[Urbis] Help me with my pantheon!

[Jürgen Hubert]

I've developed a fair-sized pantheon for Urbis, and was fairly satisfied with it. However, there have been some complaints from my gaming group that the pantheon was missing some fairly important archetypes of fantasy deities, and that other deities were too similar to each other.

I've reworked and expanded the pantheon a bit, and now I'm wondering what others think of it. You can read more about the pantheon here.

What is your general impression of this pantheon?

What is unclear or could be explained better?

What parts of the pantheon writeup did you like?


Please share any other thoughts and suggestions you might have on this pantheon.

[Xeviat]

I'm reading right now. Just wanted a placeholder for my post, to warm your heart that someone's reading.

Immediate reaction: on the list of deities links, you should add "god/dess of X" after each name. It's a good overview to have on one sheet.

Argannon (War, Tactics): I love how he's becoming a merchant deity. That's a very modernistic approach to a war deity. Do his clergy hold standard rules of battle across the world, or are these strictly regional (like does one region believe prisoners are supposed to be taken and treated well, while another believes in killing all the enemy?).
Bucatar (Conquering the Wild)
Cryelis (death)
Dahla (charity): I love the superstitions about seeing under a Dahla priest's veil. Good stuff.
Gebral (invention, change): I like the negative quality of his teachings.
Hatramo (luck, fate): I'm impressed with how different he is from traditional luck deities.
Horned Man (fey)
Jorunnos (determination)
Kortus (agriculture)
Mara (dreams)
Norol (passion)
Nyros (disease, assassination)
Ouneiros (Law - within his domain)
Palias (Travel)
Sarush (Secrets): Why is he a snake? Traditionally, snakes are associated with death (either in that they are believed to be immortal because they shed their skin and are reborn, or because they bring death with their bite). I'd love to hear the myths behind this.
Shadow Prince (unseelie fey)
Shaprat (?): Wow, now that's a villain.
Silver lady (fey, chivalry)
Tekel (fear)
Thenos (monotheism): Do the polytheistic recognize him as one of the pantheon?
Ungol (protection from the unknown, travel): A very interesting deity. I like that he can exist alongside Palias, representing different aspects of exploration.
Ygreb (divination)

The only things that seem largely missing would be a deity of knowledge that isn't a secretive or slightly mad deity. Someone for all scholors to look up to. Jorunnos fits a little, but that's a determined form of scholorship. Also, the Horned Man, Silver Lady, and Shadow Prince triad seem odd in that they don't represent much other than their people; the rest of the deities govern much more.

As a whole, I'm very impressed with how many of your religions have progressed into modern times, especially how they change when adopted by merchants. It comes off very organic. I also like how many of the gods have good and bad sides, and how there are a very small number of truely "evil" gods (and those evil gods have very good reason to exist).

I do want to know if the deities are actual physical entities, personified concepts, or what-not. Also, which deities were added after your players said some were missing?

[Superfluous Crow]

I agree that some kind of overview would be good. Maybe a line or two to each god on the front page even?

[LordVreeg]

Cryelis both intrigued me and worried me.

I love the idea, and how you solidified why people would worship her.  However, I happen to believe that a promise of afterlife would tempt quite a few people and we'd see a world quite overrur with Ghosts.  I am assuming that there are limits on this.

I enjoyed, by the way, thr chaotic underpinnings of the different gods.  It is obvious to me that there was quite a bit going on at the same time, which is how you can have a Shadow Prince and and Unseelie court and a Tekel at the same time.

I'm interested to know more about this history and the different factions within the deilogical spere.

[Jürgen Hubert]

I do want to know if the deities are actual physical entities, personified concepts, or what-not. Also, which deities were added after your players said some were missing?

A bit more about the nature of deities can be found here.

I've added the three fey deities (Horned Man, Silver Lady, Shadow Prince) recently. I've also changed some of the existing deities to make them more useful to city-based campaigns (especially Bucatar and Palias).

[Xeviat]

I think you should make sure the three fey deities have ties to the seasons. The seasons are less important to cities, but still important.

Also, is there a deity of weather/storms? Societies will find these to be important, and will pray to have them redirected or stopped.

[Jürgen Hubert]

Some more replies...

Sarush (Secrets): Why is he a snake? Traditionally, snakes are associated with death (either in that they are believed to be immortal because they shed their skin and are reborn, or because they bring death with their bite). I'd love to hear the myths behind this.

I will go into more detail on this once I port the Snake Kingdoms over to the new site, but Sarush was once a human resistance fighter against a regime of a stereotypical Dark Lord. For some reason nobody truly understands, he also had psionic powers - which does not occur naturally among humans, and indeed he was the first human to ever display such powers. His association with secrets comes from his career as a resistance fighter before his ascension to godhood, and he psychically controlled snakes to strike at the minions of the Dark Lord, which since then have been associated with him.

Later on, some of his descendants - the surathi - took their worship of snakes as his messengers a bit too far, and started to, uhm, breed with them. But that is another story...

Thenos (monotheism): Do the polytheistic recognize him as one of the pantheon?

Well, "pantheon" is maybe a little bit much here. I probably should have said something along the lines of "deities worshiped in the Known Lands". The followers of Thenos and the followers of other deities generally don't get along very well, though...

As a whole, I'm very impressed with how many of your religions have progressed into modern times, especially how they change when adopted by merchants. It comes off very organic. I also like how many of the gods have good and bad sides, and how there are a very small number of truely "evil" gods (and those evil gods have very good reason to exist).

Thanks. Real-world religions tend to have a lot of diversity and ambiguity, and I wanted to capture some of that.

Cryelis both intrigued me and worried me.

I love the idea, and how you solidified why people would worship her.  However, I happen to believe that a promise of afterlife would tempt quite a few people and we'd see a world quite overrur with Ghosts.  I am assuming that there are limits on this.

Well, other deities have their own afterlives as well - it's just that you can't access the Material Plane as well from there (though the living can visit these realms with the right rituals). And many of the afterlives the other deities offer are a lot more peaceful than a constant war against pissed-off fey...

Even people who don't strongly believe in any deity in particular get an afterlife of sorts - see the Road To Nowhere.

[Jürgen Hubert]

I've added background information on the Plane of Shadows, which is relevant to the deity entries for the Shadow Prince, Cryelis, and Tekel.

[Jürgen Hubert]

Here's an aspect of Urbis which is not directly related to deities, but also concerns beings of similarly cosmic scope.

Instead of the traditional "Abyss" of D&D as the home plane of demons, I'm going with the kabbalistic Qlippoth as the inspiration for their native realms. You can see the (short) Urbis writeup here, and the writeup of demons here.

Here is how I imagine demons so far: Each "sphere" of the Qlippoth is somewhat similar to the Primordials of Exalted. It is at the same time a being of vast power and intellect and a plane of existence in its own right - and each sphere consists of a number of component intelligences, which in turn consist of even lesser creatures and so on.

Furthermore, each Qlippothic sphere can manifest an avatar - a messenger and servant representing and carrying out the will of the sphere in the material plane. These avatars may be banished and their forms temporarily destroyed, but they will always return sooner or later to spread chaos and destruction - it's just that the form and modus operandi of the avatar will differ depending on its sphere of origin.

A good inspiration for the Qlippothic avatars would be the various avatars of Nyarlathotep. Another one would be the Joker from The Dark Knight. All of them should be extremely frightening entities - while they might appear human, and might understand humans, they are alien creatures who cannot be bargained with and whose every action is dedicated to sow chaos and destruction.

I'm looking for good concepts for the avatars of the various Qlippothic spheres (see the Wikipedia article for more information on these spheres). If you have any good suggestions, please share them.