told me different that your lyin' grandpa told you! Leaders have intentionally interpreted holy scripts and visions for their own purposes (out of intrigue or honest belief), and thus deviate from each other. Repeat for twenty generations, and you've got plenty of conflict.

2) How much do your Gods intervene in the world and its view of them?
To briefly (and carefully, I hope) touch on real world religions - there are in many "Faiths of the Book" fundamental interpretations of "the Book". They hold that their God would not allow mistruth to come into the translations/interpretations of "the Book". Now in a fantasy world, if your God is constantly coming down and saying "I didn't mean *that*", then certainly the mortals will be more likely stay on a straight and narrow path. Even then, some might say that the manifestation that your priest saw was actually the Trickster God...

But to be honest, you probably don't want your Gods constantly stepping in. After all, if they step in and solve the problems, then what are the heroes to do? So it's best to set your Gods back a bit, let them take on some misty vagueness and conflict.

This is not to say that a "Gods Walk the Earth" campaign isn't possible, but it will have a very different feel and theme than most fantasy games I've seen/heard-of/read-about.

John

 

[werebrownie]

i'm using a variety of things for the pantheon in the game setting i'm working on at the moment.

at the dawn of history the only inhabitants of the world are a large number of humans. they begin to develop primative civilization and in the process the three over-gods are brought into existance through sheer power of belief.

anyone that's read pratchett's small gods should see the angle i'm working with here.

entities in this world rise to godhood through a number of methods -
A, they're the offspring of gods. while godly beings they can fall as far as demigod status if they fail to acquire sufficient followers.
B, they're brought into existance as the over-gods were.
C, any non-divine entity that gains enough followers can ascend

the humans, being the most populous race in the world have their own pantheon, however these gods are not exclusively worshipped by the humans.

every civilized race is going to have at least a few demigods and/or minor gods... great leaders and the like that get elevated.

powerful and power-hungry planar creatures are likely to simply bring followers to the world in order to elevate themselves to godhood.

the end result is that the world can only hold so many inhabitants. this means that there are a finite number of followers the world can sustain. this sets up all sorts of conflict as the gods struggle for followers in order to maintain and increase their divine rank.

summed up you get the following -
one true pantheon that originates with the humans.
numerous other gods and godlings - some planar creatures that have found the world and others simply ascended mortals.

 

[Kryndal Levik]

Actually, I'm thinking of more of an ethical dilemma (for both the god and his followers) as opposed to the god stepping in... Example: There's a race war (say, precipitated by the trickster god you mentioned... ) between the elves and the humans (or the dwarves, etc.). If you use a "shared" god between the two pantheons, it would be possible, perhaps even likely, that clerics and/or paladins- all good-aligned- worshiping different aspects of the same deity would be fighting against each other. The issue is:

• It's feasible that such a war could occur- neither side need be "wrong," per se, or be violating the ethos of their faith/god.
• How would a god react in this situation? Let them fight it out, granting spells to both sides and letting them die (and watching the number of his faithful diminish in the process)?
• Or would he/she/it deny their spells/abilities, thereby causing a "crisis of faith?"

Just my thoughts on a rather complicated subject...