Ressurecting gods - prophecies

[jerichothebard]

Hey all - a long-term campaign plot arc has been prepped in my current campaign, and will begin after the current arc is done. The long and short of it is that in my campaign world, 6 of the 7 gods fell, more than a millenia ago. The world is slowly going out of balance - crops are starting to fail, divination magic is becoming difficult, and so on - as a result.

So, the world is now run by one single monolithic church.

The players are geared up for ressurecting the gods, once they are done with the project they are working on now. What I want to know is,

a) How do they do it? I have some ideas already, but want to hear yours.
The missing gods are: Nature, Hearth, Death/Law, Arcane Magic, War, and Trickery/Passion

and,

b) What would the possible effects on society be? How would a newly risen god gather new followers, and what would the (Neutral Good Sun God's) Church do in response?

FYI, the original falling of the gods was essentially caused by a war led a very disillusioned Paladin of the Sun, who led the forces of the Sun to conquest. They also outlawed and hunted arcanists basically to extinction several centuries ago.

In a related issue, they are also about to bring back several hundred to several thousand of those arcanists. Thoughts on how the folks of the world will take that one?


thanks in advance!

jtb

 

[paradox42]

Regarding the return of the Arcanists, I'd say the most likely response from society at large will be terror and anger. Arcanists were hunted down presumably under the auspices of this "Paladin," (I put that in quotes because the Paladin clearly had to kill Good-aligned Arcanists to do the dirty work of exterminating them in addition to the Evil ones- and killing Good creatures can hardly be considered a good act, so he clearly wasn't much of a Paladin in that sense!) which means that people in general will think they must all be dark and evil.

A campaign against Arcanists couldn't work without public approval, or even support, due to the various powers Arcanists have at their disposal, so that means the people must have been on the side of the Church-based extermination squads. That in turn means that there must be some religious bias in some holy book or another against Arcane magic, and as a result the minimum response to expect would be for anti-Arcanist cults to rise up against them when they start to show again- sort of like the Children of LIght in the Wheel of Time books. Even if the actual heads of the Sun Church are the ones calling for the return of Arcanists, and they cast the Resurrection spells needed to bring it about, there will be cults of people who want to see them stay dead and do everything they can to return them to that state.

As for how to bring back the other deities, what if the Sun God basically took over the mantles and divine power of the others once they were gone, for whatever reason? Perhaps the world would have been destroyed immediately if the Sun God hadn't done that, or perhaps the divine power just naturally migrated to its only remaining expression, or perhaps there are still other reasons. The twist this idea puts in the campaign is, in order to bring back the dead deities, this power has to be liberated somehow. I'd have it be necessary to kill the Sun God and destroy/annihilate his current Church before enough divine power was liberated, but that's me. I have a deep-rooted hatred of monolithic churches like those found in the real world, so it'd be a sort of pleasant revenge fantasy for me to see things work out this way. However you liberate the divine power though, it certainly means a loss of power to the Sun God and his Church, so the Church will be fighting it all the way (whether or not the Sun God himself does).

 

[Joshua Randall]

You should read Monte Cook's book Requiem for a God. It deals more with the death of a god than the reverse, but has some ideas on the latter as well.

 

[Piratecat]

Options:

- Create new Gods. This requires tracking down humans who have a divine spark (as they, or their ancestors, were Roman-style demigods formed by a god and a human mating), convincing them to ascend, and building their church/belief base

- Maybe one of the Gods (of trickery?) isn't really dead; he ran and hid, faking his death. The PCs need to convince him to return.

- Resurrection should involve tracking down their corpses in the astral, and somehow refining and focusing vast amounts of devotional energy.

 

[jerichothebard]

Wow, thanks for the quick replies!

One thing that I should have mentioned - the party is 1/2 priests (a monk, a paladin and a cleric) of the Sun God, but events have transpired to convince them that the Church at large was wrong in its wars against the other churches and the mages.

Also, the mages aren't dead (well, a portion of the original Mages are not, anyway), they locked themselves out of time for a while, in order to avoid a direct conflict with the Church. They threw a war (in the way you throw a fight, not a party) and went into hiding. The MacGuffin to save the world (for the culmination of the first plot arc) is locked in with them, so it is ineveitable that they will be released.

I like the idea of a conflict or schism in the church, between those that do and don't believe in the validity of the arcanists. It's been a long time since that war - 500+ years - so for most people, they are really just a fairy tale.

I have definitely thought about creating new gods - one of the NPC's is a possessed pregnant woman (long story involving the party's naive ranger, a summer jaunt to the farmlands, a foot getting wedged REALLY far in his mouth, and a ghost), and her child I am gearing up for assuming the mantle of the Death god... Interesting question - do you think the divine spark of the God he is assuming would override his growing personality, or do you think that the god's outlook could be shaped by the mother?

Because right now, she's really pretty angry and bitter. Not only did she get knocked up in a summer fling (her first), he took off, then insulted her, she got kidnapped (by the bad guys), possessed, kidnapped again, sent into hiding in a Library, and finally moved from the library to a little tiny town in the forest where she is all alone and being guarded by a pack of werewolves. And then the party took off for Gods know where, on a mission to save the world.

So, yeah, a little bitter.



So far, both the god of trickery and the goddess of magic/time have appeared in visions to various party members, though it was made clear that they currently have very little power. I figure it would be pretty hard to kill the God of Narrow Escapes and the Goddess of Foresight and Divination...!

Oh, and there are hints that Nature is still alive, in some fashion, though fading fast.

I would really like some help with the mechanics of it - how to actually set up the various rituals or situations, and figure out some concrete goals to pursue.

How, for example, to supply a congregation for the newly-reborn gods? Magic is easy, since they will be releasing the mages. But the rest?

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hi there!

I suggest a method of recreating a god via the sacrifice and expenditure of various things, sufficient to generate enough quintessence.

Heres a brief example. Lets say Orcus (a quasi-deity for the purposes of our example) would normally possess 50,000 quintessence. Hes killed, but can be brought back by 'recreating' his manifestation. That costs his followers anywhere from 50,000-500,000 quintessence, depending on the focus/poignancy of the sacrifice.

Orcus is the God of the Undead, so a living sacrifice would be preferable to the destruction of multiple artifacts or similar sacrifices.

To generate 50,000 quintessence you would probably need to ritually sacrifice 500,000 (normal) people (who said it would be easy). Sacrificing Immortals (perhaps 10 solars in this case) would be an alternative way.

 

[Nareau]

Funny, this is almost exactly the campaign I'm running!

So far, the party has resurrected 2 of the 7 gods. Technically, the gods weren't killed so much as bound to special artifact blades, but who's counting?

Eshu, the god of paths, doorways, choices, free will, possibilities, etc. was brought back in a simple ritual:
1) Get the ancient artifact sword that houses his soul
2) Travel to his ancient temple
3) Chant the proper incantation
4) Invoke his essence by tossing coins
5) Have his last remaining priest (a sentient zombie) step through a doorway at the right moment while holding the sword

I handed one player 8 pennies, and said, "OK, as your character is casting these coins for the ritual, I want you to flip these coins until all come up heads. That will be the signal that the priest should step through the portal." Now, 8 coins showing all-heads should be a 1 in 256 chance. I figured it would make for a nice little delay, giving the bad guys plenty of time to swarm in on the PC's and disrupt the ritual. Foolish me forgot that this player is the luckiest guy on the planet--he flips the coins twice, and they come up right.

Priest stepped through the doorway, and the soul of Eshu posessed him. The reborn god led the party through his realm (essentially a para-plane of mazes), and off to safety.

The second god was a goddess of fertility. Similar task to reincarnate her:
1) Get the blade
2) Go to her holy place
3) Figure it out from there

This time they faced off against a bunch of giant undead babies. See, the fertility goddess gave birth to a daughter once every 70 or so years. The birthing would kill the goddess, and her newborn daughter would take her place. But when the goddess' soul was trapped long ago this cycle was broken. Her body continued to give birth, but these children were undead giants. The party managed to kill the last undead giant baby using the blade containing the goddess' soul, and she was reborn into her daughter.

Right now they're trying to prevent an evil wizard from obtaining another god-containing blade. Once they get it, they'll need to figure out some way to bring back yet another god (this one of life and death, good and evil).

Some advice: Don't count on the campaign being a series of "Go resurrect this god, now go on and resurrect that god". After about number 3, it starts to feel like you're collecting pieces of the Triforce. I'm going to have to shift gears somewhat to keep this campaign fresh.

Also, think about what sorts of help/boons the gods can provide to the party as thanks (because believe me, the first thing your PC's will ask each god is, "So what do I get for saving you?") I'm still struggling with this somewhat, but I think these boons will come in the form of major mechanic changes--ie, the goddess of fertility will automatically Raise Dead any party member who dies while trying to save the other gods.

Finally, there's something great to be said for a campaign that sees the PC's going around resurrecting old gods. If I had a nickel for every time somebody's played an adventure trying to stop NPC's from resurrecting dead gods...well, I guess I'd be Monte Cook.

Nareau

 

[Varianor Abroad]

How do the gods get power in your world? I think that will dictate a lot of answers.

 

[guardianfallenangel]

All very good ideas. In a game my friend ran in the Forgotten Realms, the gods had been cast down, not killed and all their powers were in physical form on Toril for those with the ability to claim them to become gods. None were easy to obtain. My insane, winged, albino gobling fighter/sorc. ended up finding the portfolio of magic. He later gathered the shards of Mystra (one of the only gods to have actually died) and used his own divine powers to return her to power, keeping chaos magic for himself.

If the Sun god has the powers of the dead gods, it will be hard to have them return. While you may be able to bring them back to life, they wouldn't have any divine power. The Sun god would either have to give the powers back, or they would have to be taken, which would be no easy task.

Having the unborn child become the a god is a cool idea. The old god is dead and gone, so it's personality is unlikely to take over. It then becomes a matter of when the child becomes aware, if he becomes a god in the womb there could be an unpleasent surprise for his mother. If he doesn't become a god untill later in life, his mother will surely play a role in who he becomes. As a childlike god, he could be very emotional and impulsive, he would also have no real concept of morality.

Nature could still be alive as a semi sentient oak, or mountain, or a forest. Perhaps with his "death" a certain fey stopped being born, and to resurect him you'd have to see that one was born in his presence, and it would provide a more permanent place for his power.

just a few thoughts

 

[jerichothebard]

How do the gods get power in your world? I think that will dictate a lot of answers.

I've been thinking hard on that count.

My answer is that there is one source of divine magic - it's a raw, untamed force, fundamental to the universe. (So is arcane, but that's a different story) The gods act as conduits - kinda like hooking your house's circuit breaker box up to the city main line. Each of the circuits leads to a priest or worshipper; the strength of the line varies based on level and power. The gods tap into the divine source, but have limited ability to channel it on their own. Only thru worship can they gain greater power, and only thru the god can the worshippers gain power. It's a circuit, see.

of course, that's why I'm asking about congregations.

I'm also not married to this idea; I have never expressed in-session and no one has ever asked. Tho they do have the notion that it was a conflict between the churches that brought the gods down.


Arcanists can complete the circuit on their own; it's one of the differences between arcane and divine magic.


I have never thought until just now how druids fit into this schema.

hmmm...