AuldDragon's AD&D Blog

The Norse Pantheon is one of the more detailed for which we have information, although like the Finnish pantheon a lot of what we know about it comes from a single person’s editorialized writing on the matter. Closely connected to the fairly well-documented Norse mythos, however, is the continental Germanic and Anglo-Saxon mythoi. Neither are well documented, and the one attempt to bring the Anglo-Saxon pantheon (in Dragon #263) created much of it from whole cloth. Of course, that’s pretty necessary with such sparse information.

There are many other characters in the various Norse sagas who could potentially be deities, and many of them are giants. Many of them, like the wives of the male deities, should be near-divine immortal beings; others such as Skadi and Aegir are full deities but whether they should be included in the giantish pantheon or not is something I will need to consider. Treating them in much the way Nathair Sciathach is handled may be best. In addition, for the purposes of the D&D multiverse, a tie-in to the Greek Gigantomachy might also be worthwhile. In addition, the Vanir is very lightly detailed in Norse mythology; some scholars hold it as a merging of pantheons from different groups, but considering the lack of comparative battle in what we know of Anglo-Saxon and Continental Germanic mythology while also having clear analogs of some of the Vanir deities, that seems unlikely. However, there’s enough of them to sketch out an ephemeral pantheon, while also describing the rest as highly reclusive and mysterious.

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One of the most interesting mythologies to me is that of the peoples of Mesopotamia, chief among them being the peoples of Sumer and Akkad. The Sumerians pioneered writing, and as such their language persisted as a liturgical tongue throughout the region as their religion persisted in the descendants of the region, Assyria and Babylon. One of the strange things in the early D&D material is the splitting of the Sumerian and Babylonian mythoi, which are not truly separate faiths, just temporally separated versions of the same religion. Of course, like all religions that span centuries or millennia, significant divergences occur at various points, especially as cities with their own take on the faith rose and fell; this is the reason the Babylonian and Assyrian versions of the Enuma Elish creation myth place their primary gods Marduk and Assur in the leading roles respectively. As with the Egyptian pantheon, describing different ways of setting up the pantheon would be integral to properly describing the pantheon.

I have a large number of sources for this mythos, but I have misplaced some of them right now, so this list is based on some of my old notes. There are literally thousands of known deities, many of which have little solid information, or are local versions of other gods, or deified concepts of minor locations or things. I’ll just be listing major ones here. There are other culturally related or influenced mythologies that I will mention in a later post, that may be most appropriately integrated into this mythos.

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Another of the mythoi in AD&D that I don’t know that much about and would need to learn a lot more about before trying to write up is the Japanese mythos. What little I do know has mostly been picked up through the lens of anime and games and, again, I would need some solid sources to work on this pantheon.

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Indian mythos is another of the pantheons that I do not know enough about to tackle, especially considering Hinduism is a very large modern faith. I would want to emphasize the more ancient aspects that may not hold in the faith today, to better separate it from any sort of apparent value judgements on the modern faith.

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One of the largest pantheons with detailed information and mythology about the members is the Greek pantheon, but not all of the minor personified concepts would truly be gods in AD&D; some of the minor ones would just be near-powers and not have cults of their own, but I would need to do some research to determine who should have a cult in the game and who wouldn’t. In addition, Roman mythology imported a wide variety of Greek myth and concepts into their own (mostly unrelated at the beginning) religion; some of the deities with significant differences (like Mars) deserve their own entries while others would just be aliases. In addition, the Etruscans had a great deal of Hellenization as well, and they might be worth being included too. Further, the Titans would warrant their own pantheon of sorts, and many would function as the enemies of the Olympians. While in reality, most Titans likely never had cults or received actual worship, they could and should in the D&D game. In addition, the Greek Mystery Cults were a major element of their religion in the late pre-Christian eras, and I would need to try and capture that as well.

One significant thing missing from the AD&D material on the Olympians is the Gigantomachy, the war against the gigantes/giants. This should be an ancient, pre-historic thing and I should have integrated it into the Giant Pantheon writeups (I plan to rectify this), and none of the named members should be gods (at least one source indicates all but one of the Giants were slain), and the elven war against the giants should be connected to this too. I would have most of the Greek-facing part of the war focused against offspring of Annam and Gaia, as well as near-divine offspring of Grolantor and Karontor.

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Another pantheon I don’t know much about is the Finnish pantheon; most of what I know outside of Legends & Lore and On Hallowed Ground comes from the MST3K episode “The Day the Earth Froze.” And you can bet I would add in references to that episode in any writeups I do…

Most of what is known about these deities comes from the Kalevala, which was compiled from a variety of folk tales and then edited into a narrative; like much of the mythology of the Irish, Welsh, and Norse (through Snorri Sturluson) it is often unclear what’s actually originally myth and what is a creation of the compiler. Luckily for D&D purposes that doesn’t matter too much. Until I can get a copy of the Kalevala, I’m not too likely to work on this pantheon.

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The Egyptian pantheon is high on my list of potential pantheons to work on; I’ve always been fascinated by them, and visiting Egypt not too long ago (geologically speaking, at least) really crystalized how wondrous it is from my point of view. It presents some interesting challenges, too, since Egypt’s long history means there have been many different interpretations of the gods and even sub-pantheons throughout the years, and figuring out how to incorporate that I hope will lead to some interesting gameplay options.

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Another mythos that I don’t know well enough to put high on my list of pantheons to work on is the Chinese pantheon of the Celestial Bureaucracy. I would want to try and incorporate the faith of Kara-Tur if possible, and the Path and the Way that originated there and is used in Spelljammer. I have also heard that some of these deities may have been invented/misunderstood, like Apshai and Druaga, but I don’t know which.

As with some others, I would need to get good sources before I worked on it.

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Like the Native American mythos, this mythos merges Aztec and other Central American cultural mythologies into one in a way that should probably be separated; the 2nd Edition Legends & Lore book did just that, but I do not know enough about the various mythoi in question so I’m not as likely to pursue this set of deities as I am for some others. I would want to get some solid sources before I tackle these, so I’m interested if anyone has any recommendations. I will say one thing I do like about these deities is saying their names, though!

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Of the real-world mythoi that are in the D&D game, Celtic is one of the ones I’m more likely to work on. How to handle it is an open question, because the D&D game primarily merges a variety of Celtic cultural mythoi into one; considering how much of what we know comes from euhemerized tales of the gods and simple interpretatio romana inscriptions. There are a small set of Irish figures that we can reliably see as pre-Christian deities, and the same can be said of the Welsh tales. Contitnental Celtic mythology is mostly known from inscriptions and artwork. So what would be the best way to approach these different groups? Merge them as one, and use the continental names to expand it into a large pantheon, or split them into smaller ones? I’m not sure what’s the best approach. I have two good sources for Celtic mythology: The Lore of Ireland: An Encyclopedia of Myth, Legend and Romance by Daithi O hOgain and Dictionary of Celtic Religion and Culture by Bernhard Maier. I would like to get a good analysis of Welsh folklore, though.

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