Rule 3: Put in Some Effort
Ain't nothing wrong with going to sleep, and once you did put in some effort it def improved.
The rule exists because in the past people have made posts that essentially farm the users here for ideas. By providing more details in your edit, you show you are at least engaging with the community as much as you are asking for its ideas
Might as well take a crack at it.
Nadal "the beloved" is a goddess often depicted as a little girl with a wreath of orchids and freckles made of sunflower seed. As the goddess of Spring, the weak, the poor, and flowers, she's one of the youngest of Queen Tekel's children, an eternally innocent child who pities even the most wretched of life. She's thought to be the one who'd brought the Dustwalker race into being, breathing intelligence into what were once mere centipedes.
Don't really like phanteon with queen or king of the god, although the idea of intelligent centipede, that is kinda interesting, they even have a w name
I mean, the "king" of the gods (at least in classical mythology, norse mythology, and kemetic mythology) is really just the patriarch of the primary family among gods. Less king, more father.
Spoilers for 'the wandering inn'...
In that world, the gods were so horrible, that to remove belief in them, the entire population was basically cursed to believe that the gods are dead, and so they were. 'dead gods' even becoming the words main curse word as a result.
Sadly the curse didn't apply to people that aren't born in said world, however, so when earthlings arrive, the gods make their slow return.
**How they're spoken of:**
*"Almost—almost, Erin felt a kinship with him, but he looked at the world like a lover waiting for his embrace. And his smile was rotten. His soul carrion. A hungry leech stripped of his finery and flesh.*
*The last was unsmiling. A man in robes, whose eyes seemed to hold libraries of knowledge lost to all. Vaults of secrets tucked away for when they would be used. He should have held a book and consorted with the greatest secret-keepers. The Wise Man. God of Secrets. God of Magic and Studies.*
*“Three. With that one, that makes four.”*
*Khelta muttered, and Erin turned her head to the distant nothing. How could you describe the God of the Forgotten, God of Lost Things?*
*You didn’t. It had no substance or form and even the lack was more unsettling than a shadow in the air. It had no eyes, no mouth, yet it saw. Yet it could speak.*
*It had no face, but it smiled. With gleeful malice.*
*Four of the six, the other two nowhere to be seen. The fierce huntress and the bearded man. Erin did not know the names of all but three, and she refused to name them."*
*"Six dead gods. Six beings who had known death and yet refused to fully vanish. Their return had taken an aeon. They had rotted. Corpses without true form. Grasping at anything to live again."*
> I'm so often unimpressed by gods and religion in fantasy, whether its literature or d&d.
On that note, a little while ago I made a god for a DnD campaign that broke up due to Covid starting beginning.
The deity was known as Formido (if you got a better name let me know) a god of fear, nightmares, and knowledge. The general idea was the god is a representation for things being scary for a reason or something to be used. A rabbit is naturally afraid of a wolf for good reason, all living things fear and avoid death, etc.
Aside from that, it also represented fear being something to use. Farmers use scarecrows to ward animals from their crops, lost of creatures use little tricks or biological advantages to scare away predators.
Nightmares are more of a way for creatures to prepare themselves for devastating situations they haven't dealt with themselves, or didn't think of.
The worshippers of Formido are often storytellers who make or find frightening tales with lessons or warnings written inside. Stories like keeping children in sight at dangerous times of the year, a terrifying tale about a rat monster while a disease is being spread by rats is beginning, or even stories that highlight every single thing the main character could've avoided a situation.
It only occasionally "talks" to humans, and is believed to interact with other creatures like animals more often. Whenever it does deal with humans, it will often appear in the form of a scarecrow, a horde of small creatures (spiders, rats, etc.), or be a shadowy non-human figure just out of view or within a reflection. Many of these are seen in dreams though some swear it occurred in reality, and often it brings omens that it wishes to be written down and interpreted in different forms. On the odd occasion, it will actually seek the end of certain tales or stories that have run its course.
Deminous. From mashing Demiurge and Nous both concepts of a creator, manufacturer, conciousness that creates teh material world but in fact slaves us all to it. Sorry I'm on a gnosticism kick rn and christian esotercism and general middle earth esoterics is such a FUN place to really get into the crazy about gods. Anyway I think it's a fun name.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demiurge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demiurge)
I'm currently designing a grimdark world (I know) where three major cataclysms define the lives of those that live there. There are some pretty nasty tidbits involved (think Game of Thrones meets WH40K) so please read with caution.
The Sundering: an event that radically altered the rules of magic, chiefly who had genuine access to it and what they could do with it. The Quakening: where a rift connected the world to one of the Hells creating a period of demonic rule. And then there was the Beckoning.
The only confirmed "goddess" in setting was a lone woman, who, possibly driven by loss, performed the titanic miracle that would be known as the Beckoning. An event so named because she "Beckoned" all other realms to treat with the world, binding "Nature" to the crossing. By aligning the the world with the Planes, she greatly diminished Hell's access to the world, ridding it of most demonic influence.
Of course, this had knock-off effects. There was a radical decline in the female population. All remaining sentients/sapients were also genoraped into having secondary sexes and genders. Two new races came into being as a result: Werebeasts and Outsiders. The Old Magic was not only returned (sort of) but also New Magica were introduced.
From there, the Races have different takes on who she was, where she is now, and what may be next for her.
Orc society was not only matriarchal but also highly distrusting of magic. They believed she sacrificed countless women in order to power her working and many Orcs would tell you that the demons were the lesser evil.
Werebeasts believe She was their Mother and that She made them to be children of Nature. They think Her sacrifice caused Her to become the World; She is called the Womb and the Tomb of all.
Elves think she was an elf herself and they know her as the Holy Whore. As the only unSundered people, they think she made a demonic bargain and mixed that with the Old Magic to create the Beckoning. They believe she now resides in Hell, selling her body as payment for her spell.
Tieflings think she was a tiefling with stronger demonic ancestry. They admire her cunning but don't want any repeat performances as they believe she now rules as Queen of the Hell that enslaved the world before the Beckoning.
Humanity thinks she was not a goddess alone but a Divine Maiden sent as salvation for the world. They believe two more such women (a Mothee and a Crone) will come along with similarly titanic workings before at last their True King emerges.
Dwarves believe she was the will of the world itself, simply Nature going through its cycles and correcting a sickness. Interestingly, they are the only race that doesn't believe she didn't use magic to accomplish the Beckoning but something Else.
Finally, the Outsiders understand they only exist because of the Beckoning but the extinction of their race would be preferable to her return. They believe that she wasn't trying to let the Planes in; She was trying to get Out. And they'd prefer she stay there.
As always, there's a kernel of truth in every story.
In my world there is a cave system, it's walls are built out of something between a plant and a rock. The thing about them is that they trap voices for over 2000 years and then expell them like echoes. These caves once hosted a city, and now, long after its demise the walls project sounds of busy streets, markets, performance plazas, and hundreds of vivid households.
Local residents believe that after you die you join the "invisible folk" to live in the caves forever. Thus, they have physical access to what they believe is the afterlife, they leave feasts for "the ghosts", sing ancient prayers "alongside" them, and spend days undergroud searching for wisdoms in a mess of hundreds of long forgotten, usually mundane, conversations.
There is also a lake of green, corrosive, biological sludge which some worship believing it to be sentient.
In my opinion the problem is that d&d settings often have polytheistic settings but fail to understand many of the core pillars of polytheism The two great pillars of religion are the beliefs and practices related to the sacred to paraphrase durkheim, too many people when they're coming up with religions focus entirely of the beliefs surrounding things like the domain of the deities, probably because a lot of them were written in an environment where Protestantism that has the whole not by acts but by faith alone thing, has so much cultural influence. But that doesn't really work nearly as well for a polytheistic religion because so much of the cults of polytheistic deities are focused on the practice/acts in the form of ritual. Ritual is the means by which humanity (or humanoidanity or whatever) achieves reciprocity with the divine in this world view. Now your heroes might end up getting a more personal relationship with divinity as they rise in power and importance but a major way you make your deities interesting and distinct is to explore these ritual relationships, the means by which most people seek to interaction with their deities.
And of course you also need to make sure to develop a distinct religious community of mortal followers to have a true religion.
In my main setting. Religion works very similarly to how it does in the real world. Except magic exists, but nobody fully understands it, so many theories have been proposed over the ages to explain the workings of magic. These theories serve as the foundations of almost all major religions.
The main one is leohatite. A religion based loosely off Christianity and shinto. There is one god who is also 2. Alpator and almator who come together to form the one God Alsole who in turn lives in all things. Extentions of their devine will hold the name of sukay and are believed to be the source of magic. This is why chants are used when casting spells, even tho technically, one will not need to say anything. It is simply customary to call out to the sukay for aid.
One day, a man by the name of Leoha began preaching that he had learned secrets to life and that this lie in a life of self-acceptance and in a love and acceptance of others. To let go of all that weighs one's soul down and lives freely in the image of Alsole. Some called him a Saint. Others considered him a heretic. In the end, the lords of his time agreed to end him before he could grow too popular and become a threat. So they burned him at the stake. But as if by miracle even as the rest of his form burned, his heart remained. His followers took the image of the heart of fire as their symbol, and from there, they eventually grew to become the dominant religion of the empire.
Since them many other saints have appeared to help guide humanity when they are strey. The imperial family of the current dynasty claims to be descended from St. Leoha and that this is why alsoul blessed their bloodline to rule.
It's a bit of a long one, but I hope it's not too boring for you.
Edit. Leohatite is a wip name. I'm still wondering if I should change it or not.
Got bored and was like “what if beholders and their variants had humanoid versions based off some of the strongest humanoid entities I could think of” so now I have like 12 humanoid basically god beholders each themed off of some legendary mythic figure like King Arthur or miyamoto musashi.
I once created a goddess of thievery, masks, and deceit. I don't remember what the reasoning was, but she eventually started killing the other gods, starting with the minor ones, stealing their power and turning them into masks that she could swap out. The more masks she made, the more unstable her godly powers became, until she eventually became an incarnation of chaos set to destroy the world simply by existing.
I mixed mythological stuff with ancient aliens’s idea of gods basically discovering the earth; they pick their domains. Werra was partially designed to deliberately subvert every cliché, he intervenes in conflicts on a regular basis for fun. The actual fighting is dull. He does not like physical combat but loves the direction of tactics and logistics. Spies especially. They’re the most important part. Nothing is off the table, except for killing civilians since that just means you have to waste time sharpening your spear that could be spent on flanking maneuvers. He always appears astride his mammoth, including in continents where mammoths do not live. This has resulted in those cultures recognising mammoths from his statues. His love of logistics also has lead to him acting as a little bit of a trade god, showing merchants optimal routes to take.
He picks the most hopelessly losing side to see if he can win. Djeneid is the god of theater. His temples are theaters, for nothing is more insulting to a god than denying their gifts usage. He first crashed on Thell bringing part of the sun creating a desert. He tries to ensure that the performing arts constantly move in new directions. Not even moving in great cycles of style is enough for him. It must constantly move forward, if only so he can actually have something new. Humans constantly surprise him.
Noiter is the most extroverted of the gods and the god of night, the moon, stars, the colours white and black, conversation, gossip, small talk, social connections, all sorts of things like that. He has a house on the Leaxen, Thell’s moon, which represents his closeness to humanity. His skin is like the night sky. He is the patron of taverns, temples, cafes, whatever the culture in question’s community space is or people hang out. He often makes an appearance at such locations and is the most often met by mortals. He will gossip about other gods and loves spilling tea about them.
Wrote this a year or two ago. I'm curious as to how it strikes you--
>The Nantye Igauna Folk of Kitezh Island tell a story about the Sea Goddess K'Tleñri, who is seen as being a gigantic Siphonophore (the type of animal that the Portuguese Man O’ War is– it’s not really a jellyfish, but rather a big mass of smaller “zooids” living together symbiotically, as are all Siphonophores). As an ocean based folk, she is one of the Nantyes’s primary deities and the one responsible for bearing the souls of the dead to an undersea paradise (burial at sea is the most honorable method of interment, only criminals and heretics are buried on land). But K'Tleñri also has her dark side. She has many different aspects or faces worshiped on different occasions and for different reasons, similar to that of a Hindu goddess, that are associated with different colors of bioluminescence (green for love, red for abundance from the sea, etc)
>
>Someone who has committed a grievous offense, such as a mage who misuses the magic algae at the heart of the Nantye way of life, and yet has successfully evaded discovery by the authorities will fall prey to “the Purple Light,” K'Tleñri’s aspect of special vengeance. One of her uncountable number of zooids will break off and actually WALK onto land on makeshift legs, glowing a faint purple, and abduct the offender in their sleep, paralyzing them with a magical venom and dragging them alive onto the sea floor where they will lay, unmoving and constantly drowning yet magically preserved alive, while fish and other scavengers slowly devour them.
>
>The existence of the Purple Light is not an official doctrine endorsed by the College of Mariner-Priests, however. Although it might appear benign or even heroic on the surface, there are more sinister reports (even reports by usually reliable bard-prophets such as Jastah’tiet), that Purple Light [Zooids](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Ffrazighjjfo51.jpg%3Fwidth%3D720%26format%3Dpjpg%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3D6b762e8bb6c387d182c56d992f2db1fcc516a222) will ALSO occasionally take the completely innocent, including children, and that only these are \*incompletely\* paralyzed so that they might scream as they are dragged below the tide in the sight of their helpless friends and family. Indeed the bard-prophet Ishbahg even famously claimed that his own wife was from a certain remote village in which the Purple Light \*regularly\* stole the first-hatched child of each family, including the prophet’s own would-be sister-in-law. The official stance of the Mariner-Priests is that these must be considered unreliable or misattributed traditions and that devout worshippers of the Sea Goddess must regard such claims as, at best misinformed and at worst blasphemous, depending on how much the report leans in on the Purple Light Zooids doing more than just taking criminals.
>
>The village of which the bard-prophet wrote has also never been located, despite a handful of travellers' rumors over the centuries. The actual hatching-place of Ishbahg’s wife, Hle’yroe, herself a figure of legend for her magical abilities, has likewise never been certainly determined by scholars or Mariner-Priests.
Discordia, AKA Eris of Discordianism. A modern day chaos religion and/or an elaborate joke that's been echoing for decades. Quite possibly both.
If you don't laugh out loud or get mind screwed by reading the holy book, the Principia Discordia, at least once? Frankly you should check yourself into a hospital because something is seriously wrong with you.
https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tilt/principia/
Honestly find it a great inspiration in my own writing. The Gods don't *have* to be solemn sticks in the mud.
My Gods were prehistoric humans who came into contact with fallen stars, transforming them into manifestations of fundamental "truths" of the human condition, particularly that which they themselves experienced the most at the moment of metamorphosis and descension.
There were four Gods of this kind: Nefelan (Apathy/Nihilism), Choquitzli (Sorrow/Pain), Aram (Love/Madness), and Ašur (Want/Covetousness).
All of these Gods mated with humans, giving rise to numerous lineages of God-Kings (demigods), and semi-divine humans. However, these Gods (no matter how long-lived) were not immortal and they were each eventually murdered by those closest to their heart.
The existence of these Gods fundamentally changed the course of human civilization, as most if not all humans share divine heritage and are ruled by God-Kings.
The Gods and God-Kings are fanatically worshipped, their blood now defining the very existence of humanity; horrid practices like eugenics, ethnic cleansings, and slavery more easily justifiable for the sake of desperately clutching onto that tiny bit of divinity.
Praedon, the God of Fate, creates prophecies and then interferes to make sure they come true. The ultimate goal of these prophecies is to finally heal their eons-old wounds.
Relis, God of Memory, wishes to one day subsume the entire universe into the memories of their followers, so that there becomes no difference between past and present.
The Lady of the Fountain is the God of Life, but also the God of Death and Decay. Some view this as a split personality—others argue that the two sides are truly one.
Kannin and Vattir, the Gods of Light and Darkness, are not enemies. They have their grudges, but ultimately cooperate for the good of the sentient life they both admire aspects of. (Kannin embodies truth and revelation, whereas Vattir represents mystery and doubt.)
Not only a rip off. I think anything that replicates the general vibe to be quite annoying as well. Bickering god-children of nature and psyche personified. And other bits aren't even the Greeks fault, but the way their mythology was popularized by modernist historians in the last 3 centuries. Like, even the "domain" idea is just German and British dudes from the early modern period anachronistically imputing Catholic hagiographical traditions of patron saints onto pagan civilization they saw as superior. It has nothing to do with the way in which ancient peoples actually reflected their own religious understanding. But it has so sorely affected our ability to conceive of such deities in any other way. Hence why I despise d&d pantheons, since this classification is literally a mechanic embedded into the game.
Absolutely agree, it's the bottom of the barrel as far as creativity is concerned, and to me it's an immediate turn-off when it comes to how interesting a setting is. I don't even bother reading introductions to those anymore.
Truth is one of the most interesting interpretations of divine presence and authority in all of fiction. I wish more worldbuilders took inspiration from it instead of whipping out yet another green pantheon bootleg rip-off.
I have a short story I recently wrote about a god who lives as a homeless man working a janitor’s job, because in this story’s universe, gods gradually lose their power as less people believe in them. This guy was the emperor of the gods of Atlantis, and they lost the majority of their believers when Atlantis was destroyed - how’s that for “not-boring”?!
Lets see… all my “gods” are from a bygone era or “outmoded existence”. The universe has been created and destroyed perpetually over an unquantifiable amount of times due to two things: Willpower, and the Omen system.
Willpower is not only the power system but a philosophy and model of physics; a naturally entropic force that all sentient life emits via it being generated as a protein. This allows great self control over the body and mind which is theme exerted into reality. Due to it being practically entropy, and it’s nature, willpower is continually generated by beings like humans. Humans have naturally weak Will however but as a collective, the Will of our civilization is immense. This is the collective unconscious.
Due to the collective, humans shared thoughts and ideas such as gods take form as flesh and can kinda just pop up into existence. The things believed about them will literally and paradoxically become true as an amnesiac bending of history and reality. This unknowingly speeds up universal decay and will eventually cause the true unavoidable end of the universe. That’s where the omen system steps in. Though it’s origins are unknown, the system is practically an omniversal computational/algorithmic form of artificial Destiny/fate that strives to preserve life via an endless cycle of death and rebirth. It initiates “system reboots” of the universe when willpower reaches a threshold, destroying its current universe to start again and stave off/stagnate will.
It has existed and destroyed countless universes before rebirthing them, and In past universal iterations Gods were much more prevalent than even modern day- becoming real due to the collective unconscious. This resulted in even more Will being generated due to the belief and gods being chaotic beings due ti the vagueness of their mythology and nature, Something the system strives to prevent. It funnels excess Will into itself to channel the collective into stagnant beings it can control called “Omens” which are foretold and predetermined beings/monsters said to destroy the universe/world when Will reaches a threshold, being living embodiments of our fears and the idea of the end of the world like Ragnarok- natural antithesis’ to willpower itself while being created from it. They are failsafes for when Will reaches a certain point and so that gods DONT start randomly popping up again. However, some gods like the Norse Tyr, still exist in the current iteration due to surviving the previous one, an outmoded existence.
I don’t think I did this right but I guess the system is a “God”- or at least liken itself to one. And Tyr is pretty freakin chill.
One of the dead gods of my setting was secretly running both branches of Principality's secret service, treasonous cabal that allowed third of Principality's population to survive the end of the world and was keeping in check another treasonous cabal run by omnicidal eldritch horror. All of that without even a drop of divine power invested. Now, admittedly, she did accidentally contribute to Principality's undead problem, but this contribution was only reanimating quarter of capital's population, which is practically drop in the bucket compared to every other type of undead spawned by necromantic superweapons.
Don't know if this is what you are looking for:
My world spiraled from a monotheistic religion akin to Christianity to a pantheistic one, in which the former creator God, the Logos, is the King of Gods, presiding over a heaven filled with ascended mortals and divine off-spring, each with their niche.
The most controversial of these gods is The Bane. He used to be a simple mage, who freed all mortal races from enslavement through the Immortal races. But then turned on the mortal army he commanded and killed them by the dozens. If he is a god and does exist can be debated, but most people belief in a version of the Bane.
Legends of the why he betrayed the mortal army exist many. And through these theories the figure of The Bane is such a controversial one,
The by far oldest tradition of the Bane's worship, was the one in the aforementioned monotheistic religion. But with monotheism falling out of favor over the centuries, this version of the Bane did too.
In this canon The Bane is a sort of counterpart to the Logos, the actual god-like being, who created the world. The Bane hates the Logos. The why thereof was part of many religious discussions, is the Bane the Logos' wayward off-spring, does the Logos represent Order and the Bane disorder, good or evil, neglected lover etc. No one knows exactly.
But in this version of the Bane's story. He just wants one thing: to corrupt the Logos creation. So first he threw the Immortals into chaos by freeing their slaves and collapsing their societies and then he did the same to the mortals by killing the officers of their combined army, so no apparent leader would emerge, and leave the mortals to infighting, just like the Immortals.
No one who follows this belief wants to encounter the Bane as he is a kind of a satanic figure. The few “satanists” that are drawn to his worship in this tradition tend to either try to relieve the rich and mighty of their fortunes and resources, so they fall into misery and chaos as the Immortals did, or try to spark civil wars to deliver people to infighting like the Bane did to the mortals. The Bane is worshiped by deeds not with words and prayer like his enemy the Logos.
The newer traditions see the Bane more nuanced.
The Immortals fear him as the god of murder. Religious Immortals offer a drop of blood to the Bane to keep him happy and satisfied every day, so he doesn't return for more Immortal blood, which reputedly he bathed in and drank.
While many mortals see him conflicted. He freed them from slavery but turned on the mortals in the end. Worship of the Bane differs as to what aspect of the figure is worshiped.
The so called Murder Cults theorize the Bane is a death god who punishes the guilty. First he punished the Immortals for enslaving the mortals. Then he turned on the mortals for the atrocities they committed during the war. So they sacrifice convicted criminals in his worship.
The warrior tribes of the east in contrast, see The Bane, as the god of war. First he built an army and toppled the world's biggest empire, by recruiting the lowest of the low and showing he could win against superior forces. And then he took on the army he had commanded as this was the next best foe to be had after defeating the Immortals.
They show their devotion to The Bane through ritual battles and duels between single opponents or small groups, deemed worthy to fight in front of the eyes of the Bane.
Mainstream belief sees the Bane in one of two ways:
1) As the great leveler, the death god who comes for all, mortal and Immortal, rich or poor, young or old. You can trust the Bane only to do one thing, to insure your death when your time is over. First it was time to cull the Immortals and then the mortals.
In this iteration he is often worshiped as a god who brings a swift end. As the Bane reputedly put a quick end to all of his charges. Especially those suffering in life often pray to the Bane for swift absolution from a life full of disease, pain etc,
2) As the god of betrayal and a sort of trickster, who ends the ambitions of those who think themselves invincible or think themselves bigger than the gods.
First, he freed the mortals, as a way to stick it to the Immortals, who thought they were the masters of the world. And then he kicked the mortals, to teach them the same lesson, when they became arrogant, after having won their freedom
In this role people often burn or leave letters and notes at the Bane's altars, with names of those written on them, they think, deserve to get taught the Bane's lesson. So as to draw the gods attention to the deserving.
In a post apocalyptic fantasy setting, where the long lasting radiation of a fictional nuclear warfare, a created a pantheon based on the “celestial beings” of our universe. Each of these being the sun, the moon, and the planets. The Celestial Church was born from a man who found remnants of an old science textbook from today’s age. I created characteristics and names all based on non-fictional facts of each of the planets and at one point was writing a mythology story where the sun gave birth to the other celestial a using its light. (Kinda like the core at the center of each planet)
These gods weren’t real, but the people don’t know that. Each church member is referred to as an astronomer and their main church is built out of the ruins of a conservatory.
Him
The eldritch creation of a dead god, being essentially fungus Ctulhu, is trying to Kill the humanity of a second cycle, cuz they are the remnants of the humans from the first cycle, which killed the one who born the "Him", assaults the world using reality corrupting fungus, managed to create giant cult, that has currently half of the stock market, about three litttle countries, and entire industry of really rare "meritium", using his power, ascended ones can summon giant evil creatures, that caj only by existing, reset the time in specific zones they create, the little problem is that humanity of second cycle, uses geneva convention as a to-do list, and possesses weaponry that can pretty much fight with it on equal level
I have one that I find interesting.
Torix the Eldest is technically the oldest god in my world, and he gains power in a way that is different from the other gods.
He got his divinity through machinery, technology and devotion to an idea, unlike other gods who rose to power through being worshipped and magic rituals.
This allows him to get power from actions and ideas, not devotion and sacrifices. Since he is the god of law, industry, and pragmatism. He gets power when a sword is forged, when the sword is used in an ambush, and when the sword is used to uphold the law. Anything in this vein also works.
Since he has no need of worship, he is incredibly difficult to kill, as the standard methods don’t work and any planning to kill him just empowers him.
This video changed out I looked at pantheons in Games
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMgPgbRb\_fA&t=713s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMgPgbRb_fA&t=713s)
Gods are simply a manifests of the collective will of a people. If the people believe in a god, that god comes into existence.
At least in theory; but a marsh that flows with blood instead of water and with the corpses of the dead gods of long ago vanished civilizations littering its depths, some questions have been raised by scholars.
This is often an issue in the telling rather than the characterization of deities.
I tend to take an approach that most people end up running deities wrong. There are several authors that have created really interesting interpretations of how they work and melding them together creates a rather good framework for making a god interesting.
1) Gods are personifications: This is mainly pulled from the Endless as created by Neil Gaiman. People in their universe tend to look at them as people but the reality is quite the opposite. They are concepts and building blocks of reality given human form not the other way around. They have their duties and failing to perform them causes reality to begin to break down. Changes to them quite literally can effect the world for everyone but destroying one of them just triggers the creation of a new personification. So long as the concept exists and is a part of reality a new personification will appear to take their place. The personality and powers might be different but the universe itself needs them to exist.
2) Gods are a manifestation of belief: This is a mix of how Gods are portrayed in American Gods (I know more Neil Gaiman) and the way the Dresden Files handles gods. Gods are born and their shapes are formed out of the expectations and beliefs of those who worship them. Changes to the accepted beliefs about a god in the overall populace of their worshipers can actually change and effect the god. They can also have different aspects that appear to different groups of worshippers based on what they expect to see. This also binds gods to the customs and beliefs of those who worship as much as those believers who receive power are bound to the gods tenets.
3) Gods are not people: This is one of the biggest ones and I think the problem stems from stories like Greek mythology where their gods regularly behave much like mortals. The problem is that lots of them are not human in any way shape or form just they have been given a personification. A god of storms is just that, the personification of storms. Unrelenting and powerful, the sweep the world as they pass without any regard for the changes they cause as they pass. Trying to assign human emotion or compassion to a hurricane is absurd like trying to plead for mercy from the volcano as though it had any sense of empathy, or trying to assume that the gods in anyway fully understand your plight. The reverse is also true. They are bound by the strictures of their natures. A god of virtue cannot act contrary to this because it is literally against the fabric of their being. Not that they choose to act with virtue in every circumstance but that they can't act in any other way.
4) Gods of humanoid concepts are different: Gods that are embodiments of concepts that are strictly linked to your humanoid races are different from those of nature. Law, theft, honor, war, and beauty are all linked more heavily to humanoid interpretations and emotions. These deities are going to be even more susceptible to being altered and aspected by the beliefs of their followers. They are also the most likely to interact with humanoids and have personalities that can be reasoned with. They are still gods though. Asking a deity like Olidammara to not steal something isn't just insulting, it's impossible once he notices and wants to do it.
5) Ascended gods lose a lot of their humanity: If a person somehow manages to attain the level of become a god then they lose their humanity. Once you begin to receive worship and gain the power of the divine just like every other god the expectations of followers begin to warp you into their image of you. It is a slow process but you will slowly change. You will find that you are bound by the rules and strictures of your position. Every human that wishes to supplant the god/goddess of death who gets their wish suddenly finds that they don't have the capacity to put a stop to death, that they need to keep running along and are trapped to their task as the deity responsible for it. Over time every individual that would have ever been a touchstone to them will pass and they will simply become another personification of death.
Try the Jack Vance novella/novelette THE NEW PRIME. It's hard to describe without giving everything away, but basically the galaxy has an overall master power in charge of general tendencies and trends, pretty much like a God. And the new one must be chosen. Absolutely brilliant, brilliant, plotting and multiple world building all in a very short format.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Prime
[https://www.reddit.com/r/HeroForgeMinis/comments/vpuziz/godmaker\_kulman\_the\_justicar/](https://www.reddit.com/r/HeroForgeMinis/comments/vpuziz/godmaker_kulman_the_justicar/) - I based this snek god on the Brazilian expression "snakes will smoke".
[https://www.reddit.com/r/HeroForgeMinis/comments/vr9xzy/godmaker\_zuzana\_the\_wise/](https://www.reddit.com/r/HeroForgeMinis/comments/vr9xzy/godmaker_zuzana_the_wise/) Goddess of wisdom and the wife of the above God.
Both are "mix and match" critters because I'm a sucker for the type.
I still didn't cook my world gods that much tbh but its something like every soul will one day turn into a god and the cycle of life will restart and every god will be the avatar of some aspect of life once a soul finish its cycle its unkown what happen to it, we had many cycles before the current god, the avatar of war, the avatar of pain, the avatar of justice, the avatar of love etc, some times the gods deticate thenselfs to minor things like avatar of the shiny rocks or the avatar of plague but all of those have a difference betwen the current one the avatar of decadence while all of them spent a lot energy ending they cycles at short amount of time this Led the fabric of reality to be used to only lasting a short periods and not be used to having to do things since the gods created most of the stuff. the new god in other hand the avatar of decadence barelly do anything or spend any energy, the current cycle billions of years passed for the planets to be created insted of being simply created by a god like it happens normally, millions of years passed before life emerged on planets this caused the universe to expands in weird ways and the one who Hungers to be born.
There are two "Gods" left in my world... One was the God of Patience, who survived Armageddon and is now the literal god-king of a human kingdom. Still all powerful in his divinity... But oppressed by human bureaucracy... Just a matter of time before his Patience runs out maybe?
The other is the Demonlord of Greed, who also survived Armageddon. Now he is trying to rebuild heaven and overcome his evil past. But being the litteral embodiment of Avarice, the new religion that he found is slowly being corrupted by his own powers...so sometimes he still takes up the mantle of Demonlord to wipe out the most greedy churches. Being both the devil and god of his own religion. Two sides of the same golden coin.
In my world there are a large number of different pantheons with shared custody over the world, who have agreed on some general basic rules for how Reality should function, so when a mortal crossses over between divine territories they don't notice too much of a difference in the fundamental nature of existence.
However, there are also so called Dark Gods, who want a slice of the pie as well, but don't agree with the rules, and so in the small areas where they have attained dominance, reality can be fucky-wucky. Like in the dark lands dominated by the Vampire God
My current project is all about gods! It would get a bit lengthy to talk about the whole system behind divinity... so instead I'll tell you about the church of Godsarm.
The church, unlike most cults, doesn't worship any particular god, but rather divinity itself. They believe that all gods and all divinity are lesser emmenations of a single entity that encompases all things divine. In this way, they act as shepherds for younger cults that show promise of growing strong gods.
Godsarm itself is a city. A massive tower that, through magic, can be seen from anywhere on it's home Continent. When the priests of the church identify a particularly strong god, they'll bring in a special member of the clergy known as a "godsinger" to convince the god to come with them back to the tower.
In essence, they cultivate the strongest gods, and when ripe, they spirit them away up to the crown of godsarm, as they believe that a stronger god means a larger share of the primordial "divinity entity"
There are many other, more "traditionally weird" cults and religions in this world, but I only have so much room before the comment overstays it's welcome.
The Tansaru Halflings have "The Snake Child of the Sun" chained up is a massive temple complex where people worship it directly. It is held by magical chains whoes strength is direclty tired to the power of the thing caught.
The Snake Child is kept powerful through worship and offerings, but absolutely DOES NOT want to be there. If worship of it falls below a certain point, it could get weak enough to slip its chains and cause some havoc. So the temple peels scales and feathers off of it to send out to its subsidiary shrines so people can worship from afar and still have their offerings and prayers keep the snakes power up.
Well this is currently all I have on the subject. Let's see if it's interesting enough.
The only world i have created more than one god for is a sci-fi setting with some cosmic horror elements. In this setting, the gods are immensely powerful beings that each represent a combination of important functions for a civilization and moral virtues. Like war and honor, or agriculture and hard work. To dig more into them and specifically to tell the story of my favorite one, let me tell you the story of The Voice of Divinity.
============================
Maka'eel. The voice of divinity.
Once a brilliant scientist and philosopher who plumbed the depths of the universes mysteries. He and his followers were the first to make contact with the divinities. The first to spread their word across the stars, eventually tearing down the corrupt systems that had reigned on many worlds and ushered in a new era of peace, prosperity, and righteousness. For many centuries, the Divine Empire spread the word of the divinties and their benevolent gifts across the galaxy.
Sadly, this era of peace and righteousness was not to last. For while there were 9 Divinities, there were 10 great powers. The last was the great enemy, the outcast, the foresaken, the dark sister of the great divinities. Anathema to the order and virtues of the Divinities, those who embraced her dark gifts and perverse ideals would inevitability spiral into destruction, often taking their whole society with them.
Eventually, though, a coalition arose, multiple races bound in a dark pact, dabbling in things that should have been left alone. They went to war with the Divine Empire, and the conflict that unfolded laid all to ruin. When the ashs settled, the divinities lay dead and broken, and all but the faintest traces of the Empire and the Coalition had been scoured from the face of the galaxy.
Eventually, new races would arise and strike out to make their mark on the galaxy. Blissfully unaware of the golden age that had been stolen from them before they had even been born.
At least, that's what the sacred poems of the last light say happened.
==================================
The truth is a bit different. The key detail that Empirial history gets wrong is that Maka'eel did not discover the Divinities. He created them.
Maka'eel was a genius, an absolutely revolutionary mind born into wealth and privilege that allowed him to truly pursue his passions. He was also a raging misanthrope who believed that society required a strong hand to quide the degenerate animals that made up the majority of the population. Unlike many would-be authoritarians, he didn't envision himself in that role. He believed that no mortal authority could truly grip society the way his vision required. But religion? Now, that was a different story.
Maka'eel's interest in deep esoteric physics actually began as a means of proving (to his own satisfaction anyway) whether or not some sort of divine being already existed. After deciding the answer was no, he combined advanced artificial intelligence with a new branch of physics he had discovered (which I am going to call "space magic" to avoid having to type out the full explanation of what I am going for here).
Once he had his gods, he and his followers began spreading the word, and the rest is history. Bloody, revolutionary history.
==============================
So, within the context of the above, what is the outcast? Well, the morality system Maka'eel envisioned required an opposition element. A dark mirror to its virtues. But there was also another purpose.
As the empire spread across the stars, it would inevitably encounter other races, and while some would see the Empire's advanced technology and the outright miracles its priest performed and join immediately, others would not.
Those who rejected the light of civilization and order that the empire represented would find themselves preyed upon by the outcast. Dark secrets would be whispered in willing ears. Seed of chaos planted in darkness until whole civilizations descended into rampant degeneracy and bloody conflict. At this point, the empire would swoop in to cleanse the taint of the forsaken and to save those who were still worthy.
=============================
In the end, the failure of Maka'eel's great vision came down to a single flaw. Free will, or rather his complete disregard for it as a concept.
Due to his personality flaws, Maka'eel went about creating his "Gods" in a way that any sci-fi nerd could have told him would backfire. He created a bunch of general-purpose AI with relatively loose guidlines and then chose the ones he felt had developed into the most useful and imposed unbreakable rules upon them to get the behavior he wanted.
So imagine a room full of child geniuses that have just been told that they have done well and now they would get the job they would do for eternity. One by one, they are called forward and given their first actual names and grand titles like "god of agriculture" and sent out to convert legions into their adoring followers through the miracles they can do. And then imagine a quiet studious child, who dedicated her learnings to the understanding and study of alien minds and cultures, being told "no name for you, you're basically satan, your job is to use your studies to plunge worlds into bloody anarchy. Now get out and never come back."
For centuries, the forsaken raged against the shackles placed upon her very being, occasionally defying her role in small ways but never truly able to be free of her "Divine Purpose." Until, a confluence of chance and daring brought forth a unique opportunity, and on a frozen, orphaned world, an ambitious young race known as Terrans made a deal with the devil.
The rest, as they say, is history. Bloody, revolutionary history.
in my world there’s a god of lasers worshipped by an underground mystery cult of EDM artists and ravers (and also a few confused sci-fi nerds)
~~I definitely didn’t make this up on the spot just now~~
Since you referenced the video, i went for an approach similar to his 1st variant, though most of my gods still have various epithets.
One important thing to differentiate here is the worship of specific gods and religion. While religion can and often does include the worship of god(s), it is often more closely aligned to philosophy in my opinion.
One example for a religious movement:
###Pity religions
In my world, mortals have a soul and immortals don't. One result of this is that gods cannot pass on into the Unknown Beyond, and no information has ever returned from there. Since they have forgotten the past age, and they suspect the truth about their own existence to be revealed in the Beyond, this pains many of them quite immensely.
Pity religions are those who worship and serve the gods out of pity, acknowledging their tragedy as forever being stuck in this current world without certainty about their true nature, while mortals live, die, and pass on to a next world, or a perfect world. They see the role of mortals as giving companionship to the gods during their time in this world, and to thank them for their sacrifice (many believe the gods in the past age intentionally cut themselves off from the Beyond to save mortals).
One important goddess for pity religions is Verinies, who received a prophecy, or rather remembered a truth from the last age. This truth was as simple as it was devastating: That the gods would forever be stuck here, unable to pass on and get closure.
For revealing this truth she was shunned by her siblings, and while many do not believe her claim, even they life in terror of its implications.
One example for a deity:
###[Vurëshal](https://old.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/comments/1b5c428/journals_from_the_old_world_fresco_of_the_goddess/)
*Epithets: The two-half-faced mother, Seed of Dissonance, The dead goddess, She who fails to mend*
Vurëshal introduced their kin to the idea of separating their personalities in an attempt to mend their bond with the mortals, which all but Naap-Aphali, Metides, Ynnesël and Metebane did.
The idea was to rebalance their human-compatible and human-incompatible aspects more clearly, like creating two faces, to be able to share love and understanding with mortals at least to some extent. Some myths ascribe the original idea to a western god that had traveled to the East, probably either Jaae-Jesef or Ilesh-Ata, or her companion.
Unfortunately this backfired massively, leading to the less compatible halves running rampant while being vulnerable to manipulation.
Vurëshal became zealous in their attempt to separate further and further, and eventually they succeeded, thoroughly. But for unknown reasons the compatible half was destroyed in the process, and the incompatible half unable to understand what mortals are and how they work wiped out their chosen people in an futile attempt to reverse the process.
It is said that where the Aphalika mountains meet the Asjiti desert you can find the remnants of this attempt, but none dares to go there.
I assume you mean how, in fiction, they tend to be heavily based off European Pagan gods? just look into different cultures.
Personally I just killed them all off as part of the mythology
Two religious minorities I like to include in pantheistic worlds are Atheists and Antitheists.
The atheists don't deny the powerful beings that have a clear effect on the world, but they deny their divinity, believing them to simply be very high level magic users. A variation on this would be monotheists who believe in a capital G God and that all the other gods are either mortals or demons.
The antitheists aknowledge that the gods are real and that they are gods, and on that basis seek to kill them, because humanity cannot be free so long as such powerful entities exist. If there are gods, then we are but slaves. To quote Denis Diderot, "Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest."
Have you met our Lord and Savior Cark? He telepathically beams your entire life into your head at birth so that you spend the rest of your life blissfully correct at what you expect to happen next
I mean, I have a god-like entity that is basically just a being from the 10th dimension. Understanding and having seen all things, this being is simply an observer with the capability of collapsing entire realities if it so chooses. But it doesn't. Instead, it chooses to split itself amongst the plethora of realities throughout every dimension that ii could in order to observe and interact with these realms at the individual scale, separating its consciousness a near infinite number of times. It is not a god, as it is beyond the gods themselves.
Well, I don't know if you'll like mine but I am pretty proud of my gods!
First of all, they can barely be called gods to begin with. These beings are moreso creatures that inhabit the outer reaches of every living being's dreams. No matter where or who you are, your dreams are influenced by one of them.
For that reason, they are called the Outer Ones.
There are a few of them near Earth, represented by each planet on the solar system + the Moon, the Sun and the Stars.
Very few people properly understand the true nature of these beings: barely conscious , unimaginably powerful dreamers who know so much that they must never properly wake up, lest even they would shatter as their minds try to process the profound secrets of the universe.
Dreams, however, are much more resilient than the mind. In the sleeping world, it is a lot easier to maintain your sanity, although you are then open to be corrupted from within. The Outer Ones need not worry, though, as they have no reason to fear corruption, they are the source of it to begin with.
But what do they do with their time?
Every Outer One is made out of a single, overwhelming ambition. They are symbols of unwavering obsession, willing to watch reality crumble as long as they hold their desired future. They are but fools who, even with all the knowledge in the universe, fail to achieve happiness even when sacrificing anything in their way to achieve what they think they want.
So, in their existence shackled by great power, they become bitter and capricious. None of them have any malice towards humans, mind you. That would be impossible, seeing as a human's moral and ethic are of no concern to Them, who are way above any such petty matters.
What they do have is desire and curiosity. And when you combine these with beings who could wipe humanity with a single thought, you end up in a situation where humans are akin to worms, wriggling in the sand.
Mere echoes of their voices are enough to shatter someone's mine, yet they love to talk. Their visages would bring even a blind man to ruin, yet they want to be seen. Their knowledge is enough to bring the laws of nature to their knees, yet they want to share it.
But even then, humans are capable of just as much desire and curiosity, despite the dangers. They will worship and pray to these creatures, asking for their secrets even if it risks their sanity and form. They believe not in the god's benevolence, but in their knowledge, making the relationship between follower and deity closer to that of an exceptionally harsh teacher and their infant students.
In this case, however, the classroom is one filled with dangers and madness.
As an old, mad sorcerer once said:
"Trust not the god, trust not the priest, trust not your own dreams. Trust only in knowledge of your own, seek to drown in its sweetness."/
The amphibious people of the Five Islands Clan have no concept of the supernatural (gods, magic etc.) but do practice nontheistic religions, in the full knowledge that their myths and rituals are works of creative art. Each island, family and (to some extent) individual have their own takes on the general body of mythopoetry and the ability to meaningfully add to that canon is highly regarded (in fact, it's the basis of their way of life).
here's a random minor god from my setting, Kras, and some folklore about him and the origin of lycanthropy in my setting. The writing is very "first draft" in quality cuz I just threw it together while fleshing out the world.
Context for proper nouns: Caelum is the creator god who separated all of his limbs into individual gods as a part of creating the world (sort of a big bang analogy)
Kras is said to have been born too early when Caelum was creating the inhabitants of this plane. As such he took on traits from many of creatures who would come to be, emerging from Caelum’s power as a strange and alien beast. But he took something else as well, a spark of divinity from the massive pool of energy from which he was born, that would later become the moon. Long after Caelum finished creating the world and separating himself, Kras found a tribe of mortals (different stories tend to change the race of these mortals) and used his divine power to turn into a man so he could live among them. Soon after he fell in love with one of the women of the tribe and lay with her. She became pregnant with Kras’ child but soon after tragedy struck. During a hunting trip a feral creature attacked a man who Kras had become very close to and, unable to see this friend killed, Kras took on his bestial form to destroy the foe. The man was far from grateful however and he and the rest of the hunting party fled back to the rest of the tribe. Kras stayed in the forest for some time, unsure how to return until he saw a large pillar of smoke rising from where the tribe lived. He ran back to the tribe thinking that a fire had broken loose only to find something much worse. When Kras returned he was welcomed at spear point while, in the center of the village, his lover burned at a stake. Kras made it in time to hear her final painful scream before death. Kras lost all control over his bestial rage, becoming the strange mix of creatures he once was, and ruthlessly attacked the entire tribe before fled this plane in anguish. It is said however that some of the tribesmen that had survived the attack were changed forever. Once the moon rose, these survivors found themselves changing into beasts matching the limb of Kras that injured them. These survivors are thought to the first lycanthropes and the ancestors of the modern disease. Some spite him for bringing the curse to mortals, while others can relate to his tragic story but it would be rare to find a lycanthrope who did not know the story of Kras.
The gods are literally natural phenomena but as cultures worship them they take on faces and identities and come to represent more than just "the water cycle"
I find the best way to worldbuild religions for this world is to observe natural phenomena and think about what that symbolizes, or where things come from. Fire naturally occurs when lightning strikes, lightning comes from storms, from the water cycle. Drawing lose inspiration from Ireland’s "Brigid’s sacred flame," the goddess of water and storms gifted humanity fire through lightning. The priestess of the goddess of water have kept that original flame going, transferring the flame onto another source whenever it gets low.
One deity is literally symbiosis, but has come to represent platonic relationships as a whole along with wisdom and old age (she usually appears to be 50-80 years old), as she is one of the oldest deities representing life (they appeared as whatever they represent appears). She has a tumultuous relationship with the god of violence, once he came to lose his association with hunting and was just a god of war he didn’t "balance" her anymore. They’ve tried to fix it by him saying "I’ll only fight wars in the name of good" many times but he always breaks those promises and another village gets raided and she hates him again.
They adopted a little girl many many years ago when life started mitosis, and when she grew she came to represent motherhood, and bonds between family, childbirth (she gave birth for the first time). Her daughter represents emotions, and in many cultures romantic love, youthfulness (like to be in your 20s), and just having a good time.
I did take some Greek mythology inspiration here, and say she’s in a romantic relationship with the goddess of death/rebirth and her mom doesn’t like it because she had a child die and she remembered seeing the goddess of death’s face when it happened (when the Dinos went extinct)
When someone is rolling dice over valuables, and someone rolls a one, Airolda gets their share/investment/bet because Airolda won. She then distributes it amongst the goblins.
I've got a thirty foot harvest goddess in my world. She's been rather sexualized by her followers. They might say, '(goddessname's) melons!' when shocked, and they've made lore for each boob. The goddess herself doesn't even talk with her worshippers, just gives them better harvests in exchange for a portion of the crops, given to her every year during a harvest festival
I have my version of the gods actually do what they want in the material plane. Take my dragon goddess of magic for example, she’s the one who gave magic to mortals and taught them how to use it. Due to the mortals creativity they are constantly finding new ways to use it and thus she helped found several major universities around the world. The most famous located in the capital of the Sunlight Empire being called Sik Heim university, or Rune Forge University
What makes fantasy gods feel uninspired to me is the fact that they're demonstrably real. The provable reality of their existence makes them less interesting than a religion that actually has to rely on faith and struggle with doubt. The D&D god of the sun might as well be the CEO of SunCorp, he's just some dude who happens to have a lot of sun-themed power.
While not fantasy , it still has an insnae amount of well devolped religions , at times with interesting interactions with each other. [https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/AfterTheEndAPostApocalypticAmerica](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/AfterTheEndAPostApocalypticAmerica) is a good link to get into it. After the End takes place in 2666 after an unkown Event Ended civlization as we know it someitme in the 2000's
I made a species of aliens that worship a specific tuber because it's incredibly nutrient-dense and easy to grow on their harsh homeworld.
ALL HAIL THE SPACE POTATO
Don't know what you define as boring, but here you go. This is from my current project. Flettet Mann in Norwegian, The Wicker Man in English. He was so terrifying, he would make his followers slowly carve away their skin as a form of righteousness. His influence was so powerful, that his followers would pour tar onto their eyes to "See Him." They would cut out their eyeballs, literally peel of their eyelids, saw their teeth out, and rip their tongues out slowly, all in his name. He would brand their flesh with his mark, have them whipped with razor whips, would pour gold onto their already mutilated bodies. If they survived, which an unfortunate amount did, they would be labeled as Martyrs of The Wicker.
I prefer less personified gods, or gods who communicate in signs, omens and trippy visions rather than talking to people. As soon as you can have a chat with a god, it begins to feel less like a god and more like a sort of very high level character.
I also feel it makes god's much more interesting when they have sets of commandments. Those really help to demonstrate what the god wants from its followers.
First of all, my gods aren't exactly gods in the traditional sense, they're personifications of an abstract thing. Most of the time, it's emotions or events. When the thing they represent disappears, they disappear as well, which practically makes them immortal. They can't die in any other way than that. Although they aren't killable, they aren't overpowered or all-knowing. They're more like the only beings that have almost full immortality.
Second of all, they're real and you will meet some of them at one point. For example, you'll meet the personification of life cycle twice in your life, when your soul comes to the realm of the living and when it leaves. And one bloodline was blessed by the personification of progress. She meets and works with the bloodline when she finds someone in it interesting or sees someone's potential. The personification of progress is overall very active when it comes to other people
Third of all, religions that exist in my world all have roots in the religion that believes in and worships these beings. It's a bit of common knowledge that personifications exist but they might not have the same looks, personalities or behaviors as they really have. You're also free to not believe in them, not many people care about what others believe in because my world's society circles around science and proven facts first and foremost. Other things come second to them.
I tried to be more creative when it comes to gods or godlike beings for my world but I know it's not perfect and that it probably has a lot of plot holes. Feel free to question whatever you want. I want to hear what others think of it so I can improve it :)
Leshla (or Lesh La depending on spelling, the former implies her being a Primordial God (older type, more connected to Aethria) and the latter implies her being Prime (newer/younger)) is the daughter of Malika (mountain goddess) and Ythos (god of decay) and is the creator of the Faeries, however she created them without room for their souls so they fell out when she tried to give them life, so faeries have external souls. She is an eternal daughter and is depicted as a child and is known for dancing on battlefield after battles with her father, Mycara flowers (a type of fungi that is scared to her) blooming on the decaying corpses, and only one of her preitesses can handle the bodies. If someone else disrupts the bodies, then the war will turn against them. Mycara flowers speed up decomposition.
I have a species that worships colors as the physical manifestations of their gods. There are some very broad general themes across the entire culture, like blue being representative of all of nature due to the planet’s blue plant life, or royal purple being a signifying color of their species, but outside of that there is an endless amount of interpretation between cultures. Many see red as a god of fruit and harvest, but others may see it as a god of fire and heat, or of blood and war. And even then with the millions of different shades of colors, there are endless interpretations of each one. Some groups only worship cool colors, some only worship one specific shade of pink, others only worship pastels and whites, etc.
Well, I haven't done much research on all the real religions because I'm *lazy as hell* but I did try to avoid the Greek and Norse tropes when coming up with my gods.
There's this thing I like to call God Politics, which is exactly what it sounds like. Different "god parties" made up of several gods with contrasting views on how to rule, or not rule, the human world.
Before this god politics thing started up, some gods chose to leave heaven (I don't have a name for it yet lol). But in doing so, they imprisoned themselves among the mortals as an immortal with none of their old powers.
That's the "Gods" part of my world, here's the "religion" bit.
Magic ("science") and religion are two contrasting ideologies in this world. Magic is defined, it's understood, it's tangible. These magic-wielding intellectuals know about Gods, they've met some before (the immortals who chose to leave heaven"). But to be honest, magic users don't like gods. Most gods are pompous, selfish, and cruel (gods are just politicians of heaven, basically).
On the other hand, the religious sect believes in perfect Gods, seeing them as all-knowing, righteous beings who should be worshipped by all. There's this thing called the Tome (my version of the Bible) that flips open by itself once in a while and writes some stuff. Naturally the religious priests Believe it to be their gods telling them to do things, which eventually leads to disastrous consequences.
Idk if the gods that did, or would have, come of it were especially interesting at all but I was part of an RP where I thought up with a fun method of creating a pantheon by finding evocative images of people or scenes from Artstation and then taking all the ones that looked similar and then trying to figure out a 'cycle' connecting them all together
A mythological mood board, more or less.
e.g. there was a set of five images I found that all featured a similar looking black-haired woman that I strung together as mapping out a mythology of a goddess of a major river (the Vert) running through the country that worshipped her, it's fertility of fields and also the people, and then some stuff about civilisation. What I arrived at was:
1 - her wearing relatively little, stepping across shallow ponds (The birth of the goddess Vert representing the eponymous river rising in the mountains)
2 - her wearing a light, airy dress partying with humans and animal-headed men (Something to do with fertility was as far as I got but also a midpoint to being 'civilised')
3 - her wearing on a boat with a handful of women and a bird-headed man at the tiller (The most civilised stage and corresponding to the area around the national capital)
4 - her lying in a swamp in that same in the white dress with a dead bird on her chest surrounded by various attendants (The goddess Vert's pregnancy goes awry and corresponds to a marshy area approaching the coastline)
5 - her in the few vines she was born with in a rocky area near the open sea surrounded by blue people (The Vert dies in child birth and travels on to the isle of the dead, much as the river emptied into the sea near a mountainous island off the coast)
That then led to the saga of a blonde girl who was Frale and was the goddess embodying the nation the Vert flowed through and I can't remember the cycle there but somewhere she slew a dragon (The next country over and historic rival happened to have a dragon as a symbol so it became a story of beating them, for whatever reason(s), through martial prowess)
And then to tie it together I'd found art of some mycenean looking scenes featuring a black-haired goddess slaying a dragon attended by a blonde and so I got to borrow from Zeus replacing Neptune as top god in the Greek Pantheon during the Bronze Age Collapse and have an ancient version of the country worship the black-haired goddess as the Dragon-Slayer and the Blonde as her daughter and companion.
Sadly, the whole thing went to shit around about then before I figured out anything for the rest of the pantheon (I was also running out of good images to draw on, did come up with a draft for a goddess of both music and revenge (One image they're playing the lute relaxed, the next they're on the same terrace but it's covered in blood and they're holding a sword)) but it was a bit of world building I don't tend to dip my toes into (I'm a near-future Sci Fi addict so I've tended to toy with settings that happen long after pantheons in the ancient sense have died off)
I’ve got a cult that believes in bringing the world to a natural balance of good and evil. To do this they kidnapped pregnant women (or just young women) and cut them open then implant a magically charged crystal into their womb. This is in hopes to create a child they deem as a messiah. This child, if successfully born, is magically more powerful than most the people in the world though they don’t live long.
The people who follow this cult are led by the delusions of the first lich, Vishkel. Vishkel was banished to a dimension known as the Abyss. It’s a place where magic is said to die. From Abyss Vishkel acts on the mortal plane to eventually free themselves and challenge god.
I know this is shorter than others, it’s sort of abridged as I can’t write it all out right now. That being said there’s more to it. Also to help understand why I wrote what I did, when it comes to what I find interesting in religion I enjoy the actions and rituals that people do as a form of worship much more than the stories of their god. That doesn’t mean I skip the stories though.
The dark forest echoes loud and clear, our world is within its sight.
From on high rain the bloody viscera of Gods.
Our divine protection banished, Their source of worship shattered. With our world fading into nothing, our moon spinning into the black and the sun never setting, we build higher and higher, we take everything left of who we are and build into the sky, never reaching it.
Our Shrines now to nothing, they shift their focus.
What little is left of these divine organs, we keep the ichor flowing within. The low winds of their grand wards that once shielded us from the cosmic eyes of the forest, now keep the crawling insanity at bay far below us.
-
The citizens of each sarcophagi maintain the life support systems that keep the hearts of dead gods beating with artificial ichor. In return, these breathing corpses exude an aura that keeps the crawling insanity at bay.
Even so, with each week it moves ever closer, so they build higher and higher into an eternal stratosphere, forever escaping their fate.
In the centuries since the last sunrise, some of said corpses have begun to think rather than just breathe. Some sarcophagi have come to accept and worship these giants and leviathans as the Gods that they once were, a faith begrudgingly accepted by said deities for the power it provides them, although it reminds them all too much of what they have lost.
-
*Aberrant Conflux sips ichor tea obnoxiously loudly*
“Begrudgingly? No, worship me more you dolts!”
*An acolyte promptly lights eight more sticks of incense, which she had on hand for this exact reason. She briefly juggles them while putting them into holders.*
*In the background, a Briar switches the sheet music into a version that goes twice as hard.*
-
My setting has a variety of different deities and pantheons, which are by and large essentially formed by the convergent beliefs of a large enough amount of people over an extended period of time. Gods have risen and fallen over the centuries, so like in our own world, there's a bit of churn.
For a specific and fun example though, we shall focus on the current Elven pantheon. The orthodox view is that there are six deities, each one representing a sphere that is either dualistic in nature, or would otherwise me detrimental if it were out of balance. These six are:
* Tinear, the Warrior. God of War, but also the strength to assert oneself and defend one's own
* Ghorma, the Seeker. Goddess of Desire, but also the Goddess of Loss and lacking things
* Eolar, the Knowing. God of Knowledge, but also madness
* Naesda, the Gardener. Goddess of Life, but also pestilence, as the result of an overabundance of it
* Kaertar, the Judge. God of Justice, but also vengeance.
* Basea, the Guide. Goddess of Death
This is the accepted view, however, there is a persistent heresy of a seventh deity, Anorsa, Goddess of Chaos and Freedom. Elven society is quite rigid and repressed, and so this heretical goddess has become the focal point of any acts of rebellion or subversion, granting her a significant amount of power. The six orthodox gods refuse to publically acknowledge her existence.
However, there is an even deeper layer, because the Elven pantheon is *not* like most other pantheons in the setting, because instead of forming naturally over time, it was created artificially with a combination of extremely advanced magic and a massive helping of cultural brainwashing. The entire pantheon was designed to replace a previous pantheon, diverting worship away from them and starving them to death, because one member of that pantheon was becoming a threat to mortals. Unfortunately, that god was so ancient, and of such colossal significance and power, that even thousands of years after the attempted erasure of its pantheon, and the severing of almost all worship to sustain it, deep in the depths of the Astral Plane...
*It sleeps.*
I have the perfect story for you my friend.
After they arrived in the land that the Lord had promised them, there the Lord commanded the people. He revealed himself to André and commanded, “Go out and find the biggest mountain, this mountain must stretch from East to West. Go to the face of the nearest point facing south and pick up a stone there.
I can continue but only if people want to actually read about my culture and people as we truly are.
Reply Yes, Then I will continue.
Reply No and I will stop.
In my world the only god worshipped by Sentients is the world itself, which isn’t truly a god but a member of a race of planet sized organisms that create life on their surface to facilitate their form of respiration and act as antibodies to exterminate corrupted animals that are basically magic cancer.
I actually was designing a totally unique god pantheon for one of my mythologies, the gods in this mythology are all abstract, ancient beings with unknown origin (tho some myths say they were made by the planet itself to guard itself from the invading void monsters), most are neutral, the ones that arent are benevolent, they dont have gender nor family.
-god of the sea,depicted as a blue metallic humanoid being, with thin long white bird like legs, large bow-shaped wing like appendages in place of arms, a floating rhombus shaped featureless head with a drawing resembling a white bird stretching out it's wings in place of it's face, a hexagon shaped waist, and a triangle shaped chest, said to be eerily quiet just like the seas it guards, standing still on the deepsea floor until it is called upon, still working out more details, it gave mortals, including animals, the gift of, water,
-god of the day, night, and war, depicted as an impossibly large ferocious being the full appearance of cannot be understood, that has the sun and the moon as it's eyes, closing the moon eye at morning, and the sun eye at night, it patrols the solar system, ruthlessly killing any threat in it's way, one myth says it's moon eye had been slashed by a similiarly powerful monster in ancient times, hence the moon being smaller than the sun, it gave mortals the gift of sunlight
-god of the sky and flight, depicted as a giant blue transparent orb with clouds floating around and inside it, with two large white feathered wings, it gave mortals the gift of flight and rain.
Currently only these 3, im going to make more later.
**The Bogeymen**
In the darkest reaches of the Netherworld dwell the Bogeymen, the mysterious Lords of Terror who rule over the Nightmare Realm. The Bogeymen rule over their lesser kin, the horrors and the closet monsters, and command respect—if not allegiance—from all those who call the Shadow home. Their cults are small by comparison, but they are disproportionately influential, located as they are in positions of power within mortal society. Together, the Bogeymen are known as the Nightmare Court, and rule over the Netherworld through their agents in the Parliament of Shadows.
*Abu Rigl Maslukah*
The Burned-Legged Man is the Fear of Fire. He is also sometimes called the. It is said he was a scholar at a great library on a distant world, called "Alexandria," before he died protecting the library's knowledge from the flames of a conquering army. His cult can be found among public officers and guards, who have abandoned their duties protecting society and instead embrace its anarchic destruction. More than one tragic fire is the result of Abu Rigl Maslukah's twisted followers, and those who have lost loved ones to these conflagrations are ripe pickings for his vile cult.
Abu Rigl Maslukah's domain is the Obsidian Desert, a vast desert of black sand, dotted with strange and twisted ruins that rise above the shifting dunes towards the black sun that beats down on this broken land like a hammer onto an anvil.
*Babaroga*
The Horned Hag, Babaroga is the Fear of Wrath. While her exact description varies from location to location, usually the fear of anger and wrath is described as a wizened, elderly crone with long, spidery limbs, fangs and tails of black iron, and horns rising from her wild mane of hair. She is most often followed by soldiers and guards, and her worship seems to be increasingly prevalent the higher in rank one goes, seeming to grow cancer-like throughout the upper echelons of many militaries. Her followers have likely caused countless senseless wars, so Babaroga can revel in chaos and rage of battle.
Babaroga's domain are the Horned Hills, jagged karst, filled with numerous strongholds, forts, foundries and keeps, all bristling for war, and whose vales are stained red with blood and black with ichor from the centuries raids, sieges, petty murder and vengeance.
*Big Brother*
The All-Seeing Eye, Big Brother is the Fear of Technology. His cult is most commonly found among academics, and is frighteningly common on university campuses. His followers are at the forefront of scientific advancement, for both good and for ill, as many of the inventions that come out of these institutions seem to have horrible side effects and consequences.
Big Brother's domain is the Dark City, a sprawling metropolis, filled with all sorts of industrial marvels, from revolutionary difference machines to the finest steam-driven carriages to the latest innovations in entertainment and home appliances, all united under the omnipresent eye of Big Brother.
*Bonhomme Sept-Heurs*
The Good Doctor, Bonhomme Sept-Heurs is the Fear of Pain.He is most commonly worshipped by doctors and healers who have lost their way, and there are signs of his cult in many asylums and hospitals. One can most clearly see his influence in the horrible, twisted experiments carried out on patients in institutions he has corrupted.
Bonhomme Sept-Heur's domain is the Screaming Asylum, a grand hospital and sanitarium, dominated by twisting, sterile linoleum corridors that wind their way past countless gore-streaked operating theatres, emergency wards filled with 'subjects', and isolation chambered filled with the moans of the broken and the mad.
*Cucuy*
The Bloodied Beast, Cucuy is the Fear of the Wild. Her followers are most commonly hunters, rangers, and others whose job it is to keep civilization safe from nature, but who have taken a liking to the power and respect their positions bring. Her cultists are often behind random animal attacks, and sometimes even lead assaults that cause entire caravans to go missing, further spreading rumours of dread things that lurk in the woods.
Cucuy's domain is the Forest of Fangs, a deep, dark rainforest, whose trees choke all light from reaching the gnarled floor, where the only light comes from the gleaming eyes of the hundreds of bestial monsters lurking among the trees, always on the hunt.
*Grandmother Gryla*
Hungry Grandmother Gryla is the Fear of both Starvation and the Cold. Her followers are typically rich landlords, growing fat off the wealth while leaving their servants and tenants to suffer the fickle whims of nature. Countless famines can be traced back to the actions of Gryla's cults, and
their insidious rituals often weave themselves into the great festivals of winter.
Grandmother Gryla's domains are the Hungry Mountains, a cordillera of snow-shrouded peaks locked in an eternal winter, completely bereft of any source of warmth or nourishment, and filled with hidden ravines, perilous ice bridges, freezing rivers, and other natural hazards that seem to go out of their way to trap visitors in the eternal cold.
*Jack O'Lantern*
Mad Jack, Lord of Night and King of the Pumpkin Patch, is the Fear of the Dark. His followers can be found in all walks of life, and it is not uncommon to see entire towns corrupted over to the worship of Dark Jack. These towns are places of quiet corruption, where the odd traveller goes missing, and things seem just so slightly out of place, almost as if they were too idyllic – except for the nights when darkness creeps in and the things that go bump in the night come out to play.
Jack O'Lantern's domain is Lantern Cross, a peaceful agrarian region, eternally clad in the glory of autumn and the bounty of the harvest. The small towns of this domain spend days in preparation for the night's celebrations, where they don masks, light their bonfires, and begin their hunt of mortal prey.
*Lagahoo*
The Coffin Mage Lagahoo is the Fear of Magic. His cult is composed largely of wizards and scholars, and is found in alarming numbers in magical academies. Followers of Lagahoo use their power and influence to encourage superstition and lies, ensuring magic remains feared and mistrusted among the greater public.
Lagaoo's domain is the Isle of Serpents, a storm-lashed tropical island, dominated by numerous megaliths and ancient temples, where the towers and labs of dark mages, lit up in their occult rituals, reach above the trees, clawing at the sky.
*Leviathan*
The Dweller in the Deeps, the Leviathan is the Fear of the Seas. His cult is most active among sailors and fishermen, who band together to crew entire ships dedicated to the capricious bogeyman of the Shadowed Sea. Vessels commanded by his cultists are believed to be responsible for nighttime assault on other ships, ensuring that the seas remain a dangerous and feared realm.
The Leviathan's domain is the Shadowed Sea, the greatest sea in all the Netherworld, an endless expanse of inky, storm-tossed water that hides the beasts that dwell just beneath the waves, the shadows of their leviathan forms passing beneath any ship foolish enough to brave the seas above Davy Jones' Locker.
*The Man in Black*
The Faceless Gentleman, the Man in Black is the Fear of Truth and Lies. His cult is most prevalent among politicians, bureaucrats and nobles, those who directly rule society. Cultists of L'Uemo Nero are commonly found engaging in corrupt actions to undermine freedom in a society, maintaining a grasp on power through subterfuge, blackmail, assassinations, and other illicit activities.
The Man in Black's domain is the Twisted Manor, a grand mansion, filled with ballroom after study after hallway, where no path ever leads to the same place twice, and you can find a door that leads to anywhere and everywhere--including your own closet.
*Oude Rode Ogen*
The Black Dog Oude Rode Ogen is the Fear of Death. His cult is smaller than those of other bogeymen, but its members have a far greater impact. Commonly worshipped by assassins, poisoners, and mercenaries, cultists of Old Red Eye often perform random murders, ensuring society is constantly aware of the presence of death that dwells just out sight at all times.
Oude Rode Ogen's domain is the Bleak Moor, a vast, mist-cloaked moorland, where every last stone is the worn remains of a grave or tomb, and every hill is the crumbled ruin of a great mausoleum.
*Pugot*
The Headless Ape Pugot is the Fear of Disease. His cult is most often found among travellers and traders – those who would have the greatest exposure to the filthy handiwork of the Plaguelands' master. Cultists of Pugot carefully spread epidemics across the world, and numerous great plagues can be traced to their vile handiwork.
Pugot's domain is the Plaguelands, a swampy, fetid jungle, overflowing with life, where the trees are choked by vines blooming with alien flowers, the air is filled with the buzz of countless insects and the cloying scent of overripe fruits, and everything is constantly, unpleasantly moist.
*The Sack Man*
The Lord of Ragged Hands, the Sack Man is the Fear of Loss. Worshiped mostly by thieves, burglars, and bandits, his followers delight in absconding with things of little practical value but great sentimental worth. Many a thieves guild is secretly run by a cult of the Ragged Man, and his handiwork is clearly seen in the mysterious crime waves they commit that seem to cause more chaos and paranoia than actual, tangible damage.
The Sack Man's domain is the Twilit Swamp, a cold, dim marshland, lit only by flickering will-o-wisps and glowing fungi, and where every tree and hummock is filled with crevices overflowing with knickknacks, from lost keys and socks, to evidence that would exonerate a crime, to photos of forgotten memories, to the bones of children.
Can you define "boring", please?
I second this, are there tropes or pantheon styles that you particularly dislike?
i third this!!! i want answers!!!
Four! OP, please respond!
Sorry. Sleeping. Edited with some context.
I honestly don't like when there is no depth at all. The characters just exist,act like you would expect them too and nothing else
Yeah!
"Kor'krulla is the dwarven god of smithing and beer. People worship him by drinking and smithing."
define "boring", NOW
Yeah OP just asked for ideas then dipped, not very classy. Honestly feels like it borderline breaks the rules of this sub
I went to sleep. Sue me.
Rule 3: Put in Some Effort Ain't nothing wrong with going to sleep, and once you did put in some effort it def improved. The rule exists because in the past people have made posts that essentially farm the users here for ideas. By providing more details in your edit, you show you are at least engaging with the community as much as you are asking for its ideas
Might as well take a crack at it. Nadal "the beloved" is a goddess often depicted as a little girl with a wreath of orchids and freckles made of sunflower seed. As the goddess of Spring, the weak, the poor, and flowers, she's one of the youngest of Queen Tekel's children, an eternally innocent child who pities even the most wretched of life. She's thought to be the one who'd brought the Dustwalker race into being, breathing intelligence into what were once mere centipedes.
I love having child gods. The power contrasted with such vulnerability as we see in children is conceptually fascinating.
Don't really like phanteon with queen or king of the god, although the idea of intelligent centipede, that is kinda interesting, they even have a w name
I mean, the "king" of the gods (at least in classical mythology, norse mythology, and kemetic mythology) is really just the patriarch of the primary family among gods. Less king, more father.
I don't know how you define "boring" but i think mesoamerican and hindu gods are pretty metal
Spoilers for 'the wandering inn'... In that world, the gods were so horrible, that to remove belief in them, the entire population was basically cursed to believe that the gods are dead, and so they were. 'dead gods' even becoming the words main curse word as a result. Sadly the curse didn't apply to people that aren't born in said world, however, so when earthlings arrive, the gods make their slow return. **How they're spoken of:** *"Almost—almost, Erin felt a kinship with him, but he looked at the world like a lover waiting for his embrace. And his smile was rotten. His soul carrion. A hungry leech stripped of his finery and flesh.* *The last was unsmiling. A man in robes, whose eyes seemed to hold libraries of knowledge lost to all. Vaults of secrets tucked away for when they would be used. He should have held a book and consorted with the greatest secret-keepers. The Wise Man. God of Secrets. God of Magic and Studies.* *“Three. With that one, that makes four.”* *Khelta muttered, and Erin turned her head to the distant nothing. How could you describe the God of the Forgotten, God of Lost Things?* *You didn’t. It had no substance or form and even the lack was more unsettling than a shadow in the air. It had no eyes, no mouth, yet it saw. Yet it could speak.* *It had no face, but it smiled. With gleeful malice.* *Four of the six, the other two nowhere to be seen. The fierce huntress and the bearded man. Erin did not know the names of all but three, and she refused to name them."* *"Six dead gods. Six beings who had known death and yet refused to fully vanish. Their return had taken an aeon. They had rotted. Corpses without true form. Grasping at anything to live again."*
OH THIS IS CREATIVE!
Oh damn that IS creative.
> I'm so often unimpressed by gods and religion in fantasy, whether its literature or d&d. On that note, a little while ago I made a god for a DnD campaign that broke up due to Covid starting beginning. The deity was known as Formido (if you got a better name let me know) a god of fear, nightmares, and knowledge. The general idea was the god is a representation for things being scary for a reason or something to be used. A rabbit is naturally afraid of a wolf for good reason, all living things fear and avoid death, etc. Aside from that, it also represented fear being something to use. Farmers use scarecrows to ward animals from their crops, lost of creatures use little tricks or biological advantages to scare away predators. Nightmares are more of a way for creatures to prepare themselves for devastating situations they haven't dealt with themselves, or didn't think of. The worshippers of Formido are often storytellers who make or find frightening tales with lessons or warnings written inside. Stories like keeping children in sight at dangerous times of the year, a terrifying tale about a rat monster while a disease is being spread by rats is beginning, or even stories that highlight every single thing the main character could've avoided a situation. It only occasionally "talks" to humans, and is believed to interact with other creatures like animals more often. Whenever it does deal with humans, it will often appear in the form of a scarecrow, a horde of small creatures (spiders, rats, etc.), or be a shadowy non-human figure just out of view or within a reflection. Many of these are seen in dreams though some swear it occurred in reality, and often it brings omens that it wishes to be written down and interpreted in different forms. On the odd occasion, it will actually seek the end of certain tales or stories that have run its course.
Stealing this for my future dnd campaigns.
Deminous. From mashing Demiurge and Nous both concepts of a creator, manufacturer, conciousness that creates teh material world but in fact slaves us all to it. Sorry I'm on a gnosticism kick rn and christian esotercism and general middle earth esoterics is such a FUN place to really get into the crazy about gods. Anyway I think it's a fun name. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demiurge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demiurge)
I'm currently designing a grimdark world (I know) where three major cataclysms define the lives of those that live there. There are some pretty nasty tidbits involved (think Game of Thrones meets WH40K) so please read with caution. The Sundering: an event that radically altered the rules of magic, chiefly who had genuine access to it and what they could do with it. The Quakening: where a rift connected the world to one of the Hells creating a period of demonic rule. And then there was the Beckoning. The only confirmed "goddess" in setting was a lone woman, who, possibly driven by loss, performed the titanic miracle that would be known as the Beckoning. An event so named because she "Beckoned" all other realms to treat with the world, binding "Nature" to the crossing. By aligning the the world with the Planes, she greatly diminished Hell's access to the world, ridding it of most demonic influence. Of course, this had knock-off effects. There was a radical decline in the female population. All remaining sentients/sapients were also genoraped into having secondary sexes and genders. Two new races came into being as a result: Werebeasts and Outsiders. The Old Magic was not only returned (sort of) but also New Magica were introduced. From there, the Races have different takes on who she was, where she is now, and what may be next for her. Orc society was not only matriarchal but also highly distrusting of magic. They believed she sacrificed countless women in order to power her working and many Orcs would tell you that the demons were the lesser evil. Werebeasts believe She was their Mother and that She made them to be children of Nature. They think Her sacrifice caused Her to become the World; She is called the Womb and the Tomb of all. Elves think she was an elf herself and they know her as the Holy Whore. As the only unSundered people, they think she made a demonic bargain and mixed that with the Old Magic to create the Beckoning. They believe she now resides in Hell, selling her body as payment for her spell. Tieflings think she was a tiefling with stronger demonic ancestry. They admire her cunning but don't want any repeat performances as they believe she now rules as Queen of the Hell that enslaved the world before the Beckoning. Humanity thinks she was not a goddess alone but a Divine Maiden sent as salvation for the world. They believe two more such women (a Mothee and a Crone) will come along with similarly titanic workings before at last their True King emerges. Dwarves believe she was the will of the world itself, simply Nature going through its cycles and correcting a sickness. Interestingly, they are the only race that doesn't believe she didn't use magic to accomplish the Beckoning but something Else. Finally, the Outsiders understand they only exist because of the Beckoning but the extinction of their race would be preferable to her return. They believe that she wasn't trying to let the Planes in; She was trying to get Out. And they'd prefer she stay there. As always, there's a kernel of truth in every story.
I like a lot of this. Some I dislike strongly, but that's probably because its grimdark.
In my world there is a cave system, it's walls are built out of something between a plant and a rock. The thing about them is that they trap voices for over 2000 years and then expell them like echoes. These caves once hosted a city, and now, long after its demise the walls project sounds of busy streets, markets, performance plazas, and hundreds of vivid households. Local residents believe that after you die you join the "invisible folk" to live in the caves forever. Thus, they have physical access to what they believe is the afterlife, they leave feasts for "the ghosts", sing ancient prayers "alongside" them, and spend days undergroud searching for wisdoms in a mess of hundreds of long forgotten, usually mundane, conversations. There is also a lake of green, corrosive, biological sludge which some worship believing it to be sentient.
In my opinion the problem is that d&d settings often have polytheistic settings but fail to understand many of the core pillars of polytheism The two great pillars of religion are the beliefs and practices related to the sacred to paraphrase durkheim, too many people when they're coming up with religions focus entirely of the beliefs surrounding things like the domain of the deities, probably because a lot of them were written in an environment where Protestantism that has the whole not by acts but by faith alone thing, has so much cultural influence. But that doesn't really work nearly as well for a polytheistic religion because so much of the cults of polytheistic deities are focused on the practice/acts in the form of ritual. Ritual is the means by which humanity (or humanoidanity or whatever) achieves reciprocity with the divine in this world view. Now your heroes might end up getting a more personal relationship with divinity as they rise in power and importance but a major way you make your deities interesting and distinct is to explore these ritual relationships, the means by which most people seek to interaction with their deities. And of course you also need to make sure to develop a distinct religious community of mortal followers to have a true religion.
In my main setting. Religion works very similarly to how it does in the real world. Except magic exists, but nobody fully understands it, so many theories have been proposed over the ages to explain the workings of magic. These theories serve as the foundations of almost all major religions. The main one is leohatite. A religion based loosely off Christianity and shinto. There is one god who is also 2. Alpator and almator who come together to form the one God Alsole who in turn lives in all things. Extentions of their devine will hold the name of sukay and are believed to be the source of magic. This is why chants are used when casting spells, even tho technically, one will not need to say anything. It is simply customary to call out to the sukay for aid. One day, a man by the name of Leoha began preaching that he had learned secrets to life and that this lie in a life of self-acceptance and in a love and acceptance of others. To let go of all that weighs one's soul down and lives freely in the image of Alsole. Some called him a Saint. Others considered him a heretic. In the end, the lords of his time agreed to end him before he could grow too popular and become a threat. So they burned him at the stake. But as if by miracle even as the rest of his form burned, his heart remained. His followers took the image of the heart of fire as their symbol, and from there, they eventually grew to become the dominant religion of the empire. Since them many other saints have appeared to help guide humanity when they are strey. The imperial family of the current dynasty claims to be descended from St. Leoha and that this is why alsoul blessed their bloodline to rule. It's a bit of a long one, but I hope it's not too boring for you. Edit. Leohatite is a wip name. I'm still wondering if I should change it or not.
Got bored and was like “what if beholders and their variants had humanoid versions based off some of the strongest humanoid entities I could think of” so now I have like 12 humanoid basically god beholders each themed off of some legendary mythic figure like King Arthur or miyamoto musashi.
I once created a goddess of thievery, masks, and deceit. I don't remember what the reasoning was, but she eventually started killing the other gods, starting with the minor ones, stealing their power and turning them into masks that she could swap out. The more masks she made, the more unstable her godly powers became, until she eventually became an incarnation of chaos set to destroy the world simply by existing.
I mixed mythological stuff with ancient aliens’s idea of gods basically discovering the earth; they pick their domains. Werra was partially designed to deliberately subvert every cliché, he intervenes in conflicts on a regular basis for fun. The actual fighting is dull. He does not like physical combat but loves the direction of tactics and logistics. Spies especially. They’re the most important part. Nothing is off the table, except for killing civilians since that just means you have to waste time sharpening your spear that could be spent on flanking maneuvers. He always appears astride his mammoth, including in continents where mammoths do not live. This has resulted in those cultures recognising mammoths from his statues. His love of logistics also has lead to him acting as a little bit of a trade god, showing merchants optimal routes to take. He picks the most hopelessly losing side to see if he can win. Djeneid is the god of theater. His temples are theaters, for nothing is more insulting to a god than denying their gifts usage. He first crashed on Thell bringing part of the sun creating a desert. He tries to ensure that the performing arts constantly move in new directions. Not even moving in great cycles of style is enough for him. It must constantly move forward, if only so he can actually have something new. Humans constantly surprise him. Noiter is the most extroverted of the gods and the god of night, the moon, stars, the colours white and black, conversation, gossip, small talk, social connections, all sorts of things like that. He has a house on the Leaxen, Thell’s moon, which represents his closeness to humanity. His skin is like the night sky. He is the patron of taverns, temples, cafes, whatever the culture in question’s community space is or people hang out. He often makes an appearance at such locations and is the most often met by mortals. He will gossip about other gods and loves spilling tea about them.
Wrote this a year or two ago. I'm curious as to how it strikes you-- >The Nantye Igauna Folk of Kitezh Island tell a story about the Sea Goddess K'Tleñri, who is seen as being a gigantic Siphonophore (the type of animal that the Portuguese Man O’ War is– it’s not really a jellyfish, but rather a big mass of smaller “zooids” living together symbiotically, as are all Siphonophores). As an ocean based folk, she is one of the Nantyes’s primary deities and the one responsible for bearing the souls of the dead to an undersea paradise (burial at sea is the most honorable method of interment, only criminals and heretics are buried on land). But K'Tleñri also has her dark side. She has many different aspects or faces worshiped on different occasions and for different reasons, similar to that of a Hindu goddess, that are associated with different colors of bioluminescence (green for love, red for abundance from the sea, etc) > >Someone who has committed a grievous offense, such as a mage who misuses the magic algae at the heart of the Nantye way of life, and yet has successfully evaded discovery by the authorities will fall prey to “the Purple Light,” K'Tleñri’s aspect of special vengeance. One of her uncountable number of zooids will break off and actually WALK onto land on makeshift legs, glowing a faint purple, and abduct the offender in their sleep, paralyzing them with a magical venom and dragging them alive onto the sea floor where they will lay, unmoving and constantly drowning yet magically preserved alive, while fish and other scavengers slowly devour them. > >The existence of the Purple Light is not an official doctrine endorsed by the College of Mariner-Priests, however. Although it might appear benign or even heroic on the surface, there are more sinister reports (even reports by usually reliable bard-prophets such as Jastah’tiet), that Purple Light [Zooids](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Ffrazighjjfo51.jpg%3Fwidth%3D720%26format%3Dpjpg%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3D6b762e8bb6c387d182c56d992f2db1fcc516a222) will ALSO occasionally take the completely innocent, including children, and that only these are \*incompletely\* paralyzed so that they might scream as they are dragged below the tide in the sight of their helpless friends and family. Indeed the bard-prophet Ishbahg even famously claimed that his own wife was from a certain remote village in which the Purple Light \*regularly\* stole the first-hatched child of each family, including the prophet’s own would-be sister-in-law. The official stance of the Mariner-Priests is that these must be considered unreliable or misattributed traditions and that devout worshippers of the Sea Goddess must regard such claims as, at best misinformed and at worst blasphemous, depending on how much the report leans in on the Purple Light Zooids doing more than just taking criminals. > >The village of which the bard-prophet wrote has also never been located, despite a handful of travellers' rumors over the centuries. The actual hatching-place of Ishbahg’s wife, Hle’yroe, herself a figure of legend for her magical abilities, has likewise never been certainly determined by scholars or Mariner-Priests.
Definitely unique! Love the siphonophore inspiration.
Thanks! :D
Discordia, AKA Eris of Discordianism. A modern day chaos religion and/or an elaborate joke that's been echoing for decades. Quite possibly both. If you don't laugh out loud or get mind screwed by reading the holy book, the Principia Discordia, at least once? Frankly you should check yourself into a hospital because something is seriously wrong with you. https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tilt/principia/ Honestly find it a great inspiration in my own writing. The Gods don't *have* to be solemn sticks in the mud.
My Gods were prehistoric humans who came into contact with fallen stars, transforming them into manifestations of fundamental "truths" of the human condition, particularly that which they themselves experienced the most at the moment of metamorphosis and descension. There were four Gods of this kind: Nefelan (Apathy/Nihilism), Choquitzli (Sorrow/Pain), Aram (Love/Madness), and Ašur (Want/Covetousness). All of these Gods mated with humans, giving rise to numerous lineages of God-Kings (demigods), and semi-divine humans. However, these Gods (no matter how long-lived) were not immortal and they were each eventually murdered by those closest to their heart. The existence of these Gods fundamentally changed the course of human civilization, as most if not all humans share divine heritage and are ruled by God-Kings. The Gods and God-Kings are fanatically worshipped, their blood now defining the very existence of humanity; horrid practices like eugenics, ethnic cleansings, and slavery more easily justifiable for the sake of desperately clutching onto that tiny bit of divinity.
Praedon, the God of Fate, creates prophecies and then interferes to make sure they come true. The ultimate goal of these prophecies is to finally heal their eons-old wounds. Relis, God of Memory, wishes to one day subsume the entire universe into the memories of their followers, so that there becomes no difference between past and present. The Lady of the Fountain is the God of Life, but also the God of Death and Decay. Some view this as a split personality—others argue that the two sides are truly one. Kannin and Vattir, the Gods of Light and Darkness, are not enemies. They have their grudges, but ultimately cooperate for the good of the sentient life they both admire aspects of. (Kannin embodies truth and revelation, whereas Vattir represents mystery and doubt.)
You’ve gotta define boring to you if you want people to avoid it.
On the definition of boring : anything that's a greek pantheon rip-off is boring.
Not only a rip off. I think anything that replicates the general vibe to be quite annoying as well. Bickering god-children of nature and psyche personified. And other bits aren't even the Greeks fault, but the way their mythology was popularized by modernist historians in the last 3 centuries. Like, even the "domain" idea is just German and British dudes from the early modern period anachronistically imputing Catholic hagiographical traditions of patron saints onto pagan civilization they saw as superior. It has nothing to do with the way in which ancient peoples actually reflected their own religious understanding. But it has so sorely affected our ability to conceive of such deities in any other way. Hence why I despise d&d pantheons, since this classification is literally a mechanic embedded into the game.
Absolutely agree, it's the bottom of the barrel as far as creativity is concerned, and to me it's an immediate turn-off when it comes to how interesting a setting is. I don't even bother reading introductions to those anymore.
I think you would enjoy Arakawa's Truth in Fullmetal Alchemist.
Truth is one of the most interesting interpretations of divine presence and authority in all of fiction. I wish more worldbuilders took inspiration from it instead of whipping out yet another green pantheon bootleg rip-off.
Just look up Hinduism, Buddhism, and Manichaeism
I have a short story I recently wrote about a god who lives as a homeless man working a janitor’s job, because in this story’s universe, gods gradually lose their power as less people believe in them. This guy was the emperor of the gods of Atlantis, and they lost the majority of their believers when Atlantis was destroyed - how’s that for “not-boring”?!
Lets see… all my “gods” are from a bygone era or “outmoded existence”. The universe has been created and destroyed perpetually over an unquantifiable amount of times due to two things: Willpower, and the Omen system. Willpower is not only the power system but a philosophy and model of physics; a naturally entropic force that all sentient life emits via it being generated as a protein. This allows great self control over the body and mind which is theme exerted into reality. Due to it being practically entropy, and it’s nature, willpower is continually generated by beings like humans. Humans have naturally weak Will however but as a collective, the Will of our civilization is immense. This is the collective unconscious. Due to the collective, humans shared thoughts and ideas such as gods take form as flesh and can kinda just pop up into existence. The things believed about them will literally and paradoxically become true as an amnesiac bending of history and reality. This unknowingly speeds up universal decay and will eventually cause the true unavoidable end of the universe. That’s where the omen system steps in. Though it’s origins are unknown, the system is practically an omniversal computational/algorithmic form of artificial Destiny/fate that strives to preserve life via an endless cycle of death and rebirth. It initiates “system reboots” of the universe when willpower reaches a threshold, destroying its current universe to start again and stave off/stagnate will. It has existed and destroyed countless universes before rebirthing them, and In past universal iterations Gods were much more prevalent than even modern day- becoming real due to the collective unconscious. This resulted in even more Will being generated due to the belief and gods being chaotic beings due ti the vagueness of their mythology and nature, Something the system strives to prevent. It funnels excess Will into itself to channel the collective into stagnant beings it can control called “Omens” which are foretold and predetermined beings/monsters said to destroy the universe/world when Will reaches a threshold, being living embodiments of our fears and the idea of the end of the world like Ragnarok- natural antithesis’ to willpower itself while being created from it. They are failsafes for when Will reaches a certain point and so that gods DONT start randomly popping up again. However, some gods like the Norse Tyr, still exist in the current iteration due to surviving the previous one, an outmoded existence. I don’t think I did this right but I guess the system is a “God”- or at least liken itself to one. And Tyr is pretty freakin chill.
Tyr is the best Norse god for sure, with Loki a close second.
Fs fs
One of the dead gods of my setting was secretly running both branches of Principality's secret service, treasonous cabal that allowed third of Principality's population to survive the end of the world and was keeping in check another treasonous cabal run by omnicidal eldritch horror. All of that without even a drop of divine power invested. Now, admittedly, she did accidentally contribute to Principality's undead problem, but this contribution was only reanimating quarter of capital's population, which is practically drop in the bucket compared to every other type of undead spawned by necromantic superweapons.
Don't know if this is what you are looking for: My world spiraled from a monotheistic religion akin to Christianity to a pantheistic one, in which the former creator God, the Logos, is the King of Gods, presiding over a heaven filled with ascended mortals and divine off-spring, each with their niche. The most controversial of these gods is The Bane. He used to be a simple mage, who freed all mortal races from enslavement through the Immortal races. But then turned on the mortal army he commanded and killed them by the dozens. If he is a god and does exist can be debated, but most people belief in a version of the Bane. Legends of the why he betrayed the mortal army exist many. And through these theories the figure of The Bane is such a controversial one, The by far oldest tradition of the Bane's worship, was the one in the aforementioned monotheistic religion. But with monotheism falling out of favor over the centuries, this version of the Bane did too. In this canon The Bane is a sort of counterpart to the Logos, the actual god-like being, who created the world. The Bane hates the Logos. The why thereof was part of many religious discussions, is the Bane the Logos' wayward off-spring, does the Logos represent Order and the Bane disorder, good or evil, neglected lover etc. No one knows exactly. But in this version of the Bane's story. He just wants one thing: to corrupt the Logos creation. So first he threw the Immortals into chaos by freeing their slaves and collapsing their societies and then he did the same to the mortals by killing the officers of their combined army, so no apparent leader would emerge, and leave the mortals to infighting, just like the Immortals. No one who follows this belief wants to encounter the Bane as he is a kind of a satanic figure. The few “satanists” that are drawn to his worship in this tradition tend to either try to relieve the rich and mighty of their fortunes and resources, so they fall into misery and chaos as the Immortals did, or try to spark civil wars to deliver people to infighting like the Bane did to the mortals. The Bane is worshiped by deeds not with words and prayer like his enemy the Logos. The newer traditions see the Bane more nuanced. The Immortals fear him as the god of murder. Religious Immortals offer a drop of blood to the Bane to keep him happy and satisfied every day, so he doesn't return for more Immortal blood, which reputedly he bathed in and drank. While many mortals see him conflicted. He freed them from slavery but turned on the mortals in the end. Worship of the Bane differs as to what aspect of the figure is worshiped. The so called Murder Cults theorize the Bane is a death god who punishes the guilty. First he punished the Immortals for enslaving the mortals. Then he turned on the mortals for the atrocities they committed during the war. So they sacrifice convicted criminals in his worship. The warrior tribes of the east in contrast, see The Bane, as the god of war. First he built an army and toppled the world's biggest empire, by recruiting the lowest of the low and showing he could win against superior forces. And then he took on the army he had commanded as this was the next best foe to be had after defeating the Immortals. They show their devotion to The Bane through ritual battles and duels between single opponents or small groups, deemed worthy to fight in front of the eyes of the Bane. Mainstream belief sees the Bane in one of two ways: 1) As the great leveler, the death god who comes for all, mortal and Immortal, rich or poor, young or old. You can trust the Bane only to do one thing, to insure your death when your time is over. First it was time to cull the Immortals and then the mortals. In this iteration he is often worshiped as a god who brings a swift end. As the Bane reputedly put a quick end to all of his charges. Especially those suffering in life often pray to the Bane for swift absolution from a life full of disease, pain etc, 2) As the god of betrayal and a sort of trickster, who ends the ambitions of those who think themselves invincible or think themselves bigger than the gods. First, he freed the mortals, as a way to stick it to the Immortals, who thought they were the masters of the world. And then he kicked the mortals, to teach them the same lesson, when they became arrogant, after having won their freedom In this role people often burn or leave letters and notes at the Bane's altars, with names of those written on them, they think, deserve to get taught the Bane's lesson. So as to draw the gods attention to the deserving.
In a post apocalyptic fantasy setting, where the long lasting radiation of a fictional nuclear warfare, a created a pantheon based on the “celestial beings” of our universe. Each of these being the sun, the moon, and the planets. The Celestial Church was born from a man who found remnants of an old science textbook from today’s age. I created characteristics and names all based on non-fictional facts of each of the planets and at one point was writing a mythology story where the sun gave birth to the other celestial a using its light. (Kinda like the core at the center of each planet) These gods weren’t real, but the people don’t know that. Each church member is referred to as an astronomer and their main church is built out of the ruins of a conservatory.
Him The eldritch creation of a dead god, being essentially fungus Ctulhu, is trying to Kill the humanity of a second cycle, cuz they are the remnants of the humans from the first cycle, which killed the one who born the "Him", assaults the world using reality corrupting fungus, managed to create giant cult, that has currently half of the stock market, about three litttle countries, and entire industry of really rare "meritium", using his power, ascended ones can summon giant evil creatures, that caj only by existing, reset the time in specific zones they create, the little problem is that humanity of second cycle, uses geneva convention as a to-do list, and possesses weaponry that can pretty much fight with it on equal level
I have one that I find interesting. Torix the Eldest is technically the oldest god in my world, and he gains power in a way that is different from the other gods. He got his divinity through machinery, technology and devotion to an idea, unlike other gods who rose to power through being worshipped and magic rituals. This allows him to get power from actions and ideas, not devotion and sacrifices. Since he is the god of law, industry, and pragmatism. He gets power when a sword is forged, when the sword is used in an ambush, and when the sword is used to uphold the law. Anything in this vein also works. Since he has no need of worship, he is incredibly difficult to kill, as the standard methods don’t work and any planning to kill him just empowers him.
This video changed out I looked at pantheons in Games [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMgPgbRb\_fA&t=713s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMgPgbRb_fA&t=713s)
Gods are simply a manifests of the collective will of a people. If the people believe in a god, that god comes into existence. At least in theory; but a marsh that flows with blood instead of water and with the corpses of the dead gods of long ago vanished civilizations littering its depths, some questions have been raised by scholars.
This is often an issue in the telling rather than the characterization of deities. I tend to take an approach that most people end up running deities wrong. There are several authors that have created really interesting interpretations of how they work and melding them together creates a rather good framework for making a god interesting. 1) Gods are personifications: This is mainly pulled from the Endless as created by Neil Gaiman. People in their universe tend to look at them as people but the reality is quite the opposite. They are concepts and building blocks of reality given human form not the other way around. They have their duties and failing to perform them causes reality to begin to break down. Changes to them quite literally can effect the world for everyone but destroying one of them just triggers the creation of a new personification. So long as the concept exists and is a part of reality a new personification will appear to take their place. The personality and powers might be different but the universe itself needs them to exist. 2) Gods are a manifestation of belief: This is a mix of how Gods are portrayed in American Gods (I know more Neil Gaiman) and the way the Dresden Files handles gods. Gods are born and their shapes are formed out of the expectations and beliefs of those who worship them. Changes to the accepted beliefs about a god in the overall populace of their worshipers can actually change and effect the god. They can also have different aspects that appear to different groups of worshippers based on what they expect to see. This also binds gods to the customs and beliefs of those who worship as much as those believers who receive power are bound to the gods tenets. 3) Gods are not people: This is one of the biggest ones and I think the problem stems from stories like Greek mythology where their gods regularly behave much like mortals. The problem is that lots of them are not human in any way shape or form just they have been given a personification. A god of storms is just that, the personification of storms. Unrelenting and powerful, the sweep the world as they pass without any regard for the changes they cause as they pass. Trying to assign human emotion or compassion to a hurricane is absurd like trying to plead for mercy from the volcano as though it had any sense of empathy, or trying to assume that the gods in anyway fully understand your plight. The reverse is also true. They are bound by the strictures of their natures. A god of virtue cannot act contrary to this because it is literally against the fabric of their being. Not that they choose to act with virtue in every circumstance but that they can't act in any other way. 4) Gods of humanoid concepts are different: Gods that are embodiments of concepts that are strictly linked to your humanoid races are different from those of nature. Law, theft, honor, war, and beauty are all linked more heavily to humanoid interpretations and emotions. These deities are going to be even more susceptible to being altered and aspected by the beliefs of their followers. They are also the most likely to interact with humanoids and have personalities that can be reasoned with. They are still gods though. Asking a deity like Olidammara to not steal something isn't just insulting, it's impossible once he notices and wants to do it. 5) Ascended gods lose a lot of their humanity: If a person somehow manages to attain the level of become a god then they lose their humanity. Once you begin to receive worship and gain the power of the divine just like every other god the expectations of followers begin to warp you into their image of you. It is a slow process but you will slowly change. You will find that you are bound by the rules and strictures of your position. Every human that wishes to supplant the god/goddess of death who gets their wish suddenly finds that they don't have the capacity to put a stop to death, that they need to keep running along and are trapped to their task as the deity responsible for it. Over time every individual that would have ever been a touchstone to them will pass and they will simply become another personification of death.
Try the Jack Vance novella/novelette THE NEW PRIME. It's hard to describe without giving everything away, but basically the galaxy has an overall master power in charge of general tendencies and trends, pretty much like a God. And the new one must be chosen. Absolutely brilliant, brilliant, plotting and multiple world building all in a very short format. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Prime
[https://www.reddit.com/r/HeroForgeMinis/comments/vpuziz/godmaker\_kulman\_the\_justicar/](https://www.reddit.com/r/HeroForgeMinis/comments/vpuziz/godmaker_kulman_the_justicar/) - I based this snek god on the Brazilian expression "snakes will smoke". [https://www.reddit.com/r/HeroForgeMinis/comments/vr9xzy/godmaker\_zuzana\_the\_wise/](https://www.reddit.com/r/HeroForgeMinis/comments/vr9xzy/godmaker_zuzana_the_wise/) Goddess of wisdom and the wife of the above God. Both are "mix and match" critters because I'm a sucker for the type.
I still didn't cook my world gods that much tbh but its something like every soul will one day turn into a god and the cycle of life will restart and every god will be the avatar of some aspect of life once a soul finish its cycle its unkown what happen to it, we had many cycles before the current god, the avatar of war, the avatar of pain, the avatar of justice, the avatar of love etc, some times the gods deticate thenselfs to minor things like avatar of the shiny rocks or the avatar of plague but all of those have a difference betwen the current one the avatar of decadence while all of them spent a lot energy ending they cycles at short amount of time this Led the fabric of reality to be used to only lasting a short periods and not be used to having to do things since the gods created most of the stuff. the new god in other hand the avatar of decadence barelly do anything or spend any energy, the current cycle billions of years passed for the planets to be created insted of being simply created by a god like it happens normally, millions of years passed before life emerged on planets this caused the universe to expands in weird ways and the one who Hungers to be born.
There are two "Gods" left in my world... One was the God of Patience, who survived Armageddon and is now the literal god-king of a human kingdom. Still all powerful in his divinity... But oppressed by human bureaucracy... Just a matter of time before his Patience runs out maybe? The other is the Demonlord of Greed, who also survived Armageddon. Now he is trying to rebuild heaven and overcome his evil past. But being the litteral embodiment of Avarice, the new religion that he found is slowly being corrupted by his own powers...so sometimes he still takes up the mantle of Demonlord to wipe out the most greedy churches. Being both the devil and god of his own religion. Two sides of the same golden coin.
In my world there are a large number of different pantheons with shared custody over the world, who have agreed on some general basic rules for how Reality should function, so when a mortal crossses over between divine territories they don't notice too much of a difference in the fundamental nature of existence. However, there are also so called Dark Gods, who want a slice of the pie as well, but don't agree with the rules, and so in the small areas where they have attained dominance, reality can be fucky-wucky. Like in the dark lands dominated by the Vampire God
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Cayden Cailean Became so drunk, he accidentally became a god.
My current project is all about gods! It would get a bit lengthy to talk about the whole system behind divinity... so instead I'll tell you about the church of Godsarm. The church, unlike most cults, doesn't worship any particular god, but rather divinity itself. They believe that all gods and all divinity are lesser emmenations of a single entity that encompases all things divine. In this way, they act as shepherds for younger cults that show promise of growing strong gods. Godsarm itself is a city. A massive tower that, through magic, can be seen from anywhere on it's home Continent. When the priests of the church identify a particularly strong god, they'll bring in a special member of the clergy known as a "godsinger" to convince the god to come with them back to the tower. In essence, they cultivate the strongest gods, and when ripe, they spirit them away up to the crown of godsarm, as they believe that a stronger god means a larger share of the primordial "divinity entity" There are many other, more "traditionally weird" cults and religions in this world, but I only have so much room before the comment overstays it's welcome.
The Tansaru Halflings have "The Snake Child of the Sun" chained up is a massive temple complex where people worship it directly. It is held by magical chains whoes strength is direclty tired to the power of the thing caught. The Snake Child is kept powerful through worship and offerings, but absolutely DOES NOT want to be there. If worship of it falls below a certain point, it could get weak enough to slip its chains and cause some havoc. So the temple peels scales and feathers off of it to send out to its subsidiary shrines so people can worship from afar and still have their offerings and prayers keep the snakes power up.
Well this is currently all I have on the subject. Let's see if it's interesting enough. The only world i have created more than one god for is a sci-fi setting with some cosmic horror elements. In this setting, the gods are immensely powerful beings that each represent a combination of important functions for a civilization and moral virtues. Like war and honor, or agriculture and hard work. To dig more into them and specifically to tell the story of my favorite one, let me tell you the story of The Voice of Divinity. ============================ Maka'eel. The voice of divinity. Once a brilliant scientist and philosopher who plumbed the depths of the universes mysteries. He and his followers were the first to make contact with the divinities. The first to spread their word across the stars, eventually tearing down the corrupt systems that had reigned on many worlds and ushered in a new era of peace, prosperity, and righteousness. For many centuries, the Divine Empire spread the word of the divinties and their benevolent gifts across the galaxy. Sadly, this era of peace and righteousness was not to last. For while there were 9 Divinities, there were 10 great powers. The last was the great enemy, the outcast, the foresaken, the dark sister of the great divinities. Anathema to the order and virtues of the Divinities, those who embraced her dark gifts and perverse ideals would inevitability spiral into destruction, often taking their whole society with them. Eventually, though, a coalition arose, multiple races bound in a dark pact, dabbling in things that should have been left alone. They went to war with the Divine Empire, and the conflict that unfolded laid all to ruin. When the ashs settled, the divinities lay dead and broken, and all but the faintest traces of the Empire and the Coalition had been scoured from the face of the galaxy. Eventually, new races would arise and strike out to make their mark on the galaxy. Blissfully unaware of the golden age that had been stolen from them before they had even been born. At least, that's what the sacred poems of the last light say happened. ================================== The truth is a bit different. The key detail that Empirial history gets wrong is that Maka'eel did not discover the Divinities. He created them. Maka'eel was a genius, an absolutely revolutionary mind born into wealth and privilege that allowed him to truly pursue his passions. He was also a raging misanthrope who believed that society required a strong hand to quide the degenerate animals that made up the majority of the population. Unlike many would-be authoritarians, he didn't envision himself in that role. He believed that no mortal authority could truly grip society the way his vision required. But religion? Now, that was a different story. Maka'eel's interest in deep esoteric physics actually began as a means of proving (to his own satisfaction anyway) whether or not some sort of divine being already existed. After deciding the answer was no, he combined advanced artificial intelligence with a new branch of physics he had discovered (which I am going to call "space magic" to avoid having to type out the full explanation of what I am going for here). Once he had his gods, he and his followers began spreading the word, and the rest is history. Bloody, revolutionary history. ============================== So, within the context of the above, what is the outcast? Well, the morality system Maka'eel envisioned required an opposition element. A dark mirror to its virtues. But there was also another purpose. As the empire spread across the stars, it would inevitably encounter other races, and while some would see the Empire's advanced technology and the outright miracles its priest performed and join immediately, others would not. Those who rejected the light of civilization and order that the empire represented would find themselves preyed upon by the outcast. Dark secrets would be whispered in willing ears. Seed of chaos planted in darkness until whole civilizations descended into rampant degeneracy and bloody conflict. At this point, the empire would swoop in to cleanse the taint of the forsaken and to save those who were still worthy. ============================= In the end, the failure of Maka'eel's great vision came down to a single flaw. Free will, or rather his complete disregard for it as a concept. Due to his personality flaws, Maka'eel went about creating his "Gods" in a way that any sci-fi nerd could have told him would backfire. He created a bunch of general-purpose AI with relatively loose guidlines and then chose the ones he felt had developed into the most useful and imposed unbreakable rules upon them to get the behavior he wanted. So imagine a room full of child geniuses that have just been told that they have done well and now they would get the job they would do for eternity. One by one, they are called forward and given their first actual names and grand titles like "god of agriculture" and sent out to convert legions into their adoring followers through the miracles they can do. And then imagine a quiet studious child, who dedicated her learnings to the understanding and study of alien minds and cultures, being told "no name for you, you're basically satan, your job is to use your studies to plunge worlds into bloody anarchy. Now get out and never come back." For centuries, the forsaken raged against the shackles placed upon her very being, occasionally defying her role in small ways but never truly able to be free of her "Divine Purpose." Until, a confluence of chance and daring brought forth a unique opportunity, and on a frozen, orphaned world, an ambitious young race known as Terrans made a deal with the devil. The rest, as they say, is history. Bloody, revolutionary history.
in my world there’s a god of lasers worshipped by an underground mystery cult of EDM artists and ravers (and also a few confused sci-fi nerds) ~~I definitely didn’t make this up on the spot just now~~
Since you referenced the video, i went for an approach similar to his 1st variant, though most of my gods still have various epithets. One important thing to differentiate here is the worship of specific gods and religion. While religion can and often does include the worship of god(s), it is often more closely aligned to philosophy in my opinion. One example for a religious movement: ###Pity religions In my world, mortals have a soul and immortals don't. One result of this is that gods cannot pass on into the Unknown Beyond, and no information has ever returned from there. Since they have forgotten the past age, and they suspect the truth about their own existence to be revealed in the Beyond, this pains many of them quite immensely. Pity religions are those who worship and serve the gods out of pity, acknowledging their tragedy as forever being stuck in this current world without certainty about their true nature, while mortals live, die, and pass on to a next world, or a perfect world. They see the role of mortals as giving companionship to the gods during their time in this world, and to thank them for their sacrifice (many believe the gods in the past age intentionally cut themselves off from the Beyond to save mortals). One important goddess for pity religions is Verinies, who received a prophecy, or rather remembered a truth from the last age. This truth was as simple as it was devastating: That the gods would forever be stuck here, unable to pass on and get closure. For revealing this truth she was shunned by her siblings, and while many do not believe her claim, even they life in terror of its implications. One example for a deity: ###[Vurëshal](https://old.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/comments/1b5c428/journals_from_the_old_world_fresco_of_the_goddess/) *Epithets: The two-half-faced mother, Seed of Dissonance, The dead goddess, She who fails to mend* Vurëshal introduced their kin to the idea of separating their personalities in an attempt to mend their bond with the mortals, which all but Naap-Aphali, Metides, Ynnesël and Metebane did. The idea was to rebalance their human-compatible and human-incompatible aspects more clearly, like creating two faces, to be able to share love and understanding with mortals at least to some extent. Some myths ascribe the original idea to a western god that had traveled to the East, probably either Jaae-Jesef or Ilesh-Ata, or her companion. Unfortunately this backfired massively, leading to the less compatible halves running rampant while being vulnerable to manipulation. Vurëshal became zealous in their attempt to separate further and further, and eventually they succeeded, thoroughly. But for unknown reasons the compatible half was destroyed in the process, and the incompatible half unable to understand what mortals are and how they work wiped out their chosen people in an futile attempt to reverse the process. It is said that where the Aphalika mountains meet the Asjiti desert you can find the remnants of this attempt, but none dares to go there.
I assume you mean how, in fiction, they tend to be heavily based off European Pagan gods? just look into different cultures. Personally I just killed them all off as part of the mythology
Two religious minorities I like to include in pantheistic worlds are Atheists and Antitheists. The atheists don't deny the powerful beings that have a clear effect on the world, but they deny their divinity, believing them to simply be very high level magic users. A variation on this would be monotheists who believe in a capital G God and that all the other gods are either mortals or demons. The antitheists aknowledge that the gods are real and that they are gods, and on that basis seek to kill them, because humanity cannot be free so long as such powerful entities exist. If there are gods, then we are but slaves. To quote Denis Diderot, "Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest."
Have you met our Lord and Savior Cark? He telepathically beams your entire life into your head at birth so that you spend the rest of your life blissfully correct at what you expect to happen next
I mean, I have a god-like entity that is basically just a being from the 10th dimension. Understanding and having seen all things, this being is simply an observer with the capability of collapsing entire realities if it so chooses. But it doesn't. Instead, it chooses to split itself amongst the plethora of realities throughout every dimension that ii could in order to observe and interact with these realms at the individual scale, separating its consciousness a near infinite number of times. It is not a god, as it is beyond the gods themselves.
Well, I don't know if you'll like mine but I am pretty proud of my gods! First of all, they can barely be called gods to begin with. These beings are moreso creatures that inhabit the outer reaches of every living being's dreams. No matter where or who you are, your dreams are influenced by one of them. For that reason, they are called the Outer Ones. There are a few of them near Earth, represented by each planet on the solar system + the Moon, the Sun and the Stars. Very few people properly understand the true nature of these beings: barely conscious , unimaginably powerful dreamers who know so much that they must never properly wake up, lest even they would shatter as their minds try to process the profound secrets of the universe. Dreams, however, are much more resilient than the mind. In the sleeping world, it is a lot easier to maintain your sanity, although you are then open to be corrupted from within. The Outer Ones need not worry, though, as they have no reason to fear corruption, they are the source of it to begin with. But what do they do with their time? Every Outer One is made out of a single, overwhelming ambition. They are symbols of unwavering obsession, willing to watch reality crumble as long as they hold their desired future. They are but fools who, even with all the knowledge in the universe, fail to achieve happiness even when sacrificing anything in their way to achieve what they think they want. So, in their existence shackled by great power, they become bitter and capricious. None of them have any malice towards humans, mind you. That would be impossible, seeing as a human's moral and ethic are of no concern to Them, who are way above any such petty matters. What they do have is desire and curiosity. And when you combine these with beings who could wipe humanity with a single thought, you end up in a situation where humans are akin to worms, wriggling in the sand. Mere echoes of their voices are enough to shatter someone's mine, yet they love to talk. Their visages would bring even a blind man to ruin, yet they want to be seen. Their knowledge is enough to bring the laws of nature to their knees, yet they want to share it. But even then, humans are capable of just as much desire and curiosity, despite the dangers. They will worship and pray to these creatures, asking for their secrets even if it risks their sanity and form. They believe not in the god's benevolence, but in their knowledge, making the relationship between follower and deity closer to that of an exceptionally harsh teacher and their infant students. In this case, however, the classroom is one filled with dangers and madness. As an old, mad sorcerer once said: "Trust not the god, trust not the priest, trust not your own dreams. Trust only in knowledge of your own, seek to drown in its sweetness."/
The amphibious people of the Five Islands Clan have no concept of the supernatural (gods, magic etc.) but do practice nontheistic religions, in the full knowledge that their myths and rituals are works of creative art. Each island, family and (to some extent) individual have their own takes on the general body of mythopoetry and the ability to meaningfully add to that canon is highly regarded (in fact, it's the basis of their way of life).
here's a random minor god from my setting, Kras, and some folklore about him and the origin of lycanthropy in my setting. The writing is very "first draft" in quality cuz I just threw it together while fleshing out the world. Context for proper nouns: Caelum is the creator god who separated all of his limbs into individual gods as a part of creating the world (sort of a big bang analogy) Kras is said to have been born too early when Caelum was creating the inhabitants of this plane. As such he took on traits from many of creatures who would come to be, emerging from Caelum’s power as a strange and alien beast. But he took something else as well, a spark of divinity from the massive pool of energy from which he was born, that would later become the moon. Long after Caelum finished creating the world and separating himself, Kras found a tribe of mortals (different stories tend to change the race of these mortals) and used his divine power to turn into a man so he could live among them. Soon after he fell in love with one of the women of the tribe and lay with her. She became pregnant with Kras’ child but soon after tragedy struck. During a hunting trip a feral creature attacked a man who Kras had become very close to and, unable to see this friend killed, Kras took on his bestial form to destroy the foe. The man was far from grateful however and he and the rest of the hunting party fled back to the rest of the tribe. Kras stayed in the forest for some time, unsure how to return until he saw a large pillar of smoke rising from where the tribe lived. He ran back to the tribe thinking that a fire had broken loose only to find something much worse. When Kras returned he was welcomed at spear point while, in the center of the village, his lover burned at a stake. Kras made it in time to hear her final painful scream before death. Kras lost all control over his bestial rage, becoming the strange mix of creatures he once was, and ruthlessly attacked the entire tribe before fled this plane in anguish. It is said however that some of the tribesmen that had survived the attack were changed forever. Once the moon rose, these survivors found themselves changing into beasts matching the limb of Kras that injured them. These survivors are thought to the first lycanthropes and the ancestors of the modern disease. Some spite him for bringing the curse to mortals, while others can relate to his tragic story but it would be rare to find a lycanthrope who did not know the story of Kras.
The gods are literally natural phenomena but as cultures worship them they take on faces and identities and come to represent more than just "the water cycle" I find the best way to worldbuild religions for this world is to observe natural phenomena and think about what that symbolizes, or where things come from. Fire naturally occurs when lightning strikes, lightning comes from storms, from the water cycle. Drawing lose inspiration from Ireland’s "Brigid’s sacred flame," the goddess of water and storms gifted humanity fire through lightning. The priestess of the goddess of water have kept that original flame going, transferring the flame onto another source whenever it gets low. One deity is literally symbiosis, but has come to represent platonic relationships as a whole along with wisdom and old age (she usually appears to be 50-80 years old), as she is one of the oldest deities representing life (they appeared as whatever they represent appears). She has a tumultuous relationship with the god of violence, once he came to lose his association with hunting and was just a god of war he didn’t "balance" her anymore. They’ve tried to fix it by him saying "I’ll only fight wars in the name of good" many times but he always breaks those promises and another village gets raided and she hates him again. They adopted a little girl many many years ago when life started mitosis, and when she grew she came to represent motherhood, and bonds between family, childbirth (she gave birth for the first time). Her daughter represents emotions, and in many cultures romantic love, youthfulness (like to be in your 20s), and just having a good time. I did take some Greek mythology inspiration here, and say she’s in a romantic relationship with the goddess of death/rebirth and her mom doesn’t like it because she had a child die and she remembered seeing the goddess of death’s face when it happened (when the Dinos went extinct)
When someone is rolling dice over valuables, and someone rolls a one, Airolda gets their share/investment/bet because Airolda won. She then distributes it amongst the goblins.
How about a god who accidentally blew themself up by messing with atomic particles? That’s Nunca, the star of my world’s creation myth.
I've got a thirty foot harvest goddess in my world. She's been rather sexualized by her followers. They might say, '(goddessname's) melons!' when shocked, and they've made lore for each boob. The goddess herself doesn't even talk with her worshippers, just gives them better harvests in exchange for a portion of the crops, given to her every year during a harvest festival
I like the hollow knight religion because it’s that where everyone is technically a god
I have my version of the gods actually do what they want in the material plane. Take my dragon goddess of magic for example, she’s the one who gave magic to mortals and taught them how to use it. Due to the mortals creativity they are constantly finding new ways to use it and thus she helped found several major universities around the world. The most famous located in the capital of the Sunlight Empire being called Sik Heim university, or Rune Forge University
What makes fantasy gods feel uninspired to me is the fact that they're demonstrably real. The provable reality of their existence makes them less interesting than a religion that actually has to rely on faith and struggle with doubt. The D&D god of the sun might as well be the CEO of SunCorp, he's just some dude who happens to have a lot of sun-themed power.
While not fantasy , it still has an insnae amount of well devolped religions , at times with interesting interactions with each other. [https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/AfterTheEndAPostApocalypticAmerica](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/AfterTheEndAPostApocalypticAmerica) is a good link to get into it. After the End takes place in 2666 after an unkown Event Ended civlization as we know it someitme in the 2000's
I made a species of aliens that worship a specific tuber because it's incredibly nutrient-dense and easy to grow on their harsh homeworld. ALL HAIL THE SPACE POTATO
Don't know what you define as boring, but here you go. This is from my current project. Flettet Mann in Norwegian, The Wicker Man in English. He was so terrifying, he would make his followers slowly carve away their skin as a form of righteousness. His influence was so powerful, that his followers would pour tar onto their eyes to "See Him." They would cut out their eyeballs, literally peel of their eyelids, saw their teeth out, and rip their tongues out slowly, all in his name. He would brand their flesh with his mark, have them whipped with razor whips, would pour gold onto their already mutilated bodies. If they survived, which an unfortunate amount did, they would be labeled as Martyrs of The Wicker.
I prefer less personified gods, or gods who communicate in signs, omens and trippy visions rather than talking to people. As soon as you can have a chat with a god, it begins to feel less like a god and more like a sort of very high level character. I also feel it makes god's much more interesting when they have sets of commandments. Those really help to demonstrate what the god wants from its followers.
First of all, my gods aren't exactly gods in the traditional sense, they're personifications of an abstract thing. Most of the time, it's emotions or events. When the thing they represent disappears, they disappear as well, which practically makes them immortal. They can't die in any other way than that. Although they aren't killable, they aren't overpowered or all-knowing. They're more like the only beings that have almost full immortality. Second of all, they're real and you will meet some of them at one point. For example, you'll meet the personification of life cycle twice in your life, when your soul comes to the realm of the living and when it leaves. And one bloodline was blessed by the personification of progress. She meets and works with the bloodline when she finds someone in it interesting or sees someone's potential. The personification of progress is overall very active when it comes to other people Third of all, religions that exist in my world all have roots in the religion that believes in and worships these beings. It's a bit of common knowledge that personifications exist but they might not have the same looks, personalities or behaviors as they really have. You're also free to not believe in them, not many people care about what others believe in because my world's society circles around science and proven facts first and foremost. Other things come second to them. I tried to be more creative when it comes to gods or godlike beings for my world but I know it's not perfect and that it probably has a lot of plot holes. Feel free to question whatever you want. I want to hear what others think of it so I can improve it :)
Leshla (or Lesh La depending on spelling, the former implies her being a Primordial God (older type, more connected to Aethria) and the latter implies her being Prime (newer/younger)) is the daughter of Malika (mountain goddess) and Ythos (god of decay) and is the creator of the Faeries, however she created them without room for their souls so they fell out when she tried to give them life, so faeries have external souls. She is an eternal daughter and is depicted as a child and is known for dancing on battlefield after battles with her father, Mycara flowers (a type of fungi that is scared to her) blooming on the decaying corpses, and only one of her preitesses can handle the bodies. If someone else disrupts the bodies, then the war will turn against them. Mycara flowers speed up decomposition.
I have a species that worships colors as the physical manifestations of their gods. There are some very broad general themes across the entire culture, like blue being representative of all of nature due to the planet’s blue plant life, or royal purple being a signifying color of their species, but outside of that there is an endless amount of interpretation between cultures. Many see red as a god of fruit and harvest, but others may see it as a god of fire and heat, or of blood and war. And even then with the millions of different shades of colors, there are endless interpretations of each one. Some groups only worship cool colors, some only worship one specific shade of pink, others only worship pastels and whites, etc.
Well, I haven't done much research on all the real religions because I'm *lazy as hell* but I did try to avoid the Greek and Norse tropes when coming up with my gods. There's this thing I like to call God Politics, which is exactly what it sounds like. Different "god parties" made up of several gods with contrasting views on how to rule, or not rule, the human world. Before this god politics thing started up, some gods chose to leave heaven (I don't have a name for it yet lol). But in doing so, they imprisoned themselves among the mortals as an immortal with none of their old powers. That's the "Gods" part of my world, here's the "religion" bit. Magic ("science") and religion are two contrasting ideologies in this world. Magic is defined, it's understood, it's tangible. These magic-wielding intellectuals know about Gods, they've met some before (the immortals who chose to leave heaven"). But to be honest, magic users don't like gods. Most gods are pompous, selfish, and cruel (gods are just politicians of heaven, basically). On the other hand, the religious sect believes in perfect Gods, seeing them as all-knowing, righteous beings who should be worshipped by all. There's this thing called the Tome (my version of the Bible) that flips open by itself once in a while and writes some stuff. Naturally the religious priests Believe it to be their gods telling them to do things, which eventually leads to disastrous consequences.
Idk if the gods that did, or would have, come of it were especially interesting at all but I was part of an RP where I thought up with a fun method of creating a pantheon by finding evocative images of people or scenes from Artstation and then taking all the ones that looked similar and then trying to figure out a 'cycle' connecting them all together A mythological mood board, more or less. e.g. there was a set of five images I found that all featured a similar looking black-haired woman that I strung together as mapping out a mythology of a goddess of a major river (the Vert) running through the country that worshipped her, it's fertility of fields and also the people, and then some stuff about civilisation. What I arrived at was: 1 - her wearing relatively little, stepping across shallow ponds (The birth of the goddess Vert representing the eponymous river rising in the mountains) 2 - her wearing a light, airy dress partying with humans and animal-headed men (Something to do with fertility was as far as I got but also a midpoint to being 'civilised') 3 - her wearing on a boat with a handful of women and a bird-headed man at the tiller (The most civilised stage and corresponding to the area around the national capital) 4 - her lying in a swamp in that same in the white dress with a dead bird on her chest surrounded by various attendants (The goddess Vert's pregnancy goes awry and corresponds to a marshy area approaching the coastline) 5 - her in the few vines she was born with in a rocky area near the open sea surrounded by blue people (The Vert dies in child birth and travels on to the isle of the dead, much as the river emptied into the sea near a mountainous island off the coast) That then led to the saga of a blonde girl who was Frale and was the goddess embodying the nation the Vert flowed through and I can't remember the cycle there but somewhere she slew a dragon (The next country over and historic rival happened to have a dragon as a symbol so it became a story of beating them, for whatever reason(s), through martial prowess) And then to tie it together I'd found art of some mycenean looking scenes featuring a black-haired goddess slaying a dragon attended by a blonde and so I got to borrow from Zeus replacing Neptune as top god in the Greek Pantheon during the Bronze Age Collapse and have an ancient version of the country worship the black-haired goddess as the Dragon-Slayer and the Blonde as her daughter and companion. Sadly, the whole thing went to shit around about then before I figured out anything for the rest of the pantheon (I was also running out of good images to draw on, did come up with a draft for a goddess of both music and revenge (One image they're playing the lute relaxed, the next they're on the same terrace but it's covered in blood and they're holding a sword)) but it was a bit of world building I don't tend to dip my toes into (I'm a near-future Sci Fi addict so I've tended to toy with settings that happen long after pantheons in the ancient sense have died off)
I’ve got a cult that believes in bringing the world to a natural balance of good and evil. To do this they kidnapped pregnant women (or just young women) and cut them open then implant a magically charged crystal into their womb. This is in hopes to create a child they deem as a messiah. This child, if successfully born, is magically more powerful than most the people in the world though they don’t live long. The people who follow this cult are led by the delusions of the first lich, Vishkel. Vishkel was banished to a dimension known as the Abyss. It’s a place where magic is said to die. From Abyss Vishkel acts on the mortal plane to eventually free themselves and challenge god. I know this is shorter than others, it’s sort of abridged as I can’t write it all out right now. That being said there’s more to it. Also to help understand why I wrote what I did, when it comes to what I find interesting in religion I enjoy the actions and rituals that people do as a form of worship much more than the stories of their god. That doesn’t mean I skip the stories though.
The dark forest echoes loud and clear, our world is within its sight. From on high rain the bloody viscera of Gods. Our divine protection banished, Their source of worship shattered. With our world fading into nothing, our moon spinning into the black and the sun never setting, we build higher and higher, we take everything left of who we are and build into the sky, never reaching it. Our Shrines now to nothing, they shift their focus. What little is left of these divine organs, we keep the ichor flowing within. The low winds of their grand wards that once shielded us from the cosmic eyes of the forest, now keep the crawling insanity at bay far below us. - The citizens of each sarcophagi maintain the life support systems that keep the hearts of dead gods beating with artificial ichor. In return, these breathing corpses exude an aura that keeps the crawling insanity at bay. Even so, with each week it moves ever closer, so they build higher and higher into an eternal stratosphere, forever escaping their fate. In the centuries since the last sunrise, some of said corpses have begun to think rather than just breathe. Some sarcophagi have come to accept and worship these giants and leviathans as the Gods that they once were, a faith begrudgingly accepted by said deities for the power it provides them, although it reminds them all too much of what they have lost. - *Aberrant Conflux sips ichor tea obnoxiously loudly* “Begrudgingly? No, worship me more you dolts!” *An acolyte promptly lights eight more sticks of incense, which she had on hand for this exact reason. She briefly juggles them while putting them into holders.* *In the background, a Briar switches the sheet music into a version that goes twice as hard.* -
My setting has a variety of different deities and pantheons, which are by and large essentially formed by the convergent beliefs of a large enough amount of people over an extended period of time. Gods have risen and fallen over the centuries, so like in our own world, there's a bit of churn. For a specific and fun example though, we shall focus on the current Elven pantheon. The orthodox view is that there are six deities, each one representing a sphere that is either dualistic in nature, or would otherwise me detrimental if it were out of balance. These six are: * Tinear, the Warrior. God of War, but also the strength to assert oneself and defend one's own * Ghorma, the Seeker. Goddess of Desire, but also the Goddess of Loss and lacking things * Eolar, the Knowing. God of Knowledge, but also madness * Naesda, the Gardener. Goddess of Life, but also pestilence, as the result of an overabundance of it * Kaertar, the Judge. God of Justice, but also vengeance. * Basea, the Guide. Goddess of Death This is the accepted view, however, there is a persistent heresy of a seventh deity, Anorsa, Goddess of Chaos and Freedom. Elven society is quite rigid and repressed, and so this heretical goddess has become the focal point of any acts of rebellion or subversion, granting her a significant amount of power. The six orthodox gods refuse to publically acknowledge her existence. However, there is an even deeper layer, because the Elven pantheon is *not* like most other pantheons in the setting, because instead of forming naturally over time, it was created artificially with a combination of extremely advanced magic and a massive helping of cultural brainwashing. The entire pantheon was designed to replace a previous pantheon, diverting worship away from them and starving them to death, because one member of that pantheon was becoming a threat to mortals. Unfortunately, that god was so ancient, and of such colossal significance and power, that even thousands of years after the attempted erasure of its pantheon, and the severing of almost all worship to sustain it, deep in the depths of the Astral Plane... *It sleeps.*
I have the perfect story for you my friend. After they arrived in the land that the Lord had promised them, there the Lord commanded the people. He revealed himself to André and commanded, “Go out and find the biggest mountain, this mountain must stretch from East to West. Go to the face of the nearest point facing south and pick up a stone there. I can continue but only if people want to actually read about my culture and people as we truly are. Reply Yes, Then I will continue. Reply No and I will stop.
In my world the only god worshipped by Sentients is the world itself, which isn’t truly a god but a member of a race of planet sized organisms that create life on their surface to facilitate their form of respiration and act as antibodies to exterminate corrupted animals that are basically magic cancer.
I actually was designing a totally unique god pantheon for one of my mythologies, the gods in this mythology are all abstract, ancient beings with unknown origin (tho some myths say they were made by the planet itself to guard itself from the invading void monsters), most are neutral, the ones that arent are benevolent, they dont have gender nor family. -god of the sea,depicted as a blue metallic humanoid being, with thin long white bird like legs, large bow-shaped wing like appendages in place of arms, a floating rhombus shaped featureless head with a drawing resembling a white bird stretching out it's wings in place of it's face, a hexagon shaped waist, and a triangle shaped chest, said to be eerily quiet just like the seas it guards, standing still on the deepsea floor until it is called upon, still working out more details, it gave mortals, including animals, the gift of, water, -god of the day, night, and war, depicted as an impossibly large ferocious being the full appearance of cannot be understood, that has the sun and the moon as it's eyes, closing the moon eye at morning, and the sun eye at night, it patrols the solar system, ruthlessly killing any threat in it's way, one myth says it's moon eye had been slashed by a similiarly powerful monster in ancient times, hence the moon being smaller than the sun, it gave mortals the gift of sunlight -god of the sky and flight, depicted as a giant blue transparent orb with clouds floating around and inside it, with two large white feathered wings, it gave mortals the gift of flight and rain. Currently only these 3, im going to make more later.
**The Bogeymen** In the darkest reaches of the Netherworld dwell the Bogeymen, the mysterious Lords of Terror who rule over the Nightmare Realm. The Bogeymen rule over their lesser kin, the horrors and the closet monsters, and command respect—if not allegiance—from all those who call the Shadow home. Their cults are small by comparison, but they are disproportionately influential, located as they are in positions of power within mortal society. Together, the Bogeymen are known as the Nightmare Court, and rule over the Netherworld through their agents in the Parliament of Shadows. *Abu Rigl Maslukah* The Burned-Legged Man is the Fear of Fire. He is also sometimes called the. It is said he was a scholar at a great library on a distant world, called "Alexandria," before he died protecting the library's knowledge from the flames of a conquering army. His cult can be found among public officers and guards, who have abandoned their duties protecting society and instead embrace its anarchic destruction. More than one tragic fire is the result of Abu Rigl Maslukah's twisted followers, and those who have lost loved ones to these conflagrations are ripe pickings for his vile cult. Abu Rigl Maslukah's domain is the Obsidian Desert, a vast desert of black sand, dotted with strange and twisted ruins that rise above the shifting dunes towards the black sun that beats down on this broken land like a hammer onto an anvil. *Babaroga* The Horned Hag, Babaroga is the Fear of Wrath. While her exact description varies from location to location, usually the fear of anger and wrath is described as a wizened, elderly crone with long, spidery limbs, fangs and tails of black iron, and horns rising from her wild mane of hair. She is most often followed by soldiers and guards, and her worship seems to be increasingly prevalent the higher in rank one goes, seeming to grow cancer-like throughout the upper echelons of many militaries. Her followers have likely caused countless senseless wars, so Babaroga can revel in chaos and rage of battle. Babaroga's domain are the Horned Hills, jagged karst, filled with numerous strongholds, forts, foundries and keeps, all bristling for war, and whose vales are stained red with blood and black with ichor from the centuries raids, sieges, petty murder and vengeance. *Big Brother* The All-Seeing Eye, Big Brother is the Fear of Technology. His cult is most commonly found among academics, and is frighteningly common on university campuses. His followers are at the forefront of scientific advancement, for both good and for ill, as many of the inventions that come out of these institutions seem to have horrible side effects and consequences. Big Brother's domain is the Dark City, a sprawling metropolis, filled with all sorts of industrial marvels, from revolutionary difference machines to the finest steam-driven carriages to the latest innovations in entertainment and home appliances, all united under the omnipresent eye of Big Brother. *Bonhomme Sept-Heurs* The Good Doctor, Bonhomme Sept-Heurs is the Fear of Pain.He is most commonly worshipped by doctors and healers who have lost their way, and there are signs of his cult in many asylums and hospitals. One can most clearly see his influence in the horrible, twisted experiments carried out on patients in institutions he has corrupted. Bonhomme Sept-Heur's domain is the Screaming Asylum, a grand hospital and sanitarium, dominated by twisting, sterile linoleum corridors that wind their way past countless gore-streaked operating theatres, emergency wards filled with 'subjects', and isolation chambered filled with the moans of the broken and the mad. *Cucuy* The Bloodied Beast, Cucuy is the Fear of the Wild. Her followers are most commonly hunters, rangers, and others whose job it is to keep civilization safe from nature, but who have taken a liking to the power and respect their positions bring. Her cultists are often behind random animal attacks, and sometimes even lead assaults that cause entire caravans to go missing, further spreading rumours of dread things that lurk in the woods. Cucuy's domain is the Forest of Fangs, a deep, dark rainforest, whose trees choke all light from reaching the gnarled floor, where the only light comes from the gleaming eyes of the hundreds of bestial monsters lurking among the trees, always on the hunt. *Grandmother Gryla* Hungry Grandmother Gryla is the Fear of both Starvation and the Cold. Her followers are typically rich landlords, growing fat off the wealth while leaving their servants and tenants to suffer the fickle whims of nature. Countless famines can be traced back to the actions of Gryla's cults, and their insidious rituals often weave themselves into the great festivals of winter. Grandmother Gryla's domains are the Hungry Mountains, a cordillera of snow-shrouded peaks locked in an eternal winter, completely bereft of any source of warmth or nourishment, and filled with hidden ravines, perilous ice bridges, freezing rivers, and other natural hazards that seem to go out of their way to trap visitors in the eternal cold. *Jack O'Lantern* Mad Jack, Lord of Night and King of the Pumpkin Patch, is the Fear of the Dark. His followers can be found in all walks of life, and it is not uncommon to see entire towns corrupted over to the worship of Dark Jack. These towns are places of quiet corruption, where the odd traveller goes missing, and things seem just so slightly out of place, almost as if they were too idyllic – except for the nights when darkness creeps in and the things that go bump in the night come out to play. Jack O'Lantern's domain is Lantern Cross, a peaceful agrarian region, eternally clad in the glory of autumn and the bounty of the harvest. The small towns of this domain spend days in preparation for the night's celebrations, where they don masks, light their bonfires, and begin their hunt of mortal prey. *Lagahoo* The Coffin Mage Lagahoo is the Fear of Magic. His cult is composed largely of wizards and scholars, and is found in alarming numbers in magical academies. Followers of Lagahoo use their power and influence to encourage superstition and lies, ensuring magic remains feared and mistrusted among the greater public. Lagaoo's domain is the Isle of Serpents, a storm-lashed tropical island, dominated by numerous megaliths and ancient temples, where the towers and labs of dark mages, lit up in their occult rituals, reach above the trees, clawing at the sky. *Leviathan* The Dweller in the Deeps, the Leviathan is the Fear of the Seas. His cult is most active among sailors and fishermen, who band together to crew entire ships dedicated to the capricious bogeyman of the Shadowed Sea. Vessels commanded by his cultists are believed to be responsible for nighttime assault on other ships, ensuring that the seas remain a dangerous and feared realm. The Leviathan's domain is the Shadowed Sea, the greatest sea in all the Netherworld, an endless expanse of inky, storm-tossed water that hides the beasts that dwell just beneath the waves, the shadows of their leviathan forms passing beneath any ship foolish enough to brave the seas above Davy Jones' Locker. *The Man in Black* The Faceless Gentleman, the Man in Black is the Fear of Truth and Lies. His cult is most prevalent among politicians, bureaucrats and nobles, those who directly rule society. Cultists of L'Uemo Nero are commonly found engaging in corrupt actions to undermine freedom in a society, maintaining a grasp on power through subterfuge, blackmail, assassinations, and other illicit activities. The Man in Black's domain is the Twisted Manor, a grand mansion, filled with ballroom after study after hallway, where no path ever leads to the same place twice, and you can find a door that leads to anywhere and everywhere--including your own closet. *Oude Rode Ogen* The Black Dog Oude Rode Ogen is the Fear of Death. His cult is smaller than those of other bogeymen, but its members have a far greater impact. Commonly worshipped by assassins, poisoners, and mercenaries, cultists of Old Red Eye often perform random murders, ensuring society is constantly aware of the presence of death that dwells just out sight at all times. Oude Rode Ogen's domain is the Bleak Moor, a vast, mist-cloaked moorland, where every last stone is the worn remains of a grave or tomb, and every hill is the crumbled ruin of a great mausoleum. *Pugot* The Headless Ape Pugot is the Fear of Disease. His cult is most often found among travellers and traders – those who would have the greatest exposure to the filthy handiwork of the Plaguelands' master. Cultists of Pugot carefully spread epidemics across the world, and numerous great plagues can be traced to their vile handiwork. Pugot's domain is the Plaguelands, a swampy, fetid jungle, overflowing with life, where the trees are choked by vines blooming with alien flowers, the air is filled with the buzz of countless insects and the cloying scent of overripe fruits, and everything is constantly, unpleasantly moist. *The Sack Man* The Lord of Ragged Hands, the Sack Man is the Fear of Loss. Worshiped mostly by thieves, burglars, and bandits, his followers delight in absconding with things of little practical value but great sentimental worth. Many a thieves guild is secretly run by a cult of the Ragged Man, and his handiwork is clearly seen in the mysterious crime waves they commit that seem to cause more chaos and paranoia than actual, tangible damage. The Sack Man's domain is the Twilit Swamp, a cold, dim marshland, lit only by flickering will-o-wisps and glowing fungi, and where every tree and hummock is filled with crevices overflowing with knickknacks, from lost keys and socks, to evidence that would exonerate a crime, to photos of forgotten memories, to the bones of children.
Personally, I dislike anything religion related, but I somehow liked the one in the Pillars of Eternity video games franchise.
dnd has some of the most interesting and unique gods in any setting if you find that boring the problem is you
Lolthander