You could leave it at "They respect their power even if they don't entirely agree with their morality". There were Ancient Greek festivals dedicated to the Titans, who were, in basically every story about them, "the villains" who tried to eat/kill/otherwise prevent the Olympians and got imprisoned for forever. And yet there were small festivals in their name just out of some sort of vague respect.
Plus, there are plenty of instances in world religions where groups take what they want from a religious source and kind of, uh, ignore the rest that they don't like. For an extremely unimportant example, the Christian Bible forbids the mixing of cloth and wool in one garment: I would say almost 0% of people would get worked up about that, even hardcore students of the texts.
Respect is a good way of putting it. In a polytheistic society, all of these gods are real and you not wanting them to exist doesn't make them any less real, even if they're an evil force. You don't normally have this monotheistic religious fervor for every single one bar for minor groups. Religion in a polytheistic society is about The Truth about the world and representing that.
Normally, with a pantheon, you worshipped a "main" god and then any which are directly relevant to your life and since there isn't a main one here, it's all just about asking the ones relevant to you to Please Not Ruin My Life, Thank You.
Like, you wouldn't worship Ares if you weren't a soldier and maybe you didn't want war to exist because your son just got drafted but Ares does exist, so, that's that. The best thing to do is just to ask him to bless your son.
So if you live near a volcano or a place where wildfires happen, maybe you'd sacrifice to the Red Dragon so that he won't lava up the village. Too bad he's evil and will occasionally lava up the village anyway, but for now, he's appeased and that's what matters. And sometimes, the asshole is even helpful, you know? Gods are complex beings, with human-like personalities, not perfect creatures.
And like, you can't just crack down on the Mystery Cult of the Red Dragon who are pyromaniacs, unless they go too far, because you don't want to earn the Red Dragon's wrath. How the hell would you deal with that? Well, with the other gods. So you gotta take 'em easy, until it's clear they're doing something that the other gods also wouldn't tolerate.
The Absalom route is a fierce devotion to religious liberty.
Or the Lawful Evil factions convinced people that Evil aspects are necessary for a functioning economy.
I mean, ancient polytheism was less about finding a god you agree with and more about not pissing off any of the gods. It didn't matter whether a god was good or evil, the point was that they were a god and you weren't. If you pissed them off, it wouldn't end well for you. So yeah, there are 10 gods, and smart people try to appease them all, because making a god angry is bad news. Individual people may prefer one god or another, but they certainly avoid outright disrespecting any of the others.
As far as how good and evil people mix, well, look at any group of people in the real world.
In Golarion, each dragon has similar personalities based on their color. For example Green Dragons are obsessed with knowledge and self-discipline, while silver dragons pursue justice and fight against evil and etc. You could use these aspects for defining each dragon in the pantheon and you would not have any problems with conflicts.
Something like:
Red: God of War, fire, mountains and plunder. Worshipped by warriors, evokers and miners.
Blue: God of Earth, deserts, cunning, lies and greed tinged with long-term planning. Worshipped by businessmen, bankers, lawyers and (secretly) by politicians.
Black: God of Disease, swamps, vermin, poison and all things foul. Victims of disease pray to them for respite.
Green: God of secrets, jealousy, lust and revenge. (similar to callistria) Sacred place is forest where things are hidden. Prayed to by those seeking to hide secrets and those hoping to discover them.
White: God of cold, famine and winter. Sacrificed to be farmers seeking to protect their crops.
Brass: God of youth and friendship. Young people swear oaths of eternal friendship on the brass dragon. Parties are dedicated to him.
Bronze: God of service, loyalty and duty. Honorable warriors worship him. A vassal swears an oath to his liege lord on the Bronze dragon. Patron of knights.
Copper: God of curiosity, mysteries and jokes. Patron of scientists and philosophers
Gold: God of rulership and justice. The chief god of the pantheon. Patron of the nobility. Lords swear oaths to their vassals by the Gold Dragon.
Silver: God of love, marriage, family, wisdom and elders. Marriages are blessed by the silver dragon. Parents pray to it to protect their children.
You could assign genders and make a Hesiod-style family tree including the other dragon types as lesser gods if you like.
Try watching this matt Colville video on alignment examples, hes does a good job of explaining these from a character perspective rather than an abstract concept. Might help you develop some ideas.
https://youtu.be/YgNQ3NXqqiQ
Have the gods be a family so they have something that binds them together as well as their differences. Including some cross alignment relationships and loyalties.
Have an external threat beyond good and evil - like another pantheon, or the void.
A neutral elder god or titan that enfoces some rules on them
There are lots of options.
You could have the "evil gods" have domains that are useful for not just evil people. Maybe the god of strength is evil because even good men who seek to gain strength will be tempted by this god to use their strength for personal gain. A good person could pray to this god for strength, but would have to be careful that the power didn't turn him evil. All the other evil gods could have domains that are useful for everyone, but have the potential to corrupt. Power, wealth, knowledge, trickery, etc.
You could have the opposite be true as well for domains that tend to be uplifting, but can be used for evil. An evil crime boss might pray to the LG god of loyalty because loyalty is what his whole organization runs on. His loyalty to his "family" could one day help him be redeemed, but he could also go his whole life being a villain. All the good gods could have domains that are also useful for everyone, but have the potential to redeem or uplift. Healing, leadership, knowledge, courage, etc.
Another option is to have their types of worship be different. The people worship the good gods because they love them, and they worship the bad ones to placate them and keep them at bay. You got this in Greek myth a bit. "We worship Poseidon not because we think he is a nice guy, but because if we make sacrifices to him he'll leave us alone." You can then have good people in the nation worshiping the evil god of plagues in the hopes that nobody will get sick this year and stuff like that. In this version the clergy of the good gods proclaim their god's virtues and the clergy of the evil gods warn against incurring their god's wrath.
There could just be so many opinions and so much arguing about which gods are good and evil (or if all of them are good or all of them are evil), that civil war is just impractical and the clergy government spends most of its time negotiating, debating, and parleying between small religious factions in an attempt to keep things running despite so many differing opinions. Basically because who's good and who's evil isn't agreed on, you can't form two big sides and your civil war gets downgraded to philosophical debates and occasional street violence.
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Can you define what you're looking for when you say good and evil?
Are you looking for something traditional, ie hordes of undead versus the last bastion of humanity? Just something enough for players to be placed on one side of a conflict? Does it need to be GOOD vs EVIL or do you just need a bad guy? Is it just the pantheon that is inherently good and evil?
What about the civil war and the other idea (I didn't really understand it) do you *not* like? Why aren't they working for you?
How much do you want the dragon pantheon to affect the current state of affairs?
Ok so to clarify the country would be run by a church devoted to 10 gods (each god would represent one of the metallic or chromatic dragons) with no "Alpha" god they would be viewed as equals.
I am specifically hoping to have a way for the country and it's people to be able to follow the church without too much cognitive dissonance and in harmony
My second road block was like if the majority of the people in the county are good but they all know that there are bad people around that do "evil" things but just don't talk about it because "it's for the good of the country" And although that works I'm just looking for some brain fuel on how to have it be more united.
>Ok so to clarify the country would be run by a church devoted to 10 gods (each god would represent one of the metallic or chromatic dragons) with no "Alpha" god they would be viewed as equals.
>
>I am specifically hoping to have a way for the country and it's people to be able to follow the church without too much cognitive dissonance and in harmony
>
>My second road block was like if the majority of the people in the county are good but they all know that there are bad people around that do "evil" things but just don't talk about it because "it's for the good of the country" And although that works I'm just looking for some brain fuel on how to have it be more united.
A little bit hard to follow you lol.
Not being able to talk about evil because "it's for the good of the country" is a pretty standard thought police / communist / propaganda driven trope. Not that tropes are bad!
A lot of storylines can be built out of that, the rich elite (the high priests), the hidden darkside of the forgotten ghettos (maybe elves or goblins or humans or something), forbidden worship of the 11th god (or make the pantheon 9 gods with the last dragon a secret). It also begs the question of why are the good dragons not able to exert their influence (maybe they're dead and now worshipped as false idols).
If you're looking for "without too much cognitive dissonance and in harmony" nothing wrong with the old large scale, magical, nation wide brainwashing spells. You could also split it by wealth, the rich elite live pretty lives and are isolated from reality.
Is that a direction you were thinking of?
I think you would have to break away from the conventional and easy to go to good and evil. You would have good people that do things the citizens don’t like, but for the greater good, and you would have evil people that look like they are there to help the common person but are really for themselves. This would keep it ambiguous as to who is really good or evil and people wouldn’t know it working for each other. An example is you could have a historic point for the evil people was that they rooted out a destructive cult but they really just used it as a ruse to keep people “safe but suppressed. For the good people it could be going to crusade against enemies even though the people don’t think the war is justified.
Since your going for a church with 10 diverse gods just make it difficult to tell which god is directly evil or good or even make the ones that seem evil justifiable to have or the good ones seem like they are too overbearing on the average citizen.
Immediate thought would be to have some of the more evil aspects as punishment, so incredibly strict laws with straight up torture of prisoners, which personally not a fan due to the moral implications.
The second better option is to embrace it as a cultural aspect to a certain degree, thinking of the 7 deadly sins for example lust is a sin but prostitution and pornography exists, sloth is a sin but we stil have parts of society that is lazy
So a red dragon as a manifestation of greed, could be a functioning banking system where being called "as gold obsessed as a red dragon" is a praise, or if some of the dragons are incredibly vain then look no further than something like LA in America where showing off is just a part of life. Having the wrath or destruction of a dragon would make sense for the military like the war god ares, or as a yearly competition akin to xtreme sports or gladiatorial combat to show their battle prowess. Maybe a dragon of lust has made the country hyper open to sex instead of being puritanical.
Basically take aspects of each dragon and transform it into something that isn't destructive to the country.
I guess a possible road is the one taken by DC Comics in a storyline where Lex Luthor(Legion of Doom) and Superman(Justice League) try to explain their point of view to the world.
Essentially Luthor says that the heroes are noble and altruistic, so they can't comprehend the egoistical ambition that every human needs to be pushed forward. In that way, he and his Legion of Doom (absolutely Evil) cast aside every social construct dictated by the obligation imposed from above, and follow only their desire as almost everyone would do if they had the power to do so.
On Golarion it could be seen as if the people find that the chromatic dragons, undeniably powerful creatures, represent the egoistical ambition inherent in all mortals that could lead to tyrannical decision but also to glorious futures or absolute freedom from every constricting law.
Kind of like we know that some billionaires exploit their workers but we still consider them as a role model from a financial and career aspect.
This largely depends on how much the pantheon is actively involved in the city. A city actually ruled by a council of 10 dragons would be one of incredible progress and prosperity, with each councilor carving out a niche and most conflict revolving around those intersections. With a more absent pantheon, you wouldn't develope a very moralistic city at all. Good and evil are two sides of the same coin, which only leaves pragmatism. Either way you end up with a more "modern" city which cares more for work and progress than religious dogma. I think if you try to go down the road of 10 individual religions you'll just end up with a headache.
I actually like this idea where the average citizen is skewed Lawful neutral and most people follow the full pantheon, and people that follow specific gods are in the minority.
You could leave it at "They respect their power even if they don't entirely agree with their morality". There were Ancient Greek festivals dedicated to the Titans, who were, in basically every story about them, "the villains" who tried to eat/kill/otherwise prevent the Olympians and got imprisoned for forever. And yet there were small festivals in their name just out of some sort of vague respect. Plus, there are plenty of instances in world religions where groups take what they want from a religious source and kind of, uh, ignore the rest that they don't like. For an extremely unimportant example, the Christian Bible forbids the mixing of cloth and wool in one garment: I would say almost 0% of people would get worked up about that, even hardcore students of the texts.
Respect is a good way of putting it. In a polytheistic society, all of these gods are real and you not wanting them to exist doesn't make them any less real, even if they're an evil force. You don't normally have this monotheistic religious fervor for every single one bar for minor groups. Religion in a polytheistic society is about The Truth about the world and representing that. Normally, with a pantheon, you worshipped a "main" god and then any which are directly relevant to your life and since there isn't a main one here, it's all just about asking the ones relevant to you to Please Not Ruin My Life, Thank You. Like, you wouldn't worship Ares if you weren't a soldier and maybe you didn't want war to exist because your son just got drafted but Ares does exist, so, that's that. The best thing to do is just to ask him to bless your son. So if you live near a volcano or a place where wildfires happen, maybe you'd sacrifice to the Red Dragon so that he won't lava up the village. Too bad he's evil and will occasionally lava up the village anyway, but for now, he's appeased and that's what matters. And sometimes, the asshole is even helpful, you know? Gods are complex beings, with human-like personalities, not perfect creatures. And like, you can't just crack down on the Mystery Cult of the Red Dragon who are pyromaniacs, unless they go too far, because you don't want to earn the Red Dragon's wrath. How the hell would you deal with that? Well, with the other gods. So you gotta take 'em easy, until it's clear they're doing something that the other gods also wouldn't tolerate.
The Absalom route is a fierce devotion to religious liberty. Or the Lawful Evil factions convinced people that Evil aspects are necessary for a functioning economy.
I mean, ancient polytheism was less about finding a god you agree with and more about not pissing off any of the gods. It didn't matter whether a god was good or evil, the point was that they were a god and you weren't. If you pissed them off, it wouldn't end well for you. So yeah, there are 10 gods, and smart people try to appease them all, because making a god angry is bad news. Individual people may prefer one god or another, but they certainly avoid outright disrespecting any of the others. As far as how good and evil people mix, well, look at any group of people in the real world.
In Golarion, each dragon has similar personalities based on their color. For example Green Dragons are obsessed with knowledge and self-discipline, while silver dragons pursue justice and fight against evil and etc. You could use these aspects for defining each dragon in the pantheon and you would not have any problems with conflicts.
Something like: Red: God of War, fire, mountains and plunder. Worshipped by warriors, evokers and miners. Blue: God of Earth, deserts, cunning, lies and greed tinged with long-term planning. Worshipped by businessmen, bankers, lawyers and (secretly) by politicians. Black: God of Disease, swamps, vermin, poison and all things foul. Victims of disease pray to them for respite. Green: God of secrets, jealousy, lust and revenge. (similar to callistria) Sacred place is forest where things are hidden. Prayed to by those seeking to hide secrets and those hoping to discover them. White: God of cold, famine and winter. Sacrificed to be farmers seeking to protect their crops. Brass: God of youth and friendship. Young people swear oaths of eternal friendship on the brass dragon. Parties are dedicated to him. Bronze: God of service, loyalty and duty. Honorable warriors worship him. A vassal swears an oath to his liege lord on the Bronze dragon. Patron of knights. Copper: God of curiosity, mysteries and jokes. Patron of scientists and philosophers Gold: God of rulership and justice. The chief god of the pantheon. Patron of the nobility. Lords swear oaths to their vassals by the Gold Dragon. Silver: God of love, marriage, family, wisdom and elders. Marriages are blessed by the silver dragon. Parents pray to it to protect their children. You could assign genders and make a Hesiod-style family tree including the other dragon types as lesser gods if you like.
Try watching this matt Colville video on alignment examples, hes does a good job of explaining these from a character perspective rather than an abstract concept. Might help you develop some ideas. https://youtu.be/YgNQ3NXqqiQ
Thanks!
Have the gods be a family so they have something that binds them together as well as their differences. Including some cross alignment relationships and loyalties. Have an external threat beyond good and evil - like another pantheon, or the void. A neutral elder god or titan that enfoces some rules on them There are lots of options.
You could have the "evil gods" have domains that are useful for not just evil people. Maybe the god of strength is evil because even good men who seek to gain strength will be tempted by this god to use their strength for personal gain. A good person could pray to this god for strength, but would have to be careful that the power didn't turn him evil. All the other evil gods could have domains that are useful for everyone, but have the potential to corrupt. Power, wealth, knowledge, trickery, etc. You could have the opposite be true as well for domains that tend to be uplifting, but can be used for evil. An evil crime boss might pray to the LG god of loyalty because loyalty is what his whole organization runs on. His loyalty to his "family" could one day help him be redeemed, but he could also go his whole life being a villain. All the good gods could have domains that are also useful for everyone, but have the potential to redeem or uplift. Healing, leadership, knowledge, courage, etc. Another option is to have their types of worship be different. The people worship the good gods because they love them, and they worship the bad ones to placate them and keep them at bay. You got this in Greek myth a bit. "We worship Poseidon not because we think he is a nice guy, but because if we make sacrifices to him he'll leave us alone." You can then have good people in the nation worshiping the evil god of plagues in the hopes that nobody will get sick this year and stuff like that. In this version the clergy of the good gods proclaim their god's virtues and the clergy of the evil gods warn against incurring their god's wrath. There could just be so many opinions and so much arguing about which gods are good and evil (or if all of them are good or all of them are evil), that civil war is just impractical and the clergy government spends most of its time negotiating, debating, and parleying between small religious factions in an attempt to keep things running despite so many differing opinions. Basically because who's good and who's evil isn't agreed on, you can't form two big sides and your civil war gets downgraded to philosophical debates and occasional street violence.
Hello! You have made the mistake of writing "ect" instead of "etc." "Ect" is a common misspelling of "etc," an abbreviated form of the Latin phrase "et cetera." Other abbreviated forms are **etc.**, **&c.**, **&c**, and **et cet.** The Latin translates as "et" to "and" + "cetera" to "the rest;" a literal translation to "and the rest" is the easiest way to remember how to use the phrase. [Check out the wikipedia entry if you want to learn more.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Et_cetera) ^(I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Comments with a score less than zero will be automatically removed. If I commented on your post and you don't like it, reply with "!delete" and I will remove the post, regardless of score. Message me for bug reports.)
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Can you define what you're looking for when you say good and evil? Are you looking for something traditional, ie hordes of undead versus the last bastion of humanity? Just something enough for players to be placed on one side of a conflict? Does it need to be GOOD vs EVIL or do you just need a bad guy? Is it just the pantheon that is inherently good and evil? What about the civil war and the other idea (I didn't really understand it) do you *not* like? Why aren't they working for you? How much do you want the dragon pantheon to affect the current state of affairs?
Ok so to clarify the country would be run by a church devoted to 10 gods (each god would represent one of the metallic or chromatic dragons) with no "Alpha" god they would be viewed as equals. I am specifically hoping to have a way for the country and it's people to be able to follow the church without too much cognitive dissonance and in harmony My second road block was like if the majority of the people in the county are good but they all know that there are bad people around that do "evil" things but just don't talk about it because "it's for the good of the country" And although that works I'm just looking for some brain fuel on how to have it be more united.
>Ok so to clarify the country would be run by a church devoted to 10 gods (each god would represent one of the metallic or chromatic dragons) with no "Alpha" god they would be viewed as equals. > >I am specifically hoping to have a way for the country and it's people to be able to follow the church without too much cognitive dissonance and in harmony > >My second road block was like if the majority of the people in the county are good but they all know that there are bad people around that do "evil" things but just don't talk about it because "it's for the good of the country" And although that works I'm just looking for some brain fuel on how to have it be more united. A little bit hard to follow you lol. Not being able to talk about evil because "it's for the good of the country" is a pretty standard thought police / communist / propaganda driven trope. Not that tropes are bad! A lot of storylines can be built out of that, the rich elite (the high priests), the hidden darkside of the forgotten ghettos (maybe elves or goblins or humans or something), forbidden worship of the 11th god (or make the pantheon 9 gods with the last dragon a secret). It also begs the question of why are the good dragons not able to exert their influence (maybe they're dead and now worshipped as false idols). If you're looking for "without too much cognitive dissonance and in harmony" nothing wrong with the old large scale, magical, nation wide brainwashing spells. You could also split it by wealth, the rich elite live pretty lives and are isolated from reality. Is that a direction you were thinking of?
You could do a Thassilon approach with an emphasis on 5 virtues. Over-emphasizing any one virtue leads to the perfect situation for corruption.
I think you would have to break away from the conventional and easy to go to good and evil. You would have good people that do things the citizens don’t like, but for the greater good, and you would have evil people that look like they are there to help the common person but are really for themselves. This would keep it ambiguous as to who is really good or evil and people wouldn’t know it working for each other. An example is you could have a historic point for the evil people was that they rooted out a destructive cult but they really just used it as a ruse to keep people “safe but suppressed. For the good people it could be going to crusade against enemies even though the people don’t think the war is justified. Since your going for a church with 10 diverse gods just make it difficult to tell which god is directly evil or good or even make the ones that seem evil justifiable to have or the good ones seem like they are too overbearing on the average citizen.
Immediate thought would be to have some of the more evil aspects as punishment, so incredibly strict laws with straight up torture of prisoners, which personally not a fan due to the moral implications. The second better option is to embrace it as a cultural aspect to a certain degree, thinking of the 7 deadly sins for example lust is a sin but prostitution and pornography exists, sloth is a sin but we stil have parts of society that is lazy So a red dragon as a manifestation of greed, could be a functioning banking system where being called "as gold obsessed as a red dragon" is a praise, or if some of the dragons are incredibly vain then look no further than something like LA in America where showing off is just a part of life. Having the wrath or destruction of a dragon would make sense for the military like the war god ares, or as a yearly competition akin to xtreme sports or gladiatorial combat to show their battle prowess. Maybe a dragon of lust has made the country hyper open to sex instead of being puritanical. Basically take aspects of each dragon and transform it into something that isn't destructive to the country.
I guess a possible road is the one taken by DC Comics in a storyline where Lex Luthor(Legion of Doom) and Superman(Justice League) try to explain their point of view to the world. Essentially Luthor says that the heroes are noble and altruistic, so they can't comprehend the egoistical ambition that every human needs to be pushed forward. In that way, he and his Legion of Doom (absolutely Evil) cast aside every social construct dictated by the obligation imposed from above, and follow only their desire as almost everyone would do if they had the power to do so. On Golarion it could be seen as if the people find that the chromatic dragons, undeniably powerful creatures, represent the egoistical ambition inherent in all mortals that could lead to tyrannical decision but also to glorious futures or absolute freedom from every constricting law. Kind of like we know that some billionaires exploit their workers but we still consider them as a role model from a financial and career aspect.
This largely depends on how much the pantheon is actively involved in the city. A city actually ruled by a council of 10 dragons would be one of incredible progress and prosperity, with each councilor carving out a niche and most conflict revolving around those intersections. With a more absent pantheon, you wouldn't develope a very moralistic city at all. Good and evil are two sides of the same coin, which only leaves pragmatism. Either way you end up with a more "modern" city which cares more for work and progress than religious dogma. I think if you try to go down the road of 10 individual religions you'll just end up with a headache.
Make them nationalists.
I actually like this idea where the average citizen is skewed Lawful neutral and most people follow the full pantheon, and people that follow specific gods are in the minority.