One Sun, Many Sungods?

[assault]

A brainstorm: how do people deal with multiple pantheons in a single (homebrew) campaign world?

 

I'm perfectly fine with my own solutions for most of the problems that arise, but I'm still a bit stuck on how to deal with deities who share responsibilities that can't really be shared.

 

The Sungod is a particularly obvious example. Who drives the Sun? Someone has to - it goes around the Earth after all - but which of the claimants is real?

 

Are all the various Sungods really all different descriptions of the same entity? How could that be the case when the various descriptions are so incompatible?

 

Is somebody lying? If so, how do they get away with it?

 

Has there been more than one sungod? Was an older sungod replaced by a younger one? How many of them were there?

 

Do they work in shifts, with a God of the Rising Sun being relieved by a God of the Sun in Splendour, followed by the God of the Setting Sun, the God of the Early Evening, the God of the Midnight Sun, the God of around about 3:30 in the Morning, the God of Just Before Dawn, and all the other night shift sun drivers, who have the tricky job of defeating all the monsters in the Underworld who want to stop the Sun from rising.

 

And if so, why do they all claim to be The Sungod Himself (or Herself)?

 

Or, of course, is the Sun something which just happens, with the various sungods only rather peripherally related to making it happen? Are they just aspects of a Greater Reality? And if they are, does that mean that there's no chance of catching a lift in/on the Sun Chariot/Boat/Dung Beetle?

 

Oh yes. What is the sun really? A chariot? A boat? A big ball of shining poo, pushed by a giant bug? Or something else again?

[Captain Obvious]

Re: One Sun, Many Sungods?

 

Probably a dodge more than a real answer to your question, but I just don't have the gods play a direct role in mortal affairs. Priests may receive spells in response to their prayers, but there's never an opportunity to say "Hey, Helios, what's up with Apollo? Not to mention Ra or Tonatiuh..." No one really knows how all that stuff pans out...and I find it more interesting to come up with various dogmas or heresies to fill in the gaps than to really answer the question. There's not enough of an element of faith in most fantasy religions...everything is spoon-fed to the high priests by the gods directly and you don't get the conclaves of the religious hierarchy meeting together to figure out exactly what it is they officially believe.

[BobGreenwade]

Re: One Sun, Many Sungods?

 

In my fantasy world the gods are (or have) really good PR guys. They do much of what they say, but the stories are exaggerated.

 

Using your example of the sun, I have the sun exactly like it is in the real world, but each sun god governs aspects of the sun as it pertains to life in their geographical region. The things they do that are attributed to being the sun are actually things they do to bring the sun's effects to that area. For example, if the sun is supposedly the Sun Father riding his chariot across the sky, then the Sun Father really does ride his chariot across the sky, making sure the sunlight reaches where it's supposed to, checking on the ozone layer, and so forth; it's just the stories he tells his priests about the chariot actually giving off the light. And sometimes it really does give off a bit of extra light, if that's called for.

 

Sometimes gods with overlapping responsibilities cooperate, and sometimes they compete and fight, depending on their respective needs and desires.

[assault]

Re: One Sun, Many Sungods?

 

Probably a dodge more than a real answer to your question' date=' but I just don't have the gods play a direct role in mortal affairs.[/quote']

 

Yeah. I have gods directly having affairs with mortals. I like playing demi-gods, or at least the descendants of gods.

 

It doesn't prevent controversy, though, especially since I'm playing with the idea that the "gods" themselves don't really know everything. (I'm largely designing the high level cosmology for my own amusement.)

 

Basically, I've slapped together a bunch of different elements from historical religions into something that intended to allow a bunch of different deities to co-exist without constructing a single cheesy pantheon.

 

The "sungod problem" is an issue that has arisen during this.

 

At the moment, I'm looking at a system where a remote, impersonal but essentially benevolent deity created a bunch of bickering godlets, who are "the gods" in terms of the campaign, but who are really more like angels, saints, demons and monsters.

 

It's not really a problem in the core campaign area, but there are, theoretically, other religions elsewhere in the campaign world, and controversy even within it.

[assault]

Re: One Sun, Many Sungods?

 

I should also add that the only thing I'm completely committed to is that the Earth is flat, and the Sun goes around it - through the sky during the day, and through the underworld at night.

 

I have some other vague concepts, such as the underworld being a kind of purgatory or Limbo, where souls go for a while before being reincarnated. The fate of the most enlightened souls is unknown, which is interesting given that saints and dead heroes are known to be exhibit godlike attributes. There are Buddhist overtones here, along with a few ideas I've borrowed from the Yazidi religion. This kind of stuff is unlikely ever to make it into a game, though.

[pinecone]

Re: One Sun, Many Sungods?

 

A brainstorm: how do people deal with multiple pantheons in a single (homebrew) campaign world?

 

I'm perfectly fine with my own solutions for most of the problems that arise, but I'm still a bit stuck on how to deal with deities who share responsibilities that can't really be shared.

 

The Sungod is a particularly obvious example. Who drives the Sun? Someone has to - it goes around the Earth after all - but which of the claimants is real?

 

Are all the various Sungods really all different descriptions of the same entity? How could that be the case when the various descriptions are so incompatible?

 

Is somebody lying? If so, how do they get away with it?

 

Has there been more than one sungod? Was an older sungod replaced by a younger one? How many of them were there?

 

Do they work in shifts, with a God of the Rising Sun being relieved by a God of the Sun in Splendour, followed by the God of the Setting Sun, the God of the Early Evening, the God of the Midnight Sun, the God of around about 3:30 in the Morning, the God of Just Before Dawn, and all the other night shift sun drivers, who have the tricky job of defeating all the monsters in the Underworld who want to stop the Sun from rising.

 

And if so, why do they all claim to be The Sungod Himself (or Herself)?

 

Or, of course, is the Sun something which just happens, with the various sungods only rather peripherally related to making it happen? Are they just aspects of a Greater Reality? And if they are, does that mean that there's no chance of catching a lift in/on the Sun Chariot/Boat/Dung Beetle?

 

Oh yes. What is the sun really? A chariot? A boat? A big ball of shining poo, pushed by a giant bug? Or something else again?

 

I don't see the issue...Helios is the Gohd of the Sun! At least around here he is...who's to say the Sun in Egypt is the same sun I see here abouts? After all an eclipse is not visable everywhere, just in certain places....thats because That Sun Gohd is having a bad day fighting a mythologic monster.....

[assault]

Re: One Sun, Many Sungods?

 

I don't see the issue...Helios is the Gohd of the Sun! At least around here he is...who's to say the Sun in Egypt is the same sun I see here abouts? After all an eclipse is not visable everywhere' date=' just in certain places....thats because That Sun Gohd is having a bad day fighting a mythologic monster.....[/quote']

 

Interesting. Unfortunately, as I envisage things, there would be enough powerful people to find out what was really going on in this case.

 

Unless, of course, the various suns were invisible to each other. Hmm...

[OddHat]

Re: One Sun, Many Sungods?

 

My default position in my Fantasy setting (Caelum Imperium) is that the physics and physical universe are only as different as they have to be to allow for the type of Magic I use.

 

So, on a purely physical level, the Sun is the Sun, exactly as it is in our universe for all practical purposes.

 

The various Sun Gods are spirits that feed off of human belief in a Sun God. Sometimes they merge and flow into one another as beliefs shift. Sometimes they change. Sometimes they split. The life cycle of spirits is not well understood by mortals, and can't always be explained in terms mortals could understand.

 

In the Dream Lands, fragments of the Other World, the Sun is many things, as many things as there are different beliefs about its nature. A mortal spirit traveling in a particular Dream Land might find the sun to be a chariot, a ball of molten gold, even a smiling human infant. And in those lands, the gods of that land would rule.

[assault]

Re: One Sun, Many Sungods?

 

In the Dream Lands' date=' fragments of the Other World, the Sun is many things, as many things as there are different beliefs about its nature. A mortal spirit traveling in a particular Dream Land might find the sun to be a chariot, a ball of molten gold, even a smiling human infant. And in those lands, the gods of that land would rule.[/quote']

 

A possible solution. A paradigm shift for my setting, but not beyond the realms of possibility.

 

I've already got things running on a pretty wild level of enchantment. And I've been looking at the possibility of Something New appearing in the world being a campaign hook.

 

Maybe I should shrink my world, so that the human lands are a relatively small area, surrounded by Chaos and Faerie. I'd still have multiple religions, but at least they could agree on certain things.

 

The Underworld could be a problem, though. I might have to either lose that, or make it less literal. Or else I could find a way to maintain it.

 

My geography would have to shift somewhat, too. I'd have to lose the world circling Ocean, and reduce my three continents to one.

 

More importantly, I'd have to reconsider the relationship between Order and Chaos. Does Order have a privileged status in the Grand Scheme of things, or is it just an accidental manifestation of Chaos?

 

Tricky. Might be a bit Too Hard.

[djkester]

Re: One Sun, Many Sungods?

 

I'm working on a campaign world with multiple Pantheons as well. I'm taking the approach of laying the gods. For example, the first Pantheon I've created is the universe creation story. You can actually read it on my OP Campaign Site if you like.

 

The idea is that in this first pantheon one of the gods is the sun. In the future pantheons certain gods will have influence over different aspects of the world. My thought is that as I write the story something will have occured in the history of the world that lead this god to be called the sun god. For example if this god protected the planet from the Sun.

 

On a final note there is actually no problem with there being more than one sun god with completely overlapping responsibility because you can always go with the Durga god design. Durga an Hindi god has many forms. So one god is simply a different presentation of the same god in a different form.

[Captain Obvious]

Re: One Sun, Many Sungods?

 

In the Dream Lands' date=' fragments of the Other World, the Sun is many things, as many things as there are different beliefs about its nature. A mortal spirit traveling in a particular Dream Land might find the sun to be a chariot, a ball of molten gold, [b']even a smiling human infant[/b].

 

Do your players know you're going to be sending them to Teletubby Land?

[Nolgroth]

Re: One Sun, Many Sungods?

 

I take to the Babylon 5 Vorlon concept. Each species (in this case either species or ethnic heritage) sees the physical form of the gods based on their teachings and beliefs. Perhaps on some sort of metaphysical foundation that is built into that particular subset of the world. It really doesn't have to be a scientific answer. It just is. If the deity exhibits different abilities or aspects to different species, it is probably more likely a matter of that particular societies views on the world. In a culture that sees the Sun as the giver of life, the Sun God may seem benevolent. In a society that sees the Sun as a force of Order, the Sun God may be more of a disciplinarian. Perhaps he may take on more of the God of Law role in addition to his whole shiny aspect.

 

As to what the Sun is physically, it is a big glowing ball of gas and flame. Or perhaps it is the physical manifestation of the Sun Gods life and hope giving properties. Does it matter to a guy who has no way to measure the Sun in any meaningful way?

 

In a campaign I worked on conceptually in the past, the Sun God of one religion decided that the only way to bring peace and order was to "conquer" the other gods. In doing so, he established a new belief system based around himself as the Supreme God and the former gods of his pantheon became diminished and somewhat more like angels than Gods. As belief empowers divinities, over time his "war" (which took place in the hearts and minds of mortal worshipers) slowly did just as he intended. Now he has turned his sights to the other beliefs in the setting.

[Captain Obvious]

Re: One Sun, Many Sungods?

 

How differently do the various religions see their sun god (or any other shared responsibility gods)? If they all have the same basic idea of how he operates, it's the same guy with a different name.

 

On the other hand, if there are people who see the sun god as sinister or cruel, maybe there's a reason. If the sun rises or sets near their homeland, maybe it gets really hot there and parches the land, turning it into desert. Even if the sun god is a nice guy, if the higher order divinity compels him to drive the sun along this particular course, those people won't like him a whole lot. Or maybe the sun god is a generally nice guy, but kind of plays favorites, and the religions that portray him as cruel are just the ones on the outs.

 

It's possible, too, that the gods have multiple personalities, and some metaphysical quality of a particular area brings out a particular aspect in a given god.

[OddHat]

Re: One Sun, Many Sungods?

 

More importantly, I'd have to reconsider the relationship between Order and Chaos. Does Order have a privileged status in the Grand Scheme of things, or is it just an accidental manifestation of Chaos?

 

Tricky. Might be a bit Too Hard.

 

Order was just an accidental manifestation of Chaos that managed to stabilize itself in the original Amber series; no reason it shouldn't be so in a Fantasy world. You'd be moving from Morecock to Zelzany, but most gamers won't mind.

[OddHat]

Re: One Sun, Many Sungods?

 

Do your players know you're going to be sending them to Teletubby Land?

 

Can't rep you, but no, they don't.

[Killer Shrike]

Re: One Sun, Many Sungods?

 

Get your metaphysical peanut butter out of my physics chocolate.

 

 

In the real world, things just are and ignorant attempts to describe things beyond ken are just mythologies...just a group belief system with no actual manifestation.

 

 

If the things that are just odd fictions held to be fact by those who prefer faith over physics in our world are actually REAL in your fantasy world, then all bets are off.

 

 

 

One way you might address your There Can Be Only One Sun God problem and still maintain some semblance of normalcy in your celestial bodies and physics is to say that some even greater force or being (or conclave of them) created a lot of the fundament long long ago and all the "gods" since then, while godlike and extremely deific, are still lesser beings by comparison. These gods can evince affinities with celestial things created by the Ur-God(s) and temporarily affect change to or manipulate them, but not actually do anything too catastrophic or permanent.

 

 

Thus your bevy of Sun Gods are not LITERALLY the Sun itself, and they don't literally own or have total provenance over the Sun, but they evince qualities of the Sun, can focus or manipulate the effect of the sun in a localized / regionalized area depending on their relative power, and are easily conflated with the Sun itself by mere mortals in a given area where that god holds sway or has some kind of dominion. In addition to their Sun-associated qualities each Sun God might also have OTHER traits, and even if they don't actually have certain traits ignorant mortals might ascribe those traits to them anyway. On the other hand, the same God might be worshiped by different groups by different names; their core traits likely carry across as they are intrinsic to the deity but all the other misc bs that mortals just attach based on their own perspectives and cultural bias's just melts away.

 

 

The power of the Gods is anchored by belief in them, which creates a feedback loop; more believers, more powerful God, the more obvious and measurable their power, the more convincing the case for others to believe in them. It's not a numbers game, its a potency game; thus a smaller number of fanatics provides more oomph to the god that they believe in. A bunch of people might acknowledge that the Gods exist and logically incorporate their existence into the background of their lives, but not actually have any fervor or zeal; but such an apathetic "faith" doesn't provide much more than a pittance to a God. It's the hard core believers who really fuel the fire for a given God's vitality.

 

 

Basically, by this kind of a scheme, Gods are just uber-politicians who need to get grass-roots support and grow their constituency, on a very quid pro quo basis; if a God stops being relevant and falls out of active belief they dwindle and are supplanted by some other God. Some power is expended to keep people believing so as to generate more power from that belief. Just like mortal politicians have different issues and "values" from which they build "planks" in their political pulpit with which to attract followers who have an affinity or bias for the given values and issues the politician claims to represent, the Gods have their dominions and values which will appeal to like-minded mortals with a particular affinity to those dominions and values.

 

Faith is in a lot of ways a very selfish, or self-realization oriented if you prefer, undertaking; when a person invokes faith as the basis of their decision making, they are basically saying that the things that I believe in with or without any factual or rational basis overrule any other concern or interest simply because I believe in them so strongly. Some go so far as to even believe that faith requires no justification; it is an ultimate trump. When mortals of different groups have faith in multiple Gods who logically cannot coexist, you have a classic four-square polychotomy (++,+-,-+,--). Perhaps both parties will agree to disagree, or one or the other will but the other wont, or both parties refuse to compromise and conflict is guaranteed. Right or wrong doesn't even really enter into it; we're talking about faith here so all that really matters is what the individuals believe to be true and false. In our little set piece, its even possible that both parties believe in the same God by two different names but unless they are willing to accept that possibility and reach some kind of syncretic accord such a technical detail doesn't matter.

 

So, for your purposes, it's all just fuel for roleplaying and you don't necessarily have to officially resolve it from on high in a didactic "this is the canon of this world" way. When youre dealing with faith it doesn't have to make sense anyway; the faithful don't require logical consistency as their footing is not based on evidence, facts, or proof, it is based on active acceptance of dogma and a high tolerance for cognitive dissonance when things they directly observe don't jive with things they have chosen to believe.

[assault]

Re: One Sun, Many Sungods?

 

The world is flat. The sun orbits the Earth.

 

Physics is heresy.

[BobGreenwade]

Re: One Sun, Many Sungods?

 

The world is flat. The sun orbits the Earth.

 

Physics is heresy.

Funny you should say that. Despite what I said above, most people in my fantasy world believe this.

[Lucius]

Re: One Sun, Many Sungods?

 

Light is a particle.

 

Light is a wave.

 

Heresy is metaphysics.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary chants: Sun God, Sun God, Ra Ra Ra!

[Starcloud]

Re: One Sun, Many Sungods?

 

Keep in mind that the apparent multiplicity of "sungods" is due to the fact that we, here in the 21st century, have a heck of a lot more information and are very much more educated and well travelled (even if virtually) than the vast majority of the people worshipping any particular sun god was, at the time they were worshipped.

 

The same goes for pantheons. The gods of one region or city or country are not going to be well known or worshipped outside that area *unless* there are ways to bring that worship to the attention of others. Missionaries usually didn't go over well unless they were backed by armies, so what usually ended up happening was the spread of worship alongside the drive to conquest of a one particular culture.

[dmjalund]

Re: One Sun, Many Sungods?

 

God 1 to God 2: Do you want to go in for a timeshare in a sun?

[Sundog]

Re: One Sun, Many Sungods?

 

Meh. I prefer One Sun, many Sundogs.

[Old Man]

Re: One Sun, Many Sungods?

 

I see three ways to go about this.

 

One is to have one overall pantheon that is basically static but whose members are referred to by different names depending on the religion. So the all-father god would be variously known as Odin, Zeus, or Jupiter, depending on where you were, while the sea god would be called Aegir, Poseidon, or Neptune. You could change this up a bit and have Poseidon/Aegir be more powerful among practitioners of the island-peoples' religion than in the religion of the mountain-people. But overall you would have one pantheonic structure.

 

The second, weirder, way would be for religion to be mortals' uncomprehending perceptions of incomprehensible divine forces. Because mortals can't possibly understand the true nature of these forces, their will perceives them to take the form of gods and goddesses, and the perceptions, if not the forces themselves, are shaped by religion. As a religion gets stronger in followers and faith, the divine forces it relates to take on a more and more definite form and increase in power. So while two mortals perceive two different sun gods, those gods are nothing more than different perceptions of the same force or even different forces. In game terms this would be practically meaningless, it just means that mana is mana no matter which cleric you're playing.

 

The third way, which I think of as "JLA theology", would be for each pantheon to have its own structure and members who may or may not have analogues in other pantheons. They would play a lot like high-powered superhero/villain groups, usually teamed up with one another but on occasion you might see the Divine League of Ambria join forces with the Divine Society of Ambria to defeat the Legion of the Divine. There might even be reason for the sea gods of all the pantheons to join up to fight all the sun gods, though ordinarily there would be something that discourages that and causes gods with similar powers to join separate groups.

[Doc Democracy]

Re: One Sun, Many Sungods?

 

I like the fact that the gods are all the Sun God. They all have a direct link to the physical entity called the Sun by the mortals which is why the Sun is so powerful and the followers of the various Sun Gods have access to strong magic. It is when many Gods overlap that you get the greater deity feel.

 

However, the Sun Gods do not know each other. They are in different dimensions and their followers tap into that dimension to get access to their deities magic. A pantheon is a set of gods who are all accessed through the same dimensional vibration. If something happens to the Sun then it affects all of the Sun Gods but possibly in different ways....

 

Doc

[Badger]

Re: One Sun, Many Sungods?

 

Personally, I worry about it when it comes up. Let the characters believe in their own preferred pantheon or religion what have you. Generally gods want play a truly direct part on the scene. (or not so you would notice enough to confirm their existence.)

 

 

Note: Not that I wouldnt use, say, a trip to the underworld to chat with Pluto, and such now and again, if I feel it appropriate. But, my preference is to leave things a bit ambiguous. (was that guy hitting on all wenches in the tavern the promiscuous god Zeus like he said partying with the mortals, or just some crazy traveling hermit.)