Can the gods determine my fate?” Elspeth asked. “What is truly the extent of their power? Can they make what I want happen—if only I please them enough?”
“If you want a god to determine your fate, you must ask the god for an ordeal,” Sarpedon said. “They will only grant it if they think you are worthy—whatever ‘worthy’ means for them. If you accomplish it, you may request a hand in your own destiny.”
—Jenna Helland, Godsend
Gods Being Gods
Serving Two or More Masters
Often, each of the characters in an adventuring party is the champion of a different god—or no god at all. What brings the characters together? How do you motivate the whole party? Consider these options:
Divine Coalition. The characters represent a coalition of gods who have joined forces against a common foe (or cabal of enemies). For example, you might build a campaign around the idea that Erebos, Mogis, and Pharika are conspiring to unleash slaughter and plague on the mortal realm. Perhaps heroic champions of Ephara, Heliod, Karametra, Nylea, and other gods unite to protect the world from this threat.
Friendly Cooperation. If Thassa’s champion helps Heliod’s champion today, perhaps Heliod’s champion will help Thassa’s champion tomorrow. As long as the aims of gods aren’t in opposition, those gods take no issue with their champions helping each other.
Together by Circumstance. A group of characters might find themselves on a galley foundering in a storm, in a polis under attack, or on the same side in a war. In such a case, when divine champions contend against a common threat, their allegiance to different gods might be less important than the urgency of their current situation, and they might forge lasting friendships that transcend their religious allegiances.
Quests
A mortal champion is a vessel of divine power and an agent of divine will. A champion’s role is to act as the god’s eyes and hands, upholding the deity’s ideals and shaping the world to conform to those ideals.
In return for the gods’ divine blessings, champions are expected to do the god’s bidding. The quests in each god’s section throughout this chapter provide examples of tasks the gods might assign to their champions.
Completing a Quest. When a champion undertakes a quest on a god’s behalf, the champion can expect a reward for doing so. As long as the champion is actively pursuing the quest and upholding the god’s ideals along the way, you can increase the character’s piety score, using the general rule of raising it by 1 every session. Upon completing a quest bestowed by the god, the character might earn a blessing as well as a piety score increase.
Declining a Quest. The cost to a champion for refusing to accept a god’s quest can be steep. Sometimes, a champion can safely put the task on hold for a time, such as when helping another champion complete a quest for a different god. As long as undertaking the quest isn’t a matter of urgency, gods usually don’t punish champions who procrastinate. But if a champion willfully ignores a god’s quest or pursues opposite aims, they might suffer any of the following consequences:
The character’s piety score might decrease by 1 each day, or each play session, for as long as the character continues to refuse the quest.
The god might intervene to steer the champion toward the quest: Thassa could cause a storm to blow the character’s ship off course, for example, bringing the champion to where the god wants them to be.
In extreme instances, the god might place a magical command on the character, similar to a geas spell.
Divine Assistance
The gods are fond of meddling in mortal affairs, and heroes sometimes call on their gods for aid in times of desperate need. Spells such as divination and commune give characters the opportunity to ask their gods for information, and clerics who beseech their gods for assistance sometimes receive miracles in answer. Heroes also have the opportunity to ask the gods for favors, after proving their worth by enduring a divine ordeal.
At other times, the gods take the initiative to reach out to mortal heroes, sending them on quests or meddling in their adventures. Dreams, omens, and emissaries are the most common means by which gods might make their wishes known.
Omens
When the lynx-constellation paces restlessly in the night sky, it is an omen that Nylea is worried. When the tides rise high in defiance of the natural cycle, that is an omen that Thassa is distressed. When rain falls on a sunny day, Keranos and Heliod must be in conversation. Through supernatural events such as these, evidence of the gods’ presence and influence is demonstrated, metaphorically manifesting their divine wishes.
Weal and Woe. The gods usually send omens as either warnings or as signs of their favor. The response to the augury spell takes the form of an omen foretelling weal or woe, and the gods might use omens in the same way, even without being asked to provide a sign. When a divine champion sets out on a course of action, a god might express approval or disapproval, hoping to either encourage or dissuade the mortal.
Communication
Communication between the mortal world and the divine can take a variety of forms, from omens that get mortals’ attention by distorting natural phenomena to face-to-face conversations between a mortal and the manifestation of a god.
Types of blessings
Uncommon magic item: requires piety 3 or higher
Rare magic item: requires piety 10 or higher
Very rare magic item: requires piety 25 or higher
Legendary magic item: requires piety 50 or higher
Blessing of Farsight (Requires Piety 3+). You have advantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on sight.
Blessing of Protection (Requires Piety 3+). As a bonus action, you can invoke your god’s protection, providing you with a +1 bonus to your AC for 1 minute. Once you use this blessing, you can’t use it again until the next dawn.
Blessing of Resilience (Requires Piety 3+). When you are about to take acid, cold, fire, lightning, or thunder damage, you can use your reaction to gain resistance to that damage type until the end of your next turn. Once you use this blessing, you can’t use it again until the next dawn.
Eyes of Nyx (Requires Piety 10+). As an action, you can imbue your eyes with enhanced vision for 10 minutes. While the blessing is active, your eyes look like the starry void of Nyx, and you can see invisible creatures and objects within 60 feet of you that are within your line of sight. Once you use this blessing, you can’t use it again until the next dusk.
Weapon of Nyx (Requires Piety 10+). You can use a bonus action to cause one weapon you are holding to surge with divine power for 1 minute. On a hit, the weapon deals an extra 1d8 radiant damage. (Depending on your god, it might deal a different damage type—necrotic for Erebos, lightning for Keranos, or fire for Purphoros, for example.) Once you use this blessing, you can’t use it again until you finish a long rest.
Divine Relationships
The pantheon of Theros is a family—a large, often dysfunctional family riven with petty jealousies and rivalries but also held together by genuine affection, admiration, and cooperation. It is easiest, after all, for mortals to conceive of gods that are very much like themselves, and the gods of Theros are very humanlike in their foibles and their exploits.
The pantheon of Theros has expanded through four generations of divine evolution. Some tales describe these as actual generations, suggesting (for example) that the storm god, Keranos, is the literal son of Thassa, god of the sea, and Purphoros, god of the forge. Others describe the generations in metaphorical terms, suggesting that Keranos represents the combination of Purphoros’s creative energy and Thassa’s deep knowledge, resulting in lightning-like flashes of inspiration (as well as the fury of a physical storm). In all their various forms, though, the myths agree on the basic structure of the pantheon’s development.
The time of the first generation precedes the presence of what are commonly understood to be “gods.” Before mortals dreamed the gods into being, before they could even imagine beings as noble as the gods, the malleable dream-substance of Nyx gave shape to their fears in the form of the titans.
The titans were beings of utter chaos, representing everything that stands against order in the mortal world, never worshiped but sometimes appeased. Myths recount how the gods battled and imprisoned the titans, sealing them in a prison beneath the Underworld. Now the titans are all but forgotten in mortal imagination. Scant mention of their names and epithets appears in the oldest tales, hinting at the nightmares that birthed them. Kroxa, Titan of Death’s Hunger, embodied the terror of death—and its insatiable gluttony for new creatures to consume. Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath, might be seen as a direct predecessor of Keranos and Thassa, but it was the incarnation of natural disaster, having none of the creativity and thoughtfulness of those gods. Phlage, Titan of Burning Wind, was an all-consuming whirlwind of fire, and Skotha, Titan of Eternal Dark, was the utter darkness of the starless night.
The oldest of the gods, often imagined as siblings or as some kind of offshoot of the titans, are Kruphix and Klothys. The origin of this second divine generation is mysterious. Perhaps Klothys arose from a sense of inevitability, a notion that the world was unfolding as it must, and thus the actions of mortals made little difference. Kruphix might have been born from a sense of mystery, supporting the idea that the workings of the universe are simply incomprehensible to mortal minds. It’s also possible that Kruphix and Klothys are a different order of beings from either the titans or the other gods, and Klothys at least has existed for unknown ages despite being all but forgotten among mortal folk.
Once mortals could imagine a world beyond the horizon and a course of destiny that left behind the trials of life, they could formulate the notions of principles, order, and natural law. Out of those ideas, the third generation of deities was born: sun-crowned Heliod, deep-dwelling Thassa, bleak-hearted Erebos, bronze-blooded Purphoros, and keen-eyed Nylea. These gods are known to refer to each other as “brother” and “sister,” though they never speak of parents and almost certainly don’t imagine Kruphix and Klothys in that role.
The other eight deities, the fourth generation, represent the application of abstract principles to the reality of mortal life. For example, while Heliod stands for universal moral precepts, Ephara is the god of laws, the rules and structures that govern mortal societies. Nylea is the god of wild nature, predatory animals, and the change of seasons, and at the same time Karametra is the god of nature tamed for human use—agriculture and domestication—and of the natural cycles involved in human life, especially childbirth.
These gods recognize the previous generation as their elders but only occasionally as parents. Iroas and Mogis are widely considered to be brothers, but few myths describe their parentage, and those that do contradict each other—in keeping with the nature of these eternally warring gods.
Myths and Deeds
Countless tales tell the history, deeds, and nature of the gods. Sometimes these stories play out among the constellations in the night sky. They are chanted in hymns during the gods’ festivals, inscribed in temple walls, told around campfires and hearths, and collected on scrolls. Some are simple fables meant to illustrate a single facet of a god’s character or of moral behavior. Others are monumental epics, most notably The Cosmogony, a poem by an unnamed Meletian sage that includes several (sometimes conflicting) tales of the creation of the world and beyond.
The people of Theros don’t balk at contradictory myths. Is Keranos the literal child of Thassa and Purphoros? Did he spring unbidden from Thassa’s heart when her rage grew too great for her to control? Or did he come into being when Purphoros tried to steal the secrets of Kruphix? To the people of Theros, it doesn’t matter whether these tales describe historical facts, and each of them is true in its own way. Each tale about Keranos expresses a truth about the god, about inspiration and storms and secrets. Studying each one can lead Keranos’s worshipers to a deeper understanding of and a closer relationship with their god.
Various writings, usually organized around a central theme, collect myths about the gods. The Origin of Monsters is one such collection, notable as an attempt to find commonality in a number of different tales about the birth of dragons. It also describes how Pharika hid secrets in the blood of basilisks, how the spirits of great warriors are reincarnated in the form of manticores, and dozens of other tales.
The epic poem called The Theriad is another such collection. It describes the exploits of various champions of Heliod, all of whom are simply called “the Champion,” as if they were a single individual. Because the identities of the heroes aren’t mentioned, the tales have more to say about the character of Heliod than about any champion’s mortal deeds.
The Callapheia, by contrast, is about the exploits of a single mortal hero, Callaphe the Mariner, who snuck into Mount Velus and stole Purphoros’s tears, hid behind Phenax and wrote down his secrets, and raced Thassa at the edge of the world before sailing into Nyx. Tales of this sort highlight the gods’ pettiness and vanity and promote the somewhat blasphemous notion that a mere mortal can outwit the divine. The Callapheia also serves as something of a gazetteer of Theros, describing its various lands and their inhabitants, at least as they existed some centuries ago.
Finally, the deeds of the gods are sung in paeans during their festivals. Naturally, these hymns portray the gods in the most favorable light, as benevolent (or at least indifferent) and all-powerful.
Worship
The idea of the existence of gods, as it grew in popularity among the mortals of Theros, didn’t bring the gods into being by itself. Mortal reverence and worship turned universal ideas into deities. It wasn’t until mortals trusted the gods to act on their behalf, in response to sacrifices and prayers, that the gods took shape from the dream-substance of Nyx. Worship remains crucial to the power of the gods, though mortals are generally not aware of their influence. Were a god to cease being worshiped, their might would dwindle.
The most prevalent form of expressing reverence is the practice of libation, pouring out a splash of wine or water in honor of the gods. Pious people perform a simple rite of prayer and libation every morning and evening at a household altar or hearth, while the less devoted might still pour out a splash of wine before drinking the rest.
The defining feature of a Theran temple is a statue of a god—which the actual god can occupy and animate at any time. Worshipers kneel before it, touch and kiss it, drape it in garlands and fine cloth, and leave offerings before it. These acts are sometimes spontaneous outpourings of love or gratitude, and sometimes petitions, imploring the god to cure an illness, send rain for crops, guarantee a safe journey, or perform any other favor related to the god’s sphere of influence.
Most people aren’t devoted to a single god, though many prefer some gods over others. Someone might ask Pharika to spare a loved one from disease, then later offer prayers to Karametra for a bountiful harvest or to Thassa for safety on a sea journey.
Clerics and Champions
It’s far more common for a hero to be devoted to an individual god than it is for an ordinary mortal. A cleric almost always worships a single god of the pantheon and chooses a domain appropriate to that deity for their Divine Domain feature.
Often, heroes choose to devote themselves to particular gods either out of piety or self-interest. Sometimes, though, the gods choose champions who might not be entirely willing. Heliod, for example, takes pride in selecting only the best mortals to be his champions. He doesn’t care how the mortals feel about being chosen, and his demands won’t be refused.
Brief descriptions of the gods.
Athreos
The River Guide straddles the line between life and death, maintaining the cosmological balance with no regard for the morals and emotions of mortals.
Athreos’s champions seek to further his goals, and rarely do so with greater sympathy than their grim patron.
Ephara
Serious and knowledgeable, Ephara watches over cities, protecting them from the wilds and seeing that they develop in a just and beautiful way.
Erebos
Jealous but patient, Erebos is a demanding master. His champions know that service to him lasts not just until their deaths, but beyond that.
Heliod
As powerful as he is arrogant, Heliod believes in his vision of a bright, orderly future and demands that his champions help bring it into being.
Iroas
Iroas expects much of his champions. Constant training and testing oneself against the strongest foes available are the hallmarks of Iroas’s champions.
Karametra
All life—plant and animal—needs fertility to continue to exist, making Karametra’s constancy vital to sustaining a habitable world for mortals.
Keranos
Mercurial and temperamental, Keranos personifies storms. Adventuring in the service of the god of storms is often challenging but never dull.
Klothys
Secretive yet vindictive in enforcing her vision of destiny in Theros, Klothys not only takes umbrage at perceived slights but has also awakened a horde of terrors during her ascent from the Underworld.
Kruphix
Enigmatic and patient, Kruphix influences the lives of his champions in ways both subtle and profound.
Mogis
Mogis demands deeds, not just words, from his followers—and he is by far the most bloodthirsty god of the pantheon. As such, Mogis and his worshipers are ideal antagonists to pit heroes against. Tread carefully when using him as a patron, as his area of concern trends toward villainy rather than heroics.
Nylea
Wild and unpredictable, Nylea can bring both blessings and hardships to the heroes whose lives she touches.
Pharika
The god of affliction cares little for mortals, seeing them as test subjects whose agony, resilience, and defiance all contribute to Pharika’s efforts to reveal reality’s secrets.
Phenax
Cunning and deceitful, Phenax spins innumerable plots across all of creation. He enjoys upsetting the natural order of things, either by thwarting the plans of his fellow gods or secreting away information for later use.
Purphoros
Impulsive and unsubtle, Purphoros is an unpredictable force in the lives of his chosen champions.
Thassa
Thassa’s influence on the lives of her champions varies wildly, often influenced by her stormy whims. A champion of the god who serves dutifully might not attract her attention for years. Those who displease her, though, or who engage with those who have earned her ire, might find themselves the uncomfortable focus of her attention for an extended period.
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