Last time we made the village of Arcford, today we’re making the religions. Just like when we built the town it’s going to be a little incomplete. We’re just going to focus on the religion and try to sum the organisation (if any) attached to it and flesh those further out when we get to cultures.

Page 10 to 13 of the Dungeon Master’s Guide deals with gods and deities and though I’ll reword some things to fit my own brand of world building there are a few tips in there that are really helpful.

One of which is to look at eight domains and assign each a deity. Death, Knowledge, Life, Light, Nature, Tempest, Trickery and War, with some gods having a foot in two domains. I’d go one step further and specify them just a little more.

• Brigantia. Domain: Life/Nature; Goddess of agriculture, fishing and animal husbandry.
• The Raven Queen. Domain: Death(Life); Goddess of the cycle, of a life fully lived come to close. Goddess of mementos and cherished memories.
• Mystra. Domain: Knowledge; Goddess of secrets, whispers and patron of libraries and forgotten archives.
• The Wildmother. Domain: Life(Death), Nature; Goddess of the cycle, of balance and harmony within nature.
• Kord. Domain: Tempest, War. God of thunder, battle and oaths.
• Milil. Domain: Light, Trickery. God of songs, poems and wit.
• Death. Domain: Death. The reaper, the ferryman.
• Bahamut. Domain: Light, War. God of justice, war on the wicked.
• Amanthur. Domain: Light. God of the Sun, God of Law.
• Sylvanus. Domain: Nature. God of the Wilderness.

This is a good place to stop for now. There are more gods that I want to add in, Mrykrul, Umberlee, Tiamat, Shar, Sune, Loviatar etc. etc. But these’ll be the dominant gods in my setting.

Decide how Gods God

Now before we crack on, it’s a good point to decide where gods are in your setting. They can be unknowable, ephemeral or they could walk the mortal realms as avatars. They could manifest their powers and ability often or rarely. They could communicate directly, indirectly or be silent, and if they communicate, how often do they?

In my setting the gods are on a self-imposed ban from the mortal world. At some point in history a war broke out between them with the mortals trapped in the conflict. The forces of ‘good’ won but after seeing the damage they wrought decided as a collective to withdraw. They only police themselves and their influence on the mortals that are on the material plane is indirectly and rare.

When you’re making your decisions on the above it’s important to not just take into account the lore but also what your creative direction is and what the gods are there for to accomplish. What their purpose is in the narrative.

In my case, the gods are physically absent from the world and often silent. They keep to their planes because even though they are silent I want the players to be able to visit them and in some cases I can leverage a god to encourage the players to travel to different planes. Primarily they are absent for more nefarious reasons. I want there to be a lot of grey area and I want the mortals (factions) to not just misinterpret a god but pervert them.

The gods being absent and mostly silent also enhances the impact when they do interact with the players and helps create myth and legends. When the gods are not there to discredit or credit themselves there is room for interpretation, not all knowledge will be available to all. Some people will have false conceptions or a skewed view and finding cold hard facts on gods is incredibly hard.

As for the gods themselves, they are individuals who have either been given godlike powers or have somehow ascended into godhood. They aren’t omnipotent and though they can peer into the material realm and gently influence their believers and followers they are not omniscient and can be flawed.

I enjoy my blemishes and I abhor a sterile world which is a reason behind this choice. It’s perfectly fine to have your gods be paragons and flawless but it makes it hard to leverage a story out of them in my experience. It also implies a measure of ambiguity when it comes to alignment which can more easily become a matter of perspective if the gods are flawed.

Another thing I will never do is give them statblocks. They might have an avatar with a statblock but the gods themselves can not be killed or defeated by regular means and if at some point this needs to happen it’ll occur via a MacGuffin.

Nemesis and Allies

When creating, modifying or implementing a deity in your setting it is good to spend a moment consideration of who the enemies or allies of that god are.

Of course for a god of law it is easy: lawbreakers. But for a god of the sea? The land? Allies with fairly large ponds?

Though I wouldn’t encourage writing a thesis worth of these, a few key words should be included. More so you have a basis for NPCs or players to work off of later.

A paladin of Milil for example needs something to strive and fight for. In the case of Milil it is straight forward enough being the god of poetry and song his chosen would fight to end censorship or general oppression of expression wherever they may venture.

It’s also worth noting any antagonism between the gods. At face value Brigantia and Sylvanus both keying off the domain of nature could be seen as allies. But Sylvanus symbolises the wildness of nature and Brigantia the fruits of it. Where Brigantia expands, in the form of farms and crop yielding fields, Sylvanus retracts. Though both in the realm of ‘good gods’ they could easily be put at odds with one another which would expand through to their worshippers. The druid circles that hold to Sylvanus might find very little love indeed for the farmers encroaching on the wilds to work their fields.

Alignment and Morality

When it comes to gods I like to place a few in the ‘good/order’ category and a few in the ‘evil/chaos’ category but the majority of them firmly in the ‘it depends’ category.

In the above case of Sylvanus and Brigantia they are firmly squared in the ‘it depends’ category and it is up to individual interpretation.

From the viewpoint of the farmers, Sylvanus is a real pain. The forests roots drain the soil of their fields and make it hard to plow them. The wild animals eat off the fields, reducing their yield or kill their livestock. Brigantia is whole and good from their view, not only does agriculture allow them to earn a living wage in relative ‘free’ conditions, it allows them to employ others, feed themselves and the village they supply to. If Brigantia had her way, there would be no hunger.

Conversely, the druids of Sylvanus view Brigantia in an entirely different light. They see the expansion of civilisation, they feel the pain of the forest as they are chopped down in the name of progress. They see both plants and animals being subjugated and domesticated and the wild animals killed for acting on natural instinct.

Example 1: Amanthur

Within my setting the gods are separated from the material realm so we’ll break history down into the age of gods and the age of mortals with the war of the gods happening in between.

In the age of gods Amanthur was the god of the sun and law. The piercing flame of justice that shone light on the actions of ne’er do wells. His form was one of a towering luminescent golden skinned elf with long white hair and a silver toga. While he walked among mortals he taught them law and order, helped them form the structure and basis for larger civilisations. His influence changed the primordial elves around him into the sun elves.

He was considered a just god but had little patience for the short lived races and when law was written it was to be adhered to at all cost or amended by him and him alone which he did often. Perfection through reiteration was his creed and he was certainly one who strived for perfection. All would be well if the rules were perfect and no misinterpretation or loophole could be made or found.

In the age of mortals the Church of Amanthur was made, even though Amanthur when he walked the realm was opposed to the creation of a church and rather worked to integrate his presence into law and structure.

The Church of Amanthur is a separate organisation which we’ll mostly be filling out in a separate worldbuilding post. The Church will have a leader, a hierarchy and several suborganisations not unlike a large business or other entity.

Over time the worship of Amanthur has split, the majority follows the Church of Amanthur which has corrupted over the ages to yellow-robed version of the Spanish Inquisition using the Sun God as a right and leveraging their faith into power.

There are original sun elves that stay true to the original vision of Amanthur but, as per their deity’s direction, their worship is integrated into daily life and harmonises within their commune.

The type of worship varies quite a bit between the free worshippers of Amanthur and the Church of Amanthur. In the first case worship is conducted simply by living their lives adhering to the laws and practicing it, perfection through reiteration. Worshippers are encouraged to consider laws beyond their face value and find the correct avenues to argue and debate them without breaking them.

In the Church of Amanthur worship takes on a more ‘traditional’ form of church visits, where the pious go to Church after dinner every single day and the less devout attend ceremony on Sunday. In this version of Amanthur’s worship the pious are not allowed to argue on laws and are encouraged to accept Amanthur’s word as spoken through his select few.

This is wholly possible by fudging the ability for the gods to interact with the mortals and material plane in our setup. The vast, vast majority of the priests and worshippers of Amanthur are not clerics as we understand them as a class in my world so they are essentially not in communication with their deity.

Amanthur in the current timeline of my world is in the Celestial Plane (a reworked Mount Celestia) where he is able to observe what is happening to his worshippers but has very limited ability to interfere, only able to connect with clerics and paladins and only if they follow him and his ideals, which in the Church of Amanthur has become a very, very rare thing indeed.

Now let’s look at a completely different deity in the pantheon I’ve assembled. The Raven Queen.

Example 2: The Raven Queen

Heavily popularised by Critical Role and the amazing work of Matt Mercer as their DM and Liam O’Brian as Vax.

In my world the Raven Queen is the upstart Goddess, one that has ascended into godhood under mysterious means after the separation of the gods from the material realm. The Raven Queen is not one but a line of successor goddesses that call the Shadowfell home and superintend the passage of souls to the afterlife and ready them for rebirth.

In the Shadowfell, deep inside her Fortress of Memories she tends to the river of souls and purges mortals of their memories and experiences before they are allowed to proceed. In my world she’s almost a part of the cycle of life. Which I’ll not define here, partially because this would become far too long and partly because not every question needs an answer.

Her worshippers are just that, often people with a fascination of death, life, the cycle and the end. She holds a few temples dotted across the world on neutral or at least open minded grounds, usually in regions where people deal with a lot of death or their needs have been met and they are philosophical in self realisation. Because of her domain these temples are situated in graveyards and the public makes use of the temple for not just the entombment and inhumation but also for counselling, helping people with their grief and keeping a record of the dead.

Because there are plenty of people fascinated with the end of life and the great beyond the amount of worshippers she has varies with ebs and flows but they produce more clerics and paladins because her worshippers are not bothered by a religious organisation like the Church of Amanthur.

While some of her worshippers gather ‘officially’ the vast majority pays respect to the Raven Queen out in the world. She has no built, permanent shrines but her worshippers only need a raven’s skull or quiet contemplation on death to pray and/or form somewhat of a connection.

For the worshippers that do congregate in a temple worship does not hold a set regiment like the Church. They of course have their own holidays and rituals but most worship is done when someone dies and all the ceremony around that, the inhumation and the record keeping is how the priests of the Raven Queen worship.

Her flaw is, that unlike the other gods, she is not immune to death or ageless. The Raven Queen is a construct, a role of responsibility, not a single entity. Though all the various individual Raven Queens have their own particular quirks their vision at large is simple and coherent.

Now let’s look at Kralnam and their god Elnur.

Example 3: Kralnam

“But Demi”, I hypothetically hear you ask, “that god isn’t on your pantheon!” That’s right. Because Elnur and Kralnam are constructed religions. They have no true deity in the fantasy sense. There is no plane of existence where Elnur resides and he has no domain. He is wholly and utterly constructed by a people.

Long ago in the region of Batdia (and yes I’m moving ahead by making a region) the people were divided into tribes that were kept apart by family rivalry and war until one wholly charismatic human did the unthinkable at the time and reunited them. He brought a message of peace and with it he united the tribes and became the first leader of Batdia.

As he got older he wrote the basis of Kralnam which was a set of rules and commandments to living a wholesome and peaceful life. When he perished and war threatened to tear Batdia apart once again, his advisors, rather than admitting the death of the king, announced his ascension into godhood. Over time prophets of Elnur rose up (more political figures than ‘religious’ as fantasy dictates) who added onto Kralnam until faith, the good book and politics became one. A religious state, with laws, morality and values drawn from a book…

Worship of him occurs at temples at mandated times and days but is visible from the outside. Kralnam dictates the food the people eat, their values, the way they treat other races, all the way down to the way they dress.

Despite Elnur being a mortal man in my world, the religion that spurred from his life and death is still notable and I feel a world can surely be enriched by having a ‘false’ religion thrown into the mix.

Example 4: Brigantia

So how about the one goddess we established in Arcford. Brigantia is the goddess of farmers, agriculture, fishing and animal husbandry. This is the goddess they pray to when it comes to harvest, crop yields, sick animals and fishery. Most towns that have a form of agriculture will have a shrine to Brigantia where people may leave offerings or spend a moment hoping-loudly that the crops will come in despite the weather. In large farming towns, such as Arcford, there may even be a temple with a priest.

A priest in the traditional sense, not a cleric or paladin as in my imagination at least I find it hard to believe Brigantia inspires such vim and passion to create paladins or clerics. That’s not to say that these do not exist, but considering Brigantia’s ‘mortal enemies’ to be famine and disease, a cleric would be less about smiting and more about goodberry.

Bonus: Death

Last one to talk about is Death. The eternal ferryman, a complete and utter neutral force that moves souls from one destination to the next; easily cut to size and fit into your narrative if you want him to. He has no temples, he has no worshippers, no plane of existence. A universal force that’s just there and probably will never be on the player’s radar. Unless they die… and you’d rather they not.

Death is something to be addressed of course during session 0 and should the players be averse to their character dying and you’ve come a long clean way without that happening but it does happen for unfortunate or ridiculous reasons; looking at Keyleth swan-diving off a cliff, Death may offer a way out.

Of course you can handle it as Matt did in Critical Role, allow a resurrection even though technically you need a somewhat intact body for it to work which Keyleth most certainly did not. But if you’re working with a world where resurrection magic isn’t available or the party does not have access to it, you can use the presence of Death to your advantage.

Take the player aside and offer a frozen time perspective where they meet whatever your vision of Death is. You can give Death a reason for ‘refusing’ to ferry the player, whether that is because the party’s objective is about to transcend the world they are in and he would suffer consequences if they did not complete it, or alternatively keep his reasonings a secret. Take a page from the Supernatural playbook of Death’s portrayal.

Next time we’ll be looking at building an organisation, lawful or lawless.