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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pukunui" data-source="post: 9409686" data-attributes="member: 54629">That reminds me of how gods work in Discworld. Small Gods explores the idea in great detail.Revisiting my homebrew world, I decided that divine magic didn't exist and there were no clerics or paladins. Taking a page from the elemental cultists in Princes of the Apocalypse, magic-wielding priests would actually be sorcerers or warlocks mostly. Druids became the priests of the "old gods".Please note: when I first developed the world and its religions, I was still operating on the classic D&D model of equating species and culture (and thus religion). Hence why the breakdown is as follows (putting it in a spoiler block just for space-saving purposes):[spoiler]Dragonborn: These people hail from a mist-shrouded swampland, where long ago calamity befell the God-Empress and her daughters (rumored to be dragons) and sent the dragonborn into a diaspora. Today, the dragonborn tend not to worship gods or follow abstract philosophies.Dwarves: Ripped straight from Dragon Age, the dwarves of my world consider themselves to be the Children of the Stone, a Mother Earth-like entity. Much of their culture revolves around giving thanks to the Stone for its blessings, and when dwarves die underground, they "return to the Stone". But they don't worship the Stone as a god. The closest things they have to gods are their paragons - revered ancestors who must have done something to advance dwarven culture in some way. The accompanying list of example paragons included some classic D&D dwarven deities, like Moradin, as well as some from the Dragon Age setting, like Caradin.Elves: The high elves / eladrin consider themselves to be too sophisticated for childish notions like religion. Most are agnostic at best. They pay obeisance to the mightiest archfey among them but don't worship them as gods. The wood elves, however, still worship the ancient pantheon of primal elven deities, which I called the Seldarine, but they were a mixture of the elven deities from both D&D and Dragon Age. The drow were all still under the thumb of the treacherous Lolth.Gnomes: For the gnomes, I just went with the FR "Lords of the Golden Hills", complete with the idea that there were once ladies among them but they had mysteriously disappeared long ago. Gnomes who suffer from wanderlust are said to have "gone looking for the Ladies". (I suspect this was inspired by Tolkien's tale of the missing Entwives.)Halflings: The halflings of my setting take a casual, chill approach to religion, but when they can be bothered, they follow the tenets of a trio of female deities they cheekily refer to as the Sisterhood. The oldest sister is Yondalla, the middle sister is Cyrrollalee, and the youngest sister is only ever referred to as "the Lady" (aka "Lady Luck") but who may or may not be Avandra. It is thought to speak the Lady's name is to invite her displeasure, thus causing you much misfortune. (I specifically got this last idea from Discworld, but I expect that Pratchett got it from somewhere else himself.)Humans: As the usual dominant species, humans got several religions. Firstly, there are the old primeval nature-themed gods, which are modeled on the old Celtic, Norse, and other pagan religions of Europe. I included a random grab-bag of gods from various fantasy and real world mythologies, including Auril, the Devourer, Freya, Malar, Oghma, and the Raven Queen. Secondly, there was the Andarian Septry, which is a modified version of the Faith of the Seven from Game of Thrones. So there's a single god with seven aspects (Mother, Father, Maiden, Smith, etc). And then there are the fanatical, dualistic Lightbringers, who follow the Lord of Light in his quest to defeat the Great Other (another GoT rip-off).And that was about it really.If I ever revisit this homebrew world, I would most likely revisit a lot of this.[/spoiler]</blockquote>

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