Requesting some feedback on my world's pantheon

Hello, I believe this is my first time posting here, and I’d like to get some feedback on the fantasy world called Ekos I’m crafting for fun. I thought this would be a good place to look because the feel of this world is very self-aware and Troperiffic. Things are vibrant, geography makes no real-world sense, and it’s just a cool place I can daydream about whenever I feel like it.

There are four main regions in the world, each feature their own race of humans and have a predominant climate. In the north is Ilmèdre, a lush region which combines The Lost Woods with pockets of Arcadia. In the east is Ezotad, a Thirsty Desert with combined elements of Ancient Egypt, "Arabian Nights" Days, and The Wild West. In the south is Heovol, an industrious region with lots of rocky highlands and subterranean valleys used for mining. Finally there is Rosini, Slippy-Slidey Ice World which you can think of as theocratic Norse by Norsewest.

Now that you have a very basic idea on the geographic diversity, I’d like to get into the world’s pantheon. These are four goddesses, sisters, that created the world, and each of them are tied to one of the four regions of Ekos. Fictional pantheons have always fascinated me so I wanted to spend a lot of time giving each deity her own unique feel. These sisters are all generally good. Like Greek gods, they have human emotions and agendas, but they tend not to be vengeful or destructive to mortals.

In order to define each goddess, I decided to basically stack a couple of tropes on top of each other to come up with character identities. These are Four-Element Ensemble and Four-Temperament Ensemble. Matching elements to temperaments was simple; in fact I just used the ones listed on the temperament page. But I needed the goddesses to represent more than just an element, I wanted them to have their own philosophies, their own idea on how the world should be, something that their human followers would preach. An obvious pick was Order Versus Chaos. After some searching, I realized Harmony Versus Discipline would make a good second axis, since I wanted to avoid Good Versus Evil.

Then I matched up the Element/Temperament combinations with the two philosophical axis and came up with these four deities.

Mède – Matron Goddess of Ilmèdre, Air Element, Sanguine, Harmony, Spring Season. Domains - Nature, Plants, Animals, Fertility, Merrymaking, Hunting, Music, Storytelling, Weather, and Life.

Zote – Matron Goddess of Ezotad, Fire Element, Choleric, Chaos, Summer Season. Domains - War, Passion, Rebellion, Creation, Destruction, Blood, Love, Dance, Art, Craft, Freedom, Competition, and Luck.

Vole – Matron Goddess of Heovol, Earth Element, Melancholic, Discipline, Autumn Season. Domains - Science, History, Mathematics, Knowledge, Progress, Industry, Technology, Laws of Physics, Philosophy, Architecture, and Language.

Sine – Matron Goddess of Rosini, Water Element, Phlegmatic, Order, Winter Season. Domains - Law, Honor, Government, Peace, Civilization, Servitude, Leadership, Seafaring, Justice, Judgment, Household, and Family.

So there they are, hopefully you can get a feel for each of them by reading their attributes and domains. Now here is where I need some feedback. I’m very pleased with the Order Versus Chaos deities Zote and Vole, but I’m concerned about the other two. I feel like the first Goddess, Mede, needs to be associated with agriculture, her region’s primary industry. But agriculture is inescapably tide the Earth element, which I have firmly connected to Discipline – technology, industry, science, etc...

What do you think? Can the Sanguine goddess of Spring and Harmony be associated with Air and Agriculture at the same time? Or do I need to make some major adjustments here? I appreciate any feedback or suggestions people might have, and thank you for reading all of this. :)

edited 5th Apr '14 9:12:36 PM by infjeff

I see no reason why not. I'm no stranger to unusual pairings when it comes to godly domains. For an example: Malum, god of good, evil, intrigue, inspiration, trickery and a laundry list of others that the rest of his family couldn't be bothered to deal with.

Really you can stack any two domains you like onto a god, but where it matters is how they deal with it, or failing their absence as actual characters, how their followers/religion does.

You've got personality outlines in place, but outlines of a thing aren't the same as the actual thing.

I'm going to put things bluntly. I strongly disagree with the way in which you have established your setting. I'm aware you mentioned that this wasn't a serious effort or anything, but calling attention to that fact won't stop me from criticizing it in full.

Lets start with some basic things:

How exactly does magic or fantastical elements work in this setting? I want some very clearly established rules to how things work in this setting, and this includes the deities themselves. As much as you'd like to make fantasy counterpart settings, knowing the properties of magic in your world will enable you to track how these sorts of things would affect the cultures in your world and how your societies develop. This in turn will make your countries much more nuanced and interesting than making Hollywood copies of Earth places. This implies working out the details of the histories of each place from the ground up, as in taking each society from the beginning of civilization and watching how it develops instead of evaluating the world from what you believe to be the current situation.

I don't have anything to go by since I don't have a map, but you should avoid making your world into a fantasy patchwork map, again for more nuances. That is, unless you can justify it fully within the context of the established magical properties and without having to resort to "Gods did it" as much as possible.

I don't have any inherent objections about the pantheon itself, though to me it seems a bit bland and a bit too classical for my tastes. You might want to look beyond the classical stuff, since that's my impression of your pantheon. Also, why are your goddesses the way they are and why do they have their specific personalities? How would time and conflict and other things affect them in the long run?

Might post more stuff later.

Believe me, I have a lot more notes regarding the nature of magic and more details regarding each region. I just wanted to limit the info I put out there to keep the focus on what my main concerns were. My quick summaries really don't do the characters or the settings justice, plus this is all still a work in progress.

Alright, I want to see them. Knowing this information would allow me to make a proper evaluation.

Ok then - here's a link to some notes a typed up a while ago. A map's in there too. Keep in mind some of this stuff has changed around.

Just looked over your thing a few times. I don't see a concrete schematic of how magic and whatnot works in your world. And you might want to make a somewhat detailed climate map, even though your world isn't earth-like.

I didn't mention this earlier since I needed sleep, but I'm not too keen on the idea of active deities overlooking a setting, even if it has been done correctly. Since they are inherently powerful and may have different magical abilities than those given to the common folk, they have the potential to introduce a crapton of complications that might go unnoticed when making a generalized past history of the world, especially if they are emotionally invested for whatever reason. They also have the potential to introduce Deus ex Machinas out of the blue. Speaking of which, I don't see a detailed sheet on who these deities are, their histories, and why they act the way they do, especially since their actions can potentially change the setting.

In my opinion, your notes seem kinda sparse. I'll admit, your cultures are somewhat differentiated and you have put some detail into them, some of which I would have overlooked. The problem is that these cultures each span over a continent. Even if you've got deities controlling your world, you're probably going to have a crapton of regional variation within these specific continents. Not to mention, I don't get the impression that these places have derived from some past tradition nor that they influence each other in any way. This, I feel, is a problem with fantasy that defines its past in terms of unchanging ages, because this tends to produce cultures that feel static. Why are these societies the way they are, and what sort of history has created them?

What was the world like before the epic war that occurred? As I have said before, you should find out what the world was like from the dawn of civilization (or somewhere close to it) and figure out what sorts of places are left after a few thousand or so years of history, not use your societies now and find out what societies were like back then. And you should track how your magic affects societies, especially since you have deities running around and causing havoc.

Also, you should have a more detailed creation story for your world. Most mythologies, classical or not, have some form of this, and it will provide more legitimacy.

Thank you for taking the time to look that over. However, all of the concerns you bring up – the magic system, climate maps, the world’s creation, regional variance, etc… are being accounted for. These notes seem sparse because this is just one file out of the dozens I have on the world. At the moment I’m not concerned with these aspects – I’ll get to them when I get to them.

You’re certainly entitled to your preferences regarding deities actively overlooking a setting, but so am I, and I’m definitely not changing that aspect. Sorry if I didn’t make myself clear on the first post, but my main concern was the idea of Mede – who represents the element of Air, also holding dominion over things like farming, gardening, agriculture etc… If you don’t think that’s a good fit, I understand, I mean that’s the reason I posted here, to get other opinions on an aspect I was having doubts about. That's why my first post focused mainly on the pantheon.

As to your specific concerns, I think you should dissociate agriculture from Mede and instead place it under the domain of Vole. Going with your polarization approach, I would associate agriculture with discipline instead of harmony, and with a potentially fertile region of the north or whatnot, the people in the north may not necessarily need to develop agriculture until contact with more populous agricultural nations. Along this line, associating the north with the harmony goddess, you're probably going to have more peoples that are hunter-gatherers and shamanistic, and magic, depending on what extent it exists, might exist in a more primal form. This is of course going with your polarization method.

Is this worldbuilding for its own sake? That seems to be the implication, but I'm wondering how practical it would be to make the world fit the religion rather than the other way around.

Also, what is the reasoning behind giving the Air Elemental those domains? I can follow some of them, but 'fertility' and 'storytelling' stick out as things that might require further explanation - if you decide to do something commercial with this pantheon, that is.

Ignoring geographical impossibility of the world: your deities read sort of as laundry lists of various traits, thrown together without a whole lot of thought, and I'm not sensing much of a personality. Can we get a creation myth, and some personality sketches of these characters?

Remember that while tropes can be used to analyze a work, and even somewhat to create them, they aren't all-encompassing. Throwing a bunch of trope page descriptions together without thought to underlying structure and organization will probably leave you with a mass of cardboard where your world was supposed to go. There's nothing especially wrong with your start, but you might want to put more thought into it.

edited 7th Apr '14 9:58:29 AM by Kesar

I don't mind the storm goddess being a fertility goddess because back in the day that was Ba'al, so there is a precedent in real life. Especially since you've associated earth more with industry and technology.

It makes sense that storm goddesses would also be fertility goddesses because storms are technically very extreme rain. Plus, it implies a warlike/vengeful quality in the goddess because "make her happy, we get enough rain. Make her mad/unhappy, she full-out drowns the crops." Plus, asking the fertility/storm goddess to send a storm to hinder enemies or blight their crops would be perfectly logical.

Reminds me of the Morrigan, who was a fertility and war goddess due to battlefields becoming ridiculously verdant after the fight was over. In fact, there's a slight but distinct trend of Indo-European fertility goddesses being vengeful and demanding when crossed, contrasting with the vaguely "nice" and placid ones that people frequently write in constructed myth. "Fertility goddess" doesn't always mean "sweet and nurturing." They give life, but they also take it.

edited 7th Apr '14 1:33:23 PM by Sharysa

Funny you mention that, because there is a faction in the northern region that remained in primitive, tribal groups and are hostile to their cousins that moved out of the forest and "civilized" they think it's blasphemy.

For now it's worldbuilding for it's own sake. The goal is, down the line, to write some stories based in it, but I don't have any intention to make money off of this. As for storytelling, one of the ways I came up with the domains was to interpret their Temperaments (in this case Sanguine) and come up with things that would make sense for a deity with that type of personality to be attributed with. Sanguine characters are cheerful, outgoing, and optimistic, so I made Mede linked to parties, music, and bard-type things like storytelling. I think bards would be a large part of her worshipers.

Well I'm still figuring out the specifics, but the current creation story I'm going for is the goddesses being part of an ancient race of "star people" (real name pending) that were basically just chilling in the void of space. Then one day, they start trying to make a world. (I'm still trying to figure out a motivation for them to do this, but I might just leave it ambiguous, and let the different religions of the world have their own interpretations. Were they told to do it by an even greater power? Did they have a desire to rule over others? Maybe they were lonely?) The star people tried to make a world individually, but none of them could do it alone. It wasn't until these four sisters combined their powers, compensating for what the others lacked, that a new world was born. The main antagonist in the world is an envious and bitter star person, one of the first who tried to make a world but failed.

I don't know why it took me so long, but I actually thought of looking up some real world examples of air/sky gods associated with agriculture, I couldn't find many, but I did come across Ukko, a Finnish deity of sky, weather, thunder, and the harvest! I'm going to look more into Ukko and Ba'al to see what they were all about.

This is my current thinking as well, focus on the weather portion of agriculture instead of the soil part.

You also mentioned earlier that agriculture is inescapably tied to earth but it would mess with your order/chaos dichotomy, so maybe you should have the earth goddess' domain be literally the earth or natural phenomena. Earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides, caves and stone are all well within a literal-earth/land goddesses' domain, while also being about as chaotic as things get.

edited 8th Apr '14 7:23:16 PM by Sharysa

This is exactly how I've been trying to think - match up all the dichotomies as bet as I can. But actually, Air vs Earth dichotomy matches up to Harmony vs Discipline so both of those elements are allowed to have some Orderly and Chaotic things. I chose Earth to match with Discipline because it's cold, hard, and rigid - while air flows gently around objects, sounds about right for Harmony.

On a semi-related note, Fire was an obvious choice for Chaos, leaving Water with Order, which isn't ideal, but hey it follows strict rules about the phases of matter it goes through so at least there's that.

If you think Earth is cold and rigid, you clearly haven't experienced either half of California. Earthquakes and wildfires are a dime a dozen here.

edited 9th Apr '14 11:11:05 AM by Sharysa