Re: Religions in Space

>>>My own personal view about the deities & the outer planes varies pretty 
>>>far from offical, but rather than ranting, here's what I've done. In 
>>>ancient times, there were Elder Gods.  These were truly frightening 
>>>deities, with nearly ultimate power.  At the end of their time, they 
>>>either fell from power or simply left.  One of those deities was 
>>>destroyed, but pieces remained. Since that time, two primary pantheons 
>>>have arisen.  First is the Crux, which resembled the Egyptian pantheon.  
>>>It is the elder of the two pantheons, and used to have dozens of deities. 
>>>  However, when the second pantheon arose, it lost 80-90% of its members 
>>>in a bloody godswar.  The second is the Raer, which is actually a family 
>>>of greater titans who managed to achieve deity-hood.  Of the two, 
>>>however, the Crux is again on the rise, but has drastically changed. "Ra" 
>>>is now Solran, and his mate, Isha, have a powerful church that closely 
>>>resembles the Christan church during the Middle Ages.  Other survivors 
>>>include Ptah & Bast, both minor cults on large worlds.  The Raer are more 
>>>a hog-pog of whatever odd deities I choose to toss in, including Crecus, 
>>>Llwar, and several other deities.  The two pantheons are slowly merging 
>>>together into a single pantheon, and are no longer at each other's 
>>>throats.  Of the two, the Crux are the strongest; the Raer deities are 
>>>much weaker than those of the Crux. The monkey-wrench of this is Nemesis, 
>>>one of those pieces left over from the Elder Days.  Not a nice guy, has 
>>>the power of several deities combined.  Everyone is pretty much afraid of 
>>>him. How the demi-human pantheons work into this, I haven't decided.  I 
>>>do like individual deities, but I also have a desire to keep things 
>>>simple.  IF I add them in, I'd limit them to a handful of deities.<<<

I've thought about something similar with the elder gods myself, mine's more 
Lovecraftian inspired but seems I never really have time to finish with it. 
I guess it's destined to be a continued work in progress :o)

>>>Basically, I'd look at space culture itself for your campaign, and see 
>>>what type of people there are and what their needs would be.  Do you have 
>>>lots of merchants & pirates?  If so, then deities of wealth, travel, and 
>>>raiding would be popular.  Is a sphere currently in a war? That'd promote 
>>>gods of war, battle, protection, and healing.  Etc.<<<

Well in the current SJ campaign I'm putting together  the time frame is set 
20-30 years after the 2nd Unhuman War. Neither the elves or the scro were 
able to win it, and are locked in a bloody stand off. The elves took a hell 
of a beating before rallying back, and as a result lost a lot of their 
sphere and power, and have withdrawn to a handful of spheres. The IEN know 
longer sails the spacelanes like they used to. In this power vacum
left by the retreating elves a new power has risen to take the elves place. 
One that has always been there, but was always overshadowed and kept in 
check by the elves domintaion of the spacelanes, the powerful Trading Houses 
and Merchant Cartels. They now control the spaclanes and the bigger houses 
haved formed a grand council where each house contributes ships to a neutral 
"police force" to patrol and watch for pirates, as well as make sure that 
the elf/scro war doesn't interfere with trade. The council ships has been 
known to be quite "heavy-handed" in their methods in the past, but the 
houses are growing so powerful that many are begining to be afraid to 
challenge them for fear of reprisals in the form of boycott and the like. 
All the houses are agreed to a "gentlemans agreement" at least on the 
surface, but behind the scenes it is a machevellian nightmare.

I'd like for religion to play a more of a part in this campaign other than a 
vehicle for clerics to get spells from or as a device for yet another evil 
cult of so and so out to take over the <insert your own objective>. I want 
to pour as much depth into this aspect of the campaign as I've done with the 
multi-sphere common economic system I've been working out. Religions in the 
game world are a vast and often untapped resource of roleplaying material. 
But I haven't quite figured out how to work it in the broad scale of the SJ 
multiverse. I've only just started to dwell on this aspect of the game, but 
I'm sure I'll ponder it out :o)

Whoops!! off I go rambling about my campaign. I kind of get a little carried 
away when talking about it :o) I've been working on it on and off for about 
5 years. Just writing down a thought or idea here and there, picking up a 
bit of info from this and that scource, and just within the last year I've 
started to compile and edit all this info and I'm excited by what seems to 
be forming out of it. I've just started to talk to my players about it and 
for some reason they seem to be getting all excited and none of us has been 
this excited over a new campaign in a loooong time or at least all at the 
same time, and we are all a bunch of "old fogeys" in the RPG hobby. So it 
seems like my subconsious was hard at work on designing a new campaign that 
everyone would be jazzed about :o) Whoops! started to do it again, sorry, 
I'll go now before I start again.

Ahzad





"Imagination is more important than knowledge."- A. Einstein
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