Design and Development: Religions

The standard template for D&D religions seems to be that people pick a god and that's the god they worship, sometimes on a racial (read: species, but we're talking classic D&D here) level (the god of elves!), sometimes on a class level (the god of magic!). A farmer prays to the god of farming and a warrior to the god of war. Temples exist for each individual god and you go worship there as you please or whenever mass is.

The question is, should we hold on to that classic style in Bluestone? Are there a variety of temples dedicated to each god that is worshiped in, say, Ashford Bay. Or do they organize the groups into pantheons, something similar to say, Eberron? So perhaps a major god and two minor gods with similar portfolios would be called The Triad and have their own temple or perhaps the humans would mix together a group of gods and the gnomes would group together another (with some potential cross-over, either realized or not) and each have separate worship.

Or maybe a mix of both, some places/species only revere gods individually while others like to group them into pantheons. More things to ponder...

Musing: Religion Part 2

One of the common misconceptions (or, indeed concepts if written into the setting) is that every holy man is a cleric or a druid. Every temple you wander into, the head priest is a cleric of some level, often with lower level cleric apprentices. I like to call this the Forgotten Realms syndrome. Deminar is simply not designed that way.

From a game perspective, I've already mentioned my belief that an adventurer should be rare, in order to maintain the uniqueness the player's feel when their characters interact with the world. How special are you when you're one adventurer among a countless horde after all?

Within the world, it wouldn't make a lot of sense either. Unlike the arcane spellcasting of a magic-user that manipulates the very building blocks of creation, divine spellcasters are fueled by the gods themselves (or from various patron spirits amongst the druids). A god has to sacrifice a bit of his own power to give a cleric the ability to cast spells or turn the undead and, despite the power of the gods, their power is finite. Every bit of power given to a patron on Deminar is power that the god no longer has at his disposal to fight off rival gods. The gods are locked in a power struggle, and a god that does not have enough worshipers or who foolishly expends his power on both planar and mortal followers risks having his domain taken over by a lesser god or having his domain absorbed by another major god. Because of this, a god can't simply gift every being that prays to him with power. On the other hand, gods receive their power from mortal worshipers as well as the souls of those faithful that pas beyond mortal life. What better way to convert followers then to show a god's power through a mortal vessel (since no god can directly influence the mortal world)? Like any power struggle, this is a delicate balancing act between attracting more followers through displays of faith and power and holding onto enough power to protect their position.

This is why clerics are more then simply undead hunters, they are also traveling emissaries of their faith. They are divinely appointed to spread the good name (or vengeful wrath) of their god, converting new followers through awe or fear. A cleric who forsakes this duty soon finds himself without his abilities, as even the smallest bit of a god's power is precious and the deity is always looking for the most effective way to use it.

Design and Development: Gods

I've talked plenty about the gods before, in fact, the greater cosmology of a setting seems to always be a high point for me, be it designing or reading about it. When we originally developed Deminar we had a good number of gods figured out, nine major powers representing the nine alignments, plus a score of lesser gods that dealt with a variety of specific aspects, concepts, and states of being. The same god may be worshiped by several different groups, each who call him a different name, and worship a different aspect of his portfolio and believing that the other groups are worshiping a different or even false god (and indeed, going to battle over such slights). There may be hundreds of different religions among all the islands of Deminar, the isolation between each other means even more radical offshoots of the same deity could be worshiped.

The question is, how many of these gods do we introduce in our first book? The Bluestone Isles are not that large, but they do feature a diverse number of species and one major metropolitan area. Enough variety for several deities to have a home. I don't think there should be too many gods in the Player's Guide, especially with this one acting as a low-level beginner's guide. You don't want to overload player's with too many choices to begin. However, I do want to introduce the concept of different species (or even the same species) worshiping the same god under a different aspect/ideology/practice without them even realizing it. Though it wouldn't be spelled out that it was the same god in the Player's Guide (that's what the DM's Guide is for), meaning to players, it would seem like just a different god.

So, how many? Just the major ones? A few of the major ones? How many minor gods? Are there minor gods very specific to Bluestone? What would be a good target number for how many different types of deity worship exist on the Bluestone Isles?

Musing: Religion Part 1

There are two major forms of religion on the Bluestone Isles, druidism and deity worship. Both are intrinsically linked to one another, but the separation of ideology between them means they will forever be at odds.

Druidism is the belief that everything has a spirit, be it a living creature, inanimate matter, or a concept or idea. The spirit may be a part of something (the souls of all living things) or the spirit could be a guardian and caretaker of it (like the spirit of a river or the spirit of war), but it a force possessed by all things. The ultimate testament to the faith is the Druid, someone who can commune with spirits to obtain an array of powers and abilities.

Deity worship, on the other hand, is the belief that the powerful beings worshiped as gods created the world and everything that exists on it. They created all living things, set about the laws that make the world work, and developed every concept from love to war. When a soul dies, it travels to the plane of the god that the being worshiped and who's tenets it lived by the most, or the plane of the god that is most befitting the being's punishment, if it worshiped no god or violated his god's tenets. The ultimate expression of the power that the gods wield is that of the Cleric, someone who can focus the very power of the gods into a variety of spells and the ability to drive away the undead.

Both religions have many ties to one another, those that worship the gods very much believe in the souls that exist in them, while the druids cannot deny the power of the gods, nor their duty to claim the souls of those beings that die. However, their are core differences in their beliefs that have stopped the two from ever existing fully entwined.

While practitioners of druidism believe in the gods, they do not believe the gods created all that is. The gods are simply a group of spirits, powerful indeed, but not even the top of the spirit hierarchy. While their positions are important, their are things that have existed long before they did and play a much more important role in the world.

Those that worship the deities see the gods as the ultimate powers in existence, and that everything that is, is because of them. Also, these worshipers do not believe that everything has a spirit, certainly not non-living things and concepts. More extreme believers (but not the followers of all gods) do not even believe that unintelligent living things (such as many monsters, beasts of burdens, and wildlife) have souls and the most extreme do not even think that all intelligent species (their enemies in particular) have souls, so killing these beings is not any worse then cutting down a tree.

So who is right? Are the gods supreme beings that created all that exists and have the power to destroy it on a whim? Or are they simply just part of a larger spiritual hierarchy that has always been and always will be? These questions ensure that while the two religious ideologies may not always be at one another throats, they will never truly get along.

Musing: The Planes, Part IV: The Ethereal Plane

The Ethereal Plane is a bit of a mystery among those who study planar lore. From the most curious scholar on Deminar to the god's themselves, no one is quite sure what to make of it.

The Ethereal Plane exists in the same planar location as the Prime Material, just on a different level. It even looks much like Deminar, only everything is muted in color with more grays and browns prominent then any other. Where there is a floating island in Demiar, there's probably one on the Ethereal Plane, where there's a twisted canyon on the broken earth below, a copy exists in the same spot on the Ethereal. It's not an exact "echo," there are some places that don't exist on the Ethereal that have a place in Deminar and, more strangely, there are parts in the Ethereal that look how places in Deminar did millennium before, rather then how they do now.

However, there are "echoes" of living things in the Ethereal, every deer doesn't have a copy waiting for it, and you won't run into your twin if you pop over for a visit. Even trees and plants don't echo themselves on the plane, though they still exist there, a sickly rubbery version that barely soaks up nutrients form a muted dull sun.

There are creatures that exist, or, due to the shared location nature between it and the Prime Material, partially exist on the Ethereal Plane. Mostly these are unintelligent creatures, though the Phase Tiger exists partially on that plane. The biggest "population" that interacts with the Prime Material plane however are the incorporeal undead. Ghosts and Wraiths exist there and, on occasion and through a strong sense of will, can project themselves into Deminar.

The moniker of echo also applies to some of the structures that appear in the Ethereal. It seems anything with a strong emotional resonance with a large group of people will appear as a slightly twisted reflection in the Ethereal. Towns that were brutally razed and burned down may appear as ever burning buildings, a castle that is home to a benevolent and much loved noble may appear, taller and more opulent, upon the Plane. Even natural places, like an elven wood, may appear, though often the "trees" that show up on the Ethereal aren't real trees, just unliving reflections of them. These places can stand long after their originals are gone in Deminar, depending how strongly they meant to people and how many people were affected by them. As time wears on, however, and people forget about such places, they will simply disappear off the Ethereal.

Mortals from Deminar can enter the Ethereal if they choose to, through planar portals and gates. Also, due to the Planes sharing space, there are places where the thin gossamer veil that separates the two grows weak and one can invertible stumble into the Ethereal without meaning to. And, unfortunately, it is not always a two way street. Many have become trapped in the Ethereal, prey to the beings that inhabit it or constantly looking for a way back to Deminar. Those who visit would find the Plane slightly cold, but holding a consistent temperature no matter where they go, even in the presence of fire or lava (though those things would still burn flesh). The dull gray sky and surroundings often bring a sense of melancholy and depression to those that walk among it, but these are not supernatural factors, just a general morose that all beings get when deprived of color and sunlight.

The Plane is confounding and aggravating to the Gods for it is the one plane they cannot interact with. No God may visit the plane, not emissaries from the god of Death may retrieve the souls that exist there as ghosts, no Outsider of any kind, formed of soulstuff can enter the Ethereal and the Gods haven't a clue why and the fact that mortals can do it, angers them to no end.

Musing: The Planes, Part III: Questions and Answers

My talk about the planes brought up a few questions by one of my faithful readers who wanted more information about how I perceive that the planes work, so, I figured, for a fun post, let's do a Q&A:

Q. Given the needed propulsion, would it be possible to, say, write my name on the sky?

I'm assuming he means on the planar edge of the prime material, or, for that matter, any planar border and the answer is no.

The Domains of the gods in the Astral Plane have little to no border between them and the Astral Sea they float in, as one floats through the Astral and comes up a Domain, it begins to dominant their relative horizon until eventually you fall into that Domain and are no longer in the Astral. It's a smooth transition, there is no "pop" or cue that signifies you're in a Domain, it's much like leaving Earth's atmosphere and entering space. Scientists settled on a "line" that separates the two, but it's not a physical separation you feel, it's just an imaginary line they all agreed upon. The same is true for the separation of Domains and the Astral, so there is no physical line to write on, anymore then you could do so on the Kármán line.

The Prime Material Plane is separated from the Astral by the Elemental Planes, these planes form a sort of shell around it, one part to have all the building blocks of Deminar readily available and one part to make it difficult for something from the Astral to wander into the Prime Material. Whatever constructed the Prime Materiel as a source of mortal life wanted to make sure it wasn't easily destroyed by beings from Beyond, and thus the Elemental Planes serve as a good barrier. And while you enter an Elemental Plane the same as you would a Domain from the Astral, you have to travel through a lot of Elemental to get to the Prime Material, and many planes are almost impossibly large, near infinite, so strolling across them from one "end" to the other is no simple journey.

The barrier between the Elemental and Prime is an actual barrier however, to stop all the Elemental stuff from constantly seeping in, but this is a Planar Barrier and is more metaphysical then physical. It exists, there is "something" there, but it's not like a hard shell or crystal sphere, it's just something stopping you from entering the Elemental Planes and stop them from entering the Prime Material.

There are holes in this Barrier, one into each of the six Elementals that allowed all that building material into the Prime to build Deminar in the first place. Some of these breaches are visible, the one into the Elemental Plane of Fire is the "Sun" which all of Deminar sees, the two "moons" are simply light reflected off the Elemental Planes of Earth and Water. There are breaches into Air, Positive, and Negative too, but those are not visible from Deminar's surfaces (thought there are claim that islands floating around the north pole of Deminar can see a radiant light show brilliance at night sometimes, possible a window in the the Elemental Plane of Positive Energy. These breaches are like that which separates the Astral from Domains, in that someone from Deminar could, in theory, fly into them and enter an Elemental Plane. However, much like earth's magnetic field, the Planar Barrier that separates the Prime from the Elementals gives off an energy that, even at its breaches still holds back stuff from tumbling into the Prime, though I wouldn't recommend getting close to the breach of the Elemental Plane of Fire without some sunscreen, cause the heat given off from it can still be felt (and indeed is felt all the way to the surfaces of Deminar)

The separation between the Prime and Ethereal is gossamer thin, which is why ghosts and such can still be seen if you know how to look, but, you can't simply pass through it, as the two planes exist in the exact same spot. Though, given the right circumstances, the veil could be thin enough that people from the Prime Material could suddenly find themselves in the Ethereal, it would make for a good adventure start at the very least.

As for what separates the Astral and the "Nothing" or Shadow Plane, well, no one, divine or otherwise, as been to the "edge" of the Astral Sea, so no one knows.

Q. Could I make an awesome shot and launch something into another plane through the sun, or a moon?

See the above discussion about the "length" of the Elemental Planes, something could eventually reach the edge and wind up in the Astral Plane, but that would have to be a helluva throw, and you have to hope nothing blocks it along the way (or it's not vaporized, crushed, dissipated, or any of the other dangerous things that can happen in those planes)

Q. Do jerk beings on other planes throw their trash into Deminar?

Well the Domains don't have trash, things on those planes (planar creatures included) are made from "soulstuff" and revert back to soulstuff upon being destroyed or "killed." This then gets recycled back into the Domain to be used again as needed. Though if the thing is destroyed in another Domain, say some Angels "killed" while attacking our version of Hell, the place they fall gets the "soulstuff" instead of the original owner, which is why gods are hesitant to send armies invading other Domains, it's just a good way to make a different Domain stronger. If they did have some other form of "trash" that was not soulstuff convertible, they'd have to get it through all the barriers talked about above to get to the Prime Material. One can circumvent that by opening up Planar Gates and Portals, but it's not worth the energy or effort to do so, so you probably won't find a lot of divine trash in Deminar.

Design and Development: Clerics: The Last Word

So, after running a few ideas back and forth, I think we have the definitive version of the Deminar Cleric (all ideas subject to change), so let's take a look at it:

The Cleric is a tool of the god he worships, more accurately, a weapon. While his purpose does, partially, revolve around converting others to his religion, that's nothing that a priest or particularly devout layperson could do. The cleric has a much more defined warrior purpose in life.

A cleric delves dungeons and braves the wilderness to protect devout citizens from monsters, secure ancient relics and sites important to his god, and, most importantly, to destroy undead in all their forms. Undead are an anathema to the gods, a violation of the natural order, denying a soul its rightful rest, whether accidentally or in an attempt at immortality. Clerics, above all else, seek to destroy undead, mostly undead with souls, the soulless ones are not as big a deal, but still a violation of natural order.

All clerics use blunt weapons, not because of some religious doctrine, but because it's the most effective against undead. Things that don't bleed out or have living vital organs to pierce are only best destroyed when crushed to bits. It's not that they can't use other weapons, it's that they aren't trained to use other weapons. After all, all adventurers are trained before they go out into their first dungeon as level 1, 0 XP fresh meat (Something that's not talked about much, but think about it, you can't just be a farmer one day, then go off and be a fighter the next, properly knowing how to fight using a bastard sword without cutting your own leg off, every adventurer has training in his specific class, don't let people tell you otherwise). Nontraining results, mechanically, in being unable to use other weapons (rather then some clunky penalty for weapons, remember, this is LL, a model of B/X, nice and simple rules now). But, to keep clerics diverse, all receive training in their gods favored weapon (or possible weapons, TBD), a weapon that best represents the god and his ideals.

Turning the Undead, this falls into the very reason a cleric is out and about, getting rid of the Undead. Turning the undead, as the rules write it, seems to be a manifestation of power that sorta erupts around the cleric and can take down or make run any number of undead critters around him. To me, I picture it as a glow that either comes from above or from within the cleric and then suddenly radiates outwards, washing everything in the room with its light. What is it? It's the divine "fuel" that the gods give to clerics to cast their spells, just in raw form, it's divinity made manifest, in a way. It doesn't affect living things because they belong in the divine order, but unliving things, that's another story. Undead with souls run or are disintegrated as they are faced with the realization that they do not belong in the natural order, they are either made afraid or consumed by pure divine energy. Soulless undead are another story, why do they "run" or blow up? Well, soulless undead are made either by arcane or divine magic, they are fueled by that magic to operate and follow their last order, so the divine energy shorts out that magic fuel, either short circuiting their order and causing them to wander aimlessly instead of attack (i.e. the running) or sever their magical connection and cause them to crumble.

Now, clerics also get magic, and they all have access to the same spells, so why is that? Well, it's just a matter of the passage of time and the codifying of things. All gods provide is the divine fuel to cast a spell, it is up to the cleric to shape it and then make it work. So, over the many centuries and millennium that this has been going on, a certain set of spells has been codified and used again and again. Thus, as a cleric goes through training, he learns of the spells his masters know, who got them from their masters, who got them from there masters, and so on. What is taught, is what is learned, and any cleric going to learn about spells are going to see relatively the same things. Original or offbeat spells can still be found, be they released in a supplement by us down the road, they are just comparatively rare. There is already some division anyway, between the lawful and chaotic gods with the reversible spells, and, like Favored Weapons, we'll probably throw in a spell or two special to each god (maybe one per level, like domains?) to separate each cleric based on who he actually worships (something not really touched in LL and even B/X in order to stay setting neutral, understandably)

So there it is, all the mysteries of the clerics special abilities and restrictions explained! If I missed anything, drop a comment about it, if not, maybe someday soon another Design & Development post about another rule fitting in with a setting will come along.

Musings: The Planes, Part II: The Other Planes

So, as I stated before, the Plane in which Deminar rests, usually called the Material or Prime Material Plane sits in the middle of an infinite Astral Sea (yes, that's physically and mathematically impossible, but the planes don't conform to Newtonian Physics now do they?), however, the Plane doesn't not sit there alone. The Prime Material was constructed out of the six Fundamental Elements, Fire, Earth, Water, Wind, Positive Energy, and Negative Energy. These six Planes surround the Plane in which Deminar sits, with the Positive and Negative Energy one being on the top and bottom of a metaphysical sphere and the other four surrounding and encasing it. The sun the people of Deminar see is nothing more then the planar tear to the Elemental Plane of Fire used to ferry material into the Material Plane, Deminar's two moons are the Elemental Plane of Fire's reflection off the planar tears into the Plane of Earth and Water, and a tear exists into the other three Elemental Planes (Air, Positive and Negative Energy) but those cannot be seen. In theory, if one could travel far enough off the surface of Deminar's islands, they could pass through these tears and into the Elemental Planes (and indeed, many elemental creatures have passed through them), though they are all pretty hostile to most life that came to be on the Material Plane, as they consist of one type of elemental instead of the mix of all that most Prime Material beings need to function. Even the Positive Energy Plane would fill a creature so full of life energy they'd explode into a ball of radiance, and the Negative Energy plane would quickly suck the life force out of anything that resided in it for too long.

The Prime Material is not alone, however, for existing in the same space, yet in another Plane is the Ethereal Plane, a sort of "planar echo" of the Prime Material. Here, the world looks much as it does on Deminar, however most things are muted and gray. Not everything that exists on Deminar exists here, there are no copies of living things, for instance, but anything that hold particularly strong emotional resonance appears in the Ethereal Plane, even after it may have disappeared on Deminar. An old building that touched a lot of lives may have a pale echo on this plane, or a nonliving semblance of a forest that was particularly important to a clan of Halflings may stand in the Ethereal whereas it was cut down long ago on Deminar. No living thing leaves a true living echo on the Ethereal however, no matter how important a King or Warrior was revered, he, nor an echo or nonliving semblance ever shows up on the Ethereal. However, some people, who felt that, even after death, still had a strong emotional attachment to something on Deminar will find their souls roaming the Ethereal as ghosts instead of passing to a Domain. These beings sometimes find a way to manifest partially back on the Material Plane, allowing for the ghosts many people see on Deminar. Rumors of other intangible creatures being from the Ethereal and manifesting on Deminar (such as the Phase Tiger), much like ghosts is also a theory some scholars have. The biggest feature about the Ethereal Plane is, however, the fact that the gods can in no way manipulate or even send envoys to it (which is why they don't simply puck up all the souls of spirits and ghosts and get them to their proper Domain.) This intrigues the gods to no end and they believe that the Ethereal Plane is a subconscious shared construct of all living things and they work tirelessly to figure out a way to turn that power to themselves and their own advantage.

Musing: The Planes, Part 1: The Outer Planes

All this talk about gods and afterlife has the planes on my mind, so I might as well put some of it down to text, it's always nice to share after all.

The entire cosmology of everything exists within a vast darkness, this place, sometimes called The Plane of Shadow, due to the rare occurrence of when this dimension connects to Deminar via shadows, is actually a vast plane beyond all planes. It has always been there, long before Deminar or the domains of gods existed. The few people on Deminar who actually know about the planes, consider this vast plane a dimension of dark emptiness, there are others that claim this plane does indeed contain something that exists. The creatures known as Shadows are believed to come from there and many of the other creatures that do not seem to belong in nature are rumored to be sent by vast intelligent beings that dwell in the Plane of Shadow. Whether this is true or not, it is indeed a fact that all the planes, including the one in which Deminar exists floats amongst this inky blackness.

Many planes exist around Deminar, and all of them are suspended in the Astral Plane. Much like the island floats among the sky in Deminar, the planes float among the Astral Sea. It is a vast silvery mist in which nothing is tied down. Everything floats free, and it is easy to get lost as there are no permanent features. The openness allows for no constrains for growth and things that dwell within the Astral Plane can get quite big indeed.

Floating in the Astral Plane are the various Domains of the gods. Each major god has his own Domain and many lesser gods dwell alongside them. The Domains wax and wane in size as they collect more souls or are the subject of attacks from rivals. They are not permanently located in any one place and the only way to find them is to want to find them, such is the way of the Planes.

And, in the center of a place that has no center sits the Plane of Deminar, but it does not exist alone. Both encasing it, and existing along side it are several more planes. But such things are to be discussed at another time.

Design and Development: Cleric, Part 2

There seems to be a reasonable agreement that Undead within Deminar are seen as a bad thing amongst the gods, whether the god is full of purity and good or hatred and evil. The idea is, the undead deny souls from going to a god, and all the gods want souls to help fuel their huge domain spanning cold war that's been going on forever.
Because of this, the cleric was born, he's the ultimate anti-undead solider. While indeed, part of his job is to convert the faithless to his god or delving into dungeon to recover artifacts important to their god or even to stop various evils (or goods) from doing things against a god's faithful (i.e. justify a cleric adventuring into dungeon that aren't mainly undead places), their primary goal is to root out and destroy undead. This is something that all the gods, despite their ideological differences in a lot of things, thinks is a good thing. This also builds up an overall world concept that people who either craft the undead or seek to become them (as liches and what have you) are almost universally despised, due to the overall agreement that the undead are going against the gods.
This is why clerics are mainly trained to use blunt weapons (most effective against dead flesh) and why all clerics can turn undead through their faith.
This still brings up a few things left to wrap our heads around though. Namely, a couple of spells in a cleric's arsenal. Those being Animate Dead and Raise Dead/Resurrection.

Raise Dead and its sister spell Resurrection bring a dead person back to life, in essence putting a soul back in a corpse and letting him fight another day. This denies a soul to a god, which, as we talked about above, is bad. In a cleric's point of view, and indeed all intelligent worshiping species, that's also denying a person his rightful place in the afterlife (which isn't a skewed and wrong look at things, but, as I mentioned in the post below, is how people think). The counter to this, I believe, is that both are fairly high level spells, so the gods only grant that ability to clerics who would use it responsibly, those that weight out the factors of if being denied a chance to go to the afterlife right away is worth coming back again. Thus, I see those spells as being used rarely, and also, it has a nice built in time factor, that represents only having so much time to do so before the soul makes it to the god's domain and gets converted into "soulstuff" and not be able to retain its memories of life. Sometimes a spell just falls into world design properly.

The bigger problem is Animate Dead, as it does exactly the opposite of what clerics do, it creates undead, rather then destroys them. Now, you can argue that, since it only creates Skeletons and Zombies, that it's just making soulless undead and therefore no soul is being denied its place. And that's a good point, soulless undead are probably not as reviled as those that still have the soul trapped on Deminar (whether purposely or not), but then, why does Turn Undead work on the soulless undead to begin with? Again, I wouldn't want to get rid of this spell, so to keep the AEC as whole as possible, but its inclusion brings a few speedbumps into the thinking of how a cleric works.

And that brings up the Turn Undead affecting soulless undead issue. If the idea is that the undead are repulsed and sometimes vaporized under the presence of such faith that is basically calling out how out of order being undead is, soulless undead wouldn't really be bothered, since they don't have thoughts. The other alternative could be that Turn Undead works by disrupting whatever energy creates/sustains undead in the first place, whether soulless or not. But then, if it is that, almost, scientific approach, how come only clerics can access it? Questions, questions.

So, agree/disagree on Raise Dead? Ideas for why Animate Dead is clerical spell canon? How about that Turn Undead problem?

Musing: The Mortal Perception of the Afterlife

A thought spinning off the Clerical Talks:

Despite the fact that a soul doesn't get a happy afterlife (as I talked about below) and instead is converted into "soulstuff" to be used as needed by a god, the gods don't let that fact out. It could bring about a sort of backlash if intelligent life found out it's just going to potentially be a chair (or anything else, even a powerful angel) with no recollection of its living life when it dies.

Like those devout on this planet, most species believe that when you die your soul goes to the afterlife of the god your worshiped or the afterlife of the god who's aspects your most exemplified and you spend eternity in paradise or nightmare in view of your god. Now, we don't know if that's true or not in real life, but that's what people believe, the same applies to Deminar.

Only in Deminar, WE know it's not true because we made the whole thing up, but the idea is that the gods won't let on to that in fear of losing worshipers. Even if a person doesn't worship anyone, they end up going to the domain of the god who most resembles how they lived their life. So if people found out they don't get any reward for living a good life, they'd mostly act like chaotic heathens (why's it matter what you do?!) and that would beef up the more chaotic and evil gods considerably, so gods don't let that fact out too often. Some of the chaotic gods try to, through their followers (since no god can directly interact with the world, remember?) but most other faiths consider that religious propaganda and don't buy it. If only they knew....

Design and Development: Clerics, Part 1

This is the idea that originally sparked this whole series of subheadings:

The cleric has some interesting rules that, at times, can be challenging to explain from an "in universe" perspective.

The actual casting of Divine Spells and where they come from pretty much is already explained (though it's sure to get a detailed examination within the published material), as it comes from the deities themselves, fueled by the cleric's god, allowing the cleric to perform miracles to prove the god's existence and potentially convert the nonbelievers. Atleast, that's a quick stripped down view at it.

However, there are other rulings about the class that bring up some interesting questions:

Clerics can't use bladed weapons: We all know clerics can't use weapons with an edge, the rule's been around forever. Supposedly it comes from a edict made to questing priests during the Crusades and adopted into the D&D mythos as talked about here (where he also goes on to debunk the legend). Now, while I'm not in favor of stripping what is a iconic rule about the cleric. It brings up the question within the world of Deminar, why can't clerics use bladed weapons? Obviously they did not have any Christian Crusades into the Holy Land, so what is it? The AEC states, "Strict holy doctrine prevents clerics from using any
cutting or impaling weapons," but that's not a real answer. Is it due to ancient pacts with the gods in exchange for divine casting abilities, is it part of a strict code of ethics about drawing blood held throughout all churches? Does it have anything to do with the actually casting of divine magic in the first place?

Turn Undead: All clerics can Turn Undead in LL/AEC rules, stating, "The cleric is able to call upon the name and power of his deity to repel, and even destroy, undead." Again, the question is why? I think it's because there's an assumption that most clerics within a group are worshiping a just god, one that supports freedom, life, good, flowers, etc. and that undead are a sort of abomination on the natural order of things. However, why do clerics of evil gods have the same ability? Later D&D rules add things like the ability to control undead if you're evil and some such, but again, we're trying to use the standard rulings as much as possible to make it a setting that doesn't require a lot of rules changes to run (and therefore be more accessible). So again, I'll pose the question of why? Is it because undead trap souls, therefore denying a god the ability to have it to build his domain (something all gods, good or evil, lawful or chaotic, want)? That doesn't explain away skeletons and zombies and other "soulless" undead though. Is it that this setting has no "God of Undeath" and it's against the natural order to all gods, where raising the dead isn't a matter of good or evil, lawful or chaotic, but rather a violation of the universal order of how things work, and therefore every god grants his vessels the ability to repulse and destroy them? And why does it just make undead run away at some points and at others flat out destroy them? Does the "holy power" just not have the same amount of juice all the time, so the some undead flee from the potential harmful power (a sort of unnatural instinct, like being born knowing that you probably shouldn't touch fire)?

All Clerics Get the Same Spells: This might be the only ability that gets some tweaking in Deminar. As I'm playing around with the concept in my head of each god having a small handful of specific spells that only clerics of their doctrine get. However, the "core set" of spells still remains the same, and while the reversal of certain spells into "good" and "evil" forms can help explain away some of it based on what god a cleric worships, there still seems to be a lot of uniform spells across the board. Is it another godly pact, where everyone got together and said, "well, to play fair, we should all grant our followers similar spells so that one doesn't have a clear advantage over another?" Does it have to do with the nature of divine spell casting itself, whereas although the gods grant the ability to manipulate magic, a cleric can still only access the energy of magic in a limited number of ways? Or, is it something that comes down from generations of religious codifying, where clerics throughout the ages slowly began whittling down their spells to a unified set of tested and true versions?

So, interesting things to look at and ponder the "why" factor from within the workings of the world itself. I look forward to any comments and thoughts on the matter, discussion is encouraged, but play nice!

Musing: Gods Pt. 2 - The Dark Details

I mentioned in the last post a bunch of bits I needed explain further in this post, so, here's this post... still with me? Good!

I mentioned that the gods were quite content to let people slaughter one another in their name, even if the two sides are actually worshiping the same god. That has a lot to do about what a god gains by getting a soul sent to him.
Like many fantasy worlds, when an intelligent creature dies in Deminar, its soul separates from the body. From there, a courier from the Goddess of Death (or the Goddess herself if its a particularly important chap or she's just in the mood) comes to escort the soul to the domain of whichever god the person worshiped most in life or, whichever god has a aspect most closely attached to how that person lived his life. Here's where our afterlife differs pretty majorly though, once the soul gets to the proper domain it's reverted into the stuff that makes up the domain and is added to the god's homeland. In essence, a worshiper becomes the building block of a god's domain.
The god uses the soul stuff to grow out the size of his domain, craft all the things that exist on the domain, erect any defenses along the border, create their versions of angels or demons to go spy and fight against the servants of the other gods, make some new lawn furniture. Whatever the deity wants. Death in the game is pretty permanent, you only have so much time to bring a person back to life (the time it takes to get a soul to the proper domain, though this can take a while, as the Goddess has to figure out the right domain to send each soul to and make sure it gets there, the queue can get long, especially during wars) and you certainly won't run into the afterlife version of an old friend on a god's domain years later. There are cases where perhaps a god will let a soul retain its mortal memories before forging it into a herald or something similar to help spread the word of that god, but that's the exception, not the rule.
Having lots of souls, which means lots of soul stuff, is important so that the gods can grow their domains, sabotage the other gods, and shore up their defenses against their rivals. The gods are constantly jockeying for power and a god is the only thing that can kill another god (though it's not easy even then), so they can be very wary of one another as well.

So why not go down and slaughter all the faithful to build up a huge domain and launch an unsuspecting attack on all the other gods? Well, it's complicated, but I'll try to explain.
Firstly, the gods made a pact a long time ago that no fully divine being was allowed down on Deminar personally anymore and when gods make pacts signed in divine blood and what not, they must be followed. Second, you want worshipers or else you can die.

I mentioned that anyone can become a god and that's because that is how the divine nature of Deminar works. Worship equals divinity, and, with enough followers, everyone has the potential to become a deity. It all depends on how many followers you have. Sure, many adventurers are damn near worshiped in the towns they save from an evil menace, but that does spell divinity. At best, they might have a little more luck then the average person, but they're certainly not passing on into the domains of the gods, you need scores of people for that to happen.
The major gods, the ones that have been around since before any species rose to power on Deminar snagged the major aspects that would guarantee lots of worship, major concepts like Good and Evil, the various Seasons, Weather patterns, things like Fire and Water, things lots of different folk would pray for, and while they may just worship one of the several aspects a god represents, that's still worship and that grants power. The lesser gods, ones that were either mortals on Deminar at one time, or an outsider that somehow got linked to a certain aspect and worshiped, have a ton of followers, but not nearly as many as the major gods. The lesser gods sometimes take over an aspect held by a major god, a person or being might be linked to warfare enough that he becomes the god of war, stripping that aspect from the major god that held it. These lesser gods don't usually have a domain of their own, but instead, live on a domain of the major god that the lesser god would get along with the most, acting as a general in the greater gods army and helping to increase the major god's domain by adding the soul stuff of the lesser god's followers.
That doesn't mean a lesser god can't go out and make his own domain, but that domain is generally very small compared to the major gods and easily taken out by a major god. In fact, many major gods will kill an unprotected lesser god and destroy his domain, then take on the role of that lesser god so that followers are funneled into his domain. So why keep lesser gods around at all? Why not invite them into your domain, then slaughter them to take over their followers? One, do that enough and the lesser gods may join together to take out a major god as a threat and two, having lesser gods around as high end cannon fodder in case your domain is attacked is always a good idea.
So the best way to weaken a god, so that you can take over his aspects and grow stronger, would be to lessen his worship on Deminar. The flip side is you can't do this by having your faithful go out and slaughter your rival's faithful, because doing so only makes the rival's domain stronger, and sometimes slaying faithful can actually make the faith stronger. So it's a delicate balance of keeping a rival's worship base low, while not building his domain through deaths, all the while keeping a good balance of living worshipers for power and dead one for domain building.

As you can no doubt tell, the realm of the gods is very political, with everyone thinking several steps ahead and using all manner of underhanded tricks, backstabs, alliances, betrayals, and backdoor deals to secure their own power and crush everyone elses.

Musing: Gods

Since this version of Deminar is much the same version of Deminar we wrote a while ago, just advanced (both in timeline and depth), the same ideals we had for deities are going to carry forward from the previous edition.
Yes, the setting has gods, we're not trying to break the mold so much and say, "people worship stuff, but there might not actually be gods, man we're deep!" There is indeed a pantheon out there that watches over Deminar, provides clerics with spells, and sits around waiting for the souls of the faithful to come to their planes in death.
However, there isn't a lot of gods, not like Forgotten Realms where every race and culture has their own pantheon (last I checked, I believe FR has 13,571 official gods, all with stats so you can kill them to fulfill some ego filled power trip), but a more respectable number of gods watching over what goes on among the floating islands. Of course, if you went about asking the various species and cultures and islands about the gods they worship and compile a list of everyone's responses, you'd find out hundreds of gods are being worshiped on a daily basis.
How is that possible? Well, remember that many of these islands have not had contact with one another in generations and even among species that intermingle with one another (and the vast majority don't), each species has its own culture and beliefs. What this boils down to is that different groups are worshiping the same gods under different aliases. A God of War may be worshiped under one name by the goblins, but something entirely different by humans and something entirely different by another clan of goblins on another island. Some might worship the valor and chivalrous aspects of war as one deity and the vicious conquering bloodthirsty aspect as another, even though its the same being. Religious wars are fought over the exact same god, hundreds have died that way, yet, the gods don't go about correcting everyone about it.
Why? Well, a few reasons, first, they've taken a more passive approach to Deminar, they don't go traipsing about in person on the islands (FR, looking at you kid!), and they're not big into the divine intervention all the time. They made a pact with one another not to get involved personally due to events in the long past that I may get around to discussing at some point. Second, a religious war fought between two sides of the same god sends all the faithful to the same god, and for the gods, the more souls you get to go to your domain, the better, though you also need to be careful to keep worshipers alive as well, again, for reasons best left for another post.
The gods are very standoffish in a lot of things, they do provide power to their clerics in return for said clerics spreading the word about them and gaining more worshipers, advertising is important down on the islands, but the gods are actually currently more concerned with what's going on within their own domains.

Also, our gods will never have stats, you can't kill them like you can a monster, by reducing their hp to 0, but you can get rid of them. Also, everyone has the potential to become a god, everyone, and this was long before 4th Edition came up with that Epic Destiny.

There really needs to be a second post about how the gods and afterlife work, I'll have to remember that!

Musing: Cleric Spells

So while I just mentioned that part of LL rules system is that all clerics have the same spells, and while the most current version of D&D comes close to that (saved by feats that give access to special prayers based on the god you pick), most fantasy systems usually give each cleric some difference depending on the god they follow.

So, the thought just popped into my head, do we add a new rules system that give clerics something extra based on their worship? And if not, how do you explain, in universe, why all clerics have access to the same spells, regardless of the deity they swear fealty too.

Hmmm, something to ponder