Help creating a setting in HeroQuest?

[Bryan_T]

For the Cellsa, magical ability is directly linked to understanding of the Not-World.

Does this only come through the gods?  That is, are there also "aetheist"* sorcerors, who have obtained an understanding of the not-world without the gods?  Or is understanding of the not-world only possible through the gods?

* aetheist in the sense that they don't get their magic through the gods, although they may believe that the gods have objective reality.

[Lucy McLaughlin]

For the Cellsa, magical ability is directly linked to understanding of the Not-World.

Does this only come through the gods?  That is, are there also "aetheist"* sorcerors, who have obtained an understanding of the not-world without the gods?  Or is understanding of the not-world only possible through the gods?

* aetheist in the sense that they don't get their magic through the gods, although they may believe that the gods have objective reality.

Y'know, I hadn't even thought. Let's see....

Yeah, I think there are aetheist sorcerers in the Cellsa tradition - that is, they gain magic through study of the Not-World, without using the Ten Gods as a focus for that. They are few and far between, though, and I think without a guide (in the form of a deity or deities) it's much more dangerous and difficult. I wonder what the motivation is for a Cellsa adept to turn to sorcery instead of priesthood as a means to understanding the Not-World?

[Bryan_T]

From the sounds of it, what you have would map very well to veneration/wizardry in the HQ rules.

Historically, the Ten Gods were worshipped as an entire pantheon. The gods themselves represent a kind of mythic journey - from innocence, through pain and knowledge, to mastery of the world and the self - to the Cellsa. Many people still worship like that, but there are individual "cults" (not quite the right word) for each god, sometimes several for one god.

OK, so most likely the cultural magic would be something like "venerate the ten gods"  There are various sub-churces (or whatever you want to call them), but this would probably be the generic, almost everyone in the culture has it, key word, right?  It would look something like:

Magic: pray for miracle (essentially impossible)
abilities: venerate the ten gods
relationships: to congregation, to preacher
typical personality traits: (anything you want, keeping in mind what should be cultural key word, and what magic general key word).

Do people who participate in this also have access to common magic?  Either taught by the church, or taught by official schools, or through underground teaching, or just everyone knows sort of thing?

each deity has a rich mythology attached. Which I haven't written

.

Here is a trick you can steal from Glorantha: you don't have to write much of the mythology.  Give your players a bit of basics, tell them that there is a lot more, then let them write it as they need it!

Some (very few!) have actual personal relationships with the gods in a "you are chosen" sense. Most people worship on a very basic, feasts-and-holy-days sort of level, praying to Drissa for good harvest, Chenna for a happy marriage, etc - that's more a social obligation, I guess. Those who worship more seriously do so for understanding, I think, because the Ten Gods hold the secrets of the World and the Not-World. Magic, true magic, is the reward for understanding those secrets.

If you use the veneartion model, then this could be modelled as special blessings.  Basically at each service all of the "basic blessings" of their church are applied, and one special blessing.  At a basic level you could have five or so basic blessings, and one special blessing available from each god.  So not only do they pray for a good harvest, they actually do get a blessing on their crops--but it is a function of the liturgist leading a service and the congregation participating, it isn't the worshippers individually casting blessings on their crops.

Alternatively, if you use theism, you can treat them as lay worshippers.  They don't get any magic for their crops, but they know that the appropriate god needs their prayers to keep the cycle of life that leads to good crops healhty.  But then probably the "priest" would have crop magic that she/he might use on behalf of the community.

Hum. There are priests, but no "services" as in the Christian church where the priest serves as an intermediary. Priests are just advanced worshippers and guide figures really. Worship is direct.

By intermediary I meant more like the Virgin Mary or the saints of the catholic church.  That is while everyone knows that the ultimate power is one of the gods, do they direct their immediate worship to some lesser, but still not-worldly, type being--a demi-god, hero, etc.?

Hmmm, direct worship sounds more like theism in HQ terms than veneration, where more dedicated worshippers call upon the god for magic directly, although they still need people to conduct ceremonies.

There's not a massive amount of magic flying around in the Cellsa culture, though priests and other advanced devotees can be have quite strong magic.

Something to think about:  Not much magic at all, or not much active magic?  Does everyone mutter a quick prayer before planting seeds (or go to the right worship ceremony), does every warrior have the death god's symbon inscribed on his sword, is Chenna's blessing invoked on babies, and her symbols daubed at every entrance to a house to keep childhood illnesses out?  

Augmenting magic, where almost everyone gets +2 from magic, can add a lot of atmosphere, and make the gods seem really part of the environment, without changing the world too much from what we are used to.  But of course it is totally up to you if that fits your vision of your world.

If you're strong and knowledgeable enough, you get magic from the gods directly, even share it with others (priest level). For the Cellsa, magical ability is directly linked to understanding of the Not-World.

This models well with any of the magic systems in HQ in one way, and not at all in another.  The HQ rules don't have any prerequisite abilities for the deeper levels of dedication in various religions.  They do have suggested contests to be accepted, which sort of functions that way, but either in the character write-up or just by narrator fiat these can be avoided.  But it is understood that a deeper knowledge of "mythology" is generally requireed to understand the deeper secrets.

One strong, central religion is still there, but waning in power these days. Single-god cults, of which there are more than ten, tend to be small and very localized but quite authoritarian in their practises and structures. Essentially each priest will communicate with a god or several gods in their own way, and sometimes pick up a congregation who sees that priest as a guru or mentor - so the individual cults are more "priest-based", I guess.

This works especially well with veneration.  Each liturgist can have a slightly different liturgy, with a different set of blessings, depending on their worship.  Better liturgists give better blessings, so you could have some odd congregations built up around especially adept liturgists.

Note that so far I've only talked about liturgist and lay worshippers.  There are more advanced magic users who use magic actively, but I figure if you get the general population to "feel" the way you want it, the details of how people stand out from the crowd are less important than that they DO sstand out from the crowd.

--Bryan


[/quote]

[Lucy McLaughlin]

OK, so most likely the cultural magic would be something like "venerate the ten gods"  There are various sub-churces (or whatever you want to call them), but this would probably be the generic, almost everyone in the culture has it, key word, right?  It would look something like:

Magic: pray for miracle (essentially impossible)
abilities: venerate the ten gods
relationships: to congregation, to preacher
typical personality traits: (anything you want, keeping in mind what should be cultural key word, and what magic general key word).

Do people who participate in this also have access to common magic?  Either taught by the church, or taught by official schools, or through underground teaching, or just everyone knows sort of thing?

Your average lay-person? No. No active magic, anyway, though I like the suggestions you gave below (symbols on swords and over doors, ceremonies to Drissa before harvest, etc). I'm not sure if that's the kind of thing you mean.

I quite like the sample keyword. I'm not sure why you'd have something like Pray For Miracle if it's essentially impossible, though? And I'd be curious to see how different a Theist keyword might look.

If you use the veneartion model, then this could be modelled as special blessings.  Basically at each service all of the "basic blessings" of their church are applied, and one special blessing.  At a basic level you could have five or so basic blessings, and one special blessing available from each god.  So not only do they pray for a good harvest, they actually do get a blessing on their crops--but it is a function of the liturgist leading a service and the congregation participating, it isn't the worshippers individually casting blessings on their crops.

Alternatively, if you use theism, you can treat them as lay worshippers.  They don't get any magic for their crops, but they know that the appropriate god needs their prayers to keep the cycle of life that leads to good crops healhty.  But then probably the "priest" would have crop magic that she/he might use on behalf of the community.

In this case, the theist approach sounds much closer to what I want for the Cellsa society. The veneration model sounds (potentially) like other cultures, possibly from other countries.

By intermediary I meant more like the Virgin Mary or the saints of the catholic church.  That is while everyone knows that the ultimate power is one of the gods, do they direct their immediate worship to some lesser, but still not-worldly, type being--a demi-god, hero, etc.?

Hmmm, direct worship sounds more like theism in HQ terms than veneration, where more dedicated worshippers call upon the god for magic directly, although they still need people to conduct ceremonies.

Definitely direct worship - they pray to the gods. Again, semi-divine intermediaries sound like a good fit for other cultures I can think of.

Something to think about:  Not much magic at all, or not much active magic?  Does everyone mutter a quick prayer before planting seeds (or go to the right worship ceremony), does every warrior have the death god's symbon inscribed on his sword, is Chenna's blessing invoked on babies, and her symbols daubed at every entrance to a house to keep childhood illnesses out?  

Augmenting magic, where almost everyone gets +2 from magic, can add a lot of atmosphere, and make the gods seem really part of the environment, without changing the world too much from what we are used to.  But of course it is totally up to you if that fits your vision of your world.

Actually, augmenting magic fits rather beautifully. That all sounds exactly right for the culture - except that it'll be Jossataro's symbol (war) that will be on Cellsa swords, not Rostirno's (death)!

This models well with any of the magic systems in HQ in one way, and not at all in another.  The HQ rules don't have any prerequisite abilities for the deeper levels of dedication in various religions.  They do have suggested contests to be accepted, which sort of functions that way, but either in the character write-up or just by narrator fiat these can be avoided.  But it is understood that a deeper knowledge of "mythology" is generally requireed to understand the deeper secrets.

Sure, strong/knowledgeable enough wasn't something I imagined reflecting in the mechanics exactly. Contests sound like a cool idea, though, and there is definitely hard work involved in understanding the secrets.

This works especially well with veneration.  Each liturgist can have a slightly different liturgy, with a different set of blessings, depending on their worship.  Better liturgists give better blessings, so you could have some odd congregations built up around especially adept liturgists.

Note that so far I've only talked about liturgist and lay worshippers.  There are more advanced magic users who use magic actively, but I figure if you get the general population to "feel" the way you want it, the details of how people stand out from the crowd are less important than that they DO sstand out from the crowd.

That all sounds pretty interesting, although there were some particular parts where I preferred the theist approach. (I get paid on Friday. I can order the book then, yay!) Is there some kind of parallel for theists? I guess it might have to be less priest-based, but what I want to get across is the idea that the cults themselves are essentially human-made, rather than resulting from direct instruction by the gods, or anything. For instance you might have several cults of Mosstor - one highly studious, one rather ascetic/nomadic, one politically active, etc.

[Bryan_T]

Is there some kind of parallel for theists? I guess it might have to be less priest-based, but what I want to get across is the idea that the cults themselves are essentially human-made, rather than resulting from direct instruction by the gods, or anything. For instance you might have several cults of Mosstor - one highly studious, one rather ascetic/nomadic, one politically active, etc.

Well, theism works completely different from veneration for magic.

The three basic levels are:

lay worshipper-- essentially no magic (they can pray for divine intervention, still prohibitively hard but not as bad as for veneration).  Takes 10% of time and resources.

initiate--has three affinities, each of which can augment within broad categories.  You know how Mike had you list three areas for each god, I'm pretty sure what he was getting at was making those into the affinities.  Takes 30% of time and resources.

devotees--still has three affinities and can augment with them, but also knows some number of feats within those affinities, which they can use as active magic.  There are standard feats that almost all devotees know, but they can learn other ones that fit within the affinity.  Takes 60% of time and resources.

There are some twists to this (initiates can improvise feats with a penalty, there are disciples, sort of super devotees, who are almost living emobiements of their gods) but you can deal with those later or just ignore them in your game.

It is playable to just give three affinities to each god, choose some common feats within the affinities, and go.  Just keeping it at that level doesn't sound like it gives you the variety within each god that you want, however.  Fortunately, the same issue exists in Glorantha, leading to sub-cults.

In Glorantha, most major gods have two core affinities, along with usually some abilities and personality traits, that all of their worshippers have, and a number of sub-cults, each of which follows some narrower part of their god (often in the form of a demi-god or hero) and  offers one additional affinity, and sometimes additional abilities and personality traits.  So the Heortling "knowing god" gives all of his worshippers the affinities "literacy" and "knowledge", but offers various sub-cults with affinities like exploration, alchemy, and even sword-fighting (sword combat as a rigorous mental discipline and field of study).  The typical attitudes of these sub-cults are very different.  

Note that sub-cults are lightly touched on in the HQ base rules, because they only have so much room.

Of course, there is no reason you couldn't take a different tact.  Make different churches or orders or whatever, give them the same affinities, but give them different skills and personallity traits.  They all get to the same place in their understanding of the not-world, but they come at it from different angles in this world, so "feel" very different.

--Bryan
PS. Yay! on being able to buy the book shortly!  I know that feeling....in fact waiting to be paid on Friday to buy the Heroquest supplement "Men of the Sea" all about sailing life in Glorantha.

[Lucy McLaughlin]

Ah, I see. I think I get it now, although the book will help lots! The Ten Gods feel to me like a Theist pantheon: I'm starting to get a feel for the wizardry/veneration ideas and how I might use them in other cultures, though. The sub-cults idea seems to be exactly what I was thinking of, too. Same place in the not-world, but different places in the world. Excellent. Thank you!

Now maybe it's time to try and turn all this into a Cellsa homeland keyword, or something? I'm going back to look at Mike's articles, but I'm still not at all sure how to do that.

[Mike Holmes]

I'm thinking definitely theist pantheon at this point. For several reasons (priests, heroes become gods, the level of the powers). There are a few discrepancies, however, such as the sorcerers you mention. I thnk Bryan drew you offsides with that one. One thing to consider is just adjusting to the Theist model completely. But I think we can actually accommodate the entire religion as you've stated it.

Here's how I'd do it. First you have the standard looking Communal Worshipper basic level. Then you have the gods as cults, with aspects as sub-cults. This means that a lot of those beings that you didn't get down first because it "didn't work." Note that you don't have to cover everything, all keywords are samples. So you just cover what you think is most important for people to get the feel. Then they can adjust from that.

For example, I look at the gods and see Mosstor, the wandering god. He fits my wanderer character well. Except my character is all about wandering because he feels that he's lost everything, and that there is no hope. So I invent Mosstor's alter-ego, Morvasta, the wandering goddess, who is an aspect of Mosstor. She has knowledge, travel, and despair instead of hope. And we go from there. Or, if you decide that Mosstor is not a "Great God" then his sister can just be a lesser known goddess, rarely worshipped.

Is the Not-World the "God Plane" and is the World the Mundane World, the one the characters roam around in? If not, then you're going to have to describe these things a bit more. Is he Not-World something like hell? That is, just another otherworld? Making the World an otherworld, too? It's kinda key to indentify the otherworlds at work as opposed to the world of the characters.


OK, that pretty much covers the theism side of things. Now, what I'm thinking is that there's another cult for Rostirno, perhaps, that's actually a Sorcery school. That is, Rostirno wrote down how to reach another otherworld that he'd been to, and it was his opening the door there that lead to his death. So, of course, he's not worshipped directly anymore, but he is venerated as a saint, and before he died, he wrote some sacred texts that are linked to the magic world. These are the grimmoires that sorcerers learn their spells from.

Or, if you don't like that, even more monotheistic, is that there was a being that existed long, long ago, whose name has been forgotten who gave birth to the three elder gods of the ten. Long ago, a prophet told of the nature of this being as coming from a "higher" place than the god world, where all magic comes from, and penned a book that tells of how to commune with this higher plane which is seen as somewhat synonymous with the being in question. It's so distant, and alien, however, that it doesn't ask for worship (or so these schools say). But various scholars over the years have studied the prophet's work, and have written their own treatises on how to tap into this higher plane. The schools in which these grimoires are studied are the Sorcery shools in question.

The important part is that they're considered to be part of the same religion, because the theists all admit that their gods descend from this being. They just don't see any merit in trying to understand a being that is, by the admission of the sorcerers, unknowable. The sorcerers for their part mutter that, in fact, the gods are merely channels into the magic that are percieved as beings. Illusions that miss the "correct" way to understand magic, and which are, therefore not suitable to be worshipped.

Or something like that. Get it?

OK, so now you have your sorcerers. You could also have sects that do worship the Ultimate Being (or Rostirno, or whoever) as liturgists, orderlies and adepts per usual. This would explain where the blessings come from. But I think there's a better way there. Instead, I'd have an animist cult, too. Who see one of the gods as a spirit instead, and have access to all of the little spirits that come under it. Typically your nature god works good for this, so I'd choose Maniara. The spirits of the rivers, and trees, and mountains, etc, reporting to her as practice spirits. Again as an accepted part of the religion, her worshippers could recieve charms from practitioners. Things to put over doors, etc.

(Hey, here's a cool idea for role reversal, have Manaira, since she is a goddess of magic be the monotheist pillar, and have Rostirno be the spirit with lots of little sub-death spirits running around. Could be necromantic dealing with the spirits guiding the dead back and forth to the otherworlds or something. My point is to think up your own version of all of this.)

Anyhow, so you see how you're not restricted to a religion being just one type or another? What happens is that, yes, you start as a Communal Worshipper, who can only call on the gods of the pantheon for divine aid, but who can also maybe get some blessings if they go to services (if you decide to add that), and who can get charms if they are brave enough to ask the local practitioner (social reasons may make this more or less rare).

Anyhow, of course, a character can become an initiate or devotee of the gods in question (including the ones worshipped as wizardry or animism given that they'll have theist aspects as well, likely - you don't have to get rid of the god as one to have the other). But you can also become a Manaira practitioner, or a sorcerer in some school.

You can even, in theory become more than one of these. For example, there's nothing saying that a sorcerer can't also worship a god as an initiate. The one thing he can't do, then, however, is concentrate in either wizardry or theism (because, by definition concentration in one makes the others impossible).


So this would then be the basic Ten Gods Pantheon Specialized Religion Keyword.
Magic: pray for divine intervention (happens only slightly less often than praying for a monotheist miracle)
abilities: Worship the Ten Gods
relationships: to Temple, to Priest
Virtues: again, like Bryan said, these are personality traits that people who belong to the religion generally have. A good way to think about this is to concoct a character in your head from the homeland, but who happens to somehow be part of a different religion. Then change the religion to the one that's standard for the homeland. Whatever did not change, those are the homeland personality traits. Whatever does change, the new ones are the personality traits of the specialized magic religion. :-)


Bryan is right that the amount of magic will seem correct, IMO. That is, the magic of Initiates which will be most common, is pretty darn subdued. You can see it in that people glow and whatnot, but it just makes them better at things. Only the devotees will regularly be doing magical stunts. And the Sorcerers. Which seems to fit the model.

Mike

[Lucy McLaughlin]

I'm thinking definitely theist pantheon at this point. For several reasons (priests, heroes become gods, the level of the powers). There are a few discrepancies, however, such as the sorcerers you mention. I thnk Bryan drew you offsides with that one. One thing to consider is just adjusting to the Theist model completely. But I think we can actually accommodate the entire religion as you've stated it.

Here's how I'd do it. First you have the standard looking Communal Worshipper basic level. Then you have the gods as cults, with aspects as sub-cults. This means that a lot of those beings that you didn't get down first because it "didn't work." Note that you don't have to cover everything, all keywords are samples. So you just cover what you think is most important for people to get the feel. Then they can adjust from that.

For example, I look at the gods and see Mosstor, the wandering god. He fits my wanderer character well. Except my character is all about wandering because he feels that he's lost everything, and that there is no hope. So I invent Mosstor's alter-ego, Morvasta, the wandering goddess, who is an aspect of Mosstor. She has knowledge, travel, and despair instead of hope. And we go from there. Or, if you decide that Mosstor is not a "Great God" then his sister can just be a lesser known goddess, rarely worshipped.

So far, that all sounds very cool. A lot of the beings I didn't get down in this pantheon will be resurrected in other places - such as the spirits of the Amarein and the Muab (single higher power) that the Vilini worship. I love the idea of the Ten Gods having lots of aspects, too, and that those can be created by players. I feel like the actual gods are a closed set: that is, any "new" gods will have to be aspects of the existing ten.

Is the Not-World the "God Plane" and is the World the Mundane World, the one the characters roam around in? If not, then you're going to have to describe these things a bit more. Is he Not-World something like hell? That is, just another otherworld? Making the World an otherworld, too? It's kinda key to indentify the otherworlds at work as opposed to the world of the characters.

Well, there definitely are a number of otherworlds, so yes, the World is an otherworld of its own too, a particular place in a large number of places. The religion of the Cellsa makes a pretty broad distinction between the World, where all the people live, and the Not-World, where people don't live. Other faiths make more distinctions. But there indeed a fair number of worlds out there. I'm currently only sure of the nature of one of them, however. I'll get to that in a sec, because....

OK, that pretty much covers the theism side of things. Now, what I'm thinking is that there's another cult for Rostirno, perhaps, that's actually a Sorcery school. That is, Rostirno wrote down how to reach another otherworld that he'd been to, and it was his opening the door there that lead to his death. So, of course, he's not worshipped directly anymore, but he is venerated as a saint, and before he died, he wrote some sacred texts that are linked to the magic world. These are the grimmoires that sorcerers learn their spells from.

Mr Holmes, YOU SCARE ME! In my very first writeups about Rostirno, a good decade ago, this was almost exactly my idea of him. The original Rostirno was a magician who discovered Axis, the first known of the otherworlds (which is the god-plane, nowadays. Funny you should mention Mosstor, the one god who reputedly won't go near the place). He did indeed write it down, before the crossing killed him. Hence, um, Dead God.  :-)

Or, if you don't like that, even more monotheistic, is that there was a being that existed long, long ago, whose name has been forgotten who gave birth to the three elder gods of the ten. Long ago, a prophet told of the nature of this being as coming from a "higher" place than the god world, where all magic comes from, and penned a book that tells of how to commune with this higher plane which is seen as somewhat synonymous with the being in question. It's so distant, and alien, however, that it doesn't ask for worship (or so these schools say). But various scholars over the years have studied the prophet's work, and have written their own treatises on how to tap into this higher plane. The schools in which these grimoires are studied are the Sorcery shools in question.

The important part is that they're considered to be part of the same religion, because the theists all admit that their gods descend from this being. They just don't see any merit in trying to understand a being that is, by the admission of the sorcerers, unknowable. The sorcerers for their part mutter that, in fact, the gods are merely channels into the magic that are percieved as beings. Illusions that miss the "correct" way to understand magic, and which are, therefore not suitable to be worshipped.

That sounds like a really cool seed idea for the Muab. [swipe!]

Or something like that. Get it?

OK, so now you have your sorcerers. You could also have sects that do worship the Ultimate Being (or Rostirno, or whoever) as liturgists, orderlies and adepts per usual. This would explain where the blessings come from. But I think there's a better way there. Instead, I'd have an animist cult, too. Who see one of the gods as a spirit instead, and have access to all of the little spirits that come under it. Typically your nature god works good for this, so I'd choose Maniara. The spirits of the rivers, and trees, and mountains, etc, reporting to her as practice spirits. Again as an accepted part of the religion, her worshippers could recieve charms from practitioners. Things to put over doors, etc.

Hm, I think from your description, Drissa (nature goddess) sounds like the natural choice for an animist aspect to the religion - Chenna too, to an extent. Manaira might actually inspire a more veneration-oriented sect, like Rostirno - the two are counterparts in a way, being life and death respectively, and there are as I see it a number of saints in the Manairan "church".

(Hey, here's a cool idea for role reversal, have Manaira, since she is a goddess of magic be the monotheist pillar, and have Rostirno be the spirit with lots of little sub-death spirits running around. Could be necromantic dealing with the spirits guiding the dead back and forth to the otherworlds or something. My point is to think up your own version of all of this.)

Ooh, that's cool too. :) Then again, who's to say all of this isn't true? There are a hell of a lot of Cellsa, after all!

Anyhow, so you see how you're not restricted to a religion being just one type or another? What happens is that, yes, you start as a Communal Worshipper, who can only call on the gods of the pantheon for divine aid, but who can also maybe get some blessings if they go to services (if you decide to add that), and who can get charms if they are brave enough to ask the local practitioner (social reasons may make this more or less rare).

Anyhow, of course, a character can become an initiate or devotee of the gods in question (including the ones worshipped as wizardry or animism given that they'll have theist aspects as well, likely - you don't have to get rid of the god as one to have the other). But you can also become a Manaira practitioner, or a sorcerer in some school.

You can even, in theory become more than one of these. For example, there's nothing saying that a sorcerer can't also worship a god as an initiate. The one thing he can't do, then, however, is concentrate in either wizardry or theism (because, by definition concentration in one makes the others impossible).

I see. That rocks, a lot. I'm starting to see how this all fits together! Yay!

So this would then be the basic Ten Gods Pantheon Specialized Religion Keyword.
Magic: pray for divine intervention (happens only slightly less often than praying for a monotheist miracle)
abilities: Worship the Ten Gods
relationships: to Temple, to Priest
Virtues: again, like Bryan said, these are personality traits that people who belong to the religion generally have. A good way to think about this is to concoct a character in your head from the homeland, but who happens to somehow be part of a different religion. Then change the religion to the one that's standard for the homeland. Whatever did not change, those are the homeland personality traits. Whatever does change, the new ones are the personality traits of the specialized magic religion. :-)


Bryan is right that the amount of magic will seem correct, IMO. That is, the magic of Initiates which will be most common, is pretty darn subdued. You can see it in that people glow and whatnot, but it just makes them better at things. Only the devotees will regularly be doing magical stunts. And the Sorcerers. Which seems to fit the model.

That all sounds perfect. Thank you, Mike! [grin]

[Mike Holmes]

A lot of the beings I didn't get down in this pantheon will be resurrected in other places - such as the spirits of the Amarein and the Muab (single higher power) that the Vilini worship.

Looking at this one, you have to ask yourself if it's part of the overall religion, or if it's a separate religion all it's own. Here's the real question: will these spirits accept those who worship the Ten Gods, and will the Ten Gods accept those who worship these spirits? That is, can I worship one set of beings without honestly renouncing the other? If you can, then it's just part of the same religion. If you can't, then it's a separate religion.

Note that often you'll have pantheons and traditions, etc, that are related to each other, but still don't accept each other. For example, in HQ, there's the Earth Pantheon of Esrolia, and the Storm Pantheon of Sartar. The head god of each pantheon is supposedly married to the head god of the other pantheon, Orlanth, king of the gods in the Sartar religion, and Ernalda, queen of the gods in the Esrolian religion. But the Ernalda of the Storm Pantheon is not the same Ernalda of the Earth pantheon, she being subservient to Orlanth, while in Esrolian Orlanth is subservient to Ernalda. So the religions are quite closely related, sharing lots of gods in name at least. But you can't be a member of both.

As I understand it. I could be wrong about this example. But generally speaking, this is true. In Aeolia, they worship the Heortling gods as saints, and in that case, I'm certain that the two religions are meant to be incompatible.

I love the idea of the Ten Gods having lots of aspects, too, and that those can be created by players. I feel like the actual gods are a closed set: that is, any "new" gods will have to be aspects of the existing ten.

Makes sense, especially given the name of the pantheon. :-)

The next question, however, is which of the gods are "great gods." Meaning that they have aspects. Typically you only get one "great god" per religion, but I don't think that's a hard and fast rule. Perhaps your three older gods could be Great Gods. You might also want to have the possibility of "minor gods" who aren't counted in the ten because of their lowly status, but who are individual gods nonetheless.

Well, there definitely are a number of otherworlds, so yes, the World is an otherworld of its own too, a particular place in a large number of places. The religion of the Cellsa makes a pretty broad distinction between the World, where all the people live, and the Not-World, where people don't live. Other faiths make more distinctions. But there indeed a fair number of worlds out there.

I should have been clearer. "Otherworld" refers to a world that's outside of the "mundane world" that being the place where the humans and so forth live. The Gloranthan idea is that all gods, spirits, and such, originate in the "otherworlds," though they often come to reside in the mundane world (especially the smaller beings). So, a "god" is defined as a being that comes from the place that gods come from. A spirit is defined as a being that originates with the spirit world. Etc. What it sounds like to me is that your "world" is the mundane world of men, and that the Not-World is the

Mr Holmes, YOU SCARE ME! In my very first writeups about Rostirno, a good decade ago, this was almost exactly my idea of him. The original Rostirno was a magician who discovered Axis, the first known of the otherworlds (which is the god-plane, nowadays. Funny you should mention Mosstor, the one god who reputedly won't go near the place). He did indeed write it down, before the crossing killed him. Hence, um, Dead God.  :-)

Not really that surprising. We're talking tropes here, and memes. Before I stated that Gloranthan reality was good enough for most games. The reason I think it is, is because it plays to these tropes. I mean, look at your pantheon: Rostirno is Osirus. Tiamanti is the Fates (also Tiamat). Jossataro is Thor. Thintor is Loki. Drissa is Diana. Mosstor is Mercury. Chenna is Innana. Maniara is Gaia/Sol. Note how even the linguistics are similar in some cases.

Every pantheon is like this. Becuse the gods simply represent some part of our human existance. We all share these things in common, so all pantheons come out with these similarities.

In fact, I'll bet you could take all of your gods affinities, and all of those of the Storm Pantheon, and then compare the lists, and there would be few differences. The only really big differences are in terms of which gods are composed of which affinities. For example, I said that Jossataro was Thor, and not Ares, because he represents Truth. All you have to do to to make him Ares is to swap out fear for truth. Swap Jehnann's Madness for Nature, and you have Dionysus. Approximately. But you get the point.

That sounds like a really cool seed idea for the Muab. [swipe!]

Well, you've mentioned that Muab has something to do with spirits. So I was thinking that he might be your animism branch. That said, this assumes (quite perilously) that you're using the term Spirit in the animist sense. Which you may well not be.

Hm, I think from your description, Drissa (nature goddess) sounds like the natural choice for an animist aspect to the religion - Chenna too, to an extent.

Makes sense.

Manaira might actually inspire a more veneration-oriented sect, like Rostirno - the two are counterparts in a way, being life and death respectively, and there are as I see it a number of saints in the Manairan "church".

Sounds very cool. The only "problem" that I see with all of this, is that you're creating an intensely complicated religion. Which might work for you.

Here's the key to Wizardry - their magic has to all come from the same place, essentially "god". Now people don't have to think of it this way, precisely, but it will be a lot more work if you actually have several whole Wizardry religions inside of your overall religion. What usually happens if that, again, the religion is primarily one thing, and then there are some exceptions. These exceptions are stated as magic keywords of the higher level types.

So you have:
Communal Worshipper of the Ten Gods Pantheon (theism)

And then you havebranches like :
Initiate of Josstaro (theism, standard for the religion)
Devotee of Jehnann (theism)
Liturgist of Maniara (Wizardry - here assumes that they see Manaira as the supreme being)
Orderly of Saint Marek (wizardry, Marek being perhaps a one time follower of Manaira)
Adept of the Palzak School (wizardry, Palzak being a school founder who followed Manaira perhaps)
Sorcerer of the Nelzian School (wizardry, Nelzian being a school founder who belives that Maniara doesn't really exist, that magic is just magic)
Initiate of Maniara (again, no reason one being can't be worshipped in two different ways)
Practitioner of Muab (animism - note that in this case there is no overall "tradition" outside of Maub, just the rest of the overall religion)
Shaman of Maub (animism)

(Hey, here's a cool idea for role reversal, have Manaira, since she is a goddess of magic be the monotheist pillar, and have Rostirno be the spirit with lots of little sub-death spirits running around. Could be necromantic dealing with the spirits guiding the dead back and forth to the otherworlds or something. My point is to think up your own version of all of this.)

Ooh, that's cool too. :) Then again, who's to say all of this isn't true? There are a hell of a lot of Cellsa, after all!

Right. It all comes down to how much you want to delineate. When you do, the key thing then is to, again, decide which of these beliefs are compatible with each other. The ones that are not, are separate (if related) religions. The whole Maniara as God religion could be completely separate from the Ten Gods religion. Sounds, in fact, a tad like Zoroastrianism.

Consider that having everything in the Ironan religion (Ten Gods Pantheon), might not be as interesting as taking several of these ideas, and shunting them off as separate religions of other neighboring provinces. This makes things more simple to deal with, and starts you off with being able to flesh out more than one place. So, maybe in Irona, they're just theists. But in one neighboring country, they worship Maniaira as god, and the religion is Wizardry based, including your sorcerers. Maybe in the other direction there are the provinces that worship the spirits in an animism way.

But it's all up to you how you want to divide things up. One thing you have to consider, and you may simply want to throw out this rule, is that there's this thing called Misapplied Worship. That is, in the Gloranthan reality, a god is a god, even if you make the mistake of worshipping it as a saint. A spirit is a spirit, even if you accidentally worship it as a god. Meaning that for those religions that worship the bieng incorrectly, there are loads of penalties. For example, if Drissa is a god, but she's worshipped as a Great Spirit by some tradition or practice, then you can't concentrate your magic (actually you can, but it has no effect), and you get penalties like -20 to opening up the god world (because you think that you're opening up the spirit world).

What this does in play is to give players strong disincentives not to play any religion where misapplied worship is the norm. Hence why I don't like it. In my opinion, who's to say that the being isn't "stretched out" over two otherworlds, or the like? Maybe it's a different being with the same name? Anyhow, I ignore the rule, but it's up to you if you find it interesting to keep in.

OK, I think at this point you're best off reading your book to get what all these things are straight. When reading the book, look closely at the Teshnos homeland, and it's religion, which is all mixed up. That'll give you an idea of how to do the writeup.


Let's move onto homelands. What other provinces are there besides Irona? Making homelands is easy as I point out in my article. Because a lot of it is just putting down Ironan Customs, Ironan Geography, Speak Ironan (or whatever the language is called), Urban Survival (or whatever most applies) etc. Compared to the religion keywords, they're a piece of cake.

Mike

[Lucy McLaughlin]

Hi, Mike and everyone - thank you so much for the advice! I'm putting this on hold just for a little while, while I wait for my HeroQuest book (yay!) to arrive. It should be here next week. At which point, I'll have a better idea what everybody is going on about.

[Mike Holmes]

So...the book came, right? :-)

Mike