The coming and going of gods

[TrustMeImRudy]

Hello, gonna jump right in,
While Gurkhal has a point, I don't think I'm insulting anyone by saying that those pantheons are commonly thought to not be real. In a world with actual interacting gods it would be less chaotic. Not saying it isn't too orderly, but with a real god directly overseeing stuff I think it would go along more or less orderly.
However if they had gods prior to the arrival of these new dudes, those old gods will still have a hold on their minds, and it'll be hard to unroot them. Take the missionaries for example, the best way to earn converts wasn't to preach their religion nonstop, but to take the present religions and draw similarities. This god became that saint, that monster became this demon, and when they were beginning to believe, take the other gods and turn em' all into demons.

So what happened in the minds of the people to the old gods? Are they now saints? Demons? Manifestations of their new, true god? Lies, or parents of, etc.

And btw those totems look awesome. Very cool symbols.

 

[claramcalister]

Time to introduce another God, one who is concerned with the afterlife (life and death) more than ought else. (Maybe his priests claim the far southern island continent, and venture elsewhere on their gods errands). The other six gods don't act against him, but tend to get real nervous when he shows up at the council meetings. Also...this god would have to have a powerful weapon associated with him, powerful enough to slay a god, 'lost' somewhere in the mortal realm.

I don't think a God of the Afterlife / Death is really necessary. In fact, I actually think it's a really bad idea for this story.

If I'm understanding the premise correctly, your Gods are actually just another humanoid race from another planet a la Stargate (but with what's roughly Magic instead of Technology). And instead of conquering the people like most similar scenarios tend to go for, they decide to help them by providing them with the main resource they need to survive in their environments. For this, they're worshiped by the tribal peoples and considered "Gods".

If that's the case, any sort of "God" who doesn't do this is ultimately unnecessary to the plot. More than that, they stick out like a sore thumb. You also have to take into consideration that these aren't classically divine beings. They're "people" who have been deified and have replaced the cultures' classical divinity- and there's a huge difference; yes, afterlife practices are inevitably going to crop up around them because afterlife is a part of religious belief. However, that doesn't mean your "Gods" themselves have to specifically contribute to that in any way.

Looks pretty good to me. The only thing that I could possibly object to is that it somehow, at least to my initial sense, is that it seems a bit to orderly and not as chaotic as a "natural" pantheon would be. But, hey, go all the way if you feel its the way to go. I don't see anyting bad with it even if it don't really strike my cords at first glance.

Well, to my humble view the Egyptian, Norse, Celtic and Aztec pantheons are a bit chaotic as you can tell that it hasn't grown out along orderly lines but is actually fairly chaotic with overlapping deities and deities which can be unique without adhering to any seeming plan for them. At least that's my view of it.

Polytheistic cultural faith systems seem "Chaotic" to outsiders specifically because of Local Cultus practices.

In essence, in practically every culture you had what amounted to a singular state religion that held a base ideology. But within each of them, however? Each region, family, city, tribe, or city-state (and so on) had their own variations on the myths. For instance, Athena Polias was an incredibly different figure compared to Athena Paionia- but she was also incredibly different from Athena Glaukopis... Despite the fact that all three were worshiped in Athens and were figures of the Greek state religion.

Unfortunately, modern people tend to way over simplify the number of figures that these polytheistic faiths actually had, and hypergeneralize what their peoples believed they actually did. Their cults and regionally specific aspects are usually left out entirely.... So instead of there being over a hundred unique Athenas (no, I'm not joking) with their own limited specialties? We think there's only one- and then we get confused when their purview overlap with the others. In all reality, however, they rarely overlapped. More than that, their purviews were often incredibly specific (like only a certain type of medicine, for instance- or a certain type of thunder)- and were largely specific only to a certain location or city to boot).

That's why we (in general) tend to think they're chaotic and poorly disorganized: Because most people, for a number of reasons, are ultimately missing like 99.9999% of the system in the first place. And it really is a shame, because these faith systems were often incredibly fascinating- and fascinatingly organized.

That being said, though... Once again, here I have to point out that these beings in the store (if I'm understanding it right) aren't classical divines in the first place. And if they come from a civilization advanced enough to have space travel? There's no reason they should realistically be disorganized. In fact, I'd expect beings from a civilization like that to be far more organized than any sort of pantheon we'd be capable of coming up with on our own.