Welcome to our Worldbuilding Wednesday! On Wednesdays, we will discuss the creative process behind different facets of the Twinverse, from as lofty a concept as the entire cosmology, to specific characters and their role in the setting. Worldbuilding Wednesday is meant as a behind-the-scenes column to give insight into how the setting itself changes and evolves, beyond just the events of the books.
A critical step in creating a new world, especially in fantasy, involves the creation of the world's deities. There are many factors that go into deciding when and how to do this. For instance, while in some worlds, the gods are the creators of everything (and therefore should be defined as early as possible, since their natures and personalities will color the way the world looks like and works), in other worlds the gods are caretakers, or ascended mortals, or impersonal forces. The more the gods are involved in the creation, history and maintenance of the world, the sooner they should be defined. And this does not just refer to the deities themselves, but also to their cults, especially if they tend to be political in nature.
Most fantasy worlds tend to have a single pantheon of deities (although not all deities may be described at the beginning, and a pantheon without a specific, stated number of deities can always be retconned into including new deities later). Some worlds may have only one deity, others may subscribe to a dualistic system (see Wheel of Time with the Creator/Dark One cosmology). Not all gods might be worshipped, or even known by mortals. This is especially true if some gods were killed or imprisoned long ago, and their memory faded from history (or was made to fade).
Personally, I have always felt that a single pantheon of deities with a few names each was reductive in its approach, and furthermore limited creative potential. There could be an infinite number of deities in a fantasy world, and most of them could be fictional, or impostors, or impersonal forces, or powerful creatures from other Planes of existence. Mortals in a fantasy world may be quick to see "signs" in otherwise natural phenomena, and make up a "god" to explain them away. Other deities may be masks which real deities have worn to interact with a specific culture, or particular aspects of existing deities (e.g. a "god of destruction" could be simply the worship of the destructive aspect of a god of fire, ignoring the god's creative or cleansing aspect). Some "deities" may be mortals who use magical powers to impress primitive populations. Some may be fairies, or fairy-like creatures (if you have them in your world). And of course, some may be real gods (although it is by no means mandatory).
If you have real gods in your pantheon, the next step is define the scope of their power. Few if any fantasy deities are omniscient or omnipotent. Some may be physically incarnate, others may not; some may be vulnerable to mortals under certain circumstances, others may not be. Gods may simply be erstwhile mortals who no longer age and have great power; or they could be entirely incomprehensible to the mortal mind.
If they aren't omnipotent, they should be associated with portfolios - e.g. a god of fire, a god of war, etc.; this would also make it easier to embed them in stories and better give you a sense of how their cult would work. Concepts don't need to be elemental - you could have a pantheon that rules over emotions and feelings, rather than elements of the universe. You could have a philosophical pantheon that rules on abstract concepts (the "god of revelation", the "god of supremacy", etc.). All these pantheons may coexist, or may ignore each other. But they are good springboards for story ideas - crises of faith, religious wars, artifacts of the faith, and so on.
There are more questions to be asked when creating a pantheon. Can mortals ascend to the ranks of the gods? If so, how can they do that, and have any mortals ever successfully ascended in the past? Where are they now? Similarly, can gods be demoted into mortality, and/or can they be killed? How?
Was this pantheon the creator of the world, or did they come about later? Did they come from another realm? Did they ascend from mortality? Did they coalesce out of the faith of mortals? Are they the offspring of the primordial pantheon?
There are too many questions to list all of them here, but the general gist is the same. You must define what the very concept of a deity means, in your world. Furthermore, the pantheon informs the culture(s) that descend from it; therefore, if you already have a general idea for the culture the pantheon is associated to, find ways to weave the culture's foundations into the gods of the pantheon. For example, a culture that worships death may have multiple gods of death and the afterlife, or may see the god of death being the ruler of the deities.
As an example, take the Kerrethain pantheon of Mathklyr. I already knew the Kerrethain would not be the creators of the world, and in fact many of them would be masks worn by real universal deities. The others would be a mixture of invented deities, erstwhile pretenders whose ruse has outlived them, impersonal forces, creatures from other realms posing as gods, and a handful of earthbound deities. But I didn't just want a group of deities. I wanted a complex pantheon that could reflect, to some degree, the extreme age of Mathklyr. So I decided that over the millennia, each god was splintered in the worship of different aspects. Each aspect is a deity in itself, but also a part of the whole (the Mathklyrians claim it is meaningless to wonder whether an aspect has a personality that is independent of the whole god or not). Aspects incarnate specific parts of a deity's portfolio: for instance, Oinrin has different aspects for the afterlife; death; sovereignty; and fate.
This was a good start, but I needed more complexity. I wanted the pantheon to be bewildering to strangers not of the culture (and represent that confusion to readers or players, too). So I created composite gods as well - deities born of the mingling of two other gods (or, to make things more complicated, aspects of two gods). Such composite gods are considered at once children of their "parents" and distinct individuals; as well as mingled "emanations" of the two gods coming together in an alliance. Again, Mathklyrians claim the difference is meaningless.
I also had to evaluate what would be important concepts for Mathklyr. Clearly death is part of their everyday life, and so Oinrin would have to be the chief deity (which also fit well with her, since she is likely a mask of the Lady of Souls). But I also needed deities associated with war (a god of war, a god of valor, a god of honor, and so on), because Mathklyr is a warlike Empire. I needed very masculine and very feminine deities (to underscore the difference between the way the sexes are represented in Mathklyrian culture). I wanted the gods to feel old-fashioned, reflecting the age of the belief system. And I wanted them to be represented in Mathklyrian mysticism (such as the wording of the Crowning of the Emperor).
The entire endeavour took a long time to be completed, but I am now quite happy with the complex Kerrethain pantheon. Nonetheless, there is still room for improvement - but as the pantheon is open-ended, and it hasn't been exhaustively described, there's always room for additions, even if it's just regional deities.
You may decide that, for your own world, a single pantheon is enough. If so, I highly recommend imagining different "masks" worn by the pantheon in different cultures, or deciding that some cultures only worship/know a subset of the pantheon members (e.g. a warlike culture has no knowledge of the god of peace). This adds some cultural variation, which gives the world more verisimilitude. But if you can and your world concept supports it, create multiple pantheons, even if some are composed of nonexisting deities. Religious conflict is a powerful motivator for characters in a story or in a game, and some concepts may be too unique to fit a single pantheon (and remember, you could still have a single pantheon, and a number of lesser, regional cults that are unaffiliated with it).
Creating a pantheon is a lot of work, but if it is well done, it informs the cultural development of the region where it is worshipped, and provides idea seeds for further work. Try to attach a story hook to each deity, and you will have plenty of material to develop as the pantheon takes shape.
Thank you for joining us, and see you next Wednesday for another Worldbuilding post!
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