Help with gods of mankind

[S@tanicoaldo]

So, for my new setting I wanted to create gods for the human race, I wanted them to represent stages in human life in the Order, chaos and neutral alignments and three genders.

Template:
-Young.
-Adult.
-Old.

This is what I got so far:

Male gods:

Order:
-The Knigth.
-The Father.
-The Smith.

Neutral:
-The Hunter.
-The Lord.
-The Hermit.

Chaos:
-The Berserker.
-The (Not sure, maybe Vagrant?).
-The Wizard(or maybe shaman?).

Female goddesses:

Order:
-The Maiden.
-The Mother.
-The Crone.

Neutral:
-The Amazon.
-The Healer.
-The Witch.

Chaos:
-The Rebel.
-The Dancer.
-The Hag.

Genderless Gods:
-The Stranger. No gender.
-The Fool. No gender but masculine aspects.
-The mad or the weird not sure yet. No gender but feminine aspects.

So I need help with the ones I haven't decided yet and would like to know what you guys think of the archetypes so far.

Overall I think it looks really fun.:smallbiggrin:

[a_flemish_guy]

I'd change some things around
male
order:
- knight
- smith (representing all guildsmen really)
- lord (a lord must be lawfull IMO )

neutral:
- hunter
- warrior (moved berserker here and changed the name to be a bit more generic, unless all cultures in your world have a concept of berserker)
- shaman

chaos:
- vagrant
- bard
- hermit

female:
order:
- the maiden
- the mother (I've kept the mother here but axed the father since in most societies women were housemakers, a man was considered what he does first and then a father, while a women was a mother first and her profession later)
- the crone (I wanted to change this to priestess but if I'm going to keep the mother then I shouldn't axe the crone since it would look really weird otherwise)

neutral:
- the amazon
- the healer
- the witch

chaos:
- the rebel
- the dancer
- the hag

[hymer]

I like the thought of what you're doing, and I've been doing similar things myself. It takes a lot of polishing to put a real shine on this sort of thing.
E.g. the two magicians (Witch and Wizard; Healer and Hag, possibly too) are Neutral and Chaotic. This would seem to have or reflect a profound impact on magic's place and role in human culture.
The Knight is Lawful, the Berserker Chaotic, and the Amazon Neutral. This seems to me to require a clear definition of the Amazon. What is her role, and her philosophy? Hopefully there's a lot more to her than just being the female counterpart and 'compromise' between the two male warriors.
The difference between the orderly males and females is also quite stark. The males are defined by their professional occupation, while the women seem to be defined by time - Men Act, Women Are (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MenActWomenAre) (warning, TVTropes link). This seems to indicate a patriarchal culture, with all that entails.
There is also a lot of potential overlap between Hag and Crone. Maybe make one of them a Lorekeeper, Storyteller, or Arbitrator?

As for the Vagrant, that could also be the Wanderer or Traveller, the Seeker, or the Finder. The latter two moves the notion a little away from the Hermit, which it otherwise could have a lot of overlap with.

[Millstone85]

This is all very A Song of Ice and Fire, with the Maiden, the Mother, the Crone, the Smith, the Warrior, the Father and the Stranger.

[LibraryOgre]

Chaos:
-The Berserker.
-The (Not sure, maybe Vagrant?).
-The Wizard(or maybe shaman?).

Wanderer, instead of Vagrant, might be the "formal" title, but I can see a lot of lawfuls calling him The Vagrant. For the last one, I think you might go with "Magician", with Wizard and Sorcerer being local variants on that title.



Neutral:
-The Amazon.
-The Healer.
-The Witch.

Chaos:
-The Rebel.
-The Dancer.
-The Hag.

I'd lean more towards

Neutral
-The Huntress Handmaiden
-The Healer Huntress
-The Hag Healer

Chaos
-The Dancer
-The Rebel
-The Witch

It gives neutral a nice bit of alliteration, though I'm not fond of "Hag"... maybe the Handmaiden, the Huntress, and the Healer? The Handmaiden being a young girl whose job is to serve and learn, the Huntress being the mature adult who provides, and the Healer being the Wise woman... not outside the order, as Chaos's witch, but apart from the struggles, focused on her goals?

For Chaos, putting Dancer as the "young" outlook has connotations of "feckless partier", the mature version as "someone who knows the world and fights it", and the older version as "person wise in the ways of the world who acts outside its strictures"



Genderless Gods:
-The Stranger. No gender.
-The Fool. No gender but masculine aspects.
-The mad or the weird not sure yet. No gender but feminine aspects.
:

If you're keeping with the age categories, I would go with
The Fool - Young and immature. Does things to do things, without regard to consequences.
The Stranger - Older, mature. Outside the expected, without clear identity. It would create a culture where strangers are treated with cautious respect, certainly
The Shaman - An aged adult, whose experience transcends a lot of conventions, but is balanced between "wisdom" and "Whackadoo".

[S@tanicoaldo]

My idea was that:

Male:
-Young: Uses force to get things.
-Adult: Uses maturity and reason.
-Old: Use inteligence and wisdom.

Female:
-Young: uses force or beauty.
-Adult: Related to life and sexuality, I feel bad about using sexulity for the young stages.
-Old: Magic and wisdom.



If you're keeping with the age categories, I would go with
The Fool - Young and immature. Does things to do things, without regard to consequences.
The Stranger - Older, mature. Outside the expected, without clear identity. It would create a culture where strangers are treated with cautious respect, certainly
The Shaman - An aged adult, whose experience transcends a lot of conventions, but is balanced between "wisdom" and "Whackadoo".

That does make sense.

[Amazon]

This is all very A Song of Ice and Fire, with the Maiden, the Mother, the Crone, the Smith, the Warrior, the Father and the Stranger.

-The Maiden, the Mother and the Crone is actually a lot older than that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_Goddess_(Neopaganism)

I'm sure George R. R. Martin borrowed his idea from that.

The neutral gods from the male section are also very close to this trope: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheThreeFacesOfAdam

But they use The Prophet rather than the hermit.

I would change "The Amazon" to warrior. It's a female warrior that cares more about the battle than honor, like Belona https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellona_(goddess) or Enyo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enyo.

[Nifft]

So, for my new setting I wanted to create gods for the human race, I wanted them to represent stages in human life in the Order, chaos and neutral alignments and three genders.

I did something for a campaign long ago which you might find useful: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?544304-Six-God-Pantheon

For that campaign, we fit some very similar archetypes into six gods, 3 male / 3 female, which covered all Neutral and Good alignments. (There were no evil gods in that setting.)

In terms of your archetypes, they'd fit like...

Male:
- LG - Father / Justice / Sun (=> Knight, Lord)
- N - Smith / Fire / Artifice
- CN - Warrior / Strength / Storm (=> Berserker, Hunter)

Female:
- LN - Crone / Death / Moon (also Magic => Witch, Hag)
- NG - Mother / Healing / Growth
- CG - Maiden / Trickery / Luck (=> Dancer, Rebel)


It's not a perfect fit for which category you've given -- like I don't see much distinction between Crone / Hag / Witch, since all three of them are grounded in the same "ugly old magic woman" trope -- but it covers a lot of the same ground, and it's pretty efficient in terms of minimizing entities.

Steal ideas if nothing else. :smile:

[Kitten Champion]

I used the Maiden, Mother, and Crone as a kind of stand-in for Trimurti before.

The Maiden is a creator deity who shaped reality and is innocent in nature but also lacks a conscience, she would bring into the world dazzling beauty and abysmal horrors with equal delight. While she can make things as well as creatures out the ether - and is compelled to by her nature - that's all she can do. Being unable to change or destroy that which she's made real. She's a chaotic figure who's prone to following her whimsical desires and is worshipped as much as she's cursed, and is revered in particularly by monsters. Her form is constantly shifting, she's generally depicted differently depending which culture is imagining her -- though a red spider is the most popular.

The Mother formed reality and maintains its cohesion, she could be seen as something like a gardener in that she created the firmament for existence and keeps it alive through judicious care but isn't overly concerned about its exact shape, nor the loss of individual plants therein. She's a neutral figure who largely exists outside the world and has the least religious significance. More of a function like gravity, that's obviously important objectively but sapient beings rarely stop their lives to revere it. If she did appear in her avatar it would usual portend something existentially cataclysmic is transpiring, though she has functionaries who she activates which are specifically aimed at dealing with Outsiders. She's depicted in most art as a serene Woman cast in pale blue, the size of galaxies with stars for eyes.

The Crone is the force of entropy and change that exists at the end of everything, she the most concerned with sapient Creatures and serves as arbiter of their souls. Her "judgements" of the dead are not actual born from objective considerations of morality but rather reflects the soul's own sense of inequities back at it with complete fidelity. Your flaws and virtues of a lifetime laid bare without illusion or delusion, and the weight of this is something the soul is to work through in her realm before being placed back in the cycle. She possesses all knowledge of the dead that have come to her, only speaks the truth, and she will answer any three questions asked by any individual being -- though only three, ever. Her goal, in general, is to end the stagnation of souls through carefully guiding them through self-reflection and the revelation of hidden truths. She appears as an inky black silhouette sitting on a ivory-white throne, her voice more than her physical characteristic gives the feel of an elderly woman. She's strongly associated with lawfulness, those swearing honesty or on their duty evoke her and her symbol is used in pertaining to justice. She has functionaries in the mortal realm who she activates which are specifically aimed at dealing with those who disrupt the cycle of souls.