Posts
Gods of
Dungeons and Dragons
I have over the years put out
several entries on the topic of fictional religions. I never really went anywhere with my discussion
of Religion as an aspect of settings that I wrote about years before that, but since
then I have tried to come at the topic in ways that would make it interesting
for someone who had been playing for a while or someone new.
In each instance I have tried to
either go in an entirely new direction like with my unique
take on Orcs a while back. I then did a short follow up to that with a pair of orc
characters in that context. There was also a more traditional
pantheon of deities that act in concert with one another, "The Five".
I did a follow up to that one in which I created a team of
characters that each serve as an exemplar of the various members of The Five. My last entry was “The Preserver” which was
my attempt to graft a messianic style belief system onto environmentalism
oriented religion.
To
continue with this I am going to write up more of my stranger and off the
beaten path religious aspects of my own campaign world and see what
people think. This will kind of be a
series, much like my attempts to write characters for all the class and
background combinations it is something that is informal and rarely done… I am
a surprisingly busy person…
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| It is important when making a symbol for a fictional religion, to keep the iconography simple enough for people to draw. |
The High Arcana
Holy Symbol:
Lines on either side of a pentacle
above a curve, the “Wand, Sword, Pentacle, and Cup”
Cleric Domain:
Arcana (Sword Coast Adventurer’s
Guide) or Knowledge (PHB).
There are also some sects that
ascribe different domains based on how they worship.
World View
& Mythos:
The universe is chaos. From that chaos emerged the Arcana. The Arcana is the living energy that empowers
all things. It is knowledge and
imagination.
The arcana is a concept beyond
mortal reason and cannot be perceived or understood by mortals and instead is
perceived in various facets. 22 “gods”
form a sort of pantheon, when acolytes seek to understand the arcana or see the
future they evoke these gods and attempt to divine the answer to their
questions via which gods appear and in which order those gods make those appearances.
Linked below are the 5 blog entries
that give names and identities to all 22 of these “gods”. This is more an overview to see the religion
from more of a birds’ eye view and the idea of them being gods in the
traditional sense of a pantheon of beings with genders, goals, and personality. (COMING SOON; turns out writing 22 of these
things takes more time and creative energy than I realized, and I stalled out
in the middle of the pack).
Part 1: The Leaders: Empress,
Emperor, High Priestess, Hierophant, and Magician.
Part 2: The Adversaries: Fool,
Hanged Man, Death, Devil, and Wheel of Fortune.
Part 3: The Virtuous: Strength, Temperance,
Justice, and Judgement.
Part 4: The Cosmos: Star, Moon, Sun,
and World.
Part 5: The Others: Lovers,
Charioteer, Hermit, and Tower.
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| For those who don't know what this is a reference too from this opening, here is an additional clue. |
Beliefs:
The High Arcana does not listen to prayers. They are not a “they” but simply many
different faces of a higher form of knowledge and energy that exists beyond the
mortal ability to perceive time and space.
It is mercurial, uncaring, random, and often capricious… from the point
of view of mortals. Followers seek foreknowledge
and truth by channeling the arcana, but the replies come in such a cryptic
manner that divining what they mean is often an exercise in futility.
As a religion they are (at best)
something a “worshiper” tries to listen intently to and decipher in hopes of
gaining some kind of edge on the tumultuous circumstances that constantly
assault people’s lives. They might
reveal the key to casting a spell, a coming storm, or simply hint at the mood
and focus that will be needed in the coming days.
Practices:
To the world at large the most
common practice associated with the High Arcana is prominence of oracles and
divination utilizing cartomancy, the use of
cards to predict the future. Each of the
22 images of High Arcana are dealt out and the meaning associated with each of
the images is interpreted based on where it falls in the chain.
As the cards never deal out the same
way twice, a common criticism of this practice is, “if I were to ask the same
question twice in a row, why would I receive different readings?” This question has created the main schism
with currently divides the religion based on how they answer this question
discussed in “Churches and Denominations”.
The Holy symbol represents the
Lesser Arcana, the meaning varies depending on who you ask within the
faith. The most common answers to tend
be some variation of, “They represent positive actions taken in the material
world based on the guidance of the High Arcana.” That is to say, attack, cast, heal, or learn…
But even that varies and some people in larger churches think that the symbols
should be discarded.
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| Thank you to Lucas Pezeta for the free stock photo from Pexels. |
Superstitions
and Taboos:
The faith has a 22-month calendar, 9
of months having 16 days, the other 13 having 17 days. They do not have weeks or weekends and see
the calendar strictly as a means to keep track of holidays. Each of the months is associated with 1 of
the gods and it serves as a zodiac.
There is division in the faith between those who believe that one’s birthday
can influence one’s persona or one’s relation with the arcana, some holding so
true as to not associate with people who are born in certain months because they
assume those individuals have conflicting personality traits.
Social
Organization:
Generally speaking there is no
prescribed social order in the belief systems of the High Arcana. Implicit in the belief system are certain
virtues and social roles, but they are descriptive rather than prescriptive,
that is to say, the reason one of the gods is “The God of Emperors” is not
because there should be emperors, but because the word “emperor” best describes
his role within the pantheon.
Churches and
Denominations:
The two largest groups were split
over the question, “if I were to ask the same question twice in a row, why
would I receive different readings?” The
first group are called Refractory Readers, they have the easiest explanation to
understand and as such are the more widely understood. Their explanation is, “The first reading was
the ‘correct’ reading, and as it has not resolved itself another reading cannot
be taken yet. The second time you asked
the question you were just getting psychic noise from the High Arcana.”
The Second group is more esoteric
and are called Infinite Readers. Their
explanation is as follows, “whenever you ask a question you are only seeing a
small amount of an answer, the first few cards, in reality the answer is not
cards but an unknowable glimpse into the High Arcana. You could ask the question an infinite number
of times and you would get a different answer each time, but they are all the
same answer, one long stream of information that is simply too much for you to
take in and interpret.”
Essentially they are giving the same
answer, “too much information for the person to process” but there is a nuance
to each’s explanation that has spawned their own canon to be explored and
contrasted by the various followers.
As for formal organizations, there
are two exceptionally large churches that have formed, and they are in tension
with one another. The first is the Order
of the Oracles, which focus on trying to see the future of the material world
and provide such services to communities.
The Oracles have their own missionaries and often study other forms of
divination in addition to cartomancy.
The Oracles ascribe to the Refractory Readers explanation and are more
generally accepted by the public at large.
The other group is the Church of the
Highest Arcane and prescribe more to the Infinite Readers explanation. They do not feel the material world is of
interest and spend most of their time seeking out a greater understanding of
the higher dimensions. The Astral Plane,
the Ethereal Plane, and the Dream Plane take special interest them. They are favored by Wizards, Warlocks, and
others that value Knowledge perceived to be beyond ‘typical’ people. They are seen as elitist, aloof, and as
unproductive intellectuals.
There exists a third group which is
growing in size and influence called the Pantheists. They believe that the High Arcana should be
seen and worshiped as a traditional pantheon of gods with temples to each,
pilgrimages, holidays, and each having their own holy symbols. This group tends toward traditional cleric
practices of picking one god to follow with a domain suited to that god, these
clerics are often call themselves “Embodiments”.
Cults &
Heretics:
The “Literalists” are a small
faction of the faith do believe that these concepts should be applied more
literally to the world and have tried in small utopian communities to create a
social order based around the various symbols, appointing people to fill each
role which can be seen as a person, codifying ideas like Temperance and Judgement
into the law, and creating actual Wheels of Fortune that people may gamble
upon.
These groups are viewed by the
larger faith as missing the forest for the trees to a comical degree and
derided as misrepresenting the faith to the outside world.
Another group are the “Charlatans”
which is a term used for anyone who pretends to practice the art of divination
with a set of High Arcana cards but does so without faith or purpose. They are seen as false prophets and are
shockingly common because the cards are often sold or given away as tokens of
the faith.
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| And thank you to Scott Rodgerson on unsplash. |
Heretical
Symbol:
The Literalists use the same symbol,
the “Wand, Sword, Pentacle, and Cup” and see themselves as the true faith.
The Charlatans also use the “Wand,
Sword, Pentacle, and Cup”, it would dispel their ruse if they used a different
symbol.
Heretical
Domain:
The Literalists tend toward Order
(Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica) or Knowledge (PHB) while Charlatans use the
Trickery (PHB) domain.
Heretical
Texts:
Often these small groups will be
founded by a leader or group of leaders who wish to set themselves up as the
Emperor of their own community. They
will frequently write their own holy text which serves as a supreme and final
word on how the high arcana should be interpreted.
Often times they will rename the
gods, create dozens of new gods, or make themselves the 23rd
god. Ironically, none of this behavior
can be called “heretical” in any meaningful sense. The existing names of the gods are
placeholders for larger inscrutable concepts.
More gods are just as likely and 22 that exist currently were part of
previous generational efforts to codify various ideas, the last to be added was
the Charioteer, and there are still debates on whether that god should be split
off to a 23rd in the form of the Paladin, to say nothing of
splitting the “Devil” into multiple devils representing sins as they are
commonly understood.
Even the idea of adding one’s self
as another god is strange, as that is what the card “World” is often
interpreted as. Not the literal world,
but the world as a person perceives it.
The larger religion is flexible and
contains no supreme “Evil” that can be called to as exists in many other
faiths, the closest being those who wish to worship the Devil as a means to
gain power thru misdeeds, but even that is atypical, because the Devil is
rarely seen in those terms by others within the faith, instead seeing him as a
source of knowledge (often forbidden) or the embodiment of personal drive
(often leading to self-destructive ends).
Inspirations
This is going to be pretty obvious,
but the big
inspiration here is Tarot Cards and their presence in the pop culture as a form of
divination. I find them somewhat
entertaining in the same way I find all real-life expressions of the occult to
be entertaining.
This was also inspired in Dungeons
and Dragons by two things the first is obviously The Deck of Many Things, an iconic magic
item
which… inexplicably is not just a Tarot deck in spite of it having 22 cards in
it.
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| Love this art style for the third party publisher trying to release this as a game supplement. |
Seriously, if you look
at the list of tarot cards they suggest using for the various Many Things they suggest
using numbers from the cups, swords, pentacles, and wands. That is just weird. Why not just make the Deck of Many Things the
Tarot cards? Just straight up make them
the same things. It is all nonsense
anyway…. What is really weird is one of the suggestions they use is for the
“Idiot” in the Many Things deck should align with the “Juggler” in a normal
tarot deck…. There is no “Juggler” in a typical tarot deck! It is the Magus or Magician, both things that
belong in DnD more than a Juggler.
Also, why does the Deck of Many
Things need an Idiot, a Fool, and a Jester?
Those are too close together. It
is dumb.
The other inspiration was the Tarokka Cards which were
an add on to the recent Ravenloft “Curse of
Strahd”
adventure for 5e Dungeons and Dragons.
Having looked thru the cards I found a lot of their theming to be off
and weird. They are clearly ordered with
the basic fighter, rogue, cleric, wizard arrangement in mind, but aside from
the wizard I think that the archetypes on the others were not entirely right.
This is another instance in which
they could have just used a Tarot Deck and published a Dungeons and Dragons
themed deck. It would have been much
more accessible and sold to people who don’t play DnD, instead it was so niche
as to be a waste of money. I will say
that I LOVED the art in the Tarokka deck, as the black and white portrayals are
cool enough that it could have easily served as a sort of Gothic/retro style
for some kind of collector’s edition of the Player’s Handbook. And I will say, that if they were to do some
kind of “Ravenloft Player’s Handbook” with this style of art thru out, and
adding a half dozen new options for players (maybe just a beefed up version of the
Innistrad options they put on the internet), I could imagine the thing selling
a lot better than the decks.
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| Seriously now, the art looks moody and great. Check out each. |
In regard to the church
denominations, the Order of Oracles was inspired by the Oracle of Delphi, the
most famous organized practitioners of divination in Western history, and there
were many other oracles both in Greek myth and in the real Greece, to say
nothing of all the shamans and oracles that exist in nearly all cultures.
The other, Church of the Highest
Arcane is a sort of parody of any religion that keeps secret knowledge for the
highest of their members. In general I
am not a believer in any supernatural power, but I find those groups which
deliberately keep information hidden from worshipers to be particularly
insulting. If you think your mythology is too
silly or strange for a layman to just not “get it” you may have to rethink
whether you believe in it at all.
The idea of utopian cults forming is
pretty easy to find in real life, but they are most often centered on doomsday,
this video by Jack Rackam explores one such group, and this video by Crash Course European History discusses
one such “utopia” founded on Calvinism.
I am sure that you reader can conjure in your memory any number of
groups and communities that have been created by an exceptionally literal or
particularly esoteric interpretation of religious text.
Charlatans really require no great
explanation. There are any number of
false prophets back thru history and in the modern world. Those who
perform a religion for profit to bilk the trusting of their money and futures. And those who turn such performances
into industries
unto themselves, when they are not scheming
people in other ways.
There is always a danger in pulling
inspiration too directly from real world sources, and I have talked about that
before in my creation of the “Wild
Elves” which I based on the Sioux Indians, and specifically looked at via
the lens of racial bias. However… there
really is no other way to make things.
We exist in the real world and our
personal perceptions of the world, what we learn, and how we learn it, limit
our ability to understand greater concepts.
The best we can do is take those elements we “know” and remix them into
something that feels familiar but is still original. Dungeons and Dragons, and genre fiction in
general allows us to explore concepts like this and I feel allows us to
understand something better via such distortions, by shuffling disparate
elements together we see their similarities and contrasts all the better.
Maybe, when I finally finish this
series of entries it will ultimately be seen as entertaining, and even
something a person might want to include in their own game. Regardless, I hope it was entertaining to read. Have fun.
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