Duality of opposing forces without obvious moral connotations.

[Miskatonic]

The one thing I've struggled with is coming up with a duality that doesn't give an immediate sense of moral polarity; such as good and evil, positive and negative, light and darkness, etc.

I'm dealing with a pantheon of gods that are split into two factions. They are a duality yet they originated from a single source. When the universe was created they were all formed from the same matter.

Any suggestions?

 

[Svrtnsse]

Maybe you can draw some inspiration from politics? Not about what they're disagreeing over, but over how people get really excited over the best way of achieving a certain goal.

Politicians are all human beings, and their goals are to make things better for the people of the world. So in that way they're the same - yet they can't seem to agree on things and they always struggle back and forth about the best way of achieving the gold.

(note: I'm a lot more cynical about politics and politicians IRL - the above is just a theoretical example. Please don't start a discussion about politics here)

 

[Feo Takahari]

I've seen order-versus-chaos stories where order was the clear good, and order-versus-chaos stories where chaos was the clear good. It probably wouldn't be too hard to make them neutral against each other.

 

[CupofJoe]

Almost anything can cause a division...
Gourd or Shoe? Exhibit A

 

[mt_jupiter]

Perhaps blur the line between good and bad, like/dislike by having some of the gods from faction A& B be jerks/helpful to the MC to mix it up? Those that help the MC could still hate the guts of the opposing group.

 

[Gryphos]

You could use light and darkness (even though it's a tad cliche), but make it so that neither is the inherently 'good' side. Just make them to sides of the same coin and stuff, and then you could lay on other themes.

 

[Miskatonic]

Thanks for the input guys!

Chaos and Order seem to work the best as both are necessary in varying degrees. Constant order without change may lead to stagnation and constant chaos without order can lead to destruction, though sometimes that is necessary.

I can definitely see those as being more forces of nature as opposed to man made principles.

The gods in this story took the Earth in its raw form (a blank slates of sorts created by the entity that breathed life into Earth's gods) and each worked on a certain aspect of the planet that was most pleasing to them.

The gods will be similar to other pantheons in as much as each represents a different subject, such as war, fertility, wisdom, etc. However, I don't want them to be too similar to humans; I'd rather they be a little more cryptic. Mankind will establish their cults/religions to worship specific gods but their understanding of their patron god's wisdom will always be incomplete.

Some of the gods will have a greatly vested interest in what's taking place on Earth, while others will have little interest.

 

[WooHooMan]

I got two suggestions...

In Indian mythology, gods are sometimes divided into two classes: gods representing elements of nature and gods representing grander concepts (often with multiple domains).
Examples of nature gods: Agni is the god of fire, Varuna is the god of water, Rudra is the god of weather
Examples of conceptual gods: Lakshmi is the goddess of prosperity, Shiva is the god of change (among other things), Ganesha is the god of wisdom/knowledge/fortune.
Morality-wise, the nature gods could be both good and evil while the conceptual gods were always good.

The Elder Scrolls video game series divides its gods into two (but really three) classes.
The Aedra (meaning "our ancestors") are the gods who sacrificed a portion of their power to create and sustain the mortal world. Due to their sacrifice, they are "inactive".
The Daedra (meaning "not out ancestors") are the gods who chose not to sacrifice their power and are still active.
Last is the Manga-Ge, who left the physical universe after the world's creation.
So the gods are generally split into inactive creators, active users and non-participants. There are also gods that don't strictly fit into any of those classifications.
It's explicitly stated that the moral dichotomy of good and evil do not apply to the gods. Most gods have done both good and bad things over the course of the universe's existence.

So, there's some ideas.

 

[Mythopoet]

I'll tell you what the two opposing forces in my world (neither of which I view as inherently good or bad) are, but don't steal the idea!

Potentiality and Actuality

So there's one side that's always trying to become the perfect form of what they are and the other side that's always trying to return to the primeval state of chaos where there is no individual being. The problem is that they apply their ideology not only to themselves but to all the world around them. Well, naturally the beings who seek potentiality think that there should be no actuality at all, that the world should never have emerged from the primal soup, and so they are always seeking to right that. This tends to put the existence of the beings seeking actuality at risk, so they must oppose it. The wars that occur between these two factions throw the world into upheaval on a fairly regular basis as a result.

 

[Legendary Sidekick]

You could use light and darkness (even though it's a tad cliche), but make it so that neither is the inherently 'good' side. Just make them to sides of the same coin and stuff, and then you could lay on other themes.

In Heroes of Might & Magic, there were six factions: life, death, order, chaos, nature, might.
Life and death were the most apparent good-vs-evil. Order and chaos were less obviously so. I was hard pressed to consider my awesome "might" army the eeeeevil anti-nature force, but nature had cute little butterfly fairies, leprechauns and elves, so yeah, I guess they were the good guys. Might had mermaids, but every other might creature was dumb and/or ugly.

On order-vs-choas, the Nazis were order and the Resistance was chaos, so even in history, there were times chaos was the clear good.

I like to write Huntresses who know "the world of beasts" and are strangers to "the world of men." That could be Wilderness vs. Civilization. (Opposing forces—or settings, really—without any good/evil labels.)

 

[Androxine Vortex]

Have different gods trying to impose laws on Each other and the mortal world, maybe have them as greedy and power hungry. They don't have to be good or evil, suppose one god calls for the worship of another tribe because through his actions he saved them but that tribe owes allegiances to other deities and they do not wish him to be added to the pantheon. Just a suggestion off the top of my head.