The Divine and the Lesser Gods
Fate and Will are the two faceless forces that guide and control the world and the future of all mortals. These two together are referred to as The Divine. They have existed for as long as any being has been capable of rational thought. There are priests and those who worship them directly, but no clerics of either, as neither Fate nor Will respond directly to prayers.
The third faceless force, the source of most (or all) of the darkness in the world, is usually referred to as Despair. In it die both of the others, as well as all the smaller gods.
[the three faceless forces are or were often symbolized by three arrows, brown, orange, and blue, pulling away from each other in a triangle, with a small green hexagon in the center.]
The three gods of the elves, known by their translated names as Sky, Sea, and Forest are correctly named Loriliel, Mireliliel, and Gilirsim.
One of Fate's many, many plans for mortals includes the birth, every few generations, of a person fated (or at least with the potential fate) to become divine. Those who have are known as the Lesser Gods, or the Modern Gods.
The best known of the Western mortals to succeed at this destiny is the Dwarf (or part-Dwarf, accounts vary) Constance, goddess of civilization. She rose to divinity just over 1600 years ago, and has created a vast and well-organized church stretching throughout most mortal societies. One of Constance's first godly actions was calling down her "Unending Umbrage" against all the Elves of Meara, because of the sky elves' rescue of the Goblins. Rather typically, she couldn't be bothered with cursing the goblins directly, considering them unworthy of even that attention. The next lesser god to arise in the modern era was Fancy, Lord of desire and personal gain. Born an anthropoid Goat, he rarely wears his own face when appearing to mortals, usually taking the form of a very handsome member of their own species, with small horns on his forehead. His focus is the collection and use of knowledge for self-aggrandizement. "Want, take, have." While generally amoral, Fancy hates nothing more than lies, as they warp and devalue knowledge. Keeping secrets is fine, of course. Perhaps in reaction to Fancy's rise, noble Rabbit Kotaki Tanga Tehroh rose to become the goddess of love and marriage. She is known as Unity, in any language. Her symbol is a pair of rabbit ears, entwined. The one and only known example of someone rising to godhood by means of the power of Will rather than that of Fate is the fox, Counsel (or Reynard), the Trickster. He ascended in about 820 J.E. Before his ascension, he was a leader of the resistance fighters against hominid invasion on the anthropoids' continent. He wasn't the first god to rise from the ranks of anthropoids, but he is the best known on the other continents. Clash is the god of battle, war, and conflict in general. He's most often depicted as an Orc, if not as one of the locals, but no one is entirely sure what his species really is, as no one is entirely sure when and where he ascended. Conjure is the very recently ascended Hobgoblin deity of the Arcane. [Like, 50-80 years ago?]He had been a Demiurge for at least 150 years before finally achieving godhood.
A goddess who arose from Kobolds or their ilk, or else from an ancient dragon, depending on where you hear about her, is known to the Dwarven kingdoms as Jauksata "the Hoard/Horde"--a dwarven word that has both of the meanings of the homonyms in English. They consider her an evil creature, god of hateful, subhuman monsters that gather in groups that couldn't be considered civilized (mainly because they don't work metal, and fight with Dwarves for territory underground.)
She's widely worshiped by kobolds and halflings as the goddess of hearth and home, although the halfling worship is very low-key, and generally overlooked by those not raised in their communities. For example, copper coins struck by halfling governments always feature a reverse side containing the abstract image of a lizard curled around a baby or clutch of eggs. (Draw this very abstract design at some point.)
Kobolds, on the other hand, call her the elder dragon Avasitarien and say she created their race to assuage her own loneliness. Their homeland, Avaria, is named for her. Other god thoughts: A pair of twins/siblings, with the Grave and Death domains individually, in balance or opposition. Dire and Vital are cool words. Not sure which is which yet. Vital for the Grave domain, Dire for Death Craft for Forge.
The best known of the Western mortals to succeed at this destiny is the Dwarf (or part-Dwarf, accounts vary) Constance, goddess of civilization. She rose to divinity just over 1600 years ago, and has created a vast and well-organized church stretching throughout most mortal societies. One of Constance's first godly actions was calling down her "Unending Umbrage" against all the Elves of Meara, because of the sky elves' rescue of the Goblins. Rather typically, she couldn't be bothered with cursing the goblins directly, considering them unworthy of even that attention. The next lesser god to arise in the modern era was Fancy, Lord of desire and personal gain. Born an anthropoid Goat, he rarely wears his own face when appearing to mortals, usually taking the form of a very handsome member of their own species, with small horns on his forehead. His focus is the collection and use of knowledge for self-aggrandizement. "Want, take, have." While generally amoral, Fancy hates nothing more than lies, as they warp and devalue knowledge. Keeping secrets is fine, of course. Perhaps in reaction to Fancy's rise, noble Rabbit Kotaki Tanga Tehroh rose to become the goddess of love and marriage. She is known as Unity, in any language. Her symbol is a pair of rabbit ears, entwined. The one and only known example of someone rising to godhood by means of the power of Will rather than that of Fate is the fox, Counsel (or Reynard), the Trickster. He ascended in about 820 J.E. Before his ascension, he was a leader of the resistance fighters against hominid invasion on the anthropoids' continent. He wasn't the first god to rise from the ranks of anthropoids, but he is the best known on the other continents. Clash is the god of battle, war, and conflict in general. He's most often depicted as an Orc, if not as one of the locals, but no one is entirely sure what his species really is, as no one is entirely sure when and where he ascended. Conjure is the very recently ascended Hobgoblin deity of the Arcane. [Like, 50-80 years ago?]He had been a Demiurge for at least 150 years before finally achieving godhood.
The Demiurges
While very few mortals in the modern age have risen to the heights of true godhood, many more have been called on that path, and several handfuls have attained a sort of lesser plateau of immortality to become what's known as a Demiurge. Unlike the gods, a demiurge lacks the omniscience required to hear and answer prayers from worshipers across the globe, but they have, among many other things, the ability to grant a small spark of their power to a mortal with whom they've made a contract, and thus are the source of (all, or a large proportion of?) Warlocks. Or do we want to leave the Warlock pacts to various extraplanar beings, and have demiurges just be their own thing? Among the major demiurges (those actively working toward godhood, rather than those who remain more traditionally embodied) are The demiurge of brute force (strength, athletics, and using muscle alone to perform feats, tends to encourage bullying and "tiger mom" style behavior.) Burl The demiurge of travel, movement, and communication, even if it means running away very fast right afterward. A Bird Folk named Whiz. Gondish "the goat god of eating things" a goat (not goat folk) who oversees prey animals and consuming stuff. No-one is quite sure where he came from. Great Old One?Older Gods
The Elven Pantheon
The elves are considered quite backward and uncivilized in general, but particularly when it comes to religion, as they continue to worship their own triad of nature deities, rather than the gods everyone else knows to exist. This is partly because of the burdens laid on them by Constance's "Unending Umbrage" which prevents anyone of pure elven blood from becoming a cleric of her church or those of the young gods associated with her. The fact that the elven triad of deities' names translate into common as "Sky," "Sea," and "Forest" certainly doesn't help. The elves even claim that their three sub-species were created by the three gods, rather than the gods rising from them, the silly folk. Elven and part-elven followers of their traditional gods are most often Druids or Rangers, rather than Clerics. Otherwise, Sky grants the Light domain, Sea grants Tempest, and Forest grants Nature. The truth may be that both Elves and their deities came from another plane of existence somewhere in the dawn of time. Like Fate and Will, however, the elven Triad never manifest as avatars, nor "speak" to their worshipers in anything more clear than divinatory dreams and visions.Refuge
A goddess who arose from Kobolds or their ilk, or else from an ancient dragon, depending on where you hear about her, is known to the Dwarven kingdoms as Jauksata "the Hoard/Horde"--a dwarven word that has both of the meanings of the homonyms in English. They consider her an evil creature, god of hateful, subhuman monsters that gather in groups that couldn't be considered civilized (mainly because they don't work metal, and fight with Dwarves for territory underground.)
She's widely worshiped by kobolds and halflings as the goddess of hearth and home, although the halfling worship is very low-key, and generally overlooked by those not raised in their communities. For example, copper coins struck by halfling governments always feature a reverse side containing the abstract image of a lizard curled around a baby or clutch of eggs. (Draw this very abstract design at some point.)
Kobolds, on the other hand, call her the elder dragon Avasitarien and say she created their race to assuage her own loneliness. Their homeland, Avaria, is named for her. Other god thoughts: A pair of twins/siblings, with the Grave and Death domains individually, in balance or opposition. Dire and Vital are cool words. Not sure which is which yet. Vital for the Grave domain, Dire for Death Craft for Forge.
Deity | Domain(s) |
---|---|
Constance | Order |
Fancy | Knowledge |
Counsel | Trickery |
Refuge | Life, Twilight |
Sky | Light |
Sea | Tempest |
Forest | Nature |
Conjure | Arcana |
Clash | War |
Unity | Peace |
Vital | Grave |
Dire | Death |
Craft | Forge |
Type
Religious, Organised Religion
Demiurges | Patron Type |
---|---|
Burl | Earth Genie |
Whiz | Air Genie |
Celestial | |
Fiend | |
Fire Genie | |
Water Genie | |
Great Old One | |
Archfey | |
Fathomless | |
Hexblade | |
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