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View Full Version : Help with creating a Deity of Death based on Mexico's Día de Muertos.



Lemmy
2017-11-29, 12:52 PM
Hello, fellow playgrounders! How are you doing? Awesome, I hope!

So... I'm currently creating a homebrew setting with my group, for my group. And now we're finally moving on to the Pantheon.

So we decided the deities of Life and Death would be siblings. Both of which are mostly benevolent (if somewhat indifferent) in the sense that they want to preserve life and death (without life, there's no death, and vice-versa).

Furthermore, the idea is that one aspect of the God(dess) of death is that (s)he would encourage people to not only honor and remember the dead, but also enjoy life while they can, for there's no way to extend it forever. Even so-called "immortals" eventually die, even if it take eons to happen (death is nothing but patient) .

So... A cool idea we got was to base it on the Day of the Dead's traditions and culture, with the appearance of the deity of death being somewhat based on the Mexican calacas (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calaca). Perhaps something like La Muerte (https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/powerlisting/images/3/36/La_Muerte_book_of_life.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20170905124151) from Book of Life?

I've been to Mexico once, on the Day of the Dead, but I'm not all the knowledgeable about it, so I'd like to hear suggestions and advice on how to go about it, so I ask you for help.

What is your advice?

Nifft
2017-11-29, 01:15 PM
Sounds like a cosmology about cycles, which would include a god of the human lifecycle.

So you'd have something like...


God of Seasons: Summer, Fire, Winter, Cold

God of Weather: Weather, Storms, Water, Ocean, Air

God of Days: Sun, Moon, Darkness, Sky

God of Stars: Pact, Time, Fate, Luck

God of Conflict: Protection, War, Tyranny, Liberation

God of the Hunt: Animal, Celerity, Trickery, Travel

God of Works: Artifice, Creation, Destruction, Entropy

God of Souls: Community, Healing, Death, Earth, Renewal

Lemmy
2017-12-02, 08:57 AM
I think extrapolating ti to be a whole pantheon about "cycles" is going a tad too far...

It's simply a god(dess) of death that has no hurry to see the living die (because they'll die anyway, no matter what they do).

Right now I'm more interested in the traditions, folklore and stuff like that about the Day of the Dead...

For example... I think the deity's symbol (at least among humanoid races) might be a decorated skull with marigolds sprouting from/around it. His/her favored weapon could be something like the Aztec macuahuitl.

aimlessPolymath
2017-12-02, 10:01 PM
I'm going to quickly plug LudicSavant's excellent versions of Wee Jas (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?450352-Wee-Jas-the-First-Lich) and Nerull (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?443831-My-pantheon-s-take-on-Nerull).

On the Day of the Dead specifically:
After glancing around Wikipedia, the following things stick out to me as possibly relevant:

People go to cemeteries to be with the souls of the departed and build private altars containing the favorite foods and beverages, as well as photos and memorabilia, of the departed. The intent is to encourage visits by the souls, so the souls will hear the prayers and the comments of the living directed to them.

Some people believe the spirits of the dead eat the "spiritual essence" of the ofrendas food, so though the celebrators eat the food after the festivities, they believe it lacks nutritional value.

Some people believe possessing Day of the Dead items can bring good luck. Many people get tattoos or have dolls of the dead to carry with them. They also clean their houses and prepare the favorite dishes of their deceased loved ones to place upon their altar or ofrenda.

In some African cultures, visits to ancestors' graves, the leaving of food and gifts, and the asking of protection from them serve as important parts of traditional rituals.

Overall, I see the major traditions here as having a few major features:
-First, the belief that the dead can "come back" to visit and observe the living, if only on one day. In a D&D universe, this could extend to actual visits by ghosts. How is a community shaped when your yearly visit to meet Grandma moves to a cemetery?
-Second, the belief that offerings given actually reach the dead, and are consumed by them in some fashion. In a D&D universe, this... I'm less sure about this part, but what if, when you die, the tradition is to bury you with your equipment so you can keep using it in the afterlife? It's a bit more of a militant culture thing (Ysgard, basically), but it might work out?
-A significant focus on "telling the stories of the dead", and remembering rather specific things about them- their favorite foods, for example.

Some thoughts
-Does anything before death matter?
-Archeology as a divinely mandated activity?
-What does it think about intelligent undead? Vampires will "re-die" again eventually, so are they kosher?
-Do gods die? Will the god of death die? What happens then?
-Negative energy is strongly associated with undead. At the same time, it doesn't really have any innate moral dimension. What does this god think about this?



On a separate note, I'd like to offer a suggestion for an orc/ogre/troll god (whatever, as long as they are exclusively carnivorous, ideally maybe cannibals?), based on a rather silly one-shot I played in once:
MEAT IZ GUD
PEOPLE IS MEET
THEREFOR
MEET IZ PEEPLE
WHEN EET MEET, MEET GO IN BELLY
WHEN EET MEAT, GROW BIGGER
I.E.
WHEN EET MEET, MEET BECOME YOU
THERE4
WHEN EAT PERSON, PERSON BECOME YOU
EAT MORE PEOPLE = BE MORE PERSON

YOU AR WHUT YOU EAT:
DON'T BE PLANT
BE PERSON

WHEN DIE:
IF EATEN, BECOME PART OF EATER
IF NOT, LIVE ON IN AFTERLIFE AS EVERYTHING EATEN:
IF ATE WOLF HEAD: HAVE WOLF HEAD
IF ATE BEAR ARM: HAVE BEAR CLAWS

(the unspoken subtext to this is that most orcs in the afterlife look like hideous amalgamations of everything they ate during their life)