Convince Me That The Sovereign Host is Interesting?

[NecessaryWeevil]

I'm not looking for an argument, it's just that I don't find them compelling. I've played and enjoyed characters devoted to the Silver Flame and to the Blood of Vol, but the Host just seem really...vanilla. I'm interested in hearing other perspectives or how you've made or found them interesting.

On a side note, three out of the six characters I've played with my current group have been devout, and that includes 100% of my Eberron characters. I wonder if the Gods are actually more interesting if they're more distant?

[Amnestic]

What's interesting about Gods isn't what they are (most of the time), it's what their followers do. That Bahamut and Tiamat have a long standing feud is great and all, but what matters to us as players is usually that Tiamat's cult just wiped out a bunch of Knights of Bahamut and are summoning demons.

With Blood of Vol and the Silver Flame, the plothooks from followers is pretty easy to deduce. There's a lot written about how their adherents act, various internal schisms, drama, etc.etc.

With the Sovereign Host (and the Dark Six, they're a package deal!) it's going to be a lot more granular in their worship since they lack a central leadership 'core' and worship is instead a lot more localised, perhaps focusing on some of the Nine/Six that are relevant to them (Three Faces of War for wartorn areas, for example).

I'm not going to say they're as interesting as BoV or the Flame because I don't think they are. Plothook wise you're definitely going to struggle with the Host more than the other two. One generally unspoken aspect of the Host is that since they're the dominant religion, it's highly likely that they subsumed other smaller/local religions instead, though whether that was done actively or passively is another matter. The orcs of the Shadow Marches have apparently seen their faith wiped out by Sovereign Host evangelists, suggesting that they're not all chill "live-and-let-live" types. I'd anticipate drama if Host-ers tried to convince Volites or Flameos that actually they're just worshipping the Host by proxy, and wouldn't it be great if you joined their community?

Keith Baker has suggested that there are venerated Saints (both living and dead), along with relics potentially related to them. Who agrees on what counts as a Saint? Well apparently all the regional councils have a Conclave every ten years to discuss theological and administrative matters, so I guess it gets decided then. Is there drama there? Probably. It's never really said so far as I know.

[Psyren]

Mechanically, they were a lot more interesting in prior editions when they spanned more than 10 domains and clerics could combine more than one at a time; this made them a fun way to combine domains that would otherwise be more difficult to justify in other settings, like Magic and War. Now that domains are subclasses however and combining them is impossible in 5e, that benefit of the Host no longer exists.

Having said that, a single pantheon that's primarily worshiped as a pantheon, and covers a huge range of domains and archetypes is still useful, because it can explain how diametrically opposed domains or orders might feasibly work together. For example, SH is a good way to explain how a Watchers Paladin and a Trickery Cleric might be from the same church, or a Forge Cleric and a Shepherd Druid etc.

[JackPhoenix]

One generally unspoken aspect of the Host is that since they're the dominant religion, it's highly likely that they subsumed other smaller/local religions instead, though whether that was done actively or passively is another matter. The orcs of the Shadow Marches have apparently seen their faith wiped out by Sovereign Host evangelists, suggesting that they're not all chill "live-and-let-live" types. I'd anticipate drama if Host-ers tried to convince Volites or Flameos that actually they're just worshipping the Host by proxy, and wouldn't it be great if you joined their community?

One aspect of this is that the greater faith of the Sovereign Hosts incorporate aspects of other faiths into its teachings: If a community worships the Host by proxy, and their priest gets divine magic out of that, they clearly must be doing something right, and other vassals should adopt those practices too, because it allows them to better understand the Sovereigns' will.

Unlike the faithful of the CotSF and BoV, vassals have reason to travel to encounter new cultures and learn from them, because Host's influence is omnipresent and can manifest anywhere in the world. Seekers have little reason to care about the greater world, and focus more on their own communities and themselves, and while the Purified actively battle against evil, they know where their power comes from, and don't expect to learn anything new while traveling.

[Segev]

The game is in Pathfinder 1e rules, but he's not a cleric so the mechanics matter little, here.

My one Eberron PC, Byras, is a white-haired Cyran who shared a psychic bond with his identical twin brother, Ryaduun. His family were trying to set up something exploiting this bond, with Byras in Sharn and Ryaduun in Kalazart, with the two deliberately exercising that connection coincidentally at the moment the Mourning happened. Byras woke to find the top of the tower he had been in just plain gone, along with his father and anyone else they were working with. He couldn't contact Ryaduun, and was entirely alone, orphaned in a strange city at the age of 8.

That was five years before the campaign started. He's got more backstory explaining how he went from utterly without support to having a job in a menagerie to being discovered as a talented boy soprano, leaving him working at the Sharn Opera House when the game begins. Class-wise (remember, Pathfinder) he's a Vitalist, which is a psychic healer with an emphasis on linking minds and souls together.

The game itself is very detective-noir in tone, though there's plenty of action and fighting.

Byras is an open worshipper of the Sovereign Host, but privately believes it is the Traveler (of the Dark Six) who has his hand most in his life, and has a small shrine in his rooms in the Opera House attic. He grew less of a fervent devotion to the Traveler so much as he came to recognize that change dominates his life, and he fears the Traveler is toying with him. He's struggled with his faith, praying for the strength to endure if the Traveler will not spare him the changes, praying that those he cares for may survive as things happen. He's come to appreciate that the Gifts of the Traveler are what one makes of them, and he makes it his own religious act of devotion to try to help others whose lives are hard. He's come to hope that the Traveler is not out to get him so much as providing a companion on the hard road that life has dealt him. And, as he's in a more comfortable place now, he hopes that changes will continue to be positive, that he will be able to ride out the difficulties and enjoy the opportunities.

But still, the Traveler is one of the Dark Six, so Byras doesn't exactly advertise his following of that one.

[Dr.Samurai]

One thing I find interesting about the Host is that it lends itself easily to my characters calling on different deities at different times and for different things. Whereas I find other settings don't have "pantheons" unless they are racial pantheons, so it's easier for me to fall into worshiping a single deity, even if there are many others I can call on.