My Little Pantheon (PEACH)

[StandardDeviant]

Hi, Gang! I'm building a world for a Pathfinder campaign. It needs a pantheon. I'd like to throw out what I've got so far for comment and critique. This is absolutely a work-in-progress, with very little underlying mythology. I'm mostly wondering whether there are any rules- or character-related issues that need to be addressed. Is this a good distribution of domains? Favored weapons? Or is the whole shebang just too boring for words and ought to be punted? I'll spoiler a couple of things below, to mitigate wall-o-text shock. :smallsmile:

A bit of background: the campaign world's version of classical antiquity is a dwarven empire. Imagine Rome carved out of a mountain and armies of short, hairy legionnaires, and you'll get the idea. The pantheon detailed below represents their major divinities. The empire is long gone, but its religion lives on in most of the territories it used to control, which is a very large region, indeed.

This imagined history led me to develop a vaguely Classical pantheon. There are twelve major gods, collectively known as the Constellates, as each governs (in a vaguely astrological sense) a constellation. As with the gods of classical antiquity, the gods may be worshiped en masse or individually, as appropriate.

I don't doubt that the world will ultimately feature an assortment of demigods, ascended heroes, hemi-demi-semigods, and other oddities. Races without a "classical" heritage, monstrous humanoids in particular, have their own deities. But all of those are on my "design as necessary" list.

Aspects of Divinity

Each of the Constellates has an Ascending and Descending form—a deliberate misapplication of astrological terminology. The ascending forms are the primary way in which the gods are described, understood and worshipped. The descending aspects embody the deities as seen in a dark mirror. They are similar, but nastier, their influences perverted or taken too far. So Cassus, god of the hunt, turns to hunting people, becoming the patron of murder. Rall, the god of justice and law, turns to tyranny.

Descending aspects are designated by affixing "ek-" to the deities' names and eliding here and there. This seemed preferable to coming up with a whole new slate of names and hoping I (and my players) remember them. Also, it calls out the fact that the descending aspects are not, in fact, separate deities, merely their dark faces.

This feels right from a narrative perspective. Devotees of a particular god might well invoke their god's descending aspect in secret or in need, to attract or avert his or her influence. There's fun potential here for secret dark cults.

The devil is in the mechanics. Aspects have differing domains, alignments and so on. My provisional rule of thumb (which may need to be finagled into a clear house rule--any thoughts?) is that a divine caster may temporarily operate according to his/her patron's alternate aspect, switching all relevant features (other than weapon proficiency, which feels like a matter of training rather than divine blessing) if and only if it's story-appropriate. That's easy enough for NPCs. For PCs, the player needs to make a convincing case to me, the GM.

Alignment is a bear, here. I'm leaning towards requiring a character who has switched allegiance between aspects to temporarily interact with the rules as if his or her alignment matched that of the new aspect. Afterwards, the characters' alignment reverts, subject to change depending on how the character behaved during the interim.

The gods are not, as a rule, jealous of their own split personalities, but might require atonement or suchlike for inappropriate behavior whilst under the influence of their dark (or bright) selves.


And with that, may I present the Constellates:

Cassus (N)
Concerns: Hunting
Domains: Animal, Plant, Strength, Travel, Weather
Favored Weapon: Longbow
Descending Aspect: Ekassus (NE)
Concerns: Murder
Domains: Animal, Darkness, Death, Destruction, Evil
Favored Weapon: Dagger

Dicale (CN)
Concerns: Luck
Domains: Chaos, Luck, Madness, Magic, Trickery
Favored Weapon: Light Crossbow
Descending Aspect: Ekdicale (CE)
Concerns: Ill-omen
Domains: Chaos, Luck, Maness, Magic, Trickery
Favored Weapon: Scimitar

Domala (LN)
Concerns: Death, underworld
Domains: Darkness, Destruction, Knowledge, Protection, Repose
Favored Weapon: Scythe
Descending Aspect: Ekdomala (LE)
Concerns: Doom
Domains: Darkness, Death, Destruction, Knowledge, Law
Favored Weapon: Scythe

Eleria (CG)
Concerns: Love
Domains: Charm, Healing, Luck, Protection, Water
Favored Weapon: Shortbow
Descending Aspect: Ekleria (CE)
Concerns: Jealousy
Domains: Chaos, Charm, Madness, Trickery, Water
Favored Weapon: Shortbow

Galla* (LG)
Concerns: Sun, Light
Domains: Fire, Glory, Healing, Noblity, Sun
Favored Weapon: Light Mace
Descending Aspect: Ekalla (NE)
Concerns: Darkness
Domains: Darkness, Death, Evil, Knowledge, Magic
Favored Weapon: Light Mace

Hith (NG)
Concerns: Harvest
Domains: Community, Earth, Plant, Water, Weather
Favored Weapon: Sickle
Descending Aspect: Ekith (NE)
Concerns: Despair
Domains: Earth, Evil, Madness, Water, Weather
Favored Weapon: Sickle

Iag (N)
Concerns: Time; Generation and dissolution
Domains: Artifice, Destruction, Knowledge, Magic, Rune
Favored Weapon: Quarterstaff
Descending Aspect: Ekiag (NE)
Concerns: Decay
Domains: Darkness, Destruction, Knowledge, Magic, Rune
Favored Weapon: Quarterstaff

Jontro (N)
Concerns: Forge, volcanoes, underworld
Domains: Artifice, Earth, Fire, Knowledge, Rune
Favored Weapon: Warhammer
Descending Aspect: Ekontro (NE)
Concerns: Warfare
Domains: Artifice, Earth, Fire, Rune, War
Favored Weapon: Warhammer

Orn (CN)
Concerns: Forests, fertility, tomfoolery
Domains: Air, Chaos, Liberation, Luck, Trickery
Favored Weapon: Short Sword
Descending Aspect: Ekorn (CE)
Concerns: Knavery
Domains: Air, Chaos, Luck, Madness, Trickery
Favored Weapon: Rapier

Rall (LN)
Concerns: Authority, law, justice
Domains: Glory, Law, Nobility, Strength, War
Favored Weapon: Battleaxe
Descending Aspect: Ekrall (LE)
Concerns: Dominance, tyranny
Domains: Death, Earth, Law, Strength, War
Favored Weapon: Battleaxe

Senna (NG)
Concerns: Motherhood, family
Domains: Charm, Good, Healing, Nobility, Protection
Favored Weapon: Longsword
Descending Aspect: Eksenna (NE)
Concerns: Revenge
Domains: Destruction, Evil, Fire, Madness, Strength
Favored Weapon: Dagger

Teia (NG)
Concerns: Wisdom, battle
Domains: Air, Knowledge, Repose, War, Water
Favored Weapon: Spear
Descending Aspect: Ekteia (NE)
Concerns: Secrets
Domains: Air, Artifice, Darkness, Knowledge, Water
Favored Weapon: Quarterstaff

*Galla/Ekalla are an exception to the "dark mirror" pairings of the aspects. Mythologically, they're more like evil twins.


As a final note, let me give a shout out to Frances Yates's Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition. The notion of gods having competing malign/benign influences derives from Yates's account of Bruno's amazingly bonkers cosmological notions. If you're ever curious about what self-described magicians got up to in the real-world Renaissance, check out this book.

Thanks for reading!. I anxiously await your comments, critiques and ransom demands. Cheers!

[Mechalich]

One thing I notice with your system is that you don't have any out and out evil gods - with the possible exception of Ekalla. That means all the evil cults are worshipping dark aspects of god or neutral gods - which seems to give evil the short end of the metaphysical stick in some sense. You might consider producing an evil god with a good descending aspect just to mix it up. It might also be interesting to have some of the neutral gods, rather than become evil when descending, switch from lawful to chaotic.

Also, is there a mechanical change involved depending on astronomical position? Do the gods switch aspects at different times and does this perhaps have some effect on their worshippers? That might introduce mechanical complications you don't wish to deal with but it seems weird that both aspects would be equally accessible at the same time.

[the_david]

It's a very interesting idea. I noticed you made one mistake though. Deities with an alignment other than neutral always have their alignment domains.

To be honest, I just glanced over them, so I can't tell you much more. Did you use all the domains available in the CRB?

If there's one problem I have with this pantheon though, it's that it's presumed that the gods natural state is their benevolent side. In the standard Pathfinder cosmology, good and evil are universal forces. One isn't better or preferred over the other, so wouldn't it make sense that some of the gods are evil most of the time and only do good some of the time?

Edit: Just thought of the things you can do with this in a campaign. What if a cult manages to switch a deity to his dark side for a longer period of time? I might have to steal this idea.

[StandardDeviant]

Thanks for the replies! You've both prompted me to go back and clarify--in my own head--some very murky ideas. That's awesome.

I think the most important point in need of clarification is this: the descending aspects of the deities are not (as a rule) less powerful than the others. They are sides of a coin. The primacy of the ascending forms, such as it is, reflects the society of the ancient dwarves and their cultural descendants. The ascending aspects are the public faces of the gods, as they are worshiped openly. They have temples on Main Street; they're the ones that kids get told about in Solarday School. Full-time, primary worship of the descending aspects happens, but is necessarily clandestine. Building a temple to the murder god scares the neighbors. On the other hand, those guys get all the best blood sacrifices, the lucky dogs.

There are, of course, exceptions. I don't have a calendar system together yet, but I intend to include festivals and feast-days for the descending forms--times when they are publicly worshiped, probably in the sacred spaces of their alter egos. Something similar might happen in times of need. A community whose crops have failed, despite their prayers to Hith (the harvest god), might make offerings to Ekith, begging him to back off.

What I'm going for, and I probably should have been clearer about this from the outset, is to create a pantheon of capricious, morally ambiguous entities, similar to the classical model that I'm cheerfully ripping off. Instead of a divine Mexican standoff between good and evil deities, I'm imagining gods who simultaneously project both benign and malign influences, subject to magical manipulation by mortals. This last bit is very much lifted from Giordano Bruno, who planned to create a Utopia by magically constraining the gods' influences to their best possible forms. That guy was gloriously bats! (Someone has definitely tried his scheme at least once in the history of the campaign world. It didn't end well.) :smallwink:

Let's see, a few specific replies: Good catch on the domains, the_David. I'll have to go back and rejigger that. Thanks! Mechalich, the influence of the gods definitely waxes and wanes according to some sort of celestial scheme. But I don't know how that works, yet. I hadn't thought about making the forms unavailable, but now I really want to do something with the Persephone myth. And I'll rethink alignment in my next pass. Splitting the aspects solely along a good/evil axis was, indeed, overly simplistic.

Thanks again!