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The Undergods

Legendary Sidekick

The HAM'ster
Moderator
Just for fun, I've been thinking about what gods might exist in my world. For my Flat Earth game I ripped off emulated GRRM, and had a bunch of "The's" such as The Maiden and The Warrior, as well as some I made up like The Chef and The Painter.

But I had another thought. In one RPG, I have a follower of Brynhildr—who is pretty cool with the whole valkyrie thing but she didn't make the top ten list of Norse Gods. In another RPG I played on this site, I had a "fighting nun" who followed Bastet-Sekhmat. The character folioing her had somewhat of an identity crisis as did her cat goddess. I figured my huntress might prefer Artemis, virgin goddess of the hunt. I feel like she got a raw deal, considering how much respect petty Athena gets. A goddess of wisdom blames Medusa because Poseidon turned into a horse and… never mind the and. Suffice to say, Artemis was the wise one for not marrying any of those divine philanderers.

None of the above goddesses (in bold) are really underdogs, but I'm entertaining the idea of a mixed pantheon made of 12+ gods from several religion, and I'm basically picking the losers. Vulcan is awesome, yet he was tossed out of heaven by his own mother for being lame. He makes handmaidens out of gold and silver. He's like the god of nerds, and I mean that in a good way. Uke Mochi is a Shinto goddess of cooking, but she made a crappy meal and was killed. Her dead body continued to produce mullet, which according to the world's awesomest samurai movie, tastes awful. Toaism has a goddess of wig salesmen. I think I can work with that, as well as Chin Nii, the heavenly weaver girl who was banished for shirking her duty. I guess she left an emperor naked or poorly dressed or something. She should have said, "Blank him, I'm a goddess. HE bows to ME." I might even throw in Uriel the archangel. He lost a wrestling match with a mortal.

Anyway, I'm taking notes and having fun with the research. Whether I'll use it or not depends on… lots of things. Just thought I'd share this with whoever's interested. If you have similar ideas/pantheons/etc., feel free to share.
 

Legendary Sidekick

The HAM'ster
Moderator
I read his name as HODOR! Now I'm curious… is he a halfwit?

It took me <5 seconds to find out: he is. Also, here's an out-of-context quote from the wiki:
"the goddess Frigg made everything in existence swear"
 

Scribble

Archmage
Kagu-tsuchi was a rather unfortunate Japanese fire god... did not last very long - intact. He was chopped up by his father on the day he was born!

(From Wikipedia)

Kagu-tsuchi's birth burned his mother Izanami, causing her death. His father Izanagi, in his grief, beheaded Kagu-tsuchi with his sword, Ame no Ohabari (天之尾羽張), and cut his body into eight pieces, which became eight volcanoes. The blood that dripped off Izanagi's sword created a number of deities, including the sea god Watatsumi and rain god Kuraokami.

Kagu-tsuchi's birth, in Japanese mythology, comes at the end of the creation of the world and marks the beginning of death.[1] In the Engishiki, a source which contains the myth, Izanami, in her death throes, bears the water god Mizuhame, instructing her to pacify Kagu-tsuchi if he should become violent. This story also contains references to traditional fire-fighting tools: gourds for carrying water and wet clay and water reeds for smothering fires.[
 
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Lycan999

Minstrel
Here is a few Greek gods and goddeses that come to mind:

Hebe-goddes of youth, one of the daughters of Zeus and Hera, third wife of Heracules

Nemesis-goddes of revenge

Nike-goddes of victory, she is the small angelic figure Athena is holding at the Parthenon

Pan-god of the wild, the word "Panic" is derived from his name, he once scarred the titans away during the Titanmatchery

Eris-goddes of discord, started the Trojan War

Janus-god of choices, had two faces

Asclepius-god of healing, Zeus zapped him because he was reviving the dead

Erebus-not technicaly a god, he was the primordial of darkness, besides stories of creation his only known mention was when Hades somehow managed to toss him out of the underworld into Tartarus

Tartarus-again a primordial, known as being the deepest part of the underworld hoveringjust above Chaos, it is implied that he may be capable of physicaly manafesting himself like Gaia and Uranus...

Crab-Just a crab, Hera sent him to stop Heracules while he was fighting the hydra, unfortunatley Heracules stepped on the crab and never even knew that it was there, later became the constelation Cancer
 

Legendary Sidekick

The HAM'ster
Moderator
Nike and Pan seem especially fun. And Crab the crab! What's with Hera and animals? She's always turning Zeus' consorts into a cow or a bear... and the bear isn't even at fault, since she (Kallisto) thought it was her friend Artemis (virgin goddess of the hunt) having sex with her! (Even after she was impregnated, in one version.) Seriously, Zeus? If my daughter has cute friends when gets older, and even if I could shape-shift, I would not appear as my own daughter to trick her friend into nightswimming with benefits.

Just no.

Zeus: lousy father, lousy husband, lousy god. It's hard to read the myths, then see Liam Neeson Zeus lamenting, "Why don't the mortals love me?"
 

Scribble

Archmage
Crab-Just a crab, Hera sent him to stop Heracules while he was fighting the hydra, unfortunatley Heracules stepped on the crab and never even knew that it was there, later became the constelation Cancer

I find myself feeling sympathetic to this rather pathetic crab.

Zeus: lousy father, lousy husband, lousy god. It's hard to read the myths, then see Liam Neeson Zeus lamenting, "Why don't the mortals love me?"

Zeus has all the vices and virtues of a classic patriarch. One of the things I love about the Greek gods is their deep honesty about what humans are, a mixed bag of helpful and harmful drives, whose helpfulness and harmfulness depend on the perspective of those around them. Hera gets a lot of riffing for her transformations of hapless maidens courted by Zeus, but she had to put up with him for eternity. At least mortals get an eventual break from their spouses, and men from their primal drives...

George Carlin said it best: "If there's a hell, it's full of dads..."
 

Scribble

Archmage
Narcissus

Here's a tragic god, he fell in love with someone he could never truly be with... himself! Although we tend to mock narcissists, if you think about this myth and try to put yourself in his unfortunate shoes, it is truly heartbreaking. Interesting too is the role of Nemesis and how we use that word today.

The word Nemesis originally meant the distributor of fortune, neither good nor bad, simply in due proportion to each according to what was deserved. Later, nemesis came to suggest the resentment caused by any disturbance of this right proportion, the sense of justice that could not allow it to pass unpunished.

(From Wikipedia)

In Greek mythology, Narcissus (/nɑrˈsɪsəs/; Greek: Νάρκισσος, Narkissos) was a hunter from the territory of Thespiae in Boeotia who was renowned for his beauty. He was the son of a river god named Cephissus and a nymph named Liriope.[1] He was exceptionally proud of what he did to those who loved him. Nemesis noticed and attracted Narcissus to a pool, wherein he saw his reflection and fell in love with it, not realizing it was merely an image. Unable to leave the beauty of his reflection, Narcissus died. Narcissus is the origin of the term narcissism, a fixation with oneself.

Echo

Tied up in the same story as Narcissus, Echo fell in love with her own voice.

(From Wikipedia)

In Greek mythology, Echo (/ˈɛkoʊ/; Greek: Ἠχώ, Ēkhō, "echo",[1] from ἦχος (ēchos), "sound"[2]) was an Oread (a mountain nymph) who loved her own voice. Zeus loved consorting with beautiful nymphs and visited them on Earth often. Eventually, Zeus's wife, Hera, became suspicious, and came from Mt. Olympus in an attempt to catch Zeus with the nymphs.

...

Echo fell in love with a vain youth named Narcissus, who was the son of the Nymph Liriope of Thespiae. The river god Cephissus had once encircled Liriope with the windings of his streams, trapping her, and seduced the nymph. Concerned about her infant son's future, Liriope consulted the seer Teiresias. The nymph asked the seer if her son would live to see the old age of senescence, to which Teiresias replied "if he does not know himself."[3]

One day when Narcissus was out hunting stags, Echo stealthily followed the handsome youth through the woods longing to address him but unable to speak first. When Narcissus finally heard footsteps and shouted, "Who's there?" Echo answered, "Who's there?" Confused, Narcissus looked around and upon seeing no one around, asked "Why do you run from me?" which Echo in turn repeats to the young hunter. Finally he said, "Let us meet together."[3] Echo, never being more eager to reply to anyone, repeats "Let's meet." To emphasize her words, she exits the woods in order to wrap her hands around Narcissus in longing. He runs away from her embrace and says, whilst running "May I die before what’s mine is yours." She repeats only "what's mine is yours."[3] Heartbroken by Narcissus, Echo spent the rest of her life in lonely glens pining away for the love she never knew, crying until all that was left was her voice. However, in other versions Echo cries until only her voice and her bones remain, then turned into stone, roaming forever to haunt the earth.[3]

The most popular version of the Echo/Narcissus story depicts that Narcissus later came to a still pool and caught sight of his own reflection. He became enamored of his own beauty and didn't realize that he was looking at himself. Any words of love he would mutter to his reflection Echo would repeat around him. From then he either withered until he became a narcissus, still bending over to look at himself, or he realized that he loved his own image which resulted in Narcissus killing himself out of despair with his hunting knife. From the drops of his blood were spawned the first narcissi.
 
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