Most fantasy world builders create their fictional people and then create fictional religions that suit the people they created.

I created a fictional pantheon and then asked myself "What sort of people would they create?" I did not want to have a god for the orcs, and a god for the dwarfs, and a god for the elves. I wanted my pantheon to be everyone's deities.

I have nine deities one for each alignment. They barely managed to put aside their differences to overthrow their tyrannical progenitor when they realized their progenitor was going to eat the universe (lesser gods included) and start over. The good deities wanted to protect the innocents and the evil deities wanted to protect themselves. The neutral deities kept the coalition in line.

Originally they all agreed to share the worship of the surviving mortals equally but the Chaotic Neutral goddess Nami, was like, "I'm going to give mortals free will and see what happens." Among other things, Nami was getting a lot of worship because mortals were gratious for the Gift of freewill, so the other deities followed suit with their own Gifts to try to bribe mortals to worship them: control over fire, agriculture, literacy, etc.

Without listing a specific real world example, I will state that historically religious institutions have wielded direct or indirect political power. That was without having a small army of spell-casters to call on. It occurred to me that a medieval-ish fantasy world where the priesthoods have access to potent magic, the religious institutions would be more powerful not less. But with nine priesthoods competing, if a secular queen decides priesthood A is being too demanding she can throw her political support to Priesthood B who will fall over themselves to underbid Priesthood A.

I notice when I'm developing nations that i reuse that story a lot and I'm mildly worried that I'm reusing a cliche.

In most nations I created, the three Lawful deities' priests and priestesses are competing with each other to win over the king or queen. And if they cannot get the king, they will focus on the dukes, counts, knights, courtiers, and bureaucrats.

Hallisan is Lawful Good, he is the god of chivalry, the earth and metalworking among other things. His clergy usually focus on winning over the soldiers and knights. Then use the military influence to win over the rulers. They have a fringe faction that believes they should focus on the common man over the rulers. The fringe faction produces a lot of lone heroes.

Khemra is Lawful Neutral, she is the goddess of literacy, the sun/fire and law among other things. Her clergy usually focus on winning over scholars and bureaucrats. Then use the inner workings of the government to influence the rulers. They have a fringe faction that brutal methods.

Phidas is Lawful Evil, he is the god commerce, protection, and trade among other things. His clergy usually focus on winning over rich people. Then use money and espionage to influence the rulers. They have a fringe faction that favors generosity to win worshipers.



The three Neutral (with respect to Law and Chaos) deities' clergy will usually focus on winning over the masses of commoners.

Mera is Neutral Good. She is the goddess of family, water, healing and protection among other things. Her clergy try to win over converts by providing counsel and healing services for free. They have a fringe faction that has a police state view of "protection" and curtails freedoms for the people's own safety.

Greymoria is Neutral Evil. She is the goddess of arcane magic and monsters among other things. Usually she lashes out at the populace for not loving her enough. This causes them to turn away from her further, causing her to lash out again. Greymoria has to make due with fear instead of love. A fringe faction wants to win Greymoria worshipers by being nice to people, specifically showing them how arcane magic can benefit the populace.

Korus is True Neutral. He is the god of nature and agriculture among other things. His followers help the crops grow and help people navigate the wilderness and this wins Korus worshipers though many take Korus for granted. Korus doesn't have a fringe faction per se, he has two. About half of his followers are farmer friendly clerics and about half are wilderness friendly druids. Both sides have hardliners that want to expand or contract civilization by force and Korus' followers have more civil wars than the other priesthoods but they usually keep a lid on it not involving outsiders.




The three Chaotic deities' followers usually are content to administer to mavericks and nonconformists. Occasionally they will poke a stick at the powers that be. They are so decentralized that they don't really have fringe factions per se. They have lots of little factions, none of them are that mainstream.

Zarthus is Chaotic Good. He is the god of the moon, self-reliance, and art among other things. A few of his followers skirt between camps but most fall into the Patrons who want to spread art and music, the homesteaders who want to carve out independent communities in isolated places, and the Liberators who want to oppose tyranny where ever it's found. The latter of which are a thorn in the side of nearly all rules, even Lawful Good ones. They are not likely to try to violently overthrow a Lawful Good king, but they will complain loudly about every misstep he makes.

Nami is Chaotic Good. She is the goddess of weather, travel, and freedom among other things. Most people worship Nami once or twice a year on her holy festivals (which take the form of wild parties), and then they forget about Nami the rest of the year. Most of Nami's priests and priestesses are content with this. Nearly every country has their Nami festival on a different day, so a small number of traveling priests can preside over six or seven festivals a year. The priesthood often set up their temples at crossroads to double as inns both to help their itinerant priests and travelers in general. They claim that every priest or priestess is a faction of one. Chaotic Good and Chaotic Evil clergy are forging alliances and preparing to drag the priesthood into a civil war.

Maylar is Chaotic Evil. He is the god of Darwinism, animal husbandry, and disease among other thing. Maylar supposedly does not care if anyone loves him or not and is perfectly content to be feared. Maylar's central tenet is "That which does not kill you, makes you stronger." If you can survive the horrible things Maylar's followers inflict on you, then you are strong and deserve to survive. If not, your death is a blessing. A fringe faction is actually being nice to people. Not just anybody. They go to places with harsh climate and lots of natural danger figuring if people can survive there they deserve a little help and support.



But when I come up with descriptions for how different nations and tribes view the Nine I keep falling back on the same script.

The King supports Hallisan/Khemra publicly with Khemra/Hallisan vying for the second place spot of influence. Phidas is waiting in the wings but the king heard enough apocryphical stories about what happens to those who fall into debt under Phidas' priestshood so he keeps them at arms length.

Unless the King is a tyrant, then he has Phidas as the state religion, Khemra in the number two spot, and Hallisan tied up with red tape.

Most commoners worship Korus and Mera because Korus makes the crops grow and Mera encourages happy families. Korus's core worshipers prefer to stay out of politics as long as no one is harming nature on a grand scale, but they are sometimes sought out as impartial mediators. Mera's core worshipers rarely get political because if they do, the rulers might restrict their freedom of movement and association which allows them to go around healing people. Greymoria worship is A) barely tolerated or B) actively forbidden.

Nami is worshiped on her holy days and ignored the rest of the year. Maylar worship is A) barely tolerated or B) actively forbidden or C) brutally crushed. Zarthus is either A) hamstrung by government regulations B) barely tolerated or C) placated by the king being a patron to the arts.

I found I reuse the italicized script over and over again.

I also have a small group called the Cult of the Compact that says everyone should worship all nine of the Nine equally. They are a little hamstrung by a lack of divine spell-casters. A divine spell-caster either has to have great piety in one god or goddesses or roughly equal piety for all nine. It's much easier to cultivate the former than than to latter. So the Cult of the Compact is too small to wield much political influence outside of a few very isolated areas.

Is there an angle I'm missing to allow more diversity in the religious practices of each land while still keeping them with the same gods? I thought of some lands giving the deities different genders but that doesn't change their core values or tactics much.

I thought about giving them different regional names, but that would only irritate players. If a player can recite the names of nine of my deities, I'm satisfied, I don't need to give them more names to learn.

My current game is sort of on pause because of social distancing unless I can convince my friends to play via web camera (which they are sadly lukewarm on), but I hope to play again soonish. One of the PCs is a charismatic Lawful Good priest of Khemra and he is happy to play politics spinning his adventures to win support for Khemra among both nobles and commoners alike. He even got an ally installed in the court of a Duke who owed him a favor.