A Pantheon Presented Plainly

A Premade Pantheon Presented Plainly

All gods know ladies cannot resist a sexy swan

Hello there my lovelies,

Today I present to you a pantheon of gods. These gods are the standard gods I have in most settings. The topic of gods in mythology and fiction is a subject you could write a PhD on, so I shall try and keep this post concise and focused. I will describe my philosophy, as to how to design and use gods in a setting as well as an overview of how religion should integrate into any crafted world.

The Tea-Sets Theology List

1. The gods are distant beings. They rarely directly interact with the world. Their followers bring change in the world; they do not.
2. There should always be something unsettling or uncanny about them. They may be worshipped by millions of beings but should always be something that puts you at slight unease when you delve into them more deeply.
3. Their domain (what they are a god of) is rarely intuitive. If their nature can be summarized neatly in one sentence, then there are hidden aspects to the god that require further explanation.
4. Direct communication with them should almost never happen, maybe at most only a handful of times in a grand campaign. This should only happen in moments of the direst need (to heighten drama), or only in the most sacred of places.
5. There should always be followers who are zealots. That takes their beliefs beyond the reasonable, to the extreme. Violence and cruelty are done too often in the name of religion.
6. The gods are rarely malevolent, but also not entirely benign.
7. The vast majority of people in our world claim some form of religious belief. This should be the same in any other world.
8. Settlements should nearly always have some place of worship, be it a cathedral, temple, or shrine.
9. Reward devotion; it doesn't have to be a big reward. A splash of holy water here, or a one-time bonus to a roll there. Roleplay of a devoted follower should pay dividends.

Aresstus
Dominion: Freedom and Revolution
Appearance: A series of interlocking rings constantly revolving. Upon each ring are a multitude of eyes. Each eye is restless, looking and observing.
About: Aresstus demands freedom for freedom’s sake alone. As a result of this, Aresstus is the patron of the oppressed, imprisoned, and enslaved. The followers of Aresstus often act with moral certainty that their actions are for the good. The darker flip side to this god is the spirit of pure anarchy and rabid individual sovereignty that it inspires in its most zealous followers. All government is a form of oppression, in the eyes of its followers. All authority figures are corrupt, and all institutions are rotten to the core, and therefore they must all be taken down and destroyed. Aresstian anarchists constantly foment unrest in all civilizations in a holy crusade to bring to an end all forms of rule. So that peoples of all kinds may stand as equals in the utopia of noble savages that only Jean-Jacques Rousseau could dream of.

Batt
Dominion: Change and Catharsis
Appearance: Batt appears as a colossal floating black pyramid. On one face is a great unblinking eye that carefully surveys all that it sees. A hundred thousand black tentacles from its base grasp and reshape anything within reach.
About: Batt never communicates in any meaningful way. Batt is the representation of change and entropy. Batt does not favour any outcome over any other, it just desires that the status quo is overthrown. Very few people worship Batt directly, they do not need to as change is a constant in life. However, Batt is also the bringer of catharsis. Those who have lived through turbulent times in their life are said to receive its blessings. The clarity of thought that comes with overcoming personal upheaval.

The Grave Warden
Dominion: Peace in death
Appearance: The Grave Warden takes the form of a heavily robed human, with an oversized hood large enough to hide all of The Grave Warden’s features. A single large brass bell is extending from the sleeve of one of The Grave Warden’s voluminous sleeves. The Grave Warden will ring this regularly to call the dead to its side.
About: The ignorant call The Grave Warden the god of death, or the god of the dead. The Grave Warden is invoked to protect the dead in their eternal rest. The symbol of the brass bell is found throughout graveyards, tombs, and mausoleums. Undeath is abhorrent to The Grave Warden. To interfere with the ultimate fate of a living being is to defile it.

Ling-Gol
Dominion: Ambition, Architecture, and Obsession
Appearance: Ling-Gol is usually depicted as a city with a grand cathedral at its heart. Upon this cathedral is an unblinking, ever-searching eye.
About: Ling-Gol is the god of the academic and craftsman and is otherwise known as the Infinite City because worship of it inspires complexity of thought beyond rational bounds. Ling-Gol’s followers strive to achieve great things, but the obsessiveness it inspires in its followers can become all-consuming for the most zealous. Yes, Ling-Gol’s acolytes do create great things, but often at the cost of their minds, or family and friends.

Lumina
Dominion: The sun, Wisdom, and Healing
Appearance: Lumina takes two forms. First as that of the sun. The second is that of a golden-haired woman with an irrepressible smile. Usually depicted in traditional dress or mirror-like armour.
About: Lumina is the most accessible of all the gods. Her appearance and creed is clear and understandable. Therefore Lumina is not just the goddess of the sun but also civilization itself, as the sun gives life to the land, to the crops and respite to the weary. Her worshippers are largely charitable and seek to better themselves through good deeds and words. However, her most zealous followers are often struck blind by staring too long into her glory. She is beautiful and kind, but she is also smothering and all-encompassing.

Nyla
Dominion: Lies and Pain
Appearance: Nyla takes one of two forms. The first is that of the moon, the second is that of an old matronly woman, white of hair and sad of smile.
About: Nyla has two sides to her. One is a being that revels in the shadow of human nature, the manipulations, the lies, and the cruelties. The other side of her is someone who understands the pain people do to each other, and the damage lies inflict. She offers understanding and soothing from this suffering. For the few of those who do worship her, they consider her the most human of all the gods.

Orchidnidus
Dominion: The duality of nature
Appearance: She takes the appearance of a giant blossoming flower or that of a young woman with vines for hair. She is heavily pregnant, and her hands are covered in blood. One hand rests upon her belly, the other carries the decapitated head of a foe.
About: Also known as the Red and Green Woman. Orchidnidus is the goddess of nature, who revels in the stark truth of the natural world. She represents the duality of nature, one side that creates and fosters life, and the other side which is about brutal, pitiless survival. Orchidnidus creates life, but she also destroys it; such is the cycle of nature.

Verus
Dominion: Bureaucracy and Law
Appearance: Verus takes the image of a great green obelisk covered with all the laws of all nations. Verus also occasionally takes the form of a jade-green animated statue. He wields books and scrolls as great weapons of war.
About: Verus is sometimes referred to as the god of complexity or thought of as a sadistic god, as nothing is more labyrinthine or as frustrating as dealing with the processes and vagaries of institutions. However, nothing could be further from the truth. Verus loves and understands humanity in a way that perhaps only Nyla can appreciate. Systems and laws exist only abstractly, and this fascinates him. His followers seek to create the perfect system, a streamlined and frictionless organization. Perhaps it is more precise to call Verus the god of efficiency.

Conclusion

Crafting a pantheon of gods is an excellent way to really stamp your personality onto the setting, both the gods and the relgions following them wil add flavor and depth to your world. Use my gods or my guildlines as you like,or steal as you want. Just remember, keep them distant, keep them a bit weird, and make thier followers sometimes VERY dangerous.

Much Love,
The Civil Tea-Set

The Godfall (Part 1 Setting Overview)

 This is the world and setting for the current campaign I am running.  So feel free to read, borrow or steal.  Convert it to whatever system you want or just cherry-pick ideas.  Overall I just hope it's good brain food and helps inspire your own stuff.

The Godfall: The Elevator Pitch

Countless generations in the past, the peoples of the world had built great empires that matched their endless ambition.  Their cities gave home to millions and their agriculture fed times of times that.  It seems there was no feat that the learned and arcane could not perform at this time.  Evidence of their once-great mastery over the mysterious arts can be found everywhere in the ancient ruins of their world, and their strange machines can be found here and there humming away with unusual purpose.

Those who lived in the old world did truly live in a golden age.  Therefore the question begs, how were they not able to stop it?

One day God or a god (or something else grand and vast as a god) crashed into the world.  The body of this being is so vast that the crater formed from the impact stretches from pole to pole.  The impact of this being striking the planet caused nothing short of armageddon. A shock wave burst outwards from the impact site that broke the world.  The tectonic plates of the land were thrown up and new mountain chains were built.  It also broke civilization, it broke the cities and the people within.  The dust from the sky smothered the world in an era of darkness from which only the very strongest survived.

An untold number of years has passed. The world has forgotten its ancient past, the remains of the ancient cities and great works are either consumed by the jungles or stand defiant seemingly as permanent as the mountains. The body of God lies in its crater, rotting, the juices from its decay mutating the earth and breeding new horrendous life.

It is a time of disparate tribes, dangerous wanderers, and malevolent sorcerers who wield terrible power. There are a few fitful starts of civilization, some even a few places like the city-state of Tul-Gorak can actually claim to wield real power.  However this is a place and time where things plot against the rebirth of civilization, things from other worlds stir and stare greedily at its inhabitants.  The world below begins a long march and ancient, powerful forces are about to be unleashed.

Overview

The Godfall is both the name of the event and the place.  This happened approximately 10,000 years ago, although for even the most astute historian of this world that timestamp has been almost impossible to lockdown due to the chaos after the Godfall.

Godfall (the event) was a cataclysm where some being as tall as the world slammed into the side of the planet.  It is assumed this is God or a god, simply because what other than a god could be of that stature?  It destroyed the old world much like the meteorite wiped out the dinosuars.  At its height, the old world saw advanced magi-tech and had a level of societal progression similar to enlightenment era europe.  It was a world of new innovation and ideas slowly pushing aside old prejudices and concepts.

The world now sits in the shadow of the old.  The architecture of the old world was built to last, the spires and ruins of this lost time can be seen everywhere, they are as much a part of the scenery as the mountains and jungles.  Your average person sees the ruins as a unique type of environment in the same way you and I would distinguish between swamps and grasslands.

Civilizational spread is sparse indeed.  People cluster around arable land or valuable resources and their numbers rarely exceed a few hundred.  This means that there are often great distances between larger settlements and nomadic lifestyles are common.

There are however a handful of city-states.  Places with the resources and organizational know-how to effectively manage people in the 10s of thousands are indeed more.  The largest of all of these is the great city of Tul-Gorak.

The Godfall (the place) is the crater where the corpse of god lays.  It is a great tear in the ground and its faultlines stretch all the way up to the north pole to the south.  Without mystical transportation, it is almost impossible to traverse.  Due to the depth, darkness, and the fact, there is a rotting corpse of God to traverse.

The fluids from the decay of the corpse have unique properties.  They change and mutate whatever they touch.  This means that a vast alien ecosystem is flourishing in and around the Godfall, a place that contains rich resources but great danger.

At the Eastern Edge of the Godfall is Tul-Gorak.  It has grown rich and powerful off the strange resources it gathers from the Godfall.  It has gained a reputation as a site of pilgrimage.  Folk from across the known world come here to climb the Walls and towers of the great city so they may view the corpse of God with their own eyes and mourn its loss.

Regions of The World

The Frozen wastes of the North:

Eventually, where the Godfall tapers thin, the snow falls thick. Rumour has it that before the Godfall these lands sat at the equator, that once it was a rich steaming jungle, thick with life. Now it is a cold death. Here ancient the jungles have been petrified with ice, and the air cuts so cold that in some places it snatches the breath from your lungs.

Here is found the Singing Mountains, which are a great chain of lost cities whose spires touch the skies and dare to reach the heavens.   Was it the hubris of the denizens of these places that caused god to fall?

Life grows thin here but the life that is found here is ferocious and cruel. There are treasures here if you can somehow brace against the cold and against the winds.

Things to find:

• The great frozen and almost untouched ruins of the Singing Mountains.
• Creatures of epic size and epic ferocity.
• Small groups of hunters that work together to take down said, epic creatures.

The Endless Jungles of Hunger:

Life thrives in this thick ribbon of greenery. It is a vast home of astonishing biodiversity and awful horror. The spirit of competition amongst the creatures here has created the perfect crucible for an evolutionary arms race.

Only the most fearless, driven or those promised the most fantastic treasure dare venture into the jungles. Beware its howling cannibals and skulking horrors.

Things to find:

• Overgrown almost untouched ruins.
• Nest of creatures.
• Cannibal encampments.
• Tribal villages.
• Shaman Hideaways.

The Godfall:

A great poisoned fault in the earth. That stretches all the way from pole to pole. It is a place where the corpse of It (god?) lays. Here it rots and the fluids and miasma from its decay change the land around it. You see the rot has the power to change in the most profound of ways. The things that come from here are unlike anything in all of the world's history. There are intelligent beings within the Godfall, nearly all are averse to all other civilized life.

The land inside is sheltered from the glare of the sun and always feels like being in perpetual dusk. Even when it is night, the bioluminescence from the strange plantlife ensures a constant low-level illumination.

It is a strange and alien landscape. Harvesting the plant life and hunting the creatures here brings back trade goods of great value.  But it is dangerous. Things lurk here, like the hateful Maw and the relentless Cacospider.

Things to find:

• Ancient almost demolished ruins filled with magic twisted by the rot of It.
• The wretched villages of the Maw.
• Forgotten grottos of forgotten beasts of eldritch power and mind.
• The deep trench from which no one returns.
• The remains of flesh, bone, and mucus of the fallen god.

The Faultlands:

The land around the Godfall is a corona of change. The impact shattered these lands, created apocalyptic earthquakes, and broke the metropolises of the old world. Nowadays it is a dangerous and varied place.  Life is verdant here, thick with forests, swamps, and other stranger biomes. The land itself is a series of faults, uplifts, and canyons. It is an uneven place full of hidden places between the crags and mountain ridges.  It is through these lands that pilgrims to Tul-Gorak make their journey.

Things to find:

• Ragged towns and villages making the best where they can.
• Bandit encampments.
• Trader caravans.
• Twisting ruins from another age, overgrown with plant and fungal life.
• Fungal Groves.
• Mutant hovels.
• Traveling obelisks and their occupiers.

The Repugnant Deadlands:

The tombs of the old world cites of ancient men and women laid low for eternity.  These are petrified remains of the old world.  These lost and broken cities are full of the riches of the long past. They would also be looted clean if it was not for the things that haunt these lands.  The shambling corpses named "Mostly Dead" are but only one of the horrors found here.  For in these places things from other worlds and times make their nests

Things found here:

• Hordes of almost dead, mockeries of humanoid forms.
• Treasures of the old world.
• Dread sorcerers in there high towers.
• The dark and eldritch monstrosities, which are better left forgotten.

Bringing Black Swans to The Table

 The reason I have always preferred being a GM over a player is the sheer scope of creative tools at my disposal.  I get to craft a world and everything within it.  When I got back into TTRPGs a few years back I started as a player and I had a blast, however, 5e just didn't enthrall me the way that old AD&D book I bought off a classified ad when I was a teenager.  I was desperate to try something with more bite.  And holy shit I discovered Fire on The Velvet Horizon by the OSR power couple Patrick Stewart and Scrap Princess and then a few months later I am rapidly running out of book space.

The OSR community seems to excel at creativity and that is why I love it.  Weird and wonderful settings are my jam, so I want to help add to that.  This topic may well stretch over a series of posts because it is a fantastically deep concept that I think can be applied to any RPG under the sun.  What we will be looking at is a consideration of Black Swan Events and how we can consider it in your games.

Black Swan Events out of Context

A Black Swan Event is a term coined by Nassim Taleb in his book of the same name (The Black Swan).  To describe simply it is an event that occurs that has a huge impact (physically, politically, economically, etc.), it comes as a surprise to those who observe it, and it is something that is rationalised in hindsight.  It is perhaps better to consider the following examples:

• The Aztecs coming into contact with Europeans
• The Black Death
• 9/11
• The assassination of Arch Duke Ferdinand

In each of these historical cases, the people of the time did not predict the horror that was about to occur, and when it happened the effect of the event was so huge it changed the course of the world.  I think is the most important aspect of the Black Swan event is the out-of-context nature of what is happening.  The people suffering under its effect have no way of understanding either the scale or nature of the change about to occur because of the out-of-wack nature of the event.

The late and very great author Iain (M) Banks had a similar take on these kinds of events, he referred to them as Outside Context Problems, in essence, a challenge faced by a group to which they have no contextual understanding.  This is how he described it in his book Excession.

"The usual example given to illustrate an Outside Context Problem was imagining you were a tribe on a largish, fertile island; you'd tamed the land, invented the wheel or writing or whatever, the neighbours were cooperative or enslaved but at any rate peaceful and you were busy raising temples to yourself with all the excess productive capacity you had, you were in a position of near-absolute power and control which your hallowed ancestors could hardly have dreamed of and the whole situation was just running along nicely like a canoe on wet grass... when suddenly this bristling lump of iron appears sailless and trailing steam in the bay and these guys carrying long funny-looking sticks come ashore and announce you've just been discovered, you're all subjects of the Emperor now, he's keen on presents called tax and these bright-eyed holy men would like a word with your priests."

-Iain M. Banks, Excessions (1996)

A land beset by Black Swans

Hopefully, the concept makes more sense now.  Basically, they are the big surprise occurrences in history upon which the axis of human civilsation shifts.  They carry with them a myriad of complications, changes, and maybe even plot hooks.

In my previous post, I described a series of post-apocalyptic settings, in each case the world been affected by a black swan event.  The corpse of a god colliding with a planet like a meteorite, a terrible plague taking humanity to breathe away from extinction, and a world where unobserved regions of landmass simply disappear leaving nothing but the void of space.

Black Swan events are a magnificent way to throw conflict, weirdness, and real peril into your campaign, and because it is RPGs are only limited to your imagination they can be as weird and as outlandish as you like.  They don't have to be violent (though often the consequences of them lead to violence), they just have to usher in irresistible change.  

Here are a few examples of black swan events for "Generic Fantasy World"

• The Sorcerer King just got murdered by a slave!  Everyone thought that he was immortal, and well if he ain't immortal then his barons and guards are certainly not!
• A  deligation of daemons has appeared at the outskirts of the city.  They want a formal end to hostilities.  It turns out there was a massive revolution in hell and they overthrew the Overfiend and have instituted some kind of democracy!
• The sun has gained sentience and is now demanding daily sacrifices.  Wherever its light goes it sees, and like some mad dictator, it NEEDS to be loved at all times.  Only on the nights when no moon is in the sky do people party.
• Unbeknownst to the world above for the last 50 years, the Morlocks had been hollowing out the earth underneath the greatest cities of the world.  Then on one fateful day in unison, they kicked out all of the supports, and all of these cities, their governments, and royalty fell into sinkholes of awesome size.  The survivors were immediately set upon by the morlock troops who are now intent on enslaving the surface.

Ways to use Black Swan Events

The way I see it there are a few ways to implement black swan events:

1. They are great historical events that add a bit of flavor to your setting's history.  You would only need a few to give a sense of a living breathing world with a sense of dynamic history and change.
2. Throw one into an existing campaign.  It will radically shake up the world and everything within it.
3. They can provide the backdrop for a setting.  The main high concept feature upon which you build your game world around.

Next post I will be attempting the first stage of the implementation of a black swan generator.  I think I am gonna call it the M.E.G.  The Massive Event Generator.  I like the ring of that!