Saturday, September 3, 2011

Building a Pantheon

I've been going over some of the gods and goddesses and epic monsters that I want to include in my campaign.  I have my own pantheon of gods with their build in history, legends and motives.  But  I thought I would crack open the Deities & Demigods and scavenge a few gods.  One addition and most obvious is Gruumsh.  Is there really any other orc god?  This one-eyed bad ass is perfect.  And his name is pronounceable which is not that common.  I plan on mixing in a few bad girls.  Loviatar, a demigod known as Mistress of Pain (Finnish).  Hecate, Goddess of Magic and the Night (Greek), and finally Kali, Mother of Creation and Destruction (Indian).  I've tweaked titles and will tweak mythology to fit.  This trio can cause a lot of grief. 

In my own pantheon there are a total of ten gods, two of which are dead, but are still very prevalent in the overall mythology.  These gods were built using a non-alignment, non-aspect system so I will need to do some tweaking for this.  The good thing is I won't have to put too much effort into this since they have already been developed.  What I need to do is create a few interesting legends, heroes and those epic monsters I mentioned earlier.  I know I have at least to of these legendary beasts in my back pocket.

In the end I won't know what the complete pantheon will look like.  I will edit the gods by combining, deleting or expanding them.  Not a bad way to spend a humid and hot Saturday afternoon.  Being a god of gods is thirst work.  I think I'll go get an ice tea.

7 comments:

  1. "Loviatar, a demigod known as Mistress of Pain (Finnish). "

    Oh hell yes!

    ReplyDelete
  2. It's rumored that the three only possess one bikini top between them, which they pass back and forth as needed.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Roger, where might I attend services? It sounds like a lovely religion.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ha, Christian. She is the honey of the mythology.

    Roger, I'm not sure what is with these goddesses with all their stuff hanging out, but I guess if you got it, flaunt it. I'm happy there is no, Wanda, Goddess of the Muffin Tops and Gigantic Thongs. Maybe they could be a late entry into Grognaria's Petty Gods.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I've long been interested in the possibility of a connection between Gruumsh and Odin (and the unlisted Irish god Balor, due to my Irish predilections). It implies some interesting metaphysics for the campaign world that uses both. You can see the same sort of thing going on with Troll gods in Glorantha.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Lovitar--I dated her for a while. My cleric will pick a different deity, thank you.

    ReplyDelete