Re: Planar Churches and Polygot faiths (Was: HeroSpace and Planar Churches)

From: "George "Loki" Williams" <chaos93@?????????.net>

> > I'm glad you mentioned this, because I am currently trying to create 3e
> versions of the
> > planar churches. 17 of these can be inferred from the Manual of the Planes
> (assuming you
> > just stick to outer planes). Herospace would be a great place for them to
> have their
> > headquarters. I'll have to re-read the Herospace stuff in Crystal Spheres
> now!
>
> Now if I am correct, the Planar Churches (like the Planar Church of Olympus
> on Bral) are churches and temples that venerate entire pantheons as opposed
> to single Powers. I take your referrences to the Outer Planes to mean tht
> you are envisioning only one pantheon per plane?

I'm afraid you are not correct about the Planar Church of Olympus (although you are headed
in the right direction, you have got lost somewhere). You are confusing a Planar Church
with a Polygot faith. They are *two* different things. Here is the difference:

* A Planar Church venerates a plane (and all its gods) and
* A Polygot faith venerates a pantheon (and all its gods).

Clerics of both of these faiths venerate multiple gods and therefore regain spells in any
crystal sphere containing *any* of the gods they venerate.

I am not envisioning "one pantheon per plane". I'm also not envisioning one plane per
pantheon.

Take for example the plane of Olympus, that you mentioned. It is home to the Greek
Pantheon, the Seldarine (the Elven Pantheon), the Egyptian goddess, Nephthys, and any
other gods that a DM decides live in Olympus. A cleric of the Church of Olympus should be
worshiping *all* of these gods. A cleric that only worships *one* pantheon is a Polygot
Priest (of that pantheon).

(Incidentally the outer plane called Olympus was given that name because the first gods to
be discovered there were the Greek ones. The elves may well have a different name for this
plane. This is the case with a lot of the outer planes. The names given to them reflect
the opinion of the first people to explore them or the first gods that were discovered
there. They don't fully describe them, so you can't just go by the name. You have to read
something like the Manual of the Planes to find out how many gods live there. Even then
you won't have *full* knowledge of that plane, as there might be other gods in each plane
that have not yet allowed themselves to be discovered.)

Here are two important things to realise about planes and pantheons:

* A plane can be home to gods from more than one pantheon and
* A pantheon does not always live together on one plane.

Look at the example of Nephthys. She does not live with the rest of the Egyptian Pantheon.
Three types of clerics will gains spells from this goddess in *any* crystal sphere that
she is present in:

* A (groundling style) cleric of Nephthys,
* A Cleric of the Planar Church of Olympus and
* A cleric of the Egyptian Polygot Church.

Check out the side bars in the Concordance of Arcane Space. They doesn't tell you just how
many polygot and planar church faiths there are, but it does make it clear that they *are*
different things. Here are the differences, as I see them:

* A Polygot Church venerates one Pantheon and all the gods that make that pantheon. It
does *not* venerate a plane. There is more than one Polygot Church. The Spelljammer
Campaign setting *could* have one Polygot Church for every pantheon in the D&D universe!
Don't forget this also includes racial pantheons like the Elven Pantheon or Orc Pantheon.
(This could partially explain why the Imperial Elven Navy is found in almost every Crystal
Sphere.)

Pantheons do not "own" one outer plain. Some pantheons live together, but often one or
more god lives elsewhere and sometimes none of them live together.

The "Polygot Church of the Greek Pantheon" would involve worship of all Greek gods (good
and evil, lawful and chaotic). I suppose a Cleric of the Greek Pantheon would think of a
Cleric of Athena in a similar way that a Wizard would think of an Illusionist.

By the way to avoid confusion (with the Planar Church of Olympus) I would advise people to
call this pantheon the "Greek Pantheon" or "Hellenic Pantheon" (I prefer the second one)
and call the church "The Hellenic Polygot Church".

* A Planar Church venerates an inner or outer plane and all the powers that live there. It
does *not* venerate a pantheon (if *all* of the gods of that pantheon happen to live
together then it will worship them all but these gods will be lumped in with any other
gods from the same plane. A cleric of that Planar Church would have to treat them all
equally.)

Planar Churches evolved from a cross between the Path and The Way (another multi-god
religion from the Kara-Tur setting) and the Polygot religions.

The Planar Church of Olympus doesn't just involve the Greek gods it also involves the
Seldarine (the Elven gods), the Egyptian goddess Nephthys and any other gods that a DM
decides live in Olympus.

A Cleric of the Planar Church of Olympus must pray to *all* of these gods, so they are
probably a *lot* busier than a Cleric of the Hellenic Pantheon!

;-)

Mind you when this cleric and a Cleric of the Hellenic Polygot Church both crystal sphere
where only the gods of the Egyptian Pantheon are found, the Planar Church cleric still
gains spells normally but the Hellenic one doesn't gain spells above 2nd level (unless
they cast a Contact Home Power spell once per week).

> Each Planar Church venerates the array of godforms worshipped by a
> particular culture, this means an array of alignments as far as the deities
> are concerned. Take the Planar Church of Asgard as an example, there are
> alignments ranging the spectrum from the evil/neutrality of Loki to the good
> of Heimdal. These are excellent things to flesh out and I am all in favor of
> it, however this system has already been somewhat detailed and is purely
> alignment based. That is why I was considering the Faction of Planescape.
> They are all based on alignment specific belef structures and would be right
> at home on the planets of Herospace.

Asgard is not a plane, it is a layer of the outer plane called Gladsheim. The gods in one
culture are a pantheon and a pantheon is not what is worshiped by a planar
church. (I've already explained the differences above.)

So there should not be a "Planar Church of Asgard", that organisation should be the Planar
Church of Gladsheim and they should venerate all of Gladsheim including Asgard, Muspelheim
and Nidavellir (and all the gods from all the layers of their plane). By the way: the
clerics of this church also pray to the Egyptian goddess: Bast, the Indian goddess:
Lakshmi, and demi-god: Karttikeya, and the Japanese demi-gods: Hachiman and On-Kuni-Nushi.

You can already infer 17 planar churches from the outer planes. You don't need to have
Planar Churches for all the layers of those planes as well. We would need to have 666
churches from the Abyss if we did that!!!

:-O

Joking about the Abyss aside, it does show that if each layer had its own church (instead
of sharing one church with the rest of the plane), there would be less chance that a
cleric would receive spells in a new crystal sphere. And they are called "Planar Churches"
after all.

;-)

(However, if you were referring to a Polygot Church of the Norse Gods, which I suspect you
were, then that *would* work differently to the planar church of the plane that the Norse
gods live in. To avoid confusion, I suggest you refer to this as the "Norse Pantheon" or
"Nordic Pantheon" and the church as "The Nordic Polygot Church".)

Pantheons, as you pointed out, do not usually have one alignment for all their gods. But
what you may or may not have realised is that while an outer plane has an alignment,
there is not a requirement for gods or creatures living there to have that exact
alignment.
There can be a degree of difference. Nirvana for example has Neutral Evil and Chaotic Good
gods living in it.

So each plane alignment may differ from the alignment of the gods it contains in a similar
way to the D&D rule that worshipers and clerics/priests alignment may differ from the
alignment of their gods. This rule is more similar (although not the same) as the 3rd
Edition rule about cleric alignment vs god alignment if you use the WotC edition of D&D.

*A potential problem exists with Planar Churches*

If you allow a Lawful Good Cleric to join the Planar Church of Nirvana* and that cleric
travels to a crystal sphere where the Rudra** is worshiped, the cleric would then be
receiving spells from an evil deity! I think that the planar churches (and probably the
polygot faiths as well) need to have rigid alignment restrictions to balance this out.
This is part of the stuff that the official Spelljammer stuff just doesn't explain. I'm
working on some rules to fill in the blanks.

* = Nirvana's alignment is Lawful Neutral - one step away, and normally OK by 3e rules.
** = Rudra is an Indian god of Neutral Evil alignment.

You say: "this system has already been somewhat detailed". Are you referring to polygot
faiths or planar churches? As far as I know both of these mult-god churches are new to the
Spelljammer setting and had not previously been documented elsewhere. I was under the
impression that only the individual gods were documented. If you do know of a source that
documents these *combined* faiths, I'd be glad to know about it because I'll be wasting my
time creating Polygot and Planar Churches if someone has already done it.

:-O

> Perhaps another new sphere is in order, TempleSpace perhaps? A sphere whose
> peculiar properties and poulation make it a point where all priests can
> contact their divine sources of energy. I think that more info on the SJ
> specific incarnations of these churches would be a splendid addidtion to our
> body of work.
> I lok forward to seeing what you come up with, and also if you would be so
> kind a small calification of exactly what you mean (per my commetns at the
> begining).

I don't think that we need a *special* sphere where "all clerics can contact their
deities". There should already be several spheres where all (or most) of the (Spelljammer)
clerics can contact their deities.

The Spelljammer rules imply that the space religions* are well established in a lot of (if
not all) known spheres. So they should *all* have churches somewhere in Krynnspace,
Realmspace and Greyspace. Bralspace/Spiralspace should have all of these churches too.
Don't forget that both of these church types are *only* found in wildspace and are not
found on Krynn, Toril or Oerth.

* = The space religions are: The polygots (many Pantheon based faiths), The Path and The
Way (also called "The Path" or "The Way"), Ptah, The Planar Churches (many plane based
faiths - these faiths *might* also worship inner planes!) and Celestian.

(All of these except Celestian are mentioned in the Concordance of Arcane Space. Celestian
is mentioned in the Complete Spacefarer's Handbook.)

The Concordance also mentions that groundling deities from the same crystal sphere (that
they were born in/grew up in/became clerics in) can be chosen by Spelljammer clerics, and
that their gods may also be worshiped in a few other spheres.

As for how specific spheres work, well that is down to whoever creates them, but if they
want to specifically exclude certain *space* religions, they need to point out that this
is being done (and perhaps explain why).

The rules on P103/104 of the Complete Spacefarer's Handbook explain how religions can gain
a foothold in new crystal spheres. Any faith can establish a temple stronghold of 200
worshipers and use a "focus" spell (Tome of Magic) to allow the church to have access to
its god(s). The church has to maintain worshipers for a year to do this. In the meantime
all clerics get spells up to 2nd level anyway and higher spells can be gained with the use
of the "contact home power" spell (as long as the god hasn't been banished and isn't in
voluntary exile). To keep a god out of a crystal sphere, you need to attack any bases
where their worshipers are trying to establish a church before the complete their work.

Don't forget that both the polygot faiths and the planar churches only need access to
*one* of their gods to gain full spells. If they ever find a crystal sphere where none of
their gods are present, they do not need to bring *all* of their gods into the sphere.

By the way, the Astromundi Cluster specifically states that there are only a few gods
there. (The rest seem to have left or been banished after the cataclysm) These gods are in
disguise under false names. If you look at who they really are, it mentions the pantheons
that those gods come from. Polygot priests who worship any of those pantheons should
receive spells as per normal, while in the Cluster. On top of this if you trace the
Astromundi gods back to their home plane (something I am intending to do soon) you will be
able to work out that clerics of the planar churches, that worship any of the planes where
any of the Astomundi gods live, will also gain spells normally in the Cluster.

It is a great shame that TSR didn't document all the polygot faiths and planar churches a
bit better (especially with respect to the 3 main spheres).

Personally I think that anyone creating a crystal sphere should do one of the following
depending on what feels right:

1) Throw in an entire pantheon from Legends and Lore (if it is appropriate to the culture
you are using),
2) Pick and mix several gods from Legends and Lore, Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms and
Greyhawk or
3) Create your own deities but throw in one or two outsiders from the above sources.

Look at Toril. That planet has the Mulhorandi Pantheon (part of the Egyptian Pantheon) and
Tyr (from the Norse Pantheon) on it. From that you can work out that Nordic Polygot
Clerics and Egyptian Polygot Clerics both *definately* gain spells as normal in
Realmspace.

If your sphere is supposedly well visited then you should add many of the spelljammer
faiths to it. If your sphere is especially isolated for some reason then it is less likely
that all of the spelljammer faiths have been established there.

As for Herospace, I've fetched Crystal Spheres down from my loft and no longer think this
sphere would be suitable for the headquaters of any planar churches. The Rational Order of
Magistrates control who lives on or visits each of the nine worlds in the sphere. The
churches would need their clerics to have free access to their headquarters. There will
still be members of these churches on the appropriate planets (as well as members of all
the other spelljamming religions) so clerics of any *spelljammer* faith should receive
full spells, in my opinion.

David "Big Mac" Shepheard