Godly Domains

[Synvallius]

In the world I'm creating currently, I have a loose idea for a pantheon for a Greek/Babylonian/Frankish/Old English culture, there will be five main deities a god of earth, a god of air, a goddess of fire, a goddess of water, and a god of flesh (humans and life, essentially) (and then they all have other domains such as: war, death, life, and what not). What I would like help with is the creation of ideas for other domains for some lesser gods (and by domains, I don't mean the D&D cleric domains derived from gods, I just mean some general archetypes for basing some gods off of). I'm open to any ideas, although keep in mind the cultural context and the age of the setting (dark ages, or around there). So yes, if anyone has any ideas on any kind of god, I'm open to suggestions and even short (or lengthy) back stories (particular history or information doesn't matter, so long as the god could be adapted into one of those cultures or could fit into a pseudo-nomadic culture, it'll work).

[GorinichSerpant]

For starters, gods of fertility were considered very important as most people's livelihoods were based agriculture, even if that isn't as important in a nomadic culture you can still have it. Women would pray to someone for a son. You could have a goddess of child birth and midwives for the similar reasons.

How important is the sea here? I'd put sea faring as one of the domains of the water goddess, assuming she is also the goddess of the sea.

There is the well known trickster archetype of the likes of Loki and Hermes must be mentioned.

Each and ever trade may have itself a minor deity. Blacksmith could be a domain of the earth or fire gods.

Roman and Greece also gave landforms, trees and rivers dietys, in fact nymphs are very minor dietys.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head.

[Dusk Raven]

A god of death is certainly one I'd expect to see. Possibly opposed to the god of flesh and life, or perhaps instead an aspect of the same god (as a necessary part of life).

[warhead0180]

Death, agriculture, possibly learning and the arcane, if they will have any bearing in your setting. Basing something on a Greek influence I would also expect to see a god or godess of wine and revelry. Agriculture seems like a solid choice as well

[Thunderfist12]

When in doubt, look to Greek myth. They had gods for... practically everything.

Just think of something cool, necessary, or otherwise important. Make a god for it. The god's power and status should reflect that of his domain.

Death god;
Harvest god;
Famine god;
Plague god;
Luck god;
Traveler god;
Witch god;
Song god;
Forest god;
Sun god;
Moon god;
Star god;
Food god;
Wolf god;
Hatred god;
Blood god;
Mind god;
etc.

[TheFamilarRaven]

What you refer to as "domains" are formally known as "portfolios" I believe, because one has mechanical applications (domains grant spells), and the other is for flavor, and fleshing out the deities' character and personality.

That being said.

Gods of crafting are pretty standard.

Pseudo nomadic cultures may have a God of hunting, a god of Gathering, (although you could probably fit these portfolios into the God of earth)

Each major deity, except flesh, might also be associated with a season. Summer = fire, Winter = water, spring = air and fall = earth

Also, God of Dreams may be interesting, and don't rule out evil deities that embody the type of behavior the cultures disdain. God of trickery, god of thieves, God of "imma take your soul if you don't do what I say!". Possibilities are endless, when you have many "lesser gods" that only have 1 or 2 things in their portfolio.

[Synvallius]

Thank you, everyone, for your ideas. Usually I can come up with something but I've been drawing a blank for this particular pantheon (I'm more used to making monotheisms, rather than polytheisms) so your help is greatly appreciated.

[Devils_Advocate]

List of deities by classification (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deities#By_classification)
List of deities by association (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Deities_by_association)

Of course, a single deity may fit into more than one category. Something I noticed recently about the Olympians (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve_Olympians) is how their portfolios tend to overlap with each other to a degree. You could look at that as an illustration of how you can have multiple gods of a thing, and also as an indication that certain things are important. (They probably are, if multiple major gods concern themselves with them.) For example

- Ares and Athena are both war deities
- Hera and Hestia are both goddesses of family
- Artemis and Apollo are both deities of archery
- Athena and Apollo are both deities of knowledge and civilization
- Athena and Hephaestus are both deities of crafts
- Dionysus and Apollo are both gods of the arts

and so on. You get the idea.

[avr]

To a semi-nomadic culture the most important things might be the weather and the beasts that they interact with. You might associate these one to one and add a 3rd portfolio (3 makes for a better definition of personality than 2), so that there's a god of sheep, community and fog perhaps, or one of sun, horses and war, and/or a god of wolves, hunting and storms.

[mystic1110]

When thinking of Domains for LOC gods or for my Bottom Up Pantheon Game - I think a fun way of making original and interesting Gods is to do it like this.

(Traditional Domain), (Domain as far Removed from the Previous Domain as you can think of), and (Something somewhat to bridge the two domains you already picked.).

Then you try to build the personality of the God or Goddess in your head based on those domains.

So for example:

Here are 6 Gods based on 6 very traditional Domains. The domains were thought of with the method described above.

The Goddess of Death, Music, and Fables - while she Shepherds the souls of the dead to their final destination she sings songs of their accomplishments. The greatest songs are remembered by mortals and sung again by them.

The God of War, Flowers, and Nobility - The God of war is a dandy. He cares more about good looking uniforms and fancy heroics than for blood and death. To him War is a chance for Honor and should be beautiful

The God of Love, Decay, and Vengeance - It is said that love is a terrible curse. And that it is. Those who love, lose their loved ones to jealousy, their bones rotting in the ground. And what does one do when their loved ones die? The blood of their killers - which leads only to more death.

The Goddess of Storms, Wealth, and Chance - Acts of Gods do more than ruin lives - they ruin fortunes, and make fortunes.

The God of Oceans, Deserts, and Travel - Everyone prays to the God of the long roads, who rules the journeys from coast to coast - and every harsh obstacle in between.

The Goddess of Hunting, Dreams, and Hope - The starving masses dream of feasts of Faun and Hare, given to them by the gentle Goddess.

[Dusk Raven]

When thinking of Domains for LOC gods or for my Bottom Up Pantheon Game - I think a fun way of making original and interesting Gods is to do it like this.

(Traditional Domain), (Domain as far Removed from the Previous Domain as you can think of), and (Something somewhat to bridge the two domains you already picked.).

Then you try to build the personality of the God or Goddess in your head based on those domains.

A truly interesting way to create deities, if I do say so myself. Also not without precedent in real-world religion (I believe in Hinduism Shiva is a god of both death and rebirth). Though I'd avoid using it too much unless the religion/world is centered around opposites of that sort - could lead to some rather schizophrenic gods.

[Devils_Advocate]

To the extent that being god of X means overseeing and regulating X, in a lot of cases being god of something means being god of its opposite as well. For example, how cold something is is directly proportional to how hot it is, so being god of heat means being god of cold as well. God of temperature, pretty much.

And if you're talking about normal phenomena, destruction is creation and vice versa. Matter gets rearranged; its old forms are destroyed and its new forms are created. Of course, in a fantasy world, magic can create something out of nothing or obliterate something entirely. But except in an entirely surreal sort of setting, creation and destruction are going to be two sides of the same coin most of the time; different aspects of the overall phenomenon of transformation.

In a case like that, two enemy deities of opposite things have the same area of concern, but diametrically opposed agendas. So you get e.g. a god of cold and a god of heat who have opposite opinions on the subject of weather (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGRkNaMFp6w). But the more control that such a pair of deities have over the aspect(s) of reality with which they are associated, the more that their actual abilities will tend to be the same. Much as they might prefer not to discuss or even think about that.

This sort of dualism is ridiculously easy to set up, so entirely unsurprisingly, it crops up all the time. There are two goddesses of knowledge (and probably magic, in a D&D setting), one a goddess of education and one a goddess of secrecy. They're rivals and enemies and probably sisters. That was just off the top of my head. You can probably come up with something yourself in under a minute. Like I said, ridiculously easy. And fun! :D

And of course the equally natural alternative is to have a single deity who doesn't favor either extreme but instead a balance between the two. A lot of mortals' interaction with a god like this will be pleading for things to go in their favor this time, or bribing the god to swing things in their favor all the time. Heck, a lot of religious practices boil down to mortals trying to do what gods want them to do so that the gods will do what the mortals want them to do. And while ideally this relationship will involve mutual respect, that's really just because that's ideal for any relationship, and respect doesn't even strike me as an essential component.

But mystic1110 wasn't talking about making a god of two opposite things, which is natural, straightforward, and quite easy much of the time. Opposites are conceptually near each other -- easily bring each other to mind -- and are related to each other in an entirely formulaic way. They're one degree of separation apart in a way that's really easy to see. mystic's idea is to figure out how to make a god of two conceptually distant things by showing how those seemingly unrelated things are really just two degrees of separation away from each other, which is considerably trickier.

But anyway, two opposed things aren't necessarily each the absence of the other. The classical elements are a good example. Air isn't a lack of earth, nor vice versa. And in the context of alignment, evil isn't the absence of good. It can't be, because Dungeons & Dragons doesn't use a good/evil dichotomy; it uses a good/neutral/evil trichotomy, where there are things that aren't good that also aren't evil. Assuming a dichotomy seems to be something that frequently trips people up.

[jqavins]

And of course the equally natural alternative is to have a single deity who doesn't favor either extreme but instead a balance between the two.
This is meant as a side comment as much about myself as about gods; it is not a criticism of anybody or anybody else's ideas. Personally, I'm tired of balance. Neutrality, in my opinion, should have at least as much to do with disinterest as with any notion of keeping thing even or balanced. To use the creation/destruction example, what about a god of transformation who, rather than balancing creation and destruction, simply sees all transformations as equal? Make a castle out of rocks: cool! Make gravel and sand out a castle: cool! It's the same thing, not two things to be balanced.

The notion of a balance between good and evil has always bewildered me. Perhaps because I am so strongly good-aligned that I am blind to the merits and virtues of evil, but I just don't get how one can a claim that balance of Mother Theresas and Heinrich Himlers is better than a world full of Mother Theresas. Or in regard to personal conduct, thinking "I've done too many good deeds lately, I'd better go rob a bank." What I can understand (not support, just understand) is not caring one way or the other.

OK, rant over. Sorry.

As for godly domains or portfolios or spheres or interests or whatever one wants to call them, some old standbys are luck, travel, death, weather, time, and love. I'd like to know just what you mean by "semi-nomadic." If you mean living part of the year in permanent settlements but leaving them to make round trip nomadic treks for months at a time, then the people would have real concerns about the condition of their settlements when they get back; have the houses been burned or weather-beaten? Have their belongings been burgled? In such a culture, there might well be a god(dess) of homecomings. (Or one of automated alarm systems :smallwink:)

[Synvallius]

Quite frankly, I'm surprised people are still commenting on this (pleased, but surprised nonetheless).
Mystic1110, your idea I find to be almost overly intriguing, possibly forcing me to create an entirely new world in which I can put that idea to the test and see what kind of madness spews forth.
Jqavins (must capitalize, or risk grammatical insanity), in answer to thy query, by semi-nomadic I meant two things; 1: the people are divided into two different groups (that were once part of the same "nation group"), one group has settled (permanently), and the other group has continued to move about the river valley(s), changing their location regularly, but generally returning to the same areas following a yearly schedule; 2: I was mainly wondering (probably didn't say this beforehand because my mind is like a ball of string that a very determined kitten has been playing with for several hours), how would a non-nomadic society (that was previously nomadic) adjust their rural/nomadic deities to urban/settled civilization?
So, in summary, yes.