I am trying to come up with a Diety Hierarchy for my Albion campaign, the humans I have always been a bit generic about (the Maker or Creator) with the exception of a couple of heretic cults devoted to Death and Destruction.
As Albion is going to be involved with elven, dwarven, and possibly orchish beliefs I was wondrring if burning wheel has any preconceptions or baseline that I should be aware of before I go off and head down another rabbit hole.
There’s nothing about Elves or Dwarves, but you probably need to address their lack of Faith. Check all the Servant of the Dark lifepaths and traits for an idea of the kind of awful things that Orcs worship.
I was thinking that as elves are refered to as first born while dwarves are shaped from earth and stone that there might have been something in those descriptions.
The lack of any faith type lifepaths for dwarves and their honor based society makes ancestral worship a possibility for them, while elves have always been considered the firstborn race to walk the world and have an outlook that is based on their own immortality.
I will definitely have a closer look at the orcs as well as othrr creatures like trolls and such (everyone has their own outlook, even if it’s a nonexistent belief).
The main point of all of this is the culture clash when the human empires take their squabbles to a land that doesn’t share their views nor wish to be converted.
So far the imperial representitives to Albion have been of the give and take and lets all get along variety (when you’re out numbered 100 to 1 it just makes sense to not ruffel any feathers).
After nearly 200 years of occupation in Albion that’s about to change. A new governor brings with him an army, and the promise to bring these heathens into the empire either as citizens or prisoners it makes him no difference. He has the backing of the imperial temple and their templars (military order called pillars of the temple).
It should be fun!
The Magic Burner has a few pages on religion. Mostly some guidelines about different types of gods, divine spheres and power ranks, some rules on divine wrath and curses – might be worth checking out, if you have access to a copy (and haven’t already done so).
Dwarven Greed, Elven Grief, and Elven Spell Songs would probably be big clues to this. Maybe humans are weird in that they have to consciously ask for miracles. Were they sundered from their deity?
I can’t believe I forgot to check my Magic Burner on this!
(Bad Larkin!, No Pudding!)
Sure enough, there it is.
Thanks for the reminders, I’m sure this will help.
Stormsweeper mentioned something once in the dwarf with elven lifepaths thread about how the world was created through song and that elven songs were based upon some of what they remembered from creation. I need to find a copy of the books he mentioned. (Early Tolkien I think).
Silmarillion is the book with the Tolkien creation myth…
Just finished reading about the creation of middle earth in the Silmarillion (great read, btw) and it helps a lot. I’m not sure how much of it I’ll keep for Albion at this time mind you, but I am also leaning towards letting the players figure it out through game play and just adapt what they “know” from wises and such (imperial temple has never considered mythical creation in their doctrines so the hierarchy is scrambling to provide answers least they lose power and influence over the devout.
(Blaming everything on wizards and witchcraft seems to be their first instinct)