Author Topic: Setting Info, Concepts, and the Gods  (Read 1773 times)

Offline RedWarlock

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Setting Info, Concepts, and the Gods
« on: August 13, 2012, 05:45:10 PM »
Okay, so we have the setting basics. In this case, it starts with the gods, which are very involved. It's not quite the massive crowd that is the Forgotten Realms, but the gods are manifest and involved in the world and the ongoings of their followers.

The four overdeities are noncorporeal ideals, but they are also gender-and-age specific. (they're borrowed from the Chalion book series) They are the Father of Winter (justice, dwarves, fatherhood), the Mother of Summer (healing, gnomes, motherhood), the Daughter of Spring (travel, halflings, protection), and the Son of Autumn (war, elves, hunting). The books also have a fifth god, but I don't know if I'll include him. The basic concept is that the spirit of the world divided itself in half to understand itself, becoming the Father and the Mother. They came together again, creating the Son and the Daughter. All races variously honor these gods, with respect to gender and position, but the humans and near-human races generally worship only them. (individuals who worship other gods with anything more than passing fancy are often integrated into their respective cultures.)

From there, we have a series of racial gods, many of which are totem animal spirits which gained enough power from the faith of their worshippers to ascend into godhood, or mortals and other lesser beings who have slain gods and inherited their power. Most of these concepts are borrowed from either mythology concepts, or D&D and/or other games (mostly WarCraft). I'm debating a few I might rename because the concept is just that different (like Llolth below), but some are very obviously their other concept. I'm not worried about publishing this as a unique thing, so I'm fine with shameless copying from other settings.
  • Asmodeus the Betrayer, LN god of fire, madness, tyranny, etc. The LN is not a typo, he was originally a good man who slew an evil god, and is being corrupted by the mantle of the god he slew.
  • Cerunnos the Stag, TN god of animals, fey, plants, and druidism.
  • Bahamut and Tiamat, LG and CE respectively. I borrow the 4e mythology of them being the result of the split of the now-dead god Io, but because it was an exact even split, they share a single divine power source and rank. Each seeks to unseat the other to tip the balance of draconic power.
  • Gruumsh the Reaver, CN god of chaos, strength, big cats, and war. God of the orcs, which used to serve a sun-lioness goddess. Her murderer is unknown, but Gruumsh has been slipping towards cruelty and anger in the centuries since, seeking vengeance for the loss of his queen-and-lady and his own eye.
  • Llolth the Spider, CN goddess of elves, illusions, fey, magic, and spiders.
  • Ner'Zhul the Lich King, NE god of undeath, decay, pestilence, and cold. (Warcraft ahoy!)
  • Raven the Trickster, TN god of weather, death, dreams, and luck.
  • Tharizdun the Chained, CE god of the elements, madness, and destruction. Seeks the end of the world to end his maddened suffering.
  • Wee Jas the Beloved, LN goddess of dreams, madness, blood magic, and vampires.
  • Ysengrin the Wolf, LN god of wolves, goblinoids, hunger, survival, and hunting.
  • Zehir the Serpent, LE god of snakes, betrayal, poisons, and darkness.
  • There's also an unknown lost god, the principle 'challenge' of the setting. His/her open seat in the divine heirarchy opens up a slot for a new god to arise, with many seeking this position.

More to come, eventually. This sets up the basic concepts. There's a dynamic of enmity between the Elven/Fey gods (Llolth, Cerunnos) and the Goblin/Orc gods (Ysengrin, Gruumsh), with others like Raven and Zehir shifting between depending on the circumstances.
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Offline Garryl

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Re: Setting Info, Concepts, and the Gods
« Reply #1 on: August 13, 2012, 06:44:19 PM »
I'm already intrigued by your pantheon, largely because of these traditional D&D deities that you have a new take on. I'd love to see Gruumsh as more than "kill em all for the evulz", Asmodeus as more than "buy their souls for the evulz" and Lolth as more than "sow internal dissent so my own people never realize they can probably seize power in one fell swoop... also for the evulz".

Offline RedWarlock

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Re: Setting Info, Concepts, and the Gods
« Reply #2 on: August 13, 2012, 10:13:20 PM »
Having races that aren't evil-by-default is another one of my setting's goals, albiet a more passive one. Orcs, Goblins, and so on are going to be just as viable for PCs as humans, dwarves, and elves, they just represent a different perspective. They're still enemies, but it's due to political, economic, and idealogical differences rather than 'They're evil and we're good, so we must kill them!' and vice-versa.

Throwing different thematic hooks into the gods themselves helps to set off the idea that these races have complex motivations, because the races and the gods are reflective of one another.

For instance, Raven the Trickster is the chief deity of the Raptoran race. Reflecting this, they have a complex view of death and destruction, especially via natural disaster (IE storms), seeing it as something to be both feared and glorified. Raven is the god of natural disaster, of fate and chance, and while storms are destructive, they also bring about change and renewal. Every negative outcome has a positive side-effect in some fashion, though we may not always recognize it.

The few exceptions of raw divine evil are either insane (Tharizdun) or young in their nature (Ner'zhul is young as a god, only ascending a couple hundred years ago, having slain a prior god of undeath, probably Nerull.) Zehir is the god of the Yuan-ti/Naga, (I prefer Naga as a term) but they're not born evil. (I'm thinking they're not born at all, actually. Something about Zehir's influence doesn't stick through reproduction, so that the offspring of Naga are born human. They quickly take on reptilian traits as they're raised into it, but an abandoned child of a naga would be an entirely normal human.)
« Last Edit: August 13, 2012, 10:21:12 PM by RedWarlock »
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