A question about gods

[Naughtical]

So in the boxed set it says that elves had never encountered priestly magic before humans came to Cerilia. Yet dwarves, goblins, and orogs can all become clerics. So where did the gods of these native races come from? Were they also champions at Deismaar?

[teloft]

I have never thougth about that, reconstucting cerilia as it was before the colonial times. Was there no cleric with the other native races. It interests me.

[Thelandrin]

Moradin and Kartathok are Elder Gods (they predate Deismaar) and it's entirely possible that Elves never encountered Dwarven or Orog priests, as they live in totally separate areas. I would find it harder to explain the lack of Goblin priests though.

[Naughtical]

So then it must just have been a storyline oversight, and elves did meet priests prior to Deismaar?

On a related note: If you need to be blooded to gain RP, and realm spells cost RP, and no one was blooded prior to Deismaar, then how were realm spells cast prior to that?

[Sorontar]

The land had no blood attachment to the people so there were no realm spells. Such power was only in the hands of the gods.

The truth is that the non-human gods really are up to the DM as there is nothing very canon about them, except that the elves didn't have any. God/s of the dwarves, snolls, goblins etc are not mentioned, IIRC. Personally, I can't see why they can all worship the same gods, but have different personages of them.

Sorontar

[Naughtical]

I don't understand what you mean when you say they're not mentioned. They're listed in the boxed set rulebook. They've got only slightly less of a blurb than the human gods do.

[AndrewTall]

My take is that much of the stuff on sidhe is written from a human perspective and is at least in part human propaganda.

So the history says that it was priestly magic that led to human victories as most of the historians were priests (the literate class) and they wanted to exalt holiness - the historians either avoided mention of non-human priests/gods because to discuss them on par with human priests/gods was heresy, or to avoid politically unfortunate questions that might cast doubt on the official history.

[Sorontar]

I don't understand what you mean when you say they're not mentioned. They're listed in the boxed set rulebook. They've got only slightly less of a blurb than the human gods do.

It is one page (page 80) that doesn't define the full range of non-human gods. It just says look at other D&D books. There is no indication of how those gods fit into Cerilia and AD&D with its specialised clerics. All we can say is that you cannot be blooded by these gods as they weren't involved in the battle of Deismaar.

There are various "demi-gods" that are mentioned in various publications, like the Stone God and the Forgotten God. These may be True Awnsheghlien that have god-like powers, but again, there is little said on how that works. So I feel that it is up to the DM to decide how best to have a priest of Moradin etc in a party or for an NPC. One option is to make Moradin actually an aspect of Sera or Erik, in a similar way to having more than one faith for each God, each with their own angle on worship and behaviour.

Sorontar

[AndrewTall]

The Forgotten God is from Dragon Magazine, the Stone God is my creation :)

I always thought that the non-humans (sidhe aside) could have been explored in more depth, saying that though, you can never fit everything in to a publication so something else would have had to come out :(

I like to change the Karamhul to a more mystical bent, and have them more into ancestor worship - building off the concept in PS Baruk-Azhik to have them commonly ascend into spiritual form when they die so that their faith is less a religion and more a philosophy and the link between mortal and immortal karamhul.

[Arnkel]

Sorry if this is seen as thread necro, but I think I can actually answer this one.

Dwarves: According to the BR Boxed set, dwarves are very private about their religion(there may even be dwarven gods other than moradin according to it). If the elves didn't think to ask about Dwarven spirituality, then the dwarves probably never let on.

Orogs: These always struck me as a race that has spent the majority of its history underground, or in areas where the elves generally wouldn't be very concerned with it.

Gnolls & Minotaurs: Created by Azrai, so likely a non-issue as they would have followed the human tribes from Aduria.

Goblins: This one is the hardest to come up with an easy answer to, but I think it has to do with Goblin culture. We know that their race is prone to "borrowing" technologies and ideas from others, so it's entirely possible that, for them, Kartathok didn't actually exist until humanity's arrival in Cerilia. When the humans showed the goblins their divine might, the goblins just made up their own god and brought it into existence with their new found zeal and belief. As we have no proof that Kartathok even existed prior to Deismaar(Spiderfell seems awfully atheist to me), it's also possible that he is a new god too and the human gods just didn't realize it.

[gloriousbattle]

So then it must just have been a storyline oversight, and elves did meet priests prior to Deismaar?

On a related note: If you need to be blooded to gain RP, and realm spells cost RP, and no one was blooded prior to Deismaar, then how were realm spells cast prior to that?

I think the simple answer is that they weren't, and rulers were also not "invested in the land" as they were after Deismaar. This probably means that they ruled less effectively, and, when the more effective method of being bound to the land became possible, unblooded rulers were gradually forced out of power.

As a side issue, note that it is perfectly possible to use the Birthright campaign rules in a historical seting, with very few modifications. You remove the rules for anything overtly magical (realm spells, sources, ley lines, etc.) but you really don't need to remove the bloodline and investment rules.

Instead, bloodline and investment just become a measure of your legitimacy, by whatever the local customs of the time would condier legitimate rulership. Thus, investment for a medieval French or English king would simply involve a (non-magical) ceremony conducted by a bishop. Bloodline would be a measure of his legitimacy: a great bloodline might indicate that he is the firstborn heir of the present king, a major bloodline would mean that he was not the crown prince, but a younger sibling, a minor bloodline would be the king's cousin or uncle, a tainted bloodin would be a bastard of any of the above. Bloodline strength would not provide any magical powers, but would convert into a reaction rll modifier for any major political situations, such as determining whether the counts, dukes and earls would support the ruler or the pretender in a civil war. Appropriate marriages and victory in battle might increase bloodline strength, foolish actions and bad luck (famine, plague, indiscretions coming to light, negative propaganda campaigns, etc.) might lessen it.

My aside to the side, this is an excellent thread. Clever thought.

[arpig2]

Avery simple way to do it is to simply redefine the non-human priests as a much less powerful variety of priest. This sort of idea is as old as D&D, as orcs, goblins etc. always had much weaker Shamen and Witch-Doctors rather than actual clerics.

So it isn't that they hadn't encountered divine magic - they just never encountered the sort of divine magic that the humans used. It is this full blown access that is referred to as "Priestly" magic, as the much less potent magic of the non-human clerical type was "Shamanistic" magic.

After the arrival of the humans, in time the non-human races figured out how to interact with their deities using the more powerful rituals that the humans used, and the old Shamanistic rituals were dropped and over the centuries have been long forgotten



Or have they.......? ;)

[Fizz]

If Moradin and Kartathok had been at Deismaar, then they did not sacrifice themselves as the other gods did, because if they had there would be bloodlines of those derivations. More likely they simply were not present. But this could be tweaked according to your own campaign.

The elves and dwarves historically never had a problem with each other- the dwarves stuck to the mountains the elves to the forest. So they never had conflict and thus the elves probably never encountered priestly magic.

As for goblin-kind, i'm guessing the power of Kartathok's priests / shamans never matched the power of the human priests. So while the elves may have encountered it, it wasn't with nearly the same intensity that the humans brought.

-Fizz

[Fizz]

Of course not having these specifics is sometimes a good thing- you could build a whole campaign around such questions. :)

-Fizz