D&D 5E Racial Deities

Irennan

Explorer
And yet, as others have said, you see non-humans worship the "human" dieties but not the humans worshiping the elf, orc, etc dieties. Much of the stories and myths of Faerun revolve around the human gods, including Mystra. She literally is the magic of the entire plane. How do you fit the elven god of magic into this mythos?

The entire design feels wrong to me.

Humans do worship non human deities. That has happened, and still happens. Corellon fits into the scheme of magic because Mystra is the Weave, while he's the deity of elven arcane traditions, including High Magic and the likes. Mystra has become human, but she originally wasn't. She was more like Shar and Selune: they are worshiped mainly by humans, but they aren't human themselves.
 

log in or register to remove this ad

gyor

Legend
Simple the Elves are immigrants to Faerun, so are the Dwarves, Gnomes, Mindflayers, Orcs, Gobliniods, Halflings.

The original races of the Forgotten Realms were the Creator Races and the Giants (with Dragons coming later).

The Creator races are the Sarruhk (reptilian race that created Yuant Ti, Coults, forgetLizardfolk, Pterafolk, Nagas), anBatrachi (an Ampbian race that Created the Bullywogs, Doppelgangers, Tako, maybe the Fund too), a Bird race whose name I forget (they created the Aarcrokas, Kenku, Dire Forbid races), and the Leshay (Fey Creator race who created a bunch of Fey races, but not elves). Humans were a creator race as well.

So almost every race in the Forgotten Realms is either one of the Creator Races or one of their/descendants, an Immigrate Race, a creation of a Wizards experiments, or really minor race that has had only minor impact on history.

So many of the older Faerun Gods weren't always primarily worshipped by humans originally, for example Sseth, Jazran, Mkshulk, and a few others are really independent aspects of a God worshipped by the Reptilian races called the World Serpent, who was very much not a human friendly God, the Batrachi have their own Gods, and so on, but as these races mostly died off, humanity Gods ascended to the spotlight.

Some if the Creator races may have worshipped Shar and Selune as well, or honoured them in some way.

So most of the Mythology of the Dwarves, Elves, Orcs, and so on don't come from Faerun, but from before, with some exceptions such as the Orcgate Wars, the Creation of Evermeet.

Actually the Elves probably had the biggest impact on Faerun of race, even though they are immigrants, because of the Sundering ritual which created Evermeet causes ripples through time, backwards and forwards, trigger the current Sundering, and the Sundering in the past, where the Batrachi Empires largely ended, and Abier and Toril where first split in two.
 

gyor

Legend
Simple the Elves are immigrants to Faerun, so are the Dwarves, Gnomes, Mindflayers, Orcs, Gobliniods, Halflings.

The original races of the Forgotten Realms were the Creator Races and the Giants (with Dragons coming later).

The Creator races are the Sarruhk (reptilian race that created Yuant Ti, Coults, forgetLizardfolk, Pterafolk, Nagas), anBatrachi (an Ampbian race that Created the Bullywogs, Doppelgangers, Tako, maybe the Fund too), a Bird race whose name I forget (they created the Aarcrokas, Kenku, Dire Forbid races), and the Leshay (Fey Creator race who created a bunch of Fey races, but not elves). Humans were a creator race as well.

So almost every race in the Forgotten Realms is either one of the Creator Races or one of their/descendants, an Immigrate Race, a creation of a Wizards experiments, or really minor race that has had only minor impact on history.

So many of the older Faerun Gods weren't always primarily worshipped by humans originally, for example Sseth, Jazran, Mkshulk, and a few others are really independent aspects of a God worshipped by the Reptilian races called the World Serpent, who was very much not a human friendly God, the Batrachi have their own Gods, and so on, but as these races mostly died off, humanity Gods ascended to the spotlight.

Some if the Creator races may have worshipped Shar and Selune as well, or honoured them in some way.

So most of the Mythology of the Dwarves, Elves, Orcs, and so on don't come from Faerun, but from before, with some exceptions such as the Orcgate Wars, the Creation of Evermeet.

Actually the Elves probably had the biggest impact on Faerun of race, even though they are immigrants, because of the Sundering ritual which created Evermeet causes ripples through time, backwards and forwards, trigger the current Sundering, and the Sundering in the past, where the Batrachi Empires largely ended, and Abier and Toril where first split in two.

And some humans do worship none human deities, for example Mordin. I think it's more common amung the big name racial Gods, but it's still rare.
 

Mephista

Adventurer
Humans do worship non human deities.
Got examples? Prove it. I've seen examples one way, but I've never seen the other. Sorry, but unless I actually see equality here, I'm not going to believe it just because you say it. I've only ever seen portrayal one way.
 

Irennan

Explorer
Got examples? Prove it. I've seen examples one way, but I've never seen the other. Sorry, but unless I actually see equality here, I'm not going to believe it just because you say it. I've only ever seen portrayal one way.

From the top of my mind, Eilistraee canonically has followers of any races. Among humans, she is especially worshiped by hunters and huntresses. I'm sure there's more, but I'll need to research them. In any case, I never said that there's simmetry, but that's not very surprising, given that nonhuman deities are interlopers and (generally, not always) reflect specific aspects of their people, while many mainstream deities are like Shar, Mystra or Selune, which are not human (despite being mostly worshiped by them) and could have a general appeal. There's also the need to consider that humans usually are the most widespread race, therefore nonhuman travelers who go to live in human lands will receive much more exposure to human cultures than the reverse. Especially given that most non humans have insular cultures. I don't see implied racism here.
 
Last edited:

Mecheon

Sacabambaspis
My favourite design for this is the Elder Scrolls way, which is basically that certain deities go under different names for different cultures. So the Falmer have their creator-god Auri-El, who is also Akatosh, the dragon god of time for the Imperials and most folks, who is also Alkosh, Dragon God of Cats of the Khajit (A very regional god), who is also Alduin, World-Eater and harbinger of the Nord's end of the world

(Except Auri-el sort of split from that because his aspect was split from Aka the time spirit by the Marukhati Selective who Danced Upon the Tower and caused the first Dragon Break, which killed an aspect of a god and caused time to break for a good while there)
 

Remove ads

Top