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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tuerny" data-source="post: 375020" data-attributes="member: 674">After reading through this thread I think I have a pretty good idea of how I am going to handle the polytheistic faith of the next region I am detailing for my setting.My previous one, Ral-Auth, mostly had deities as expressions of abstract forces of the universe. They rarely intervened and existed more as an easy symbol for the human mind to conceptualize than anything else. And while that was interesting, I want to try something new for my next setting.As such I am going to be taking the ideas expressed here combined with some stuff from Exalted and my own fevered concious to create an Imperial Cult of sorts that was formed during the creation of the Ban Gali Imperium. The Ban Gali had their own native gods, but they also were pragmatic enough to accept other gods into the mix. Whenever they conquered a people they would have members of the Imperial Temple come in and assess the local deities and determine if they were aspects of one of the pre-existing deities, new deities worthy of worship, or demons. The assumption of deities was as much a political consideration as a theological one, but it resulted in the Imperial Temple having, at its height, almost thirty members of its pantheon with numerous aspects of these core thirty members. With the fall of the Ban Gali Imperium the worship of these deities has become a bit more localized. Each area had deities it favored before the fall of the Imperium, due to shared values or origin, and has, since then, essentially adopted these deities or their aspects as their local "pantheon"Just because two different locations worship the same deity doesn't mean that they have the same worship practices. Worship of Hulloth among the honorable soldiers of Mur'dosh varies greatly with that among the human sacrificing slave lords of Ullosh. The Imperial Cult, a descendant of the Imperial Temple, still exists in some respects, and these priests serve more as pantheonic priests, worshipping great divinities in general rather than any one in particular.  They are popular in trade centers and in areas that have had problems with angry gods in the past.Also in existance are animistic priests who venerate the little gods. They are very well aware of the spirits that are present in everything and make sure that it keeps working and venerate them in exchange for their own brand of power. (Druids) The Imperial Temple maintained "official myths" that changed as new gods were added or changed. Due to the great size of the Empire these myths were never update outside of the Ban Gali Province and the area around the Holy Mountain. At the time of the Imperium's fall there was thus a number of contradictory myths spread throughout the Imperium, myths which further diverged with time and the reinstating of territortial independance. This results in frequently contradictory myths in areas that are only a few dozen miles from each other. Anyway, with this basis I think I am going to cook up 20 or 30 gods and demon lords and use that as a basis for the religion in the region. The remaining ones will be left blank for future development as needed. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Any thoughts?</blockquote>

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