Café de Nuit

So, here's a question.

I find myself less and less comfortable with using the Akari and Rajan pantheons. While I don't mind pastiches of 'real' gods, it feels like it's kind of wrong to just up and use Osiris and Kali and so on.

So does anyone have any recommendations for replacements? Or just good names to change them around to?

That always bugged me a bit too. But especially for the Rajiian gods. As far as I know, worship of the egyptian gods is pretty much extinct, but it feels pretty weird to use gods that peope actually worship today.

Then again, in a modern setting campaign, it would be weird not to have catholic priests and ancient hebrew texts and the like... but if Ravenloft can have a self-sacrificing deity, whose symbol includes a long vertical bar and a short horizontal one, and whose followers are splintered into multiple sects, but who isn't actually Jesus, why can't it also have an animal headed lord of the afterlife who isn't actually Osiris?

I don't have a good replacement, but I suppose you could just stick the old blender on them... swap some different aspects around, including gender, portfolio, type of inhuman anatomy, etc, and see what comes out. Maybe the Rajian's highest god has 6 arms and green skin, not 4 arms and blue skin? Or is that too thinly veiled?

Well, I can't find any Egyptian or Hindi inspired deities, as opposed to the real things. Searching for Hindu inspired deities got me the a page making fun of "Deities and Demigods", and searching for Egyptian inspired deities got me...


Oh yes, this is much better.

Like Gonzoron, I don't mind the Egyptian pantheon as much, much like I wouldn't mind the Greek and the Norse pantheon. There's also the fact that their names are already changed from their "real" names, so if you're going the "just change the name" route... they're already there. I'm not sure how the Greeks got "Thoth" from "Djehuti", but those aren't exactly two names I'd associate with each other just from hearing them.

If you do end up having to make them from scratch, you should probably make due with just grabbing elements from what's already in the domain (sadly, not much) and working with that. For example, maybe the "Kali" pastiche is a tiger headed goddess (most Hindu deities seem to be human, so that's one way to separate the two) since the rakshasa darklord seems keen on her. You might get some symbolism out of the masks that people wear on the backs of their heads to keep tigers from sneaking up on them. You'd probably also want to change them all to reflect the fact they're in Ravenloft, much how elementals get warped when summoned in the demiplane.

...and there's always Nyarlathotep. He was Egyptian.

Lovecraft also had "Azathoth", a riff on Thoth.

there's another one I don't mind: the celtic pantheon. I've used Tepest and Nidala exactly as is with no qualms. But I might have to rethink it.. does anyone still worship those in the UK or elsewhere? (outside of some small groups of neo-pagans or the like...)

Gonzoron of the FoS wrote: Then again, in a modern setting campaign, it would be weird not to have catholic priests and ancient hebrew texts and the like...

In all fairness, the inhabitants of Odiare would be Roman Catholics (of course, since Maligno killed all the adults, there isn't much of a priesthood, but I've always liked the idea of an altar boy who has found that he's been touched with a potent manifestation of Divine Providence since the disaster that ripped them all out of Gothic Earth...)

Garudos Celestar wrote:

Gonzoron of the FoS wrote: Then again, in a modern setting campaign, it would be weird not to have catholic priests and ancient hebrew texts and the like...

In all fairness, the inhabitants of Odiare would be Roman Catholics (of course, since Maligno killed all the adults, there isn't much of a priesthood, but I've always liked the idea of an altar boy who has found that he's been touched with a potent manifestation of Divine Providence since the disaster that ripped them all out of Gothic Earth...)

Yup. That would rock.

I have no issue including Christian elements in a game, if they are handled well. The important thing is not to bring God directly into the picture [ominpotent, universal deities don't mesh well with most styles of D&D, IMO]

Well, I'm still not sure how they got Belenus worship into an organized, hierarchical apocalyptic faith out of a cyclical network/cultural union, or why we need two separate pseudo-Celtic cultures that're neighbors but have nothing to do with each other.

Or why we needed 'the noob's guide to celtic pantheons.' in full in two gazetteers without getting any real information on how Belenus merits being a major religion if it is basically unknown outside of Tepest and an island of terror.

For me it's just a little jarring to mix and match like that; if we're using RL mythological figures, okay, and if we're using made up mythological figures, okay. On the other hand, I have no problem with Baba Yaga showing up, so maybe I'm just being a fascist about religion and cosmology.

DocBeard wrote:Well, I'm still not sure how they got Belenus worship into an organized, hierarchical apocalyptic faith out of a cyclical network/cultural union, or why we need two separate pseudo-Celtic cultures that're neighbors but have nothing to do with each other.

Or why we needed 'the noob's guide to celtic pantheons.' in full in two gazetteers without getting any real information on how Belenus merits being a major religion if it is basically unknown outside of Tepest and an island of terror.

For me it's just a little jarring to mix and match like that; if we're using RL mythological figures, okay, and if we're using made up mythological figures, okay. On the other hand, I have no problem with Baba Yaga showing up, so maybe I'm just being a fascist about religion and cosmology.

I am not sold on Irish Tepest, anyway.

I prefer Ezran missionaries to explain the sudden rise of Tepestani Inquisistors/crazy clerics with blazing torches and cold iron maces.

In my campaigns I often just use titles instead of real names, just as for example "Morninglord" became a 3e substitute for "Amaunator-Lathander."

Here are my subs:

Osiris = The Green Hand
Ra = The Crimson Disk
Set = The Serpent of the Wastes
Kali = The Worldbreaker
Belenus = The Spiral Dawn
Tvashtri = The Changing Wind
The Loa = The Wilder
The Kami = The Honorable

I prefer Ezran missionaries to explain the sudden rise of Tepestani Inquisistors/crazy clerics with blazing torches and cold iron maces.

Really? The Darkonian sect, or are you just pushing more towards "The church is jerks." flavored Ezra?

Dion's stuff

That's not a bad idea, though that tugs on my 'Why do we need two gods to do job X.' cord. Between Belanus, the Morninglord, and Ra we've got three sun gods, and I know I'd rather have one sun god who has three different names.

Also, what're your thoughts on cross-setting threats like Orcus or Dispater in Ravenloft? I was tooling around with ways to subtly work them in the other night and was curious.

DocBeard wrote: Also, what're your thoughts on cross-setting threats like Orcus or Dispater in Ravenloft? I was tooling around with ways to subtly work them in the other night and was curious.

Those are the one I would change the name, ex: Orcus the Dark Shroud (or whatever!). Something close so the players know the dread of facing Orcus priests, since there D&D culture surely knows Orcus, but somehow different as it is Ravenloft and Orcus' worship is probably different in RL than on FR.

Joël

DocBeard wrote:Well, I'm still not sure how they got Belenus worship into an organized, hierarchical apocalyptic faith out of a cyclical network/cultural union,

That's part of the beauty of it, IMHO. The fact that the two inquisitions do their work in the name of Belenus, rather than a more appropriate deity emphasizes how they've twisted their faith. They aren't following their god's wishes, whether they believe they are or not, and it's obvious to anyone who knows the truth about Belenus.

or why we need two separate pseudo-Celtic cultures that're neighbors but have nothing to do with each other.

That's probably more because of the "we must have an RL equivalent of every culture" syndrome than anything else. True, it would be nice if "scotland" and "ireland" had more of a connection. But there's no connection between "rural france" (richmulot) and "urban france" (dementlieu) either. Or "rural england" (mordent) and "urban england" (paridon) for that matter. Nor the "englands" to "ireland" and "scotland". etc. That's what you get with a patchwork world. If you can accept that the celtic pantheon exists in the D&D multiverse, there's no reason they can't be worshipped on different worlds, if there can be Vecna cultists or St. Cuthbert followers on any number of homebrew D&D worlds.

Or why we needed 'the noob's guide to celtic pantheons.' in full in two gazetteers without getting any real information on how Belenus merits being a major religion if it is basically unknown outside of Tepest and an island of terror.

I'd say that's more a function of the relative lack of major religions in RL. The bar is set lower to be "major." If Belenus worship spans 3 domains, regardless of relative size of those domains, it's already more "far reaching" than the Morninglord, The Wolf God, or the Eternal Order. (Personally, I found those noob's guide very useful, especially in their differences, rather than their similarities)

For me it's just a little jarring to mix and match like that; if we're using RL mythological figures, okay, and if we're using made up mythological figures, okay. On the other hand, I have no problem with Baba Yaga showing up, so maybe I'm just being a fascist about religion and cosmology.

Yup, I see where you're coming from, but there's a long history of this in D&D. Some people want to play clerics of made up gods. Some people don't want any old generic lightning god, but want their PC to worship Thor or Zeus. That's why the 1st edition Deities & Demigods had Apollo & Anubis next to Cthulhu & Morradin.

But I still can't convince myself that the using the "Rajian" gods isn't somehow vaguely offensive. :/

DocBeard wrote:That's not a bad idea, though that tugs on my 'Why do we need two gods to do job X.' cord. Between Belanus, the Morninglord, and Ra we've got three sun gods, and I know I'd rather have one sun god who has three different names.

No reason you can't say they're one and the same. Belenus is the sun's light, Ra is the sun's heat, and Morninglord is the promise of the sun's rising. But they could could be the same god as much as Yahweh and Allah can.

Also, what're your thoughts on cross-setting threats like Orcus or Dispater in Ravenloft? I was tooling around with ways to subtly work them in the other night and was curious.

Like Joel, I'd use them but rename them, or have a public name and a secret name. I really like how our Lawgiver is the other settings' Bane.

DocBeard wrote:

I prefer Ezran missionaries to explain the sudden rise of Tepestani Inquisistors/crazy clerics with blazing torches and cold iron maces.

Really? The Darkonian sect, or are you just pushing more towards "The church is jerks." flavored Ezra?

Darkonian Sect, yup.


Edited by GonzoRon to fix coding mishap