Rites and Wrongs
If you’re running a fantasy game, chances are you’ve got a pantheon and a polytheistic society, as is tradition. But something I’ve noticed over the years is a tendency towards clannishness. You’ll see “Temples of [Insert God Here]” and “paladins of [Specific Deity]” all over the place. This isn’t necessarily bad or wrong, but when combined with evangelizing, it can indicate a monotheistic mindset.
As a counterpoint, let me quote from the Strange Aeons AP that I’ve been running lately. The description of a chapel within Briarstone Asylum (the primary location for the first book of the adventure) struck me as interesting.
The Briarstone chapel is consecrated to Pharasma, as suggested by a prominent statue of the goddess standing before the sanctuary’s westernmost wall and depicted on the spiral stained glass windows. However, there are smaller, candlelit shrines to other deities, including Abadar, Desna, Erastil, Gozreh, Iomedae, Irori, Sarenrae, Shelyn, and even a modest donation box beneath the symbols of Asmodeus and Zon-Kuthon. Several lesser deities—including almost any deity a PC might worship—also have ledges with symbols and candles here. Each serves as a place where the distressed can come and pray for guidance or mercy for their afflicted loved ones.
Now it’s important to point out that, in the fiction of the AP, this asylum is a major institution. It’s meant to serve the public at large, and so it makes sense for a non-denominational place of worship to exist inside. Many real world hospitals have similar setups with “meditation rooms” or a “prayer room” rather than a specific religion’s church. But notice the specifics here. Evil deities like the archdevil Asmodeus and the Hellraiser-esque Zon-Kuthon have a place at the table. The full gamut of major divinities are acknowledged, and the implication from the author is that PCs with unconventional religions should feel at home as well. In other words, these are not jealous gods, and that can demand a shift in mindset for contemporary players.
If you’re going to evangelize as a cleric, smite the non-believers as a paladin, or otherwise follow a single religious dogma, it’s important to remember that your character likely still acknowledges the other gods in the pantheon. You might think your way is the best or that your god is the strongest, but unless you’re one of those weird atheist types, you’ve got to admit that there are other divine fish in the celestial sea. For non-clerical types—all those fighters and rogues and wizards without a designated patron—you’re just as likely to whisper a quick prayer to a death god as to a protector of travelers.
So what does any of this have to do with today’s comic? Simply this: If you’re in a run-of-the-mill city or town, your religion is one of many. There might be common regional divinities and favored cults in a given country, but most civilized settlements will accommodate your faith in a live-and-let-live sort of way. The moment you start demanding special privileges though— insisting that your way is the way, and that your god demands XYZ from the locals—you’ve set yourself against the rest of the pantheon. And as Drow Priestess is discovering in today’s comic, that’s no way to win friends and influence people.
All of this leads us to our question of the day! When it comes to representing a polytheistic society, do you tend to favor state religions and devoted theocracies? Or does your game world adopt more of a laissez-faire attitude as in the Briarstone Chapel example? Let’s hear about your rabid priests and overzealous clerics down in the comments!
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Ok, I don’t know what’s weirding me out more: the fact that ZK was given a shrine at all, or that Asmodeus is willing to share his donation box. Unless of course ZK enjoys being on the receiving end of unfair deals and having his money taken away. Which he probably does.
I bet it’s all about good PR for Asmodeus. Dude can look like a team player when it suits his purposes.
It was probably at the insistence of Shelyn’s faithful. Where else are they going to leave little Dou-Bral dolls?
The lore about the Shelynites making little dolls of ZK during the Crystalhue is the sweetest thing in existance as far I’m concerned. Also, apparently some of those dolls can literally redeem people with the power love – allow me to introduce you to the Zonzon of Forgiveness!
https://aonprd.com/MagicWondrousDisplay.aspx?FinalName=Zonzon%20Doll%20of%20Forgiveness
Well then. My heart has been thoroughly melted.
At this point in the lore, the Zon-Kuthon theocracy state of Nidal is about the only friend the Asmodeus-run nation of Cheliax has left. They CANNOT afford any more enemies.
My understanding of ancient paganism is that in a lot of mythological systems a lot of the evil deities still had shrines and sometimes priests. They differed in that while the shrines and priests of the good deities were about seeking favor and giving thanks and praise, the shrines and prayers to the evil deities were basically protection money paid to get them to leave the populace alone or at least convince them to turn their destructive tendencies towards someone else.
Additionally, a lot of evil deities were tolerated because they were enemies of even worse deities. Pazuzu, the Mesopotamian the god of crop destroying locusts, was worshipped as the enemy of the demonic death goddess Lamashtu. Similarly, Set, the Ancient Egyptian god of destructive storms, breakdown in social order, and foreign invasions, was worshipped in his role as the sworn enemy of Apep/Apophis, a deity bent on plunging the world into eternal darkness and destroying all life on earth.
Similarly, if the PF Asmodeus is anything like the D&D Asmodeus, he is likely worshipped as deity who drives off demons and is particularly the enemy of the big three demon lords Orcus, Grazzt, and Demogorgon
My understanding of ancient paganism is more indebted to Wikipedia than I’d like. Even the go-to Pantheon example…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheon,_Rome
…Is provisional in it’s treatment of multi-god temples. Still interesting to noodle with as a worldbuilding exercise though!
My favorite part of the more detailed religion write ups is the Relationships with other Religions section.
I always consider it a must read for any divine class or DM
Just recently my players finally tried to followup on a rumor about a cult to zon-kuthon (the chapel of rent flesh for those familiar) but as it was right after Shelyns holiday Crystalhue (one of the players even took part to marry an NPC), they could find no sign of them as the cult had sequestered themselves for self torture while their power waned and so many Shelynite priests were active
In preparation for the coming addition of our Vampire/Werewolf/Wouldn’t-You-Like-To-Know-Which-One character, I’ve been going back to some of my old World of Darkness source books. I always dug those “realtionships to the other tribes/clans” sections. It’s nice to get a handle on the typical attitudes between factions. That makes it so much easier to get unique and flavorful interactions, like the one you’re describing with the ZK backstory.
Why not both? https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Abomination
I believe there’s a Lilo and Stitch joke in there somewhere.
Vampire/Werewolf
I think that’s called a “Vrykolakas” or “Varcolac”. Or in any case “Varcolac” refers to both even if not necessarily at the same time.
Please let it be a werewolf. Vampires suck… :p
Well hit that “next” button and see for yourself.
Spoiler: you got half your wish.
I play the average commoner of Golarion and similar worlds with an Exalted inspired method. They pray to the god of what they need right now, and if that god isn’t listening, they pray to who gets results. The clerics and religiously empowered classes may devote themselves to a specific deity and that’s all well and good. But the average farmer prays to Erastil to make sure there is a good hunt, Abadar to guide them in selecting a fair ruler, and Calistria to help them avoid the taxman. This is unless an area or culture is listed as having a patron deity they revere above others, like Varsians and Desna.
Over all, I like Creation’s approach to Polytheism, where you pray to the god who gets results. If Bright Feather blesses your weed so that you can get extra messed up, that’s all well and good. But she won’t help you in your war against the Linowan, and that’s why you also pray to Caltia the Eternal.
Weirdly, I always go back to this guy from The Mummy:
http://image.wikifoundry.com/image/3/931e35d333e2ded132fbc2e47986c529/GW623H255
Not exactly the world’s greatest role model, but I do think he’s a good example of attitude I want to go for with my own ‘average commoners.’
I like the approach seen in a lot of real-world antiquity, where gods are aspects of natural, daily life. One thing this does is treat them as an actual pantheon, where people are not devoted to a specific god (though they may have one they associate with most) but worship the pantheon as a whole depending on circumstance and need. This should apply even to the priests: after all, why wouldn’t a priest of the Sea God offer a prayer to the Harvest God when tending his garden?
This also allows quite flavourful travels. It permits different cultures to have their own gods who they worship in different ways (which is fun) while allowing the people in the world to rationalise it as “this is their name for X”. Travellers can exchange tales of their gods’ exploits and the most popular and memorable become codified as myth.
Another fun one is the parallel worship of local spirits or saints. Growing up in rural France this was very noticeable, as every village seemed to have its own patron saint. It seems this dates back to when Christianity first arrived there, and the missionaries convinced the people that their local spirit had in fact been Saint Whoever, so it’s all fine, you’ve just been doing it wrong, build a church there and carry on as you were. This is common across Southern Europe and quite possibly further afield as well.
What is especially interesting about it is that people essentially pray to their Saint, because why would the big boss be concerned about such little people? Whereas the Saint, well, he’s been watching over them for generations, local chap, he’ll understand if things aren’t going so well and you need a bit of help.
From this you can probably tell that I don’t tend to have the same level of religious conflict in my games as many do. It’s more of a flavour thing a way of generating immersion and stories. Also, local myth is a great plot hook, and these attitudes can lead to players being seen as religious figures in their own right (a la Saint George v Dragon) which is also fun.
There is an answer for this, but it’s practical rather than in-character. I’ve probably put more time into Golarion than any other setting, but if you were to ask me who the Pathfinder sea god is, I’d have pause and look it up. That makes natural, off-the-cuff RP difficult, which makes it easier to default to the one god you know can actually remember and decided to devote your cleric to. What you describe is ideal, but the problem is it’s hard. 🙁
I do love that saint example though. I thought about saying something along those lines in the OP — you’d mount a Desna medal on your pommel horn the same way folks put a Saint Christopher medal in their car — but I couldn’t quite fit it in. Good show bringing it up, because I think that sort of detail is spot on for a polytheistic setting.
I can definitely see this working better in original / homemade worlds rather than published settings. Essentially, the way most settings are designed is great for flexibility and easy to understand. “Sure there are tons of gods, but I just need to worry about this one and in exchange I get spells” is a great game mechanic and also makes it easy to have the typical super-diverse party working together.
I was thinking more along the lines of a “Ok guys we’re playing a sort of fantasy Ancient Mediterranean, we’re starting in this city-state here so if your character could be from there that will be great. Here’s a setting briefing that might help you (I put quite a bit of work into my games) with a pantheon table at the back. There might be some expanded material coming if your character should know more.”
Getting setting information into your players’ heads is hard work. Good on ya for the bonus materials.
Preparing for our upcoming Vampire game, I’ve actually taken to doing this on my own. I told the GM “My character has Streetwise 4, Contacts with Smugglers and Criminals. Tell me what I know about the underworld of New Orleans” and he gave me a write-up. I’ve found that it helps drive roleplay if your players are the kinds that get into that kind of thing. I like write-ups and setting material. Some of my players don’t.
I’m anew DM, and this was something I kinda had to tackle in my first campaign, as the party included a cleric and paladin of Tyr. I decided to somewhat go BBC with what I call the Greek method. Major cities tend to have a temple or monastery dedicated to one god. There could be multiple of these churches dedicated to different gods. However, all other gods are recognized, just that the majority of the population worship one or two gods as their main deity. They still make prayers to other gods, but their offerings and worship go to the main city’s god.
This has manifested in our cleric and/or paladin acting as preachers during down time. They havent tried to actively undermine the local religious norm, but they try raising awareness of Tyr and hopefully cause people to begin worshiping him more directly.
Hope I explained that well enough
“I’m not blaspheming against your god. I’m just raising awareness of mine!”
For serious though, that sounds like a pretty legit way to play. Athens may have a patron deity, but there’s no reason you can’t have other voices for other gods.
*Edit: I’m on mobile and its early in the day. Please forgive autocorrect errors and spelling mistakes.
Recently ive been in two different games, but effectively approached the temples as a ‘what kind of race’ and ‘what kind of place’ it is.
The what kind of race, had dwarves (moradin and all.) the dragonborn (bahamut) the elves (correlon) The humans to the east (primarily faerun gods, heavily favoring gond as a trading port city) further near the mountains east, the kobolds. And finally to the N and the NE. A former human city, worshipping Tempus, and their allies the aaracrockra that worshipped Syranita.
It was a you could do what you needed, every place had a place for prayer being reasonably aligned.
And the other, The ‘what kind of place’ Had the major city of the area being fully polytheistic. Everyone from LG Wizard goddess to the CE War god that was formerly a demon, and ascended up by the NG sun goddess.
They catered even to being able to have a minor shrine of a larger subset of race in there nearby.
But, as you left, what you found was really where you went. A military city catered to the war gods (of which, there were 3.)
The tree city to the nature gods, and so on, and so forth. Every city outside the major one settled, went to having shrines as fitting to each by amount of people. And kept to that style.
Both worked, and fit to matters in not being wrong.
In the first example, did every member of that race worship the patron deity? I mean, were there no dragonborn worshipers of Moradin, for example?
It was primarily that for races. There was the near likes as can happen with folks living nearby, like the elves/birds, or the dragonborn/dwarves by proxy of living nearby.
The one outlier for things has really been the kobolds, whom are likely to switch to where they live for faiths.
My homebrew setting has a wonderful mix of both. Most of the human settlements have temples similar to the churches in Oblivion, dedicated to a particular god but venerating all of them to a point. However, one city is a theocracy that shuns both other religions and other races. The god is, theoretically, not actually that restrictive, but the city itself uses it as something of an excuse.
The dwarves as a whole believe all the dwarven gods have value in their teachings, but churches and temples function similar to higher education, specializing in high skill level of their particular virtue and basically acting as grandmasters of their craft. A dwarf will pray to Moradin when smithing, Clangeddon when fighting, Dumathoin when hunting for jewels or metals while mining, etc…
The elves meanwhile have a strict hierarchy in their pantheon, with Corellon at the top the various other gods in ranks below him, however due to some mistakes made in the past, they are actually deeply uncomfortable communing with the gods, so aside from small shrines to a given god, and a larger temple to Rillifane in the wood elf capital, they aren’t especially religious, believing that the gods have judged them poorly, and that they should strive to improve.
Now see, this is where things get interesting to me. You’ve taken the basic question ‘who worships who’ and turned it into a major setting detail.
Well of course. Whats even the point of having gods as entities with personalities and goals if they aren’t going to impact the setting?
I’m currently running/restarting a Pathfinder game set in a modified version of the setting of Dark Souls. This has led to me having to make up some gods because there isn’t a whole lot of diverse portfolios there, but it’s still really interesting to run a game where the gods aren’t just divine forces who offer power and the occasional quest, but they all also exist on the map somewhere. The party hasn’t gone anywhere where multiple religions can exist equally yet (because when you’re living in a city built literally at the feet of the city where your god lives other religions are encouraged to keep their heads low) but the cathedrals of Anor Londo all pay homage to Gwyn and his children, so there’s a bit of split faith there.
So what you’re saying is that I should play Dark Souls.
You should, it’s amazing.
Divine magic in Dark Souls (Or miracles as it’s called in-universe) involves the reciting of verses of scripture which is empowered by your faith rather than directly channeling power from the gods.
I guess it’s safer to give everyone a little space for a donation box (and possibly demonstrate the insignificance of that particular god) rather than encourage the building of a separate shrine or even temple to ZK or Asmodeous by a zealous passer by.
The Asmodeus connection is interesting giving the regional importance of Cheliax:
https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Cheliax
That leads me to believe that temporal considerations play a role. I’d be awfully interested to know where this mess is celebrated, for example:
https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Eternal_Kiss
I believe that particular ritual can also be done to extremely faithful/zealous worshipers who take it up as honorably as the Incas did blood sacrifices. Most of ZKs clergy is masochistic, and the higher ranking members willingly go through the ritual of Joymaking… Which is turning them into a helpless, limbless torso.
Alternately, the Eternal Kiss is ritual is done in secret.
Most cities in my campaign have multiple temples to various deities. Since I use the Dawn War pantheon there’s a lot of canonical cooperation between the various deities so most of the good-aligned gods are accepting of each other, most of the Lawful of each other, and there’s some odd ones like how Kord is pals with The Raven Queen because they teamed up to kill his crazy mom.
Matricide: A bonding experience.
I think one important thing to keep in mind is polytheism =! religious pluralism. Consider for example a stereotypical dwarven city. It may be polytheistic in that you don’t have a shrine dedicated to a specific deity but instead to the Dwarven pantheon, and the dwarves may pray to the different gods for different needs, but they do not pray to Corellon, and the shrine has no place for non-dwarven gods, even if they would require only modest accommodations.
Maybe looking at a metropolitan area with a chapel like the one from Briarstone Asylum. Maybe it has sections dedicated to many gods, including a few gods of evil, but perhaps it notably does not have a section dedicated to any goblin deities, in a city where goblins are a servile laboring underclass.
Or perhaps an empire has something like the ancient Roman model, where they tolerate many religions, but regardless of your local religion you will still worship the Roman gods and give sacrifices to them.
Maybe your local peasant will pray to one god for fertility, another for luck, and another for protection, and generally expects other do the same, but she may be horrified of a cleric of an “outsider” god bringing the power of foreign gods in her lands, fearing this will anger the local gods.
I think it’s more interesting for a setting to have monotheism vs theistic pluralism as a sliding scale rather than a binary, and have it vary from place to place. To me it makes the religions and gods feel more like an integral piece of the cultures and worlds rather than “oh, my character sheet has a ‘deity’ section. Guess I’ll just put Tymora, or maybe areligious.”
“Tymora, or maybe areligious” is the default case that I’m looking to shift, mostly because it does what you describe: turning the interesting question of religion into a boring binary. Rather than pushing for religious pluralism as some kind of “best possible option,” I’m interested in making religion into an interesting setting detail that players will want to actively consider. Your examples are spot-on for that project. 🙂
This reminds me of a particular horror story on a Rise of the Rune Lords (Pathfinder) campaign my friends and I never got to finish (you’ll see why in a moment).
Basically our usual GM wasn’t GMing this time (my best friend GMed this one), he was playing a NG aasimar oracle of Sarenrae, took the Clergy Member trait and joined on 3rd session along with his little brother playing an orc fighter – and his personal bodyguard for that matter. Right off the bat he though that being an official clergy member entitled him to acting like he owned the town, and like a complete jackass in general, shouting everywhere how Sarenrae was the best deity ever, throwing accusations of witchcraft at the party and making up nonsensical laws about weapon regulations (as if this would be a thing in a dangerous fantasy world full of monsters and goblin raids on towns) and even had his orc buddy physically bully other party members on these ridiculous charges (I was playing a reclusive halfling oracle with the plan to be mistrusting at first and open up to the party later, needless to say that wasn’t a good start), and justified it by saying he was acting in-character. The worst part was the GM never had the idea to send the guards on his ass for being such a troublemaker and to teach him a lesson about consequences.
Yup. Those players are the target demographich for today’s comic.
Did they ever get better as players, or did you wind up moving on to another group?
I have no news of what most of the group has become now, I only maintained contact with my one best friend (the one who GMed the Pathfinder campaign).
To be clear, our usual experienced D&D GM was a massive hypocrite who made up rules constantly at his tables but was the worst rules lawyer imaginable as a player and would accuse my friend of not following the RAW when he totally was, would display obvious favoritism for his brother and his girlfriend, mainly by letting them take absurdly broken 3rd party options that no one else was informed about, and got his panties in a twist when he learned that our Pathfinder campaign would be 1st party content only and accused us of unfair targeting because he wanted the OP 3rd party classes – the character creation phase was hell, he basically wanted his character to be good at everything under the sun while the Pathfinder system doesn’t allow it.
For now I know no other TG group, I joined my friend to a Pendragon one-shot with a GM so railroady and full of himself that I GTFO’d at the end of the session.
In my homebrew, it varied.
Parthendor to the North was a Theocracy to Hextor. The other gods were allowed to worship, but always under Hextor. It was a nation built on slavery and the civil use of Undead. It was also a small nation that held the equivalent of the Caucasus Gates; they held one of the few easy paths through the Northern Mountains against the Orc Tribes.
Rython was also a “theocracy” but explicitly to the Good Deities. Ruled by various clerics and often by those “chosen” aka Aasimars and Half-Celestiels. This meant that the various temples were for each of the good Gods and had smaller alters for the others. The tope deity kept rotating a bit based on who was in charge at a time. The Neutral were housed in the poorer districts and the evils were never worshipped! (They totally were).
Finally, everywhere else basically had a chief deity for each city or a group of them and smaller temples to others.
I had fun with this concept in designing my homebrew world. Instead of having a traditional pantheon of gods rubbing shoulders with each other, for the primary continent I developed five different types of gods.
Matador, the God of Gold, is your traditional DnD god, a divine figure who rules over the world with a golden fist and sometimes descends to the world in the form of a dragon or mortal to do great deeds. Far above him is Yael, an absolutely omnipowerful creator god who is infinite in every way. Though he is so much greater than Matador, he is also the most distant god, never answering to his followers directly. He may not even really exist. Next is Skyla, an enigmatic entity who appears only in dreams, and may represent the desire of all humans to return to their original home. The “god” Munz-Kiin is no god at all but more of a creed, a way of looking at the world in which might makes right and the highest numbers are the best. Finally, Uzaza is a very real, physical monster who dwells deep underground.
Then there’s the far continent, which doesn’t have singular deities but instead worships a virtually infinite number of gods, one for every concept, every second, every blade of grass, proxied by ten pseudo-immortal saints who represent different aspects of the world that followers want to pray to. In sum, by making the pantheon as diverse as possible, it gives plenty of room for the gods to coexist by not treading on each others’ shoes.
The funny thing is that while I expected my players’ characters to come in with a variety of beliefs, along with some unique prestige options depending on the god they followed, with the exception of one Yaelan they all jumped on the Skyla train and have been riding it the whole campaign. It’s certainly pulled the plot in a direction I didn’t expect, but on the whole I think we’re all better off for it.
Meanwhile, Warrior and Commoner are outside the Church, trying to look inconspicuous.
“I’m telling you man, Priest isn’t going to go for it. It’ll come back around to us gettin’ cut, you know how she is about her highlights.”
Headcanon accepted.
In the main setting i made for my group gods don’t like to share, unless they form a pantheon and they work together. Still many people don’t know the fine points of divine politics and wage wars against the infidels and heathens that worship the other gods in the same pantheon. Gods acknowledge the mortals free will, and if that means let their worshipers to wage crusades to turn the infidels they must accept it of course. So even “unite”groups of gods have internal problems and they try to get more than their share of the worship pie.
Most cities and towns have at least the temple of the god most favored on the region. Major cities having many temples for all the gods and at least some to the whole pantheon. But equally many places worship one of the gods and they may or may not allow the worship of the others. Ironically the God of Death and Undeath is the only one who can get a temple almost anywhere without problems. Since he is the most likable, and neutral of the gods even places that ban all the other gods still let his priest and worshipers do their own things. That he once obliterated all life in a whole kingdom certainly help people think twice before harassing his worshipers too.
Thing then vary from region to region and depending on the mood of kings and priest and the mood and cooperation of the gods itself. That they acknowledge free-will doesn’t mean they can’t call for a jihad against another gods just to spite them for petty reasons :/
WARNING: SUPER-LONG POST INCOMING.
The campaign I am currently running has a city whose most common religion is sort of an animism spirits kind of thing, rather than specifically named gods. Fittingly, the main church that the PCs have interacted with has a head priest who is not a Cleric but rather a Witch with the Ancestors patron. The main religious conflict in the city is underground, between the Lovecraftian cult that wants to burn the place down and the devil-worshipers that instead wish to rule it. (Obviously, no one else much likes either of them.)
In a non-campaign setting I have been working on, I tried to give each of the different races a different “style” of religion, rather than giving them all different pantheons of the same types of gods. Elves see the world as run by a complicated, cyclical series of nature spirits that are both distinct and a part of each other. An elven priest could tell you the names of spirits of evaporation, condensation and precipitation, but would also assert that they are different forms of one water spirit. Needless to say, this can be very confusing to people who are unable to study it for decades. The central theme of elven religion is that nothing ever truly ends or begins, but simply repeats itself in new forms, and that one must find harmony with a universe that is so much larger than them.
Dwarves believe in two different types of deities – demonae and the Ascended. Demonae are monsters that represent all of the things that bedevil mortalkind, not just sins but concepts like famine, disease, anarchy and loneliness. The Ascended are dwarves of legend who invented or mastered different forms of craft or industry (smithing, farming, medicine, law, etc) that make it possible for mortals to deal with these problems. The Ascended do not act directly, but offer wisdom and assistance to those following their crafts (on rare occasions providing a small magical boon or mark of favor). As a result, Ascended are commonly prayed to among crafters, workers and specialists across the world, even in non-dwarven lands. They act a lot like patron saints rather than true deities, and while people (especially dwarves) will invoke the names of whichever Ascended is relevant to their current task, they rarely make shrines or offerings unless their careers are devoted to that craft. While the Ascended encourage the development of civilization, their primary focus is the improvement of their individual craft, which means that evil users of that craft can sometimes gain boons from them. The central theme of dwarven religion is that the world is an awful place that can only be improved through skill, knowledge and hard work.
Orcs have a more traditional set of gods, with the four main ones being the gods of strength/war, hunting/animals, the sun/fire and, at the top, the goddess of family. Most orcs worship a combination of these gods, with some specializing depending on their profession. The god of strength not only oversees warbands, but also the orcish desire for respect through acts of individual badassery. He is also the patron of the many orcish heroes of legend (the orcs have endless tales of monster-slaying and treasure-looting). The god of the hunt represents the knowledge of the herds required by the orcs’ hunter-gatherer lifestyles, as well as the husbandry of their mounts. He is also the god of wisdom and the rare orcish elders, who are highly respected. The sun/fire goddess represents craft, planning, death and relative safety from the predators that roam the prairie at night. (The most feared of those creatures, heavily featured in orc myths, are the rakshasa, near-invulnerable shapeshifting tigers that love the taste of orc flesh and are associated with vengeance, gluttony and the inevitability of death.) Most important to all orcs is the goddess of family, because the tribal nature of their society demands that the clan always come first. Orcs celebrate warriors, but more central to their culture is the belief that life is short and tough and must be enjoyed while you can, for soon nothing will be left of you but your clan’s tales of your deeds.
Humans tend to have local gods representing their city or nation and its values. They model society after their gods, and their gods change over time to match their society, as they are a personification of its culture. (Imagine, for example, if Uncle Sam was an actual god worshiped in the United States. He used to be okay with slavery, but as the country shifted away from it, so did he.) The largest human nation, the Confederation, is a league of dozens of city-states, each of which worship their own deity in addition to the Confederation’s goddess of freedom, individuality and diversity. Immigrants from one city to another might worship both their old city’s god and their new city’s deity, and the Confederation encourages cross-worship as a way to increase unity. This is because of the collective fear the Confederation’s states have of their northern neighbor, the Architect’s Domains. The only true theocracy on the continent, the Domains are run to the precise specification of the Architect, a Lawful Lawful deity who has built a powerful and prosperous civilization through total control of all aspects of life, and is prone to far more direct intervention than most deities, granting great power and even immortality to a select few heralds who run the nation. The Domains are an autocratic command economy with a rigid social order approaching a cast system, and it has a feared, professional, industrialized military. Slight worship of a few foreign gods (particularly the relevant dwarven Ascended) is permitted under controlled circumstances, but all must obey the Architect’s will within his borders, without exception. Though the Architect is not currently interested in expanding those borders, his neighbors are quite watchful. The last human god of interest is from the small nation of Turlial, sandwiched between the Domains and the historically powerful Northern Kingdom. Turlial’s deity is a trickster god, constantly manipulating all of the other gods with a smile on his face in reflection of Turlial’s centuries of diplomatic maneuvers to avoid annexation by either of its powerful neighbors.
Drow are not terribly religious, focusing primarily on development of their own power through a combination of magic, science and alchemy. They do occasionally beseech the dwarven Ascended related to their task at hand, and their general lack of morality makes them the race most likely to interact with demonae. Ironically, their values (“power through knowledge”) more closely resemble dwarven ones than the “live in harmony with nature” values of their elven cousins.
The Shadowbound are a group of humans (with very few members of other races) who have lived for centuries in the extradimensional Shadow Realm. They venerate Our Lord in Shadow, the cold (but not cruel) ruler of that realm. Our Lord in Shadow provides basic protection from the realm’s many dangers (including lots of demonae) in exchange for tribute (particularly silver and jewels), but he offers little else and demands total loyalty. His wife, Our Lady of Sounds, is far more generous, blessing the shadowbound with the music that is central to their culture. Some believe that Our Lord in Shadow is the brother of the orc sun goddess, and that they have squabbled for millennia. In recent times, some non-shadowbound have begun worshiping Our Lord in Shadow.
In the main 5e game I’m running, how the religions are being practiced where is one of my major considerations for the setting. (A setting I have a working cosmology for including multiple planets even though the game just takes place in a single country and will at no point extend beyond its boundaries.)
The game takes place in the tropical & semi-tropical country of Makara. For much of the world’s history it was an untamed wilderness, mostly jungle…. and it still mostly is. The native humanoids were largely goblins, orcs, and the like. And then a few thousand years ago all around the world the faithful of Erathis, goddess of civilization, felt a subtle urge to travel from their lands and go settle there and create the world’s grandest city. To most this call just felt like an idea they had or an idea someone else suggested that sounded like a good idea, though the divinely touched understood this for what it was.
This move by Erathis was largely uncontested by other gods because it involved her weakening the number of followers in the lands they actively cared about trying to contest or they just didn’t care either way.
So those that survived the journey (in some cases across the ocean or across multiple countries) established the city of Kelfas. Which worked out pretty well for a long time. There were ups and downs of course, the odd demon invasion to fend off. Y’know, run of the mill “every 100 years or so there’s some big problem for heroes to solve” stuff.
And then a few hundred years ago Grumsh inspired the orcs to make a grand army and crush Kelfas because….. that’s what Grumsh likes. Kelfas fought hard, but were overwhelmed. There was a great exodus of the civilized people of Kelfas to the unexplored north of Makara, while the orcs were happy enough to claim the city (that they’d trashed) as theirs. Until most of them eventually got bored and wandered back off again.
The survivors of the fall of Kelfas eventually established four smaller cities and all sorts of little towns and villages or whatnot as people were like “eh, this is far enough”. Erathis worship took a huge dive from “pretty much everyone” to “pretty much nobody” and people began treating the name of Kelfas as an unspoken taboo.
Three of the cities later established are known as the “sister cities”(Kergan’s Hold, Lf’ern, & Asatol) and are pretty much as far north as is reasonably possible. These cities have regressed politically, in two cases back to old dwarven and elven monarchies, and over time they became a bit xenophobic and intolerant of faiths other than a select handful.
The other city is known as “the Anvil by the sea” or just Anvil and retained Kelfas’ more democratic approach to things…. kind of. Anvil is accepting of all religions and races, but is ruled by guilds rather than an elected or hereditary governing body.
The game actually takes place a few hundred years later when a burly musclebound older elf general who is known as “The Boar” petitioned the sister cities for forces to retake Kelfas. This was not a popular move and he essentially got told “you have our permission to ask for volunteers”, which basically was saying “nobody is stopping you from wandering off in the wilderness to die if that’s what you want to do”.
So he did just that. On his way south ran into a group of bandits run by a powerful fire mage named Char and wound up absorbing them into his ranks rather than insist on everyone getting killed before they were anywhere close to their goal.
Travel through the jungle of Makara is brutal though as it’s full of monsters and dinosaurs. And when they finally reached the ruins of Kelfas they discovered there was still a sizable number of orcs still there. A drow that had apparently been trapped on the surface since the time of the fall of Kelfas served as an incredibly helpful source of information and crucially aided in turning the mistreated half-orcs to their side. Still, the battle severely diminished their numbers and perhaps somewhat unfortunately this brought the ratio of soldiers to ex-bandits much closer to 1:1. This whole experience had been rough on the Boar’s faith and by this time he stopped worshiping Erathis in favor of Kord, god of battle. So when the bandits made it clear that they weren’t keen on suddenly turning to farming and labor (in the ruins of a city full of monsters and warped magic), the Boar decided his dream of restoring Kelfas could only be completed by means of capturing and enslaving people as manual labor. As he had neither the number of soldiers left to do all that labor themselves and especially not enough left to do so AND have enough left to do soldier duty with the bandits to make sure the worst kinds of people weren’t the only ones with jobs involving weapons.
The game started with the party members all having been captured and brought to wait a few days in large communal pens for people yet to be processed. They (and all the NPCs in the pens with them) then got to choose between being laborers, joining the army, or the practically suicidal choice of doing six dangerous tasks inside the city in exchange for their freedom and the freedom of two people of each other their choosing if they complete all of their tasks. At which point they will then be free to become the first free citizens of Kelfas or go their own way and be exempt from being enslaved again if the Boar’s Men encounter them again later.
The PCs chose the third option. On quest 2 which they just recently completed, they went down into the underdark where there were two drow cities far too close to each other for the amount of space and resources available. They fortunately wound up closer to the non-slavery city of the two. They solved both cities problem by making a path up out of the underdark and inviting them into Kelfas. So now non-hardcore Lolth worship will be in the mix but also a large number of people, which will upset the whole balance of roles in Kelfas at the moment.
And in the background of this, Grumsh is not choosing to lie dormant but has plans for Makara of his own.
…I might filch that multi-denominational church idea for my campaign. My group’s probably going to be looking for a temple, considering they have a pressing need for a Raise Dead spell, and while I’d originally planned on having multiple temples for different gods, that multi-representative thing sounds neat.
Not going to have any shrines to Asmodeus in there, though. That might happen in other places in this world, but not that particular city.
So why’re Priest’s eyes red? (According to my googling they’re technically “Carmine”, but “Red” will suffice.) His eyes were also red in his last appearance in July. Is he secretly evil?
They look more brown to me, which is a common color. Now Drow Priestess, her eyes are certainly red.
How about non-religious classes being religious? It’s easy to play out your religion as a class, archetype, or prestige class dedicated to it (Clerics, Paladins, Dawnflower Dervishes, Evangelists, Sentinels…), but less so when you’re a class for whom religion has no direct influence on (at least until you take relevant feats and magic items, of course).
Examples include Cayden-centric fighters, who might employ a tankard and improve bar-fight weapons, fight drunk, and utilize a holy fighting style, but little beyond that.
There’s also examples where the religion is purely RP centric. I’m currently playing one such character – A ratfolk wizard, dedicated to Nethys. He has no religious obligations, boons or drawbacks to do so, but it feels fitting to the character. He even shares a neutral, mildly-insane nature with the dualistic God, being equallly destructive and constructive in measure. Being a wizard, his faith is shown through employing magic and studying it – aka, what he does all the time anyway. The ratfolk, despite having no real connection or message from his God, greatly reveres and admires the masked god.
Interestingly enough, as far as Nethys goes, the ideal worshiper is one who can both perform arcane magic and divine magic – or at least, one of the two to their extremes. Any wizard that doesn’t go to moral extremes and does an equal share of creative and destructive endeavors in magic is effectively a devout, ideal Nethysian – often more so when they outperform clerics in displays of magic. And the clerics seem to have a more ‘hands off’ approach as well, with Nethys not giving followers any dream-visions… Which the clergy proudly see as a benefit / sign that the God isn’t coddling his followers.
Is the thing on Priest’s bald head one of those thin-laced head covers (similar to the laced things you put on coffee tables), or a tattoo?
Most of the gods of my setting are cool with each other being at the same altar, so to speak.
Two big exceptions who are at the altar nonetheless are Harphus and Krenz. Harphus is all about striving to overcome one’s betters by any means necessary, and by virtue of being a god of that, he’s the weakest god around and always will be. He bamboozled his way into having a massive pool of worshippers though, and none of the others can slap him down without a whole bunch of mortals turning against their faiths. They likely want to. He’s an unpleasant little nuisance.
Krenz on the other hand has the most powerful dragon in the world operating out of his grand temple (and lounging on a huge hoard of donations). He’s really only big on the one continent on which that dragon lives, but he’s known everywhere else all the same. A god being backed by perhaps the closest thing to a god that’s still living on the mortal plane of a big deal. Krenz might not know it, though. It’s unclear if he knows that he has worshippers at all.
My current campaign is set in a city that features the Mall of Worship. Instead of Sear and JCPenny you have temples dedicated to various deities and a general ‘play nice’ rule for the entire area. Lesser deities get the small zones like the Game Stop and Hot Topic, while the most obscure ones get those little cell phone kiosks in the middle of the walking areas.
You should read Noragami, Yato would definitively try to put a stand somewhere before get kick out by security 😀
At the mention of “weird athiests” I do have to give my take.
I had a magus who was an “atheist”. It was not that he denied the existance of entities like abadar or whomever, but he denied their claims to godhood. To him, they were simply powerful extraplanar beings, but he denied clerical spells came from them (what god would bow repeatedly to a mortals demands of miracles and intervention X+casting attribute bonus times per day?) And denied them being immortal and/or all powerful as they would each have you believe since there is a precedent in nearly every fantasy realm for the death of gods or mortals triumph over fate.
Really, it’s easy to be a non-believer in a fantasy setting, it just takes a different perspective than “deny all existance even though there’s proof”.
That’s pretty much the Rahadoum philosophy verbatim:
https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Atheism
The trouble comes with the word “atheism,” which tends to engender a lot of semantic arguments when it comes up. I think the setup you describe works fine and fits the word in the context of a fantasy world.
My first character is a diehard religious type, worshipper of Sarenrae and very much the kind of character who demands that everyone does things her way. That said, she was meant to be a prick. Most clerics of Sarenrae pretend to not know her when questioned (worked with the GM on it) despite her general infamy. I think that this, like all things, comes down to a matter of player awareness. If a player plays a religious zealot, they should expect to be given a leery look even if they are promoting a socially acceptable god.
Playing a heel can be great fun. But like you say: you’ve got to be aware that you’re a heel.
In Pathfinder I think it largely depends on the society that is being observed. Places with strong central governments, mostly cities, are probably going to have a state religion focused on Iomedae or Sarenrae (if Good), Abadar (if Neutral) ,or Asmodeus (if Evil). This is because I think that in a society where there are clear benefits from being associated with a particular deity, particularly a lawful one, those in power will gravitate towards them and try to justify/hold onto their power through them. There would likely still be a large degree of religious freedom with temples to other faiths being allowed except in extreme cases (Lamashtu, Urgathoa, and Rovagug etc).
In a more rural area, a more laissez-faire attitude would probably be adopted. Sure, gods like Abadar, Erastil, and Pharasma would likely be the main focus, but most gods would probably be tolerated so long as their worshipers don’t cause trouble for their neighbors. I’m honestly surprised that Zon-Kuthon was on the list of deities for that church, since I have a very hard time imagining that his followers aren’t causing trouble for their neighbors.
Remember the anti-establishment bard? Aside from that, the player also had him set up as an athiest until we all pointed out that is functionally impossible, without being functionally loonie on an in-game level.