Gods and Monsters

When the Divine Becomes the Reviled

[...] For the gods had grown vain, and bickered amongst themselves like children.
Fearing they might destroy the celestial realms, the Divine Creator cast them low,
falling to Kyrohn as fiery comets.  The coming of the gods heralded great darkness and
misery for the Creator's children.  Thus began the Age of Starfall [...]
The Book of Creation; tome III, Into Shadows

"The gods are dead, and we killed them."

This was the sentence that started it all, that pushed me down the path that I am treading.  It was also one of the most problematic things to conceptualize once you got down to it: who were the gods?  Who killed them?  Why?  How?

For the longest time, I figured the gods were killed by a bunch of heroes who travelled to each of the deities' domains and murdered them, fought them, whatever.  This seemed pedestrian, but it fit with a lot of end-game, epic, D&D stuff.  After all, some of Paizo publishing's own adventure paths ended with the PCs killing an immensely powerful extraplanar entity (Adimarchus from Shackled City, Kyuss from Age of Worms, etc.).  It seemed... in tone with the common D&D mythology.  But once you got down to its core, this idea lacked drama or the potential for "campaign secrets".

The Dungeoncraft Experiment

I'm a big fan of DM/GM advice columns; I'm always looking for new points of view, new perspectives or ideas on how to run games.  One such advice column, the one I often go back to, is Ray Winneger's old Dungeoncraft series.  They used to be published in Dungeon magazine, but you can now find them online fairly easily.  The single best piece of advice from those columns is what he called "The Second Rule of Dungeoncraft": for every major piece of the campaign world, always devise at least one secret related to that piece."

This is great advice from a campaign-building perspective, as it "bakes in" adventure plots and campaign arcs that PCs can latch on to.  From a DM's point of view, it makes the world seem more dangerous and it gives you an ace in the whole to spring on unsuspecting players.  Even when using the collaborative narrative approach presented in the DMG2, this invaluable piece of advice will help make the world come alive by keeping the players guessing and the PCs searching for clues of what is amiss.

So, to create more mystery and make the menace of the gods feel more viceral,they had to have come down to earth as it were, had to have a physical presence that could be killed.  Still, why kill them?  And what secret could hide behind the death of so many divine entities?

The Age of Starfall

So the gods fell to earth for the sin of hubris, cast down by their mighty Creator.  Classic fantasy/mythology trope, right there.  How would the mortals have received them?  As saviours?  Probably not.  If you read the (bad) opening fiction for this entry, you'll see I've described them as "falling... as fiery comets".  The gods literally fell to earth causing untold devastation, destroying an entire country in fact.  So humans and the other races were a little wary at their arrival, and, for a while at least,

I love the Time of Troubles from the old Forgotten Realms storyline ; it's both visceral and mythic in scope, and the consequences for it were felt deeply and over a long period.  When a god died during that event, it mattered, and it rocked the world to its core (well OK, nobody cried when Ibrandul died, but I still shed a tear for fallen Torm, even though he got better).  But the FR deities knew what they had to do to get back.  What would happen if the gods of Forbidden Skies knew they could never go back to their celestial abodes?  How would they react?

The gods of Forbidden Skies are largely based on those that we know from mythology and epic sagas in that they are mostly humanoid and possess flaws that represent human failings.  Contrary to "modern" real-world religions, they are not perfect entities, and their worshippers know as much.  So what would insanely powerful supernatural entities that just so happen to also be jerks do if they were stuck in a place with a bunch of mortals?  If you answered rule over them like god-kings through a combination of fear and awe, you're completely right!

When they first arrived, the gods swore an oath of non-aggression, but soon that pact was broken and they began warring against one another.  At the same time, worshippers close to the gods began to notice how mentally and physically unstable they seemed; their minds seemed gripped with delusions, and their bodies looked warped, sometimes bloated or literally mutating with new limbs sprouting from their torsos.  The deities waged war on each other, and their flock paid the price, left to unadorned graves on battlefields or returning home to see their god demand more extravagant sacrifices from them.  If anything is surprising, it's that the Age of Starfall, from the fall of the gods to their demise, lasted over a thousand years.

Eventually, humanity (and the other free people of Kyrohn) threw off their shackles and turned against their divine masters, who had become monstrous, abomination spewing, creatures who lorded over the masses from cyclopean abodes or ruled vast stretches of land (or sea), hunting down all who dared trespass.  The first to fall was Ourghex, Lord of the Sightless Depths, ruler of the Northern Sea.  Of the hundred or so gods who fell, none remain.

The Current Situation

The gods are coming back; some have already established new domains in the Astral Realms, others, still too weak to ascend, hide amongst the mortal races.  Priests of these new gods are rare, but their numbers are growing daily.  The gods and godesses appear different from their predecessors: more even-tempered, less war-like and demanding of their worshippers.  Arteon, God of the Winds and Lord of the Storms has one of the first large temples, not dedicated to the Divine Creator, in all of Kyrohn, and his faithful wear his sigil without fear of reprisals in most towns and cities.

Still, people fear the return of the gods.  What if the madness and corruption consumes them again?  Could they survive another Age of Starfall?

That about does it for now.  Next time, a look at the "power mechanics" for two classes and a closer observation of the Fighter as a class.

Thank you for reading, and be well!

E.L.F. - AKA The Choice