Chamorus the Cat said:
I'm creating a dark-fantasy setting homebrew campaign world type thing. Okay, actually, I'm writing my own RPG. I want some help with gods and goddesses and wanted to see what people could come up with.
All good. If you're going to make this your own RPG, you want to alter any inspirations into legally distinct interpretations.
If you have magic in your world, you've got to decide how each culture sees it. Do the cultures see it as natural, arising from the environment, or is there a deity in charge of magic? Often something that powerful is the domain of the ruler of the pantheon, or it's attributed to the ruler of the Moon (or Moons, if you have more than one, or perhaps each moon has a separate God symbolically/practically attached). (when you start dealing with religion, symbology becomes intermixed with everything.)
The Broken Isles: Islands that dot the the ocean. The mainland kingdoms leave the isles alone, seeing as how it's hard to govern such peoples. These can be tribal colonies.
- Nive, slave city; think Egypt surrounded by water
- Castle in the Mist; once, a mainlander tried to civilize this island. No one goes into the main keep that was swallowed by the vegetation, but hard survivors still remain in the area.
- Falosi, tribal warground; where the various sea-faring tribes with gather for council and, in order to save their minimal supplies, where tiny wars are raged
- Hekame (undecided)
- Nkaluk (undecided)
Okay, for any island culture, the sea is paramount. It will provide most of the food, and also most of the natural dangers. Storms are devastating. Most of your gods are going to be dealing with aspects of the sea. Island cultures also tend to interrelate, to keep from getting too inbred, if nothing else. There is a fair amount of cultural cross-pollination, even between antagonists, so if there's interaction, the deities are going to look vaguely similar, even if they go by different names or have different fine details. This saves you time.
It also looks like you have a mix of technically advanced and technically primitive societies in the islands. Technically primitive societies, while capable of exactly as much complexity as technically advanced societies, tend to focus on the necessities more. They will have a few gods for things like music, maybe, or fertility, or shipbuilding, things like that that are important to the culture, but most of the gods will represent daily concerns like hunting/fishing and environment. The gods of a people reflect their concerns. In the more technically advanced societies, more people have more time to think about things, there's whole classes of people that can survive by knowledge (teachers, scribes, philosophers, historians, merchants, nobles, etc.), so they have time to consider gods to cover more abstract concerns. If the pantheons are still shared among the islands, perhaps there are some gods that are recognizably adapted, or perhaps the realm of responsibilities for certain gods might be widened to include new things that less technical societies don't bother to worry about.
Sandsea: The Western continent where sand is as common as water in the sea, hence Sandsea.
- Malvek, the ruling capitol of Sandsea; where the councils reside
- V'shlar, the Crown of Sandsea; where the nobility reside
- Urma, believe themselves to be the true rulers of Sandsea
- Orma, who also believe themselves to be the true rulers of Sandsea
- Mujagen, City of Thieves
- Qarm, City of Splendor
So, by this, do you mean it's all a desert kingdom? Pretty rough environment, and a culture's outlook and gods are influenced by what it finds itself in. Perhaps there is a god entirely concerned with the desert, or perhaps sandstorms are the work of a different god, or perhaps underlings of the main desert god. It's likely the desert god rates pretty high, or there might be a number of different gods, all equal and all at something of odds with each other. Perhaps sandstorms and such arise out of their conflicts in the Great Oasis, or wherever hey reside. Since this culture is pretty sociologically advanced, you'll likely have gods concerning themselves with abstract concepts, like pleasure or love or justice. But still, the environment is ever-present in the desert, and thus everything will be influenced by it.
Steppes of Jogun: Located on the Eastern continent, this area is inhabited by some of the hardiest folk in the land. The barbarians here are well known for their battle prowess.
- Lasthold, fortress capital of Jogun; king and council reside here; beyond Lasthold are the Wastes, where little grows
- Tamehound, a way-point between Lasthold and Ulharand, where folk come to trade
- Ulharand, the land and holdings of the family that has taken an oath to repel the Jogunites who would break their own oaths and leave the Steppes
So, wait, are the residents of the Jogun nomads, like the Mongolians, or hardy hardscrabble settlers in small hamlets and villages, like, oh, say, the Siberians? Because if they're nomads, they don't even need fortresses or capitals, but if they're settlers, then the above makes sense.
In a martial culture, all deities are likely to have aspects of battle gods, or the ruler of the pantheon is the straight-up war god. Apparently there are oaths and breakers of such are forever banned, so the gods should all be pretty strict. You won't need a sea god, and water sources will probably be ruled by a god of the land. Since they build cities, the culture seems reasonably advanced beyond mere survival level, so they likely have gods handling abstract concepts, as before. The Steppes are basically just cold grasslandy desert, with tough ground cover and just about no shrubs or trees. Resource-poor, but enough for animals to thrive, particularly with a little help. That's why most steppes-dwellers are mobile, to either hunt or tend animal herds as they follow natural patterns. There's bound to be a god of cycles, or all the gods will be influenced by cycles, if herds and animals are important to the culture.
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