Scalenex
2008-01-02, 09:36 AM
I have tried many times to come up with a pantheon for deities made up of interesting deities that are related to each other and support the notion of the Good, Evil, and Neutrality and Chaos, Law, and Neutrality being cosmological forces. Here’s my latest attempt. I’m trying to do this one step at a time. They don’t have proper names yet but they have good working names.
The current gods are the former servants of a tyrannical god that initially created the universe/multi-verse. The old primordial god was extremely evil and created the gaming world and populated it with sentient souls just so it could feed off the souls like a rancher feeds off of livestock. This god’s working name is the All-Consumer (A-C). Over countless ages, the A-C grew fat, greedy, and lazy and needed more and more people to feed him. He created ten servants gods as Creation became larger and more difficult for the A-C to manage. A-C feared its servants would one day try to depose its power so A-C created beings who disagreed on every fundamental level that A-C could imagine. The ten deities names were LN, LG, LN, N, NG, NE, CN, CG, CE, and Sell-Out. For along time, A-C’s plan worked. All Ten resented the A-C. Some resented the A-C’s high level of control, some resented his horrid treatment of Creation’s souls, some resented not being allowed to consume their own souls and there were many other grouses, but they all disliked or hated their siblings too much to unite against their father/mother.
N was the most insightful of all the Ten. Lesser beings would call N’s insight prophecy. In any event N realized that the A-C would eventually consume all Ten of them. Out of greed and paranoia and then create new servants to repeat the process. Fortunately N got along with the other siblings because he was the least extreme in his views. One by one he got his siblings to concede to the Rebellion. N also used his prophetic abilities to arrange meetings at times and places where and when the A-C would not notice.
Sell-Out only pretended to go along with the rebellion in order to set up his/her siblings and use that as a bargaining chip for the A-C to spare him/her. Sell-Out failed though and was destroyed by his/her vengeful siblings.
LN realized that while all Ten of the siblings didn’t want to be eaten by their progenitor, they needed some sort of agreement to take on an equal amount of risk during the Rebellion and take an equal share of power after they took over management of the world. The Nine divided up the management of creation into nine equal pieces (theoretically Ten but Sell-Out was obviously knocked out). Each of the Nine would have jurisdiction over one ninth (again originally a tithe but Sell-Out died) This arrangement was called the Compact and LN was the main architect.
CG is credited with coming up with the idea of using a schedule shipment of souls as a trap against the A-C. When Sell-Out revealed his/her true colors, CG left his battle position to personally destroy Sell-Out in one-on-one combat.
NE put wings on CG Trojan horse maneuver and hatched a plan to use a tribute of souls to poison the A-C. NE took the souls of a tribute load and tortured them endlessly until they were so mutilated that the A-C became weakened when it consumed them.
LE, as the most trusted by the A-C told the lies and made the maneuvers to get the A-C to eat the poisoned souls. The A-C viewed LE as the worst of all its turncoat servants so LE took the most serious wounds in the battle of any of the victorious Nine.
LG didn’t appreciate all the duplicity, leading a frontal assault on the A-C once it had become poisoned. Up until this point, all mortal souls were ignorant that they were created merely as food. LG chose the strongest and told them the truth. They became his army and followed him into battle. LG knew most would be destroyed in the charge but figured this heroic death was better then being consumed as food.
NG role in the actual battle was small, but during the preparation NG created a shelter for all the souls not used by LG and NE. NG reasoned that the Rebellion would be a hollow victory if the world was rendered unlivable and all the living souls destroyed.
CN didn’t follow LN’s carefully laid out battle plan and flouted many steps of the planning process, changing them as she saw fit. This helped because it made Sell-Out’s information inaccurate, so the A-C didn’t believe Sell-Out saying there was a rebellion until it was too late for the A-C to prevent it. CN claims that she alone knew that Sell-Out had sold out, but LN attests that she did to piss her off and that if everyone stuck to their roles, the battle would have gone smoother.
CE deliberately held back for most of the battle. Sell-Out was dead, but most of the remaining Nine were badly hurt and only CE was still standing so the weakened A-C planned to take him down before coup-de-gracing (in other words eating them) all the others. CE played possum after taking a mild blow, then sucker punched the A-C when its back was turned, striking the blow that finally destroyed the A-C.
Once A-C was destroyed, all of the Nine took one of his body parts and shaped it into one weapon and/or tool each. These divine artifacts are what the signature weapons and religious seals of clerics are based off in the gaming world.
The few souls that were part of LG and survived gained great power, these became the first dragons. The moderate amount of souls that NE mutilated that were not consumed because the progenitors of many horrible monsters, including the first undead. The souls that NG created became the main denizens of the world. The Nine created souls of their own whole cloth once they became more adjusted to their deific powers, and some races were created when two or more of the four origins of souls intermingled. People of different races and species love to argue about their origins. Most people with pride in their species/race want to have some tie to the members of LG and they want to tie their enemies in with NE’s souls and their friendly (but inferior) allies into NG’s souls and/or the later creations of the gods. That and some creatures are supposedly born of couplings between one or more of the Nine and mortals.
The Nine divided up the souls evenly of the dragons and NG’s shelter to be their worshippers. CN once again imbalanced things, saying that souls should not be puppets or cattle and gave the first of the divine Gifts: free will. Suddenly the Nine no longer had a guaranteed share of souls. The rest of the Nine eventually followed suit and gave Gifts to mortals so they could protect or expand their share of worshippers through bribery. While the Nine gods no longer have a guaranteed stake in the hearts and minds of the mortals of the world, their hand in creation and the remnant of the compact has guaranteed that their unique view points (aka the nine alignments) have become thoroughly ingrained into the fundamental forces of the world.
I originally planned to only have Nine deities, but I needed a better role for CG, so I created Sell-Out. Also, this made CN changing the battle plan a bit more sensible. I deliberately kept the A-C and sexless though I thought of making them different sexes so Sell-Out could literally lust after his/her parent, but decided against it. The Nine I wanted to give sex/gender to. I hopped back and forth between picking genders that seemed to go with their alignment/deific roles and those that were genderbending.
I knew right off the bat that LN would have dominion over the sun. The sun reliably rises and sets and watches over creation just as LN tries to watch over the other eight siblings. LN had to make concessions in order to get the Compact and Rebellion off the ground, thus the sun sets every night. For the same reasons that Rich in his world building wanted to flout convention and make the Sun female rather than male, so did I. LN is female. LN’s Gift to mortals was writing. LN didn’t want the mortals to forget their traditions just because CN gave them the ability to choose to ignore them.
CN is female. It’s probably sexist, but I think women are less predictable then men and CN is the embodiment of change. Also, I figured CN and LN’s rivalry should be sisterly rather than brother-sister. I decided to give CN dominion over the weather. The whole saying that “if you don’t like the weather, wait ten minutes” is because the one causing it gets bored and changes it a lot. I thought about giving LN dominion over the seasons so she could try to exercise some control over CN and because modern science, the sun’s rays determines the seasons, but ancient or medieval people wouldn’t have come up with that and I was running out of dominions for other gods.
I always thought of LE as an oily magistrate. So that kind of suggested male to me. I wanted LE to have some kind of lasting injury that the other gods don’t. There are far too many cases of gods missing eyes and hands, so I decided to have his face ripped off. That’s not something you see too often, and I thought it would be nice and lawful evil if all his clerics’ uniforms involved masks. LE, unlike the other Evil gods, has a somewhat legitimate excuse for his power seeking maneuvers. He believes he should get more worshippers and a better dominion then the others because he took the most grievous injuries. I have yet to come up with a good dominion I really like but for now I gave him dominion of the earth and rocks. LE’s Gift was far easier to come up with, currency and commerce. Money being seen by some as an Lawful Evil concept. This gives LE a small measure of regulatory power over the other deities Gifts. Money in this time is based off of precious metals which ties into LE’s Dominion of the earth.
NE’s horrifying trick to poisoning the A-C seemed arcane to me. I gave NE Dominion over the arcane forces of the world, though it’s incomplete control at best. That struck me as witchlike. That and I always viewed CE male right from the start and I just made LE male as well, so I needed at least one of the evil deities to be female for balance. Once the mortals of the world got free will, most mortals became horrified at what she did to sentient souls during the Rebellion, so her disgusted and frightened followers turned to her other deities. She was also the last of the Nine to give a Gift to mortals at large. She figured if they didn’t worship her in significant numbers she wouldn’t give them anything. When she realized that the other deities all had more clerics and that her power on the mortal plane was weakening, she finally gave her Gift. She taught some mortals wizardry and encouraged its spread, even outside her own worshippers. Ostensibly it was so mortals could defend themselves against dragons and sorcerers, but most view it as a subtle undermining of the clerics of the other eight deities. This also flip-flopped the traditional D&D world where sorcerers are more distrusted than wizards. Now, sorcerers are viewed as wielding powers they didn’t ask for and wizards are accused of trafficking with evil forces to learn their power by the superstitious.
LG is probably the least developed of my deities. LG is clearly a just warrior, but I’ve had trouble moving beyond that. As I was conceptualizing LG, LG starting looking more and more like a knock-off of Pallas Athena. I made LG male differentiate him from Athena. I gave LG the dominion of the seasons because it’s similar to my original plan of giving it to LN. I doubt LG has a lot of patience for CN either. LG’s Gift on the table is metal working. I had trouble coming up with a Gift too, but I eventually settled on metalworking because LG is probably the patron of dwarves so it fits. This also gives LE a grouse against him because it infringes on his domain of the earth.
NG is a very nurturing type. I never felt like gender bending here, so I made NG female, since NG concept is so motherly. I came up with contradictory Dominions and Gift though. I eventually decided that’s okay because most of the Nine are irked at the specific Gifts the others gave mortals. NG has dominion over water, the life giving element of the mortal plane. NG’s gift to mortals was fire, so they could stay warm and sheltered.
CE is also a warrior god. CE boastfully took the title Last One Standing in honorific to CE’s role in the Rebellion. This seems masculine to me. Both the desire to be the Last One Standing and bragging about bad-ass it makes you. So CE became male. CE takes the Last One Standing to mortals too encouraging them to fight and “testing” them with hardship. CE’s Dominion is over disease and decay. While LN meant this as a force of renewal, CE is a little overenthusiastic. LN (and the others) had to leave CE this because he was the most reluctant to join the Compact and the Rebellion. CE’s Gift seems innocuous enough. He taught mortals how to use as many parts of a slain animal as possible and how to raise animals domestically. This was meant to cause a link between killing and personal gain and teaching about the strong dominating and using the weak.
I was running out of steam when I got to CG. I couldn’t come up with a good Dominion or Gift or what gender CG should be for a long time. CG is kind of a warrior and I kind of wanted a female warrior, but I noticed something. So far all of my deities were the same sex as their mortal enemies (on the alignment axis anyway). And they were the opposite sex of the deities one step removed. Example, LG is male as is his greatest enemy, the dishonorable warrior CE. LG’s closest allies LN and NG are female. I decided to keep this pattern and make CG male. I decided to make his Gift music and art eventually. This will prop up bards theoretically and art is an important endeavor of civilization (most of the Gifts have to do with civilization on some level). I looked at my list of aspects of nature. I noticed I didn’t have the moon used yet. I didn’t think to use it because the moon has relatively little to do with day-to-day life, but I realized the symbolic power of lights in the night sky. LN keeps watch during the day and tries to keep the evil and chaotic gods in line, but because of his compromise, he has to give them free reign at night. CG doesn’t want to give evil a free pass at night, so CG put up the moon to keep an eye on them.
N got Dominion over plants and animals and the rest of the natural world. Since the other eight deities are the least suspicious of N, only N was trusted to be apolitical enough to be trusted with the potentially most powerful Dominion. I have trouble getting beyond this as a very Gaia-like deity. But if I made N male, N would look way too much like Obad-hai. I now had four male gods and four female and I kind of wanted balance too. For a long while I was going to have N be a hermaphrodite or androgynous, but that’s hard for some people to grasp. I eventually decided to make N male to fit with my pattern (all the deities one step removed from N are female).
Okay I have a Gift and a Dominion for each god. Unfortunately, some of these are weak, so I’m open to suggestions. Once I have Dominions and Gifts pegged down real good, it will help me come up with cleric domains later. Then it’s time to figure out what the Nine each forged from the Nine’s corpse and what body parts they used (though I know LE made a mask from A-C’s skin and CE took the heart). Once I have that I’ll come up with favored weapons and predominant symbols. I’m probably going to come up with proper names for them last. Also on the drawing board: lesser deities. I see two obvious sources. The first is the Nine mating with their siblings. All Nine of them are the opposite sex of those deities they are most likely to get along with. LG and LN can hook up and have a child who goes on to become the patron of the Dwarves for example (which usually seem to be Lawful Good with Lawful Neutral tendencies) and later LG and NG can have a child who goes on to be the patron of Gnomes. CN and CE could have a brief liaison resulting in a deific monster that creates plague-like weather. Another option is to how powerful mortals rise to become lesser gods, but a part of me just wants to have the Nine gods and use divisions within followings of the Nine’s flocks to create desired variety.
Any feedback or suggestions are welcome.
EDIT: I meant to include my thoughts on giving each of the Nine dieties a clerical domain of one of the four classic elements but this would throw off my system of the the Dominions of the Nine's influence. My biggest issue is that any and all of the four classic elements can easily have Lawful, Chaotic, Good, and Evil aspects all at once.
NG: Water, the nurturing life giving aspects.
NE: The darkness that prevents you from seeing the bottom of a body of water, the patient force that drowns.
LN: Fire, an off shoot of being the sun goddess
CN: Fire, inspiration and randomness, also thought to be a part of the human spirit and free will
LE: Earth, the steady unyielding aspect, also repository of wealth
LG: Earth, steady unyielding aspect, that and can fit with LG's style of making war.
CE: Wind, winds cause erosion, in medieval times wind was blamed for carrying diseases.
CG: Wind, since CG has some sky aspects it fits. Also with music.
N: All four, since they are basic elements of nature.
The current gods are the former servants of a tyrannical god that initially created the universe/multi-verse. The old primordial god was extremely evil and created the gaming world and populated it with sentient souls just so it could feed off the souls like a rancher feeds off of livestock. This god’s working name is the All-Consumer (A-C). Over countless ages, the A-C grew fat, greedy, and lazy and needed more and more people to feed him. He created ten servants gods as Creation became larger and more difficult for the A-C to manage. A-C feared its servants would one day try to depose its power so A-C created beings who disagreed on every fundamental level that A-C could imagine. The ten deities names were LN, LG, LN, N, NG, NE, CN, CG, CE, and Sell-Out. For along time, A-C’s plan worked. All Ten resented the A-C. Some resented the A-C’s high level of control, some resented his horrid treatment of Creation’s souls, some resented not being allowed to consume their own souls and there were many other grouses, but they all disliked or hated their siblings too much to unite against their father/mother.
N was the most insightful of all the Ten. Lesser beings would call N’s insight prophecy. In any event N realized that the A-C would eventually consume all Ten of them. Out of greed and paranoia and then create new servants to repeat the process. Fortunately N got along with the other siblings because he was the least extreme in his views. One by one he got his siblings to concede to the Rebellion. N also used his prophetic abilities to arrange meetings at times and places where and when the A-C would not notice.
Sell-Out only pretended to go along with the rebellion in order to set up his/her siblings and use that as a bargaining chip for the A-C to spare him/her. Sell-Out failed though and was destroyed by his/her vengeful siblings.
LN realized that while all Ten of the siblings didn’t want to be eaten by their progenitor, they needed some sort of agreement to take on an equal amount of risk during the Rebellion and take an equal share of power after they took over management of the world. The Nine divided up the management of creation into nine equal pieces (theoretically Ten but Sell-Out was obviously knocked out). Each of the Nine would have jurisdiction over one ninth (again originally a tithe but Sell-Out died) This arrangement was called the Compact and LN was the main architect.
CG is credited with coming up with the idea of using a schedule shipment of souls as a trap against the A-C. When Sell-Out revealed his/her true colors, CG left his battle position to personally destroy Sell-Out in one-on-one combat.
NE put wings on CG Trojan horse maneuver and hatched a plan to use a tribute of souls to poison the A-C. NE took the souls of a tribute load and tortured them endlessly until they were so mutilated that the A-C became weakened when it consumed them.
LE, as the most trusted by the A-C told the lies and made the maneuvers to get the A-C to eat the poisoned souls. The A-C viewed LE as the worst of all its turncoat servants so LE took the most serious wounds in the battle of any of the victorious Nine.
LG didn’t appreciate all the duplicity, leading a frontal assault on the A-C once it had become poisoned. Up until this point, all mortal souls were ignorant that they were created merely as food. LG chose the strongest and told them the truth. They became his army and followed him into battle. LG knew most would be destroyed in the charge but figured this heroic death was better then being consumed as food.
NG role in the actual battle was small, but during the preparation NG created a shelter for all the souls not used by LG and NE. NG reasoned that the Rebellion would be a hollow victory if the world was rendered unlivable and all the living souls destroyed.
CN didn’t follow LN’s carefully laid out battle plan and flouted many steps of the planning process, changing them as she saw fit. This helped because it made Sell-Out’s information inaccurate, so the A-C didn’t believe Sell-Out saying there was a rebellion until it was too late for the A-C to prevent it. CN claims that she alone knew that Sell-Out had sold out, but LN attests that she did to piss her off and that if everyone stuck to their roles, the battle would have gone smoother.
CE deliberately held back for most of the battle. Sell-Out was dead, but most of the remaining Nine were badly hurt and only CE was still standing so the weakened A-C planned to take him down before coup-de-gracing (in other words eating them) all the others. CE played possum after taking a mild blow, then sucker punched the A-C when its back was turned, striking the blow that finally destroyed the A-C.
Once A-C was destroyed, all of the Nine took one of his body parts and shaped it into one weapon and/or tool each. These divine artifacts are what the signature weapons and religious seals of clerics are based off in the gaming world.
The few souls that were part of LG and survived gained great power, these became the first dragons. The moderate amount of souls that NE mutilated that were not consumed because the progenitors of many horrible monsters, including the first undead. The souls that NG created became the main denizens of the world. The Nine created souls of their own whole cloth once they became more adjusted to their deific powers, and some races were created when two or more of the four origins of souls intermingled. People of different races and species love to argue about their origins. Most people with pride in their species/race want to have some tie to the members of LG and they want to tie their enemies in with NE’s souls and their friendly (but inferior) allies into NG’s souls and/or the later creations of the gods. That and some creatures are supposedly born of couplings between one or more of the Nine and mortals.
The Nine divided up the souls evenly of the dragons and NG’s shelter to be their worshippers. CN once again imbalanced things, saying that souls should not be puppets or cattle and gave the first of the divine Gifts: free will. Suddenly the Nine no longer had a guaranteed share of souls. The rest of the Nine eventually followed suit and gave Gifts to mortals so they could protect or expand their share of worshippers through bribery. While the Nine gods no longer have a guaranteed stake in the hearts and minds of the mortals of the world, their hand in creation and the remnant of the compact has guaranteed that their unique view points (aka the nine alignments) have become thoroughly ingrained into the fundamental forces of the world.
I originally planned to only have Nine deities, but I needed a better role for CG, so I created Sell-Out. Also, this made CN changing the battle plan a bit more sensible. I deliberately kept the A-C and sexless though I thought of making them different sexes so Sell-Out could literally lust after his/her parent, but decided against it. The Nine I wanted to give sex/gender to. I hopped back and forth between picking genders that seemed to go with their alignment/deific roles and those that were genderbending.
I knew right off the bat that LN would have dominion over the sun. The sun reliably rises and sets and watches over creation just as LN tries to watch over the other eight siblings. LN had to make concessions in order to get the Compact and Rebellion off the ground, thus the sun sets every night. For the same reasons that Rich in his world building wanted to flout convention and make the Sun female rather than male, so did I. LN is female. LN’s Gift to mortals was writing. LN didn’t want the mortals to forget their traditions just because CN gave them the ability to choose to ignore them.
CN is female. It’s probably sexist, but I think women are less predictable then men and CN is the embodiment of change. Also, I figured CN and LN’s rivalry should be sisterly rather than brother-sister. I decided to give CN dominion over the weather. The whole saying that “if you don’t like the weather, wait ten minutes” is because the one causing it gets bored and changes it a lot. I thought about giving LN dominion over the seasons so she could try to exercise some control over CN and because modern science, the sun’s rays determines the seasons, but ancient or medieval people wouldn’t have come up with that and I was running out of dominions for other gods.
I always thought of LE as an oily magistrate. So that kind of suggested male to me. I wanted LE to have some kind of lasting injury that the other gods don’t. There are far too many cases of gods missing eyes and hands, so I decided to have his face ripped off. That’s not something you see too often, and I thought it would be nice and lawful evil if all his clerics’ uniforms involved masks. LE, unlike the other Evil gods, has a somewhat legitimate excuse for his power seeking maneuvers. He believes he should get more worshippers and a better dominion then the others because he took the most grievous injuries. I have yet to come up with a good dominion I really like but for now I gave him dominion of the earth and rocks. LE’s Gift was far easier to come up with, currency and commerce. Money being seen by some as an Lawful Evil concept. This gives LE a small measure of regulatory power over the other deities Gifts. Money in this time is based off of precious metals which ties into LE’s Dominion of the earth.
NE’s horrifying trick to poisoning the A-C seemed arcane to me. I gave NE Dominion over the arcane forces of the world, though it’s incomplete control at best. That struck me as witchlike. That and I always viewed CE male right from the start and I just made LE male as well, so I needed at least one of the evil deities to be female for balance. Once the mortals of the world got free will, most mortals became horrified at what she did to sentient souls during the Rebellion, so her disgusted and frightened followers turned to her other deities. She was also the last of the Nine to give a Gift to mortals at large. She figured if they didn’t worship her in significant numbers she wouldn’t give them anything. When she realized that the other deities all had more clerics and that her power on the mortal plane was weakening, she finally gave her Gift. She taught some mortals wizardry and encouraged its spread, even outside her own worshippers. Ostensibly it was so mortals could defend themselves against dragons and sorcerers, but most view it as a subtle undermining of the clerics of the other eight deities. This also flip-flopped the traditional D&D world where sorcerers are more distrusted than wizards. Now, sorcerers are viewed as wielding powers they didn’t ask for and wizards are accused of trafficking with evil forces to learn their power by the superstitious.
LG is probably the least developed of my deities. LG is clearly a just warrior, but I’ve had trouble moving beyond that. As I was conceptualizing LG, LG starting looking more and more like a knock-off of Pallas Athena. I made LG male differentiate him from Athena. I gave LG the dominion of the seasons because it’s similar to my original plan of giving it to LN. I doubt LG has a lot of patience for CN either. LG’s Gift on the table is metal working. I had trouble coming up with a Gift too, but I eventually settled on metalworking because LG is probably the patron of dwarves so it fits. This also gives LE a grouse against him because it infringes on his domain of the earth.
NG is a very nurturing type. I never felt like gender bending here, so I made NG female, since NG concept is so motherly. I came up with contradictory Dominions and Gift though. I eventually decided that’s okay because most of the Nine are irked at the specific Gifts the others gave mortals. NG has dominion over water, the life giving element of the mortal plane. NG’s gift to mortals was fire, so they could stay warm and sheltered.
CE is also a warrior god. CE boastfully took the title Last One Standing in honorific to CE’s role in the Rebellion. This seems masculine to me. Both the desire to be the Last One Standing and bragging about bad-ass it makes you. So CE became male. CE takes the Last One Standing to mortals too encouraging them to fight and “testing” them with hardship. CE’s Dominion is over disease and decay. While LN meant this as a force of renewal, CE is a little overenthusiastic. LN (and the others) had to leave CE this because he was the most reluctant to join the Compact and the Rebellion. CE’s Gift seems innocuous enough. He taught mortals how to use as many parts of a slain animal as possible and how to raise animals domestically. This was meant to cause a link between killing and personal gain and teaching about the strong dominating and using the weak.
I was running out of steam when I got to CG. I couldn’t come up with a good Dominion or Gift or what gender CG should be for a long time. CG is kind of a warrior and I kind of wanted a female warrior, but I noticed something. So far all of my deities were the same sex as their mortal enemies (on the alignment axis anyway). And they were the opposite sex of the deities one step removed. Example, LG is male as is his greatest enemy, the dishonorable warrior CE. LG’s closest allies LN and NG are female. I decided to keep this pattern and make CG male. I decided to make his Gift music and art eventually. This will prop up bards theoretically and art is an important endeavor of civilization (most of the Gifts have to do with civilization on some level). I looked at my list of aspects of nature. I noticed I didn’t have the moon used yet. I didn’t think to use it because the moon has relatively little to do with day-to-day life, but I realized the symbolic power of lights in the night sky. LN keeps watch during the day and tries to keep the evil and chaotic gods in line, but because of his compromise, he has to give them free reign at night. CG doesn’t want to give evil a free pass at night, so CG put up the moon to keep an eye on them.
N got Dominion over plants and animals and the rest of the natural world. Since the other eight deities are the least suspicious of N, only N was trusted to be apolitical enough to be trusted with the potentially most powerful Dominion. I have trouble getting beyond this as a very Gaia-like deity. But if I made N male, N would look way too much like Obad-hai. I now had four male gods and four female and I kind of wanted balance too. For a long while I was going to have N be a hermaphrodite or androgynous, but that’s hard for some people to grasp. I eventually decided to make N male to fit with my pattern (all the deities one step removed from N are female).
Okay I have a Gift and a Dominion for each god. Unfortunately, some of these are weak, so I’m open to suggestions. Once I have Dominions and Gifts pegged down real good, it will help me come up with cleric domains later. Then it’s time to figure out what the Nine each forged from the Nine’s corpse and what body parts they used (though I know LE made a mask from A-C’s skin and CE took the heart). Once I have that I’ll come up with favored weapons and predominant symbols. I’m probably going to come up with proper names for them last. Also on the drawing board: lesser deities. I see two obvious sources. The first is the Nine mating with their siblings. All Nine of them are the opposite sex of those deities they are most likely to get along with. LG and LN can hook up and have a child who goes on to become the patron of the Dwarves for example (which usually seem to be Lawful Good with Lawful Neutral tendencies) and later LG and NG can have a child who goes on to be the patron of Gnomes. CN and CE could have a brief liaison resulting in a deific monster that creates plague-like weather. Another option is to how powerful mortals rise to become lesser gods, but a part of me just wants to have the Nine gods and use divisions within followings of the Nine’s flocks to create desired variety.
Any feedback or suggestions are welcome.
EDIT: I meant to include my thoughts on giving each of the Nine dieties a clerical domain of one of the four classic elements but this would throw off my system of the the Dominions of the Nine's influence. My biggest issue is that any and all of the four classic elements can easily have Lawful, Chaotic, Good, and Evil aspects all at once.
NG: Water, the nurturing life giving aspects.
NE: The darkness that prevents you from seeing the bottom of a body of water, the patient force that drowns.
LN: Fire, an off shoot of being the sun goddess
CN: Fire, inspiration and randomness, also thought to be a part of the human spirit and free will
LE: Earth, the steady unyielding aspect, also repository of wealth
LG: Earth, steady unyielding aspect, that and can fit with LG's style of making war.
CE: Wind, winds cause erosion, in medieval times wind was blamed for carrying diseases.
CG: Wind, since CG has some sky aspects it fits. Also with music.
N: All four, since they are basic elements of nature.