So, how would you add to or reinterpret an existing deity to make them more ordinary, for everyday use? How and why does Cormyrean Farmer With Pitchfork #2 pray to them without upsetting the missus? What do the Neutral members of an Evil faith do?
(Yes, I know folk in the Realms have different morality, and aren't so prudish. But they're going to have conservatives as well, and a lot of things still take place behind closed doors. This came from my intentions to use Sharess and Loviatar in my games, and do something new and different with them.)
Here goes...
Sharess:
Amongst her more popular aspects, Sharess is the goddess of hospitality and care. She oversees taverns and inns and restaurants, and her agents inspect them to make sure that they are clean, hygienic and provide good service to their customers, and that everyone is having a good time. Chefs pray to her to ensure that they cook a good and enjoyable meal, seamstresses* and clothing makers seek her blessing on fine clothes so that they are comfortable and make the wearer beautiful. Anyone who provides pleasure or comfort in any form venerates her, even furniture-makers.
Due to her aspect as goddess of cats, agents of Sharess are foes to vermin of all kinds - mice, rats, spiders, snakes, scorpions - and they oppose the gods of these creatures. These creatures steal and eat food, pollute stores and granaries, and are pests to the inns, taverns and restaurants. Sharessin encourage these businesses to own a cat to take care of these things.
* Insert Terry Pratchett joke here.
(A party in Innarlith needed to seek help from the temple of Sharess to cure a sick tressym. I merged the inn/temple with the city's many fine bathhouses, figuring there was no way that the temple wouldn't get in on that, and eventually made it into a 5-star hotel (with some fantastic room service ;)). A half-drow PC was interested taking Sharess as a patron deity (she needs one that's not Lolth), so I expanded Sharess's hatred of snakes to include all kinds of vermin, including spiders. Mice and rats was just a no-brainer.)
Loviatar:
Loviatans encourage people to be strong in the face of suffering, to put up with what cannot be changed, but also to struggle against it. She is prayed to by the poor, refugees, peasants and serfs, particularly when a follower of Ilmater isn't around. Loviatans say that they can't rely on somebody else to help them, that they must help themselves.
Many women worship Loviatar, particularly in lands where they don't have equality. Loviatans say that women endure suffering better. Hard-working peasant women, abused housewives, and victims of **** seek strength from Loviatar, the ability to carry on or fight back. Loviatans are also common as mid-wives, helping women through the pain of childbirth. They also work as strict nannies and teachers.
(This was to explain why so many Loviatans are women, and it's role in Chessenta as a "cult for women", and characters in Maiden Of Pain. I figured people other than torturers and dominatrices worshipped her.)
Eilistraee:
Like ancient Celtic warriors, female and male followers of Eilistraee go "skyclad" to show that have no fear, and fight that way to show off their strength and virility, and prove their ferocity in battle. They paint themselves in woad that shimmers in the moonlight and gives the impression of wild ghosts. The sight of a warrior, naked and covered in blood and woad, is rather more disturbing than erotic, especially for those who must face them.
(I took Eilistraee in the other direction, rather more nudist, but with a heavy Celtic woad-warrior theme to make it actually terrifying. Take a drow barbarian and call it woad-rage. :D Considering what the prime ingredient of woad-paint actually is, this is really icky. :yuck
How and why does Cormyrean Farmer With Pitchfork #2 pray to them without upsetting the missus? What do the Neutral members of an Evil faith do?
-If you remember, Cormyrian Farmer with Pitchfork #2 was going to star in a pornographic film with the Seven Sisters. So, he'd certainly be giving Eilistraee and Sharess a little homage and worship. Loviatar, not so much. He's not into that kind of kinky type stuff.
;)
:P
Actually trying to find a valid place for each religion within society.
[post=18072885]Waukeen's church[/post]
and here:
[post=18085363]churches of Bane and Loviatar[/post]
This was something kicking around my head for a while. I was less interested in how the temples adapt to the 4e setting (I'm thinking entirely of the classic FR) or become like guilds, but how their appear in mainstream society. We all know ordinary sailors might pray to Talos to ward off storms, so prays to Loviatar or Sharess (beyond the obvious).
I'm also painting Sharess as a recovering alcoholic / drug-user after her years under Shar's sway, with her priests helping such people, and promoting responsibility. In time, Sharess might abandon the Excess portfolio in favour of Moderation.
Buuuut... since I was also playing with the idea of making it into a DDi article, I had to put it into 4e terms (which is easier, because I'm not even deviating from canon - there isn't any!)
Anyhow, I already ruined the 'surprise' factor, so I'm not sure if it would be worth the trouble... plus I'm really kidding myself if I think they would except a submission from me. I didn't burn that bridge... I nuked it. :D
Anyhow, in this new, 'free', no-holds-barred version of D&D, its just as easy to use my ideas - or BCMs - in the older Realms as it is the newer - I know I have. ;)
As to Loviatar, I'd probably include her as a patroness of female warriors as well, especially those who come from places where Tempus is seen as a male-dominant war god. I could see her with a relatively strong following among female Uthgardt, who might view Loviatar as a natural consort to Uthgar, as she's the only deity strong enough to be worthy of him... a tad sexist I'll admit, but the Uthgardt tended to strike me that way a bit. Having said that, I could see women who might not appreciate Bane's more masculine approach to tyrrany following her as well, seeing her as a more appealing alternative.
Eilistraee... I can't say I ever viewed her as a nudist deity, though I like the Celtic spin on her. Personally, I've always viewed her as something of the Lliira and Sune of the Drow set, with strong ties to both, though somewhat covertly. As to her being a female-clerics-only faith, that's something I've always ignored for the most part, which I chalked up to 2e's less than kind perspective on non-human races.
To be honest though, I can't really see any deities that "don't fit" with everyday life in the Realms. Certainly some are relatively specialized in who might follow or venerate them, but I see that as pretty much par for the course in a quasi-pantheistic society.
I'm not going to go into the preface there, beyond agreeing with your assessment that Faerun has a very different take on morality, and that most likely, none of this stuff would even be an issue for them. But hey, do whatever works at home, so long as everyone has fun with it.
Talona
She directs her servants to play the role as active medicin men and women to the local area's they are active in.
Talona's priestesses and priests carry diseases in themselves and eventually become immune to them. They are the early experimenters in the medicinal field of creating vaccins, i.e. they are creating antidotes and cures for strong diseases with themselves as the guinypigs. That's pretty selfless and can be seen as an honorable practise.
A communities hit by large scaled epidemic events would be forced to knock on talona's church doors for they would likely be the first to have common (i.e. nonmagical) cures for largescale diseases. Her influence in the south of fearun (where diseases can spread easier due to favorable environmental conditions and more crowded living conditions) will be largely attributed to this important function her clergy has over there.
Well, Sharess had that Celebrant PrC in the Player's Guide to Faerun that made her out as a much more martial deity, as cats are pretty efficient predators. While I like most of your take up there, you could also add in explorers looking for new and exotic experiences and items to bring back home to make life a more sensual experience, be it exotic ingredients for food, new fabrics, or whatever. I wouldn't say it was so much about beauty as I would the sensations that bring pleasure, erotic or not.
I agree. Whenever Ed Greenwood discusses Sharess, he emphasizes her clerics pursuing new sensual experiences (including unpleasant ones).
Also, clerics of Eilistraee aren't naked most of the time, only during certain rituals. They usually just wear whatever outfit is appropriate to what they are doing.
Well, Sharess had that Celebrant PrC in the Player's Guide to Faerun that made her out as a much more martial deity, as cats are pretty efficient predators.
So what you are trying to say is that her followers don't pussy-foot around?
Though unfortunately, as the description for that PrC pointed out, a lot of them are wastes of space. Not all of them, just a lot of them... but then most things in Calimshan could be described that way. My own personal take on her followers there is that they play stupid in order to feed intelligence and such to the Jannissaries, but nothing in lore really supports that view much. It makes me feel better thinking of it that way though.
Eilistraeen rituals are very much styled on the faiths of real world Diana, they have exactly ONE "naked" hunt PER YEAR and are not exactly required to dance naked each time they offer a prayer to the deity.
Loviatar ... well, just read the dogma and description. It ain't all S&M, you know.
Its part of their programming. :P
And to carry-over my own examples from the other thread (the Sunite one), I would say Oghma and Deneir run schools and libraries. Large cities would have huge complexes, and towns would just have a local priest with a small temple-school where younglings can go (voluntarily) to leartn to read & write (which is why the Realms has such a larger literacy rate then our own medieval period did).
Only bigger towns would a have a permanent priest and school - in more rural areas with small villages and tiny thorps, people would have to travel to the larger town, or would be visited by traveling priests who stay in each settlement for a few months and ten move on. I picture these taveling ypes to have cartslike this -
Built for them by Gondsmen, of course. ;)
My point is, instead of slapping a bunch of useless stats on Gods and telling us what color Mystra's panthose are and where Cyric flicks his boogers, they should go into detail about the day-to-day activities of the church, and exactly what they do for people in order to stay a viable religion. They did this a little in those three excellent 2e sources, but we really need an entire book just on the religions, and NOT their gods.
As of right now, most of FR's religions don't seem very viable to me - which is the purpose of this thread: To give examples of what each church does for the community (even the evil ones).
What I'm saying is that it might be better to tone down on the "a temple is just a temple" aspect of the Realms, and start describing each in a civic aspect. Temples and their clergy DO STUFF for people... otherwise no-one would bother with them.
I hear Myrkul used to host a riveting Bingo Night. :D
As to anything in the FR as of right now, nothing seems particularly viable, mostly due to the Lore-lite approach, but that's supposed to be the DMs problem, not the setting's. Which seems a bit odd, considering how many young folks I've talked to hate the idea of deviating from canon... I'd imagine a lot of them are going to be fairly uncomfortable with having to do it all themselves. But, it could work out well if they get the idea in their heads that they can do things themselves without having to have a book to back up their every move. Could be that 4e will produce a 'better' generation of gamers due to that approach, since they do ultimately have to exercise their creativity more, if they can get past the idea that they need permission of some sort to do so. Or not. We'll see I guess.
FR's appeal was its deep. rich tapestry, which created the illusion that it was a real, vibrant world.
Now the illusion is shattered, and the place is dull as dirt once the 'Shiney' wears off.
The Realms without history is like Chocolate Milk without the Chocolate... Kinda pointless.