Upper_Krust said:
Hey BardStephenFox mate!
It seems to me you'll be wanting to create a Council of Gods. A Council is a political grouping of deities. (Whereas a Pantheon is a social grouping of deities*).
*There are a few other kinds as well of course.
Absolutely! One of the reasons why I am excited about the Immortals Handbook is because I ended up creating a very politically driven Cosmology. One of the most powerful gods, Pter the Protector (or Pter the Crusader), almost destroyed the prime material plane back near the "Beginning". He was rather exuberant in his desire to stamp out Evil. In the end, the other Gods ended up restraining Pter and a truce of sorts was worked out between Good and Evil. Generally speaking, Divinities cannot stride the Prime Material plane. Doing so risks breaking the Truce. Most of the battle between Good and Evil is done through mortal agents.
Of course, there are loopholes in the Truce. Lune, the god that did most of the negotiating for Good is a Good Trickster god that holds dominion over much of Nature. Mostly, many of the lesser nature Powers defer to him and channel some of their power directly to him to represent their interests. Because of this, he can choose to send his Avatar to visit these Powers without breaking the Truce. This gives Lune quite a bit of power actually. But, the other gods don't call him the Eldest for nothing. He is also called the Eternal. There are stories that he watched when Tholnar (the Builder) became and started to create the world.
Anyway, the politics works out to be interesting. In my last campaign, the players eventually figured out that Lune, Tholnar and Belmay were up to something, but they were intentionally keeping Pter ignorant of their plans. They seemed to feel that he would somehow mess it up. It was fun as all heck for me to run because two of the PC's were followers of Pter, and a lot hinged on them.
So, that is a very long way of saying that a Council of Gods sounds like it will work nicely.
(It is also a bit about my Cosmology. I try not to get started, but you know how it goes.)
Upper_Krust said:
Sounds a great idea with a lot of potential...especially if the god(dess) goes mad.
The way to handle this is easy (and already implemented). There is a Divine Ability ("Divine Champion") that allows deities to 'borrow' the Divine Abilities of other deities. So clearly in this case the Council members must have each voted to bestow a fraction of their power on this god(dess).
This actually happened in Hindu mythology (where I got the idea from) - but I'll expound on that another time.
Really, the whole thing with a being that holds dominion over Legends is one way for me to rationalize spells like Legend Lore working. I am integrating these quests into my current game. The PC's can choose not to do any of the quests, but they risk offending the God(dess) (I still haven't decided if it is Male, Female, both or neither). In this case, they take an experience penalty. Sounds harsh, I know. But, there are benefits. Namely, Divination type magic has much less of a chance of working on you.
For me, this is interesting because it puts in place the possibility of an 11th level character that is "immune" to Legend Lore. The character isn't a Legend and has avoided becoming one. Sure, the character might not advance as quickly, but then again, it would be a perfect explanation for a high level rogue or assassin.
Anyway, I have been puzzling over the mechanics for how this being came to "be" and why it wasn't there in the last campaign. My players would probably overlook it in the intervening 1000 years, but I like to have those explanations.
So, this sounds like an interesting way to implement it.
Thanks!
