Talk:Pantheon

Ok, so I took it upon myself to try to pull in all the ideas below, and merge into one document. I also created the subpages of The Ten and New Gods. Both are stubs (which I didn't mark, so shame on me) at the moment, but which should form the basis of our pantheons. Let me know what you think - I'm not married to any of this, so feel free to rip it apart. InternetSage (talk) 03:28, February 16, 2013 (UTC)

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Conceptual Discussion
So, the Ten. I get the total god's that stay out of everything and don't bother with our petty matters. I'm liking that. However this makes it so that I don't have a clue what we want on their individual pages. How much a story do they each have? Should we simply focus on their individual roles in world creation and the Falling? Other specific events? Feel free to list ideas you may have.

Kirranos (talk) 02:08, February 15, 2013 (UTC)


 * I think that since this is intended to be a resource that is useable by anyone who wants to run a DnD session in our world, that we need to have a backstory for each of the ten. Their relations with one another, their endeavors, their goals, etc. We shouldn't just leave any curious DMs hanging by saying: "The Lord of Fire is shrowded in mystery. His mysteriousness is perhaps best shown in his lack of any history whatsoever."


 * No, more what I'm thinking is something like a Legend of Zelda exposition, such as the one given by the Great Deku Tree when he explains the origin of Din, Farore, and Nayru and how they populated Hyrule with life, spirit, etc. Another set of Goddesses that I think we can use for some powerful inspiration in dealing with the enigmatic nature of The Ten is Shar and Selune in Forgotten Realms. According to lore, those two were the original deities as a result of the struggle between light and eternal darkness.


 * rchurch 02:51, February 15, 2013 (UTC)


 * The Ten don't really have backstory, in a sense. They don't have goals beyond keeping everything in balance as people are messing with it all.


 * What they do have is legends and cults. There will be stories from thousands of years ago about when one of them flooded the whole world for 40 days and 40 nights for instance. There will be religious sects dedicated to each one, and possibly some dedicated to groupings of them. Some of these sects will have conflicts with each other, especially when two of them disagree about what the same god wants.


 * The history and fluff behind the Ten is about what people say about them more than what they say about themselves.


 * Yoshanuikabundi (talk) 03:45, February 15, 2013 (UTC)


 * I agree that we have to be careful about humanizing them too much. I can see the fine balance where we need enough that they aren't hand-waving concepts that make nobody happy, and where we feel compelled to make them big enough that they start to turn into beings with relatable motivations and goals. Life makes life. So She makes living beings in spades. The other gods can't make living beings, but they can modify them, and add their own essence. So they do. The problem with this is that we can easily start to veer into *why* they are doing these things. If we say the God of the Sea took beings that Life made and turned them into fish, that's great. If he did it because he was jealous, not so great. Jealousy is a human trait.


 * My feeling is that we're going to have to turn a pretty critical eye to what people write about the gods. I expect this to be one of the more contentious ares in the near future. That said, I agree with Yoshanuikabundi that we should really focus on what 1-2 races say about the 10. If we set the precedent that there is disagreement about them, separate cultural tales, it will head off some of the innate desire of people to make up too much about them, and veer into the humanizing zone. InternetSage (talk) 03:58, February 15, 2013 (UTC)


 * Perhaps they modify the living beings because they have such a huge capacity to change the world. People have a lot of impact on the world. If all people only represented life, then there'd have to be so much chaos to keep the other powers in balance that Stasis would be grumpy (so to speak). So the other gods made other races as representatives, almost. So it's not actually jealousy, but it could definitely be misinterpreted as such - perhaps a cult of Life thinks all the other gods aren't really gods, as they're all jealous.


 * I would argue that they must change the world. To not do so would mean that they are not gods. If they were human-like gods, they could choose not to change the world. But it seems like they don't have that choice - the world is made of them, and they are part of the world. So Life must create life, and Change must make Change, and Flame must burn and the Sea must roar. Before they came together, each did that on their own; alone in the darkness. But when they came together, the entwining of their ...powers? ....wills? created the world.


 * I completely agree that the human/elven/other viewpoint will be to give them human emotions. Or perhaps one cult really does understand the gods - just nobody else believes they are right. Taking your example, the Cult of Life could look upon Flame as the anti-life. The Cult of Earth could see Fire as a partner - giving shape to and being essential to Earth - firing clay and melting ores. They're all wrong, just wrong in different ways. It's a very unique way to treat gods, and I'm starting to really dig it. Well done. InternetSage (talk) 05:15, February 15, 2013 (UTC)


 * Yeah that's a really good point about having to change the world. And I really like the idea of a creation event being when the gods started working together. Even if it's confusing how that works considering they are eternal and unchanging. Maybe they exist outside time - an eternal present, I think I've read some Christian theology that talks about that idea - and their working together isn't at a discrete time as far as they're concerned but since our world has temporality we percieve it as an event. Cool. I like that this concept is deep enough and well-established enough that it's actually hard to think about how the gods work, because of our tiny human brains and the fact that its breaking all the rules. Yoshanuikabundi (talk) 05:24, February 15, 2013 (UTC)


 * That's why I don't bother to understand it, haha. I just accept that they are above our motivations and thoughts and don't think about how that works. So I like where we're going with is, but on the subject of my original question, are we thinking then that the individual pages for the gods will mainly be a collection of legends told about them? Or at least the main, most agreed upon lore for them and perhaps a few other pieces and then on the pages for the individual sects of the gods we can say each sect's legends?
 * Kirranos (talk) 14:27, February 15, 2013 (UTC)


 * That's my understanding of how we'll proceed. One mystical "how it really happened", and then a lot of "we believe it went like this". I'm semi-ambitious feeling now that I've made it home after a night of fantastic food and beer. I think I'll hop over and write a bit so we have something to argue about. So far, we've all been on the same page, and that's no fun. InternetSage (talk) 01:58, February 16, 2013 (UTC)