suggesting eldritch abominations as well as gods

Yes please.

You know, Deci's way actually works awesomely with what we have!

Essentially, there are various spirits that exist beyond the realm of limitations that we'll have set up. For whatever reason, a long time ago, these spirits crossed from their plane and into ours and stirred crap up. Perhaps granting some early culture or group favour or some sort of "edge", or perhaps imparting ancient knowledge and lore, or even because they wished to be worshipped by the puny mortals. Whatever the reason, the meddling of these spirits created the early cults which have become the religions followed in the present era.

Which would then explain how certain gods seem to have the same properties ie: Dyrrys, the Alyrian goddess, and Dylia the Marosian goddess. Essentially, it was the same spirit, with the same traits, who interacted with different cultures in ancient times bestowing different things. Leading the Alyrians to their sacred marshes, and providing the Marosians with the gifts of healing and medicine.

Personally, I believe the gods and most of these super spirits should not have an active presence in the world at all. They interacted on the mortal plane in ancient eras, but may have become no more than old wive's tales to some in our current era. Aside from lore, MAJOR world-changing plot events, and the Oracle (who is an NPC), there can be no active involvement of gods in the mortal plane. Certain places might bestow "blessings", or there may be certain types of magic that are believed to be founded on some sort of teaching by a god, but on the whole, the mystery of the gods should be kept in tact for much of the early story-telling of our world. (Though sure, people may say that some old hag was really a god in disguise or something)

The first few RPs will probably be very quiet, though gradually, it'll become apparent that there is something going on, which will tumbleweed into bigger and bigger things. We can't really have that with gods walking around all willy-nilly.

i shouldve made a hybrid children race f*** why am i so lazy

Will organize the first post to include this map and all of the cultures soon

It's still possible to make a sub culture if someone is willing to let you stick them somewhere. They'd just be a cultural minority in the region they're in.


Also whim your cultures need basic naming rules.

cool
i think they should go where i was going to put the dome race

What do you mean by hybrid children race?

Ah f*** I thought I just needed names, gimme a day to write em up



also Kiki, I think the Gods should meddle with the affairs of the humans in the view similar to the Greeks or in the Ring/Norse Saga(s) where the Gods themselves are other beings on the Earth that are just merely more powerful than humans are. Thanks to this they meddle in the affairs of the humans because they just can.

I'm definitely for low activity Gods. Perhaps each plane wavers, in a way much like the way planets orbit, so that they occasionally "align" and the closer the plane the God exists on and the moral plane is to alignment the more influence the God in question can provide, though never crossing over in full power. The three ways the God could influence the world would be:
(1) Causes, these are phenomena such as sudden storms or the gift of a vision (whether true or false) to an individual. A God could theoretically perform a Cause at any point, though the strength of the Cause would vary drastically with how aligned the Planes were. A Cause is never a Deus ex Machina, a Cause from a God should always be orchestrated to lead to an event from man, though with no guarantees.
(2) Vessels, essentially items, or persons, gifted with a piece of the God's power. These are your Fountains of Youth, Swords that can slice though anything, or Oracles. These are able to be created during partial (or full) alignments, but are to generally be avoided, as each one would weaken the God who made it, so most would be from the early eras as an investment* disguised as a gift. Vessels should generally have failsafes to keep them from begin lost or destroyed, such as being passed through bloodlines, or only being able to be destroyed in the Fires of Mordor, but have a loop hole, as you could end a bloodline or find the fires of Mordor after three books/movies.
(3) Avatars, the mind and spirit of a God cased in a mortal shell of magic, matter, and their own influence. These could only be formed on the Mortal plane during a full alignment, though it could be possible to artificially make a false alignment, in which a lesser Avatar could be formed for a time (think your rituals for summoning Eldritch Beings). As a blanket statement I'd think most Gods wouldn't even do this past proving to early man that they indeed existed, and would likely be something that would drain power from them (I'd like to be under the assumption MOST actions a God takes is to only to increase it's own power). I wouldn't hazard to say how powerful such a thing could be, only it would be a literal God among men, but taking on an Avatar form does come with some drawbacks. They would not be omnipresent while in this state, and they, however unlikely, could be "killed" for whatever we decide that entails (whether actual permanent death, or a great loss of power and/or comma like state in their own plane due to the shock). Suffice it to say that full alignments would not be even remotely common on the timeline of the universe, and would likely define whole eras.

*Investment, for in this since, the Gods would gain power and/or subsidence from certain acts/believe/etc, therefor giving away a tiny piece for a larger return is not a huge deal, but giving away any piece is still a risk not made lightly. Any giving away too many small pieces would be all but cosmic suicide.

Again Gods here as a loose term and could be replaced by Spirits or whatever. It could mean true gods, like ones that inhabit entire planes to themselves or powerful influences that all exist together on a different Plane (or pocket realm in this one) like those found in Lovecraftian Horror.

As always this is just stuff I'm throwing to the wind, you guys feel free to pick through it for any part you like and run with only those if you'd like. To tell you the truth, I really don't want too get to deep on any God or Gods, and just want to establish the most basic catch-me-all net possible, with a tiny bit of lore, so everyone is still free to do basically whatever they want without totally breaking everything thematically. Even what I have here could be too much for me but I don't really know, kinda a "I'd have to know how long the road was to decide how far I should travel" but since I don't know the length of the road all I can do is fret about my choices about it. That's what peer review is for after all.

It really doesn't have to be complex at all. Looking at it from a big picture point of view, religion is just like culture, it's a part of the background providing motivations, behaviours, and lore of the world. Which is why I think we shouldn't have overactive gods, or god mechanics, especially in a world where practically anyone can wield magic.

The world is going to revolve around the actions of the playable characters. We really don't want to imbalance that by having meddling gods of the Greco-Roman-Norse nature. Especially considering that the world is kind of shaping up as "Mid-Fantasy", meaning most of the mystical beings and creatures do not regularly interact with society at large, or deep in forests. A few steps above Game of Thrones, since we've got a whole lot of magic in our world, but a few steps below The Lord of the Rings/Chronicles of Narnia.

We really just need to set up the religions lore-wise, and then if a plot point requires divine intervention, then we can move forward as an entire world to have greater interaction with the gods.

No no they just need names. Two of your cultures are missing names though, I think.

Also, just throwing this out there, but...

It seems some people want powerful other worldly creatures to exist in our world and from the sounds of things these creatures wouldn't necessarily be creators or gods, but could be worshiped by cults or even entire countries.


I kinda' dig the idea, but I also understand why someone would be against it. In the grand scheme of things I think it would be kinda' interesting for our world to be a tiny spec encased by a much more dangerous universe filled with creatures, diseases, and incomprehensible energy that occasionally pass into ours. It would be like our world existed within theirs and was just too insignificant to notice.

There should be ways for us to interact with this outside universe too. Imagine super-powered dimensional drifters or possibly even races from other planets.

Or, perhaps these worlds exist on something other than planets.