Aetrimonde

Continuing on from the overview of Aetrimonde’s many approaches to faith and religion, today I’m going to focus on the Pantheon, those gods that are responsible for the powers of Divine classes.

Also, if you haven’t already, go vote in the poll that will determine the faith and ancestry of the sample Inquisitor I’m working up!

The Major Gods

The CRB covers the fourteen major gods and their creeds, and encourages GMs and players to make up their own minor gods if they so desire (although they won’t have the benefit of the creed-specific feats in the CRB…).

Deity	Creed
Deum Harmonious	Revere nature. Preserve life. Prevent destructive change.
Deum Knowing	Understand the world. Spread knowledge. Act on evidence.
Deum Making	Build usefully. Create beautifully. Hone your craft.
Deum Militant	Fight for glory. Fight to survive. Fight to win.
Deum Mocking	Act in the moment. Speak truth to power. Count on nothing.
Deum Radiant	Spread hope. Uncover truth. Act righteously.
Deum Reveling	Spread joy. Build community. Comfort the desperate.
Deum Ruling	Guard civilization. Bring justice. Act lawfully.
Deum Terminal	Accept endings. Embrace change. Break what can be broken.
Deum Valiant	Protect the innocent. Act honorably. Fear nothing.
Deum Veiled	Gather knowledge. Guard your secrets. Act subtly.
Deum Untamed	Stand firm. Act freely. Defy limits.
The Bright Lady	Nurture children. Heal the sick.
The Dark Maid	Honor the dead. Ease their passing.

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The Pantheonic Canon

The Pantheonic faith’s loose approach to doctrine and canon means that even Orthodox sects have their own distinct myths, practices, and beliefs. All of them, however, agree on several core points of doctrine, the most important of which are:

The names of the gods hold power

Pantheonic sects agree that the gods should not be named, and refer to them only by titles and poetic epithets. Sects have a variety of approaches to this: some believe that the gods’ names simply cannot be known to mortals, and that giving them a name of mortal invention is disrespectful. Others believe that speaking or writing a god’s name weakens them in some way, or that the gods for their own ineffable reasons dislike hearing their names in the mouths of mortals, and are likely to curse them with ill fortune. Regardless of the reasons, the gods of the Pantheon are identified by titles reflecting their divine portfolio, which generally begin with the honorific “Deum:” Deum Valiant is the god of courage, while Deum Terminal is the god of endings, for example.

The gods help those who help themselves

Aside from the divine powers channeled by anointed priests, there is little hard evidence of divine intervention in Aetrimonde. According to the Pantheonic faiths, this is because the gods are distant and subtle. They seldom send direct divine intervention, but they empower mortals who they trust to act on their behalf, and engage with the world in other, subtler ways. 

The true afterlife lies on the far side of the Underworld

The extraplanar realm of the Underworld indisputably exists—mortals even visit on a regular basis—but it’s not a pleasant place to spend eternity. Upon transmigrating to the Underworld, mortal souls are inexorably drawn to the River of Souls—not actually a water feature, but an immense procession of souls which can be mistaken for a river at a distance. The procession moves slowly, but inexorably, into the deepest reaches of the Underworld, and although mortal explorers have attempted to find the end of the River, none have ever returned from it. According to the Pantheonic faiths, this is merely an antechamber to the true afterlife: a soul’s time in the River of Souls serves to purify it and allow it to lose its earthly attachments, at which point it reaches the end of the River and enters into its chosen god’s true afterlife.

Hell exists, but is hard to get into

Hell, or the Abyss, or the Pit, is a prominent part of most Pantheonic sects’ teachings. It is home to demons who oppose the angelic hosts serving the Pantheon; it is also popularly believed that those demons were once angels, and were condemned to the Abyss as punishment for some transgression against their patron god. Demons covet the souls of mortals, for unspecified reasons: possibly because those souls are a source of power, or to satisfy their sadistic impulses, or maybe just because it offends the gods. A demon can only obtain a mortal soul if the mortal signs it away intentionally and willingly—demons cannot trick a mortal’s soul away from them, or take it by force, and even the most foul and wicked mortals will not end up in Hell unless they have signed away their souls.

The mortal soul is sacred

The soul cannot be destroyed—this is not just a belief of the Pantheonic religions, but has been confirmed by various researchers. (This line of research is a decidedly unsanctioned one, but some of the researchers’ experimental notes survived to be studied after their authors met their just ends.) However, souls can be tormented and warped, even used as a source of power—and the Pantheon abhors this. No matter how badly a soul is damaged, it will eventually recover in the River of Souls, but the process of recovery delays a soul’s entry into the true afterlife. For a soul to be signed away to a demon is even worse, for it is rarer than rare for a soul to escape Hell and pass even into the Underworld. Pantheonic sects hold any tampering with the mortal soul to be an abominable act, punishable by excommunication.

Aetrimondean Atheism

It’s difficult for atheism to persist in the face of actual, commonplace divine magic as practiced by anointed priests. Aetrimondean atheism therefore does not deny the existence of the Pantheonic gods–just that they have some special divine nature. There are a few seeming inconsistencies in how the Pantheon’s gods work that allows staunch atheists to argue that the gods are nothing special:

The Pantheon are poor judges of character

Becoming an anointed priest requires believing in and living an appropriate creed–but particularly deluded mortals can convince themselves that seemingly any action, including some that plainly run contrary to the creed, are in fact consistent with it. That the gods empower mortals who then act against their purposes suggests that they lack the omniscience attributed to the Pantheon.

Angels themselves seemingly don’t consider the Pantheon gods

Granted, angels don’t talk much about anything: they are purpose-driven, and single-mindedly focus on whatever purpose they were created for. But, on those rare occasions when angels have deigned to speak with mortals, they have had nothing to say on questions of doctrine or theology. It can be difficult to read angelic faces and body language, but many observers have described angels as seeming “baffled” or “uncomprehending” when asked even simple theological questions.

Aetrimonde has plenty of powerful beings who aren’t called gods

There are some people who revere dragons, elementals, demons, powerful spirits, or their own ancestors. Some of those entities can even grant powers, much like the gods empower their followers, and some of them don’t even demand worship. The gods empowering a cleric aren’t any different from a faerie empowering one of their servants—so why treat the gods differently?

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I wrote the lore surrounding Aetrimonde’s Pantheon to be ambiguous: the true nature of the gods, or even if they actually exist, is a mystery, and one that GMs and players can interpret as they like for their games–or, a GM can decide on some answers and let the players discover them as part of a campaign. (Author’s Note: I absolutely have my own answer to what the gods are actually like. But I’m not going to spoil the fun for everyone else by making it a canonical answer to this question.) As with much of Aetrimonde’s deep lore, I prefer my writing to raise interesting questions for players to explore.

Up Next

I’ll be picking back up with the creation of a sample Inquisitor soon. And seriously: go vote in the poll that will determine this character’s faith and ancestry!