Under Sleeping Suns: The Power Of Myth

So I thought instead of talking theory this time I'd talk about what it is I'm actually, actively doing with the creation of this here Fantasy RPG game world. This week: Myth structures and patterns, and how they relate to religion and the various gods of Loris.

One of the predominant and cool things I picked up on during my study of history, philosophy, and religion was that there are these repeating patterns that pop up in religions all over the world. The concepts of the Heroic Journey, the separation of the Earth and the Divine Realm, and the Escape From The Underworld to name but three. Joseph Campbell did an entire series of lectures on this sort of thing, and did it far better than I could ever hope to do, so I won't bother going too deep into it. What I'm calling on here boils down to, basically, the idea that there are certain over-arching meta-plots that recur time and time again throughout the myths of the cultures of the world. The idea that the Divine can interact with the Mortal and influence, guide, or outright compromise the world of Man is not something that is unique to the Fantasy RPG - it's endemic to the very mythic center of the human collective. With that in mind, I started applying the concept of recurring themes and meta-stories to Under Sleeping Suns.

When designing the religions and gods for the world of Loris, I decided on a few basic truths:

* The Gods Of The Nine come into power after a previous set of Gods have been eliminated by a world-changing event. The two primary Gods Of The Nine also come from somewhere else, and are not native to the world of Loris.

* The time between that event and the rise of The Nine is a time without the influence of Gods, although beings with extremely powerful abilities do end up ruling over the known civilization of Man in what is known as The Age Of Kings. These Kings are also removed by a significant, world-changing event.

* Before The Age Of Kings, and once again removed by a world-changing event (sensing a trend?), there were the Gods Of Light and Darkness. These Gods may have been native to the world of Loris - no one can say for certain, because conflicting tales are told by the story tellers. No one is alive today who was alive then, and no one has been brave/foolish/lucky/stupid enough to go diving into the ancient temple/libraries (if any still exist) to find out the truth.

* Before the Gods Of Light and Darkness, no one can say. This is the Old Time, and there are no records in existence of this.

And finally - and this is a big one, so pay attention to it:

* Loris has no creation myth. None. The world has just always been here.

That last piece is a big'un, and not just because it very precisely removes one of the fundamental necessities for a "jumping off point" for religions. It also eliminates one of the most common of those recurring themes I've been talking about quite handily. But, do consider the idea that without that sense of primacy - Our Gods made this world for us, bucko - there exists the very real (yet unspoken) undercurrent of "Well, if they didn't make it, who did?" Yes, this is a deliberate plot-point-creation device, but it's also there for the purpose of good storytelling. If the solitary set of Gods that rides herd over the planet doesn't come from the planet in the first place, how do they get their power? If they didn't make it, why can they influence it? And where did they come from, originally?

As I've said in a previous post, one of the things I wanted to avoid with Under Sleeping Suns was the trope of the perfect, infallible historical record that so many games make available to their player characters. To help with this, I've tried to front-load Loris with just as much uncertainty and doubt as I have solid facts and verifiable truth. The lack of a creation myth is part of this - if there is no myth of how the world came to be, then what happens if (or, more accurately, when) the Player Characters find out? World-shaking levels of horrific revelation? Or perhaps unity-inspiring unveiling? The world may never know. But I want that speculation to exist. I want the GM's and PC's of the game to have something to look for, and so I'm sprinkling hints all throughout the various histories and records to help move things along in that direction.

But, I promised you stuff about recurring themes and Deities and religions, so let's talk about those.

Out of the Old Time came the Gods Of Dark And Light, twelve Gods that split between them the various powers and aspects of the world. It was they who broke down the physical and spiritual worlds and split them apart in The Knot. They made the Waking World safe for man by separating the layers of reality to bring balance and order to the cosmos. Their own realm, The White, they split off from the Waking World, with The Veil between them to act as middle-ground between the world of Man and the world of Gods. Into the Lower Dark they threw the spirits of evil, decay, and corruption, and sealed them away behind The Howling. Five layers of being, one for each finger on the hand of man.

But five is an unstable number in the realm of myths - and thus the legends speak of a sixth, unknown layer of existence, interwoven and connecting all the other five layers. The concept of some over-arching, binding force is now introduced to the spiritual makeup of the world - five defined "worlds" and the unknown undercurrent that binds them all together. Now we have our "Divine Cosmos," as it were.

In the legends of the rise of the Kever Age, it talks about how Kalykan The Night Walker (Brother of Doan Lord of Light) and his wife Ardanta The River Queen, had children. This upset the balance of the Gods, as suddenly these children took for themselves powers that had previously been solely the realm of the original twelve Gods Of Light And Darkness. The resulting power struggle led to a period of unrest, imbalance, and strife on the world of man, as is the way of such things. The newborn Gods didn't necessarily fit into the molds of Light or Darkness, and were often chaotic and unruly. Now we have our upsetting of the established order, the reallocation of power from a small subset of Deities into a larger set, and the eventual return to balance (albeit a new one) that is often seen in real-world religions (this is especially true in the Greek or Egyptian myths - which Under Sleeping Suns draws heavily from, as you'll see).

The next recurring theme to appear is that of the significant, world-changing event; the "Fire Falls From The Sky, Everything Resets, New Era Dawns" concept, if you will. At the end of the Kever Age, when the God Of Secrets had returned from his Long Journey South completely mad and begun slaughtering the rest of the pantheon (sparking a civilization-wide war while he was at it, no less), Doan Lord Of Light gathered up his forces and made one final push against the forces of his murderous enemy. He put on his armor and his helmet and went off to die. His daughters - the twins who would become the new suns of the world... which is a great myth for why there are two suns in the sky where previously there had only been one, I'll point out... - watched their father's body torn apart by the forces of the God Of Secrets, and in their grief and rage wept tears of fire. Fire fell from the sky, and Kever was wiped off the map.

These themes would play out again during the Age Of Kings.  Where first there were but a handful of Eternal Kings, eventually others would rise up and claim their share of the power left in the land by the deaths of the various Gods Of Dark And Light. Again, a struggle would sweep across Harak-Ur, Land of Kings, and again, it would be the common man who suffered while the nigh-omnipotent Eternal Kings levied their powers against one another.

Eventually, the Eternal Kings would number in the hundreds, with each King controlling a narrow, unique aspect of the world around them. The King Of Rivers and the King Of Storms both held sway over aspects of nature, for example, but only the King Of Flowers could cause the ground to become fertile, or the bountiful fruit trees to grow from that ground. As before, it would be the one with power over secrets - in this case the King Of Books - who would start the downfall of the Age Of Kings.

Exactly what happened is unknown, but as the Kings grew more and more protective of their powers, and more and more secrets of the world were gathered up by the King Of Books, the Eternal Kings turned from the benevolent protectors of their people into brutal, vicious tyrants. Part of this may have been due to the fact that at some point near the end of their reign, the Gods Of The Nine (though they were originally ten) appeared. The King Of Books became obsessed with the lands to the south, where Kever had once stood. On the continent of Saron lay some great threat, some great treasure, some great unknown mystery that must be uncovered and possessed by him and him alone. But none of the subjects of the Eternal Kings must ever leave Harak-Ur, so had decreed the King Of Laws... so the King Of Books' plans were thwarted. Or so they say.

I've said that the Gods Of The Nine came from somewhere else, and that's dealt with in more detail in the actual text, but for now I'll encapsulate: The White, realm of the Gods, intersects with the Waking World by way of The Veil. At the juncture of The Veil and The White, there came to be a great silver door. Through this door stepped Moran - God Of Wisdom - and his equal, Kolas - God of Knowledge. At the foot of the door, they found two infants: Graalis The Seabeard and Astares The Starmaiden. If you're paying attention, you'll see that Graalis and Astares share a naming convention with the Gods Of Light And Darkness. This is intentional, and the ties between the two are born out in later revelations in the text.

But back to myth patterns. You can see where this is going: the inevitable strife that comes from these "upstart" Gods - two of whom aren't even native! - coming along and suddenly laying claim to power that the Eternal Kings have held for over a thousand years. Goran The Seabeard and Astares The Starmaiden bore children (raising the number of Gods to 10... or 12 if you count the Sun Sisters... seem familiar?) and thus the fight between the Eternal Kings and the Gods Of The Ten began. At the very end, the King Of Flowers would lead his people (and those of at least one other Eternal King) out of Harak-Ur and into a new land; mere hours before Fire Falls From The Sky, Everything Resets, New Era Dawns. It was called the Rain Of Glass, and it left Harak-Ur a blighted, forbidden wasteland.

So now we come to the current era, and once again, we have our recurring themes: The usurpation of powers, the corruption of the truth-seeker, and the inevitable war in the world of men brought about by the conflict between the Gods.

It would be Kolas, God Of Knowledge, who would start this pattern. Roughly 300 years ago, so still within recorded history, Kolas began whispering to his believers that the other Gods were false. What's more, they were not only false, but they were not real. They did not exist. They were merely apparitions, brought into being by his own fevered imaginings. The Curses of the Eternal Kings had been wrought up on him, and as such he had gone mad for a short while. Now, however, he was sane once again, and the other Gods - his hallucinations - had taken on lives of their own. He would empower his faithful, and make them ready for a journey to the lands of the south on the continent of Saron. (Again, look at all the patterns!)

Kolas would kill Jengo The Luckbringer, shattering the God of Fortune's power and removing it from the House Of The Nine forever. His people would begin their journey southward, and form their own nation in Kolas' name: Kolantha. From here, they would launch their war and their Inquisition against the nations of the North, and build up their temple cities and their strict, brutal form of law and order.

The recurring themes for Under Sleeping Suns, then, can pretty quickly and easily be sorted out:

* The rise of a few, specialized Gods who control a large spectrum of power
* The fracturing of that power by the creation or introduction of new Gods or powerful entities
* The conflict brought about by that fracturing, and the eventual settling and re-ordering around the new paradigm
* The corruption of the truth seeker following, or during, the investigation of a far-away place
* The obsession with that far-away place driving the truth seeker to more desperate and violent acts
* The inevitable war between the Gods spilling over into the world of man
* Fire Falls From The Sky, Everything Resets, New Era Dawns

Now, savvy players and GM's will ask "What's so all-fired important about the continent of Saron?"

And they'd be right to do so. But I'm not telling.

Not yet, anyway.