Gods be good

Unlike other settings, my cosmology does not segregate gods by alignment. Gods are, by definition, good, not deaf to humanity's suffering, or play some key role in maintaining reality. They are the protectors and allies of the cosmic balances.

I will not be portraying gods as named entities. The generic pantheon is thus presented as:

• God of Roads 
• Goddess of Bounty 
• The Lord of the Hunt 
• God of Commerce 
• Goddess of Fortune 
• God of Artifice 
• Goddess of Storms 
• God of Strength 
• The Sun God 
• Old Man Winter 
• Goddess of the Wilds 
• God of Decay 
• God of Carnage 
• The River God 
• Goddess of Magic 
• God of Glee 
• Goddess of Vice 
• The Wyrmlord 
• The Dark Scale

Unlike the odd mix of polytheism and monotheism that characterizes typical fantasy settings, my Gods operate like the Loa of Voodoo or the patron saints of Catholicism. That is, people give praise to all of the gods, particularly those who oversee a matter of pressing importance. A farmer prays to the goddess of bounty when he needs a harvest, and to the god of roads to make sure he gets to market to sell it.

While humans and demikind worship them as a single pantheon, in planar politics the gods are divided into the beast lords, elemental lords and empyreal lords. The elemental lords are concerned with the natural forces that underpin reality, the beast lords are concerned with the beasts and forests, and the empyreal lords are concerned with civilization and the afterlife.

There are a number of minor deities, which are detailed in books like Petty Gods and Unknown Gods. While we're on the subject, reading Primal Order might be fun.

These powers collectively form the lords of cosmos. Their enemies are the lords of chaos, who are worshiped largely by savage humanoids (often ironically) because they destroy civilizations rather than build them. There are other powers, the lords of discord and lords of order, but they are rarely worshiped due to their inimical nature.

While some of the gods sound terrible or fearsome, they embody both good and bad qualities. Without bad things in life, there would be no way to define the good things in life. The lords of chaos are the nominal bad guys because they take it to the opposite extreme and want to despoil and destroy everything.

(I am critical of the idea of evil religions or evil races and struggle to include them coherently, since they never existed in reality save in blood libel. I need to include guilt-free targets for adventurers to massacre by the truckload but find the very concept unrealistic. What to do, what to do...)

15 COPYRIGHT NOTICE
A Generic Human Pantheon Copyright 2006, Dark Loch Creative Enterprises and Necromancer Games; Author Nathan Douglas Paul.