Pantheons

[Finchbearer]

Don't beat yourself up. Most of the world did not even make up these.

The creative part is not really who and how many, but what they all mean to the story and how it all plays out anyway.


I am hesitant to go into depth on my own creations in a forum post, but I do enjoy placing them in the world and showing how and when they matter.

That’s true, it’s so easy to get caught up in world building, but the reader doesn’t necessarily need all the details.

 

[skip.knox]

Mine is an alternate history world, so I just pick up the gods of the classical world and use them more or less as-is. At first I thought that would be sufficient, but then I realized I had other intelligent beings--elves, dwarves, orcs, ogres ... maybe I could include trolls--who would be unlikely to accept the human gods and so I would have to make up systems for them. *sigh*

So far, I've been able to leave things very nebulous. I try to aim well wide of specificity, until I get down to the individual story. When I do have to come up with something, it's in response to the story need.

Dwarves don't have gods. But they do have ancestor worship. Dwarves place great value on custom, tradition, and ancestor worship fits in with that. It's not even worship; more like veneration. Respect. Honor. The ancestors so honored are clan-based, so the religious practice reinforces clan ties.

Elves are highly individualistic. While certain patterns of practice do emerge, the ideal for elves is that each comes to their own understanding. Truth is a tree with a thousand branches. That sort of thing. Elves are big on what humans might call the dream quest or the walkabout.

Orcs are at the other extreme. They are the only monotheist people in Altearth. Theirs is the one true god, symbolized by the sun and all things to do with light. (yeah, I know; but my name isn't J.R.R.). Since the human world of Europa is profoundly polytheist and imperial, I thought it would be a nice contrast to have one of their two arch-enemies (trolls are the other) be monotheist and imperial. For the orcs, the humans got it right with the whole empire bit, but are dead wrong on the religion front.

So far, I don't have anything for trolls. Or sprites or sea folk or various others. And, of course, nobody knows what the h*ll pixies believe.

 

[nuh-the-deva]

Orcs are at the other extreme. They are the only monotheist people in Altearth. Theirs is the one true god, symbolized by the sun and all things to do with light. (yeah, I know; but my name isn't J.R.R.). Since the human world of Europa is profoundly polytheist and imperial, I thought it would be a nice contrast to have one of their two arch-enemies (trolls are the other) be monotheist and imperial. For the orcs, the humans got it right with the whole empire bit, but are dead wrong on the religion front.

Orcs being associated with the sun is pretty interesting. Nevermind the standard darkness:badorcs:bad. The sun can be just as overbearing and relentless as the dark. Not to say your orcs fit the moral stereotypes, just thinking.

 

[pmmg]

Worse than that, Tolkiens Orcs could not even go out in the sun.

 

[ThinkerX]

I basically coopeted the Lovecraftian Pantheon - Azathoth, the blind idiot creator, Nyarlathotep, the black Pharoah, Dagon, the tentacled God of the Sea (ironically sort of imprisoned in a lake), Shub Niggurath, the chaotic goddess of vegetation and life, and so on. Two of the central characters are actually minor avatars of two of the entities listed above.

To this, I added a sort of 'broken second tier or pantheon' of gods, drawn mostly from old European and South Asian mythology because many of the worlds human inhabitants were pulled from those places thousands of years ago. However, at least some of these 'Gods' are imposters of one stripe or another.

Then, initially to plug a plot hole, but kept because they fit in with an overall theme, I went and added the 'Saints' - benign spiritual beings who 'possess' willing hosts and then proceed to roam about teaching ethics and offering strong moral support in times of adversity. Ironically (or maybe not) the monotheistic church these Saints nominally belong to are less than thrilled, preferring their divine heroes safely dead in the past where their teachings can't contradict current doctrine. So, the Saints are often taken as wandering 'do-gooders.'

 

[skip.knox]

Orcs being associated with the sun is pretty interesting. Nevermind the standard darkness:badorcs:bad. The sun can be just as overbearing and relentless as the dark. Not to say your orcs fit the moral stereotypes, just thinking.

There's a story reason for it. Orcs once lived in light, then went through a long period of dark, to emerge under the sun. It became a symbol of their salvation. When something fits neatly into the existing world, ya just gotta use it.

 

[Karlin]

Right now my favorite is the Goddess of Mercy, or actually the Bodhisattva of Compassion, Guan Yin, or Kanon.
There are so many gods out there....

 

[UsuallyDexter]

I'm sure the fire God does not think of himself as boring.

Fair enough. Most of the plot revolves around him being a total jerkwad, actualply.

 

[nuh-the-deva]

Kann

Right now my favorite is the Goddess of Mercy, or actually the Bodhisattva of Compassion, Guan Yin, or Kanon.
There are so many gods out there....

Oh man, especially when you get into bodhisattvas. But they're just as fun as saints, so many of 'em, so many good stories.

 

[Ban]

Orcs are at the other extreme. They are the only monotheist people in Altearth. Theirs is the one true god, symbolized by the sun and all things to do with light. (yeah, I know; but my name isn't J.R.R.). Since the human world of Europa is profoundly polytheist and imperial, I thought it would be a nice contrast to have one of their two arch-enemies (trolls are the other) be monotheist and imperial. For the orcs, the humans got it right with the whole empire bit, but are dead wrong on the religion front.

Hopefully I don't sidetrack this thread too much, but I do wonder. How do your Orcs interact with other monotheists of the ancient (of course also the modern, but that's beside the point) world such as the Mandaeans (if John the Baptist even existed in this world), Samaritans and Jews? Is their one true god a separate being or is there some recognition of each other found there?

 

[Demesnedenoir]

I have multiple pantheons with conflicting creation stories and all sorts of good fun, plus I've broken "gods" into three types—for my purposes, not for the characters to understand.

 

[Gurkhal]

Worse than that, Tolkiens Orcs could not even go out in the sun.

With risk of going OT I think you're mistaken here. Orcs didn't like, and in fact hated the sun, but I can't recall them being unable to go into the sunlight if needed. That was the weakness of the trolls as the trolls turned to stone in the sunlight.

 

[pmmg]

Well. I let the tolkien enthusiasts sort it out.

The advantage the urak hai was that they could function in sunlight. The inference being the other orcs could not. The sun impaired and/or burned regular orcs so they avoided it. Not like a vampire would, but it just wasnt their thing.

 

[skip.knox]

Hopefully I don't sidetrack this thread too much, but I do wonder. How do your Orcs interact with other monotheists of the ancient (of course also the modern, but that's beside the point) world such as the Mandaeans (if John the Baptist even existed in this world), Samaritans and Jews? Is their one true god a separate being or is there some recognition of each other found there?

So far they have not interacted (nothing happens until I at least start planning a story), but I do have some context. I decided at the outset that other monotheist religions either did not exist or never grew beyond local cult status. So, for the orcs to interact with various Middle East religions, they would have to get to the Middle East, and that they never do. Parts of the old Roman Empire got in the way, and then the Five Kingdoms of the trolls occupied the space between. The orc empire is very roughly, the empire of Rus--Russia, Novgorod, greater Poland. I keep all that vague until needed by a story. That story is currently on Back Burner status, but it's a re-telling of the career of Frederick II.

Anyway, no real interaction. I'm mainly interested in playing off orcish monotheism against human polytheism. Orcs see humans as the great threat both because the humans also have an empire, and because they have a well-organized state religion. Dwarves and elves are just superstitious and ignorant and too stubborn to convert. The angle that needs work is orcs vs trolls. I need to develop something worthwhile for the trolls to juxtapose against orc religion. No story has so far stepped up to that task.

 

[Miles Lacey]

The twelve gods of the world I created are loosely based on those of Maori and other Polynesian folklore. There's not much agreement or consistency in the stories about the gods and their exact nature. Even their names vary. However, all the various folklore about the gods are agreed on three things:

● There are twelve of them: five male, five female and two non-binary.
● They gift a certain percentage of the population (about 1%) with magical powers when they reach thirteen.
● They created the world.

I deliberately make most aspects of the pantheon of the gods vague and contradictory to tie in with the fact that, in Pacific Island societies, Maui is treated as a god or demi-god and that he did a lot of great things. However, the stories about him and what he looks like vary considerably from place to place.

(Sorry device about to die!)

 

[Logomancer]

This video talks about 4 godly archetypes that often show up in mythology, namely Purpose, Authority, Treachery and Harbor. (P.A.T.H, if you will)
You could try building a pantheon using this structure. The video below goes into more detail.