Theology - How the AD&D gods and priest magic system has been adapted for the Eternal Campaign on the planet Lothar.
Gods, Worship, and the Temporal Bubble
1) Gods who exist outside of Lothar who have worshippers on Lothar gain power from these worshippers faster than they gain power from worshippers on other worlds.
1.1) This profit is reduced to some degree by having to cope with transferring power across the Temporal Bubble.
1.1.a) A god can spend additional energy to build a direct link to a worshipper across the Bubble. This is the Direct Link system
1.1.b) Godly vassals on Lothar can collect power for later transfer in large "packets." Vassals can cross through the Temporal Bubble, bringing power to clerics and collecting Worship Energy to bring back home. A disadvantage to this method is that it is expensive, because vassals use energy 10 times as fast when on Lothar. A benefit, though, is that vassals can respond "in Lothar time" to events, and that direct intervention or visits by the vassals is easy. This is the Vassal System.
1.1.c) A god can also use reservoirs (holy relics or places of power) to reserve power for later transfer. This has expensive set-up costs, but a lower maintenance cost, compared to the vassal system. There can be some loss if the power is left too long in the storage system. Others can "tap" into the storage system for power as well (followers, minions, the god, and those who "crack" the power access mechanism). This is the Storage System.
2) Widespread worship of gods who exist outside of Lothar generally drains some sort of natural resource from Lothar faster than it can be renewed.
3) Some gods choose to permanently dwell inside Lothar and eliminate all the logistics problems. The Chaos Lords are one example. These gods may be weaker than demigods. It may be that they can grant worshippers only third and fourth level spells.
The Temporal Bubble And Spells
4) Lothar's Time Bubble affects spells.
4.1) Passing out priest spells usually slows down at higher levels, because the god has to directly intervene for these spells.
4.1.a) However, spells can be passed out by an intermediary who is itself on Lothar, with no effect on game mechanics. This is more often the case with third and fourth level spells, and sometimes with fifth level spells.
4.1.b) A priest may have to pray for an extended period of time for other high level spells, or high level spells may not be available as frequently.
4.2) Spells that involve contact with places outside of Lothar, whether on another plane or not, need to be rewritten to account for the time dilation.
4.3) It is difficult for gods to physically enter or leave the Temporal Bubble. One legend suggests that the gods (with legions of time elementals in one instance) themselves cannot bring this barrier down. Many have tried and all have failed.
5) One god (the self-styled "Lord God") has contrived to become head of a pantheon (the "Old Faith") of lesser gods who each contribute power to him (ie: attract worshippers to his cause for a cut of his power). Another name for the Lord God is the One Pale God.
5.1) This Lord God rules over the entire pantheon (corresponding to the Emperor). There are a few lesser gods, directly associated with the greater god (Dukes). And there are a host of demigods, commonly called Saints (Earls and Barons). Serving them all are the angels (knights).
Old Faith Structure And Expansion
5.2) Historically, the Old Faith has not expanded by dogma, persecution, or forced strictures, but instead by co-opting and absorbing other faiths into itself. However, it is not the odd holy war or crusade from time to time.
5.3) The great majority of saints and lesser gods under the Lord God are home-grown. That is, they were nurtured and raised up by the One. A very few may have been adopted into the power structure.
5.4) The Lord God and his minions are the religion of the Old Empire, a continent-nation with about 20 percent of Lothar's human population.
5.5) Non-human creatures and societies are absorbed only with the greatest of difficulties, since the cultural, biological and spiritual natures of these non-humans are a barrier usually too great to overcome.
5.5.a) Those groups and societies that can not or will not be assimilated into the Old Faith are targets. Groups that are weak, slow-growing, or provide valuable services are less persecuted.
5.5.b) Some elves have been assimilated and some not. Half-elves are more readily converted, and the effort to convert and assimilate elves is relatively new.
5.5.b.a) The ones who were assimilated have also tended to accept humans and to produce a higher percentage of half-elves.
5.5.b.b) The Elf colony on the New Continent is comprised of religious dissidents from the Old World -- true believers in the Elf gods.
5.5.b.c) These might tend to avoid humans and to look at half-elves with suspicion, at least initially.
6) There is an essential base core in the Old Faith that allows no compromise. It includes acknowledgment of UG as the true deity over all others and acceptance of the authority of the central church and Supreme Primate. Otherwise, the church will accommodate just about anything. Accommodation means toleration and open-minded willingness to compromise. Within a loose structure imposed on all from above, there is considerable latitude for variation.
6.1) The Lord God is Lawful Neutral.
6.2) The Lord God is willing to use Good or Evil to advance his goals. He ends up using Good more than Evil, just because happy worshippers give him more power, and happiness arises from Good more than Evil. The Lord God encourages common worshippers to be good rather than evil, for similar reasons. One primary motivation of the Lord God is to gain more worshippers, by whatever means.
7) The Lord God, Lesser Gods, and Saints all live outside the world, so they can take advantage of the ten to one exchange rate.
7.1) Because the Lord God and his divine retinue live outside Lothar, they tend to react slowly to change.
7.2) Having pretty much spread across the length and breadth of the Old Continent, the Old Faith has become mostly complacent. Soon a mandate will come down from above to convert the people of the New Continent, but that directive has not been issued yet.
8) The Old Empire is primarily feudal in nature. There is an emperor, a few great dukes or satraps, many barons and earls, served by a vast array of knights. All these folks make up the nobility.
8.1) The Old Faith has some say in government, but the secular government is ostensibly separate.
8.2) The Church helps maintain the status quo and preaches support of local authority. The Church acts to mitigate the worst excesses of feudalism because when serfs are unhappy or oppressed or abused, they make bad worshippers.
9) The Lord God accepts all alignments among low-level worshippers, but encourages behavior to become more lawful as an individual gains power.
9.1) An alignment change towards chaotic by a priest will be punished.
10) All Empire Priests worship the Lord God. But most first choose to belong to an Order. Each Order is associated with a particular demigod, called a Saint. Priests switch to a lesser god, called a Divinity, when they gain 6th level spells and to the Lord God himself when they gain 7th level spells. One example of an order is the Jerboan Order.
10.1) Saints and Divinities grant powers to specialty (Order) priests.
10.1.a) Priests must continue to abide by the restrictions of their former Order, and keep the benefits of that Order, after they move on to a Divinity and then to the Lord God.
10.2) You don't have to be an Order Priest. You can just honor the Lord God from first level, and be a standard cleric.
10.3) There are no limits on the numbers of priests or clerics or their levels.
10.3.a) One priest who receives seventh level spells is made Supreme Primate (ie, "Pope"), by direct selection by the Lord God.
10.3.b) The Supreme Primate has extra granted powers, the scope of which are as yet unknown.
10.4) Theoretically, all priests are allied under the Lord God, but in practice there are rivalries and conflicts.
10.5) Clerics and Priests up to fourth level are subject to the same laws as everyone else. They may be treated as the lowest rank of the nobility, depending on Order.
10.5.a) At fifth level, when a cleric gets third level spells directly from a divine minion, secular law stops applying. Divine judgment will apply.
11) There are Chaos Lords whose primary goal is to disrupt the religion of the Lord God.
11.1) In the areas ruled by the Old Empire, one can be hanged for being a member of a Chaos Cult.
11.2) There is an Old Faith Inquisition that seeks out rouge Chaotic elements and investigates resistance movements.
12) The Cam gods, who the Mountain people worship, dwell in an alternate reality or plane.
12.1) Access to the dimension where the Cam gods dwell has been largely blocked off.
12.2) Cam spiritual Worship Energy is stored in Artifacts, Places of Power, etc. Old Faithers are eager to get their hands on these sources of spiritual energy (as are others). Higher level Cam worshippers use these sources to transition to the "dreamtime" and/or carry some of the power to the gods. The art totems that are highly prized by the Old Empire may be a key to the Worship Energy Storage System.
12.2.a) Cam priests have to visit the "dreamtime" to contact their gods -- they cross the barrier spiritually, get spells from their gods, then return. It may be that it is priests in the dreamtime who tap the Worship Energy Storage System and send power on to the Cam gods.
12.2.b) The Cam gods don't drain resources quickly. This may be because the Cam gods are in temporal synchronicity with Lothar, or because priests use nine-tenths of worshippers' energy to cross the temporal barrier and enter the dreamtime. This nine-tenths loss goes back into the Lothar system. One tenth profit gets sent on to the Cam gods. These two possibilities are not mutually exclusive. Druids view the Cam gods as allies because the Cam gods remove only a "natural" level of energy from the system.
13) The druids actively resist the influence of the Lord God and his Old Faith.
13.1) The druids draw their spiritual powers directly from a Nature Force that is unique to Lothar
13.2) The druids are organizing other religions to resist UG, who they see as plundering the planets natural resources.
13.2.a) They primarily seek to ally with other religions that drain Worship Energy at a natural rate, like the Cam gods, or with weaker allies who can be dominated after the war is won.
13.2.b) Within these limits, the druids are including non-humans in the resistance.
Site Map | 1 April 99
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