Specialty Priests for Non-Human Gods, Part I

Recently I’ve thinking about expanding the priesthoods listed in Monster Mythology with full listings in the style of Faiths & Avatars. However, quite a few do not list statistics for priests at all, or only list Shamans. Personally, I think it makes sense to create priesthoods for them, but I want to discuss it and see what everyone else thinks.

For example, almost no sylvan gods have priesthoods besides Skerrit. Some faerie creatures can become specialty priests of some of the Elven gods in Demihuman Deities, so I don’t see why they should be barred from becoming priests of their own gods. In particular, the Queen of Air and Darkness has the potential to generate some great priest-villains, since she’s one of the few prototypical elven/faerie deities who is evil (discounting Drow gods).

In a similar vein, the gods who only have shamans seems somewhat arbitrary in some respects. For example, Gorellik does not have specialty priests, and yet Yeenoghu does. That means Gnolls are clearly capable of being organized enough to have a priesthood, so why would Gorellik not have specialty priests?

Part of the impetus for this project is because I find specialty priests really fascinating. In addition, in the Forgotten Realms for example, Specialty Priests are an important part of the clergies of the human and demihuman gods’ power base. Seems reasonable the non-human gods would want to encourage specialty priests amongst their own people.

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