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  1. - Top - End - #1
    Ogre in the Playground
     
    SwashbucklerGuy

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    Feb 2012
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    smile Help with creating a Deity of Death based on Mexico's Día de Muertos.

    Hello, fellow playgrounders! How are you doing? Awesome, I hope!

    So... I'm currently creating a homebrew setting with my group, for my group. And now we're finally moving on to the Pantheon.

    So we decided the deities of Life and Death would be siblings. Both of which are mostly benevolent (if somewhat indifferent) in the sense that they want to preserve life and death (without life, there's no death, and vice-versa).

    Furthermore, the idea is that one aspect of the God(dess) of death is that (s)he would encourage people to not only honor and remember the dead, but also enjoy life while they can, for there's no way to extend it forever. Even so-called "immortals" eventually die, even if it take eons to happen (death is nothing but patient) .

    So... A cool idea we got was to base it on the Day of the Dead's traditions and culture, with the appearance of the deity of death being somewhat based on the Mexican calacas. Perhaps something like La Muerte from Book of Life?

    I've been to Mexico once, on the Day of the Dead, but I'm not all the knowledgeable about it, so I'd like to hear suggestions and advice on how to go about it, so I ask you for help.

    What is your advice?
    Last edited by Lemmy; 2017-11-29 at 12:52 PM.
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  2. - Top - End - #2
    Titan in the Playground
     
    Nifft's Avatar

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    Default Re: Help with creating a Deity of Death based on Mexico's Día de Muertos.

    Sounds like a cosmology about cycles, which would include a god of the human lifecycle.

    So you'd have something like...


    God of Seasons: Summer, Fire, Winter, Cold

    God of Weather: Weather, Storms, Water, Ocean, Air

    God of Days: Sun, Moon, Darkness, Sky

    God of Stars: Pact, Time, Fate, Luck

    God of Conflict: Protection, War, Tyranny, Liberation

    God of the Hunt: Animal, Celerity, Trickery, Travel

    God of Works: Artifice, Creation, Destruction, Entropy

    God of Souls: Community, Healing, Death, Earth, Renewal

  3. - Top - End - #3
    Ogre in the Playground
     
    SwashbucklerGuy

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    Default Re: Help with creating a Deity of Death based on Mexico's Día de Muertos.

    I think extrapolating ti to be a whole pantheon about "cycles" is going a tad too far...

    It's simply a god(dess) of death that has no hurry to see the living die (because they'll die anyway, no matter what they do).

    Right now I'm more interested in the traditions, folklore and stuff like that about the Day of the Dead...

    For example... I think the deity's symbol (at least among humanoid races) might be a decorated skull with marigolds sprouting from/around it. His/her favored weapon could be something like the Aztec macuahuitl.
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    Bugbear in the Playground
     
    OrcBarbarianGuy

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    Jan 2017

    Default Re: Help with creating a Deity of Death based on Mexico's Día de Muertos.

    I'm going to quickly plug LudicSavant's excellent versions of Wee Jas and Nerull.

    On the Day of the Dead specifically:
    After glancing around Wikipedia, the following things stick out to me as possibly relevant:
    People go to cemeteries to be with the souls of the departed and build private altars containing the favorite foods and beverages, as well as photos and memorabilia, of the departed. The intent is to encourage visits by the souls, so the souls will hear the prayers and the comments of the living directed to them.
    Some people believe the spirits of the dead eat the "spiritual essence" of the ofrendas food, so though the celebrators eat the food after the festivities, they believe it lacks nutritional value.
    Some people believe possessing Day of the Dead items can bring good luck. Many people get tattoos or have dolls of the dead to carry with them. They also clean their houses and prepare the favorite dishes of their deceased loved ones to place upon their altar or ofrenda.
    In some African cultures, visits to ancestors' graves, the leaving of food and gifts, and the asking of protection from them serve as important parts of traditional rituals.
    Overall, I see the major traditions here as having a few major features:
    -First, the belief that the dead can "come back" to visit and observe the living, if only on one day. In a D&D universe, this could extend to actual visits by ghosts. How is a community shaped when your yearly visit to meet Grandma moves to a cemetery?
    -Second, the belief that offerings given actually reach the dead, and are consumed by them in some fashion. In a D&D universe, this... I'm less sure about this part, but what if, when you die, the tradition is to bury you with your equipment so you can keep using it in the afterlife? It's a bit more of a militant culture thing (Ysgard, basically), but it might work out?
    -A significant focus on "telling the stories of the dead", and remembering rather specific things about them- their favorite foods, for example.

    Some thoughts
    -Does anything before death matter?
    -Archeology as a divinely mandated activity?
    -What does it think about intelligent undead? Vampires will "re-die" again eventually, so are they kosher?
    -Do gods die? Will the god of death die? What happens then?
    -Negative energy is strongly associated with undead. At the same time, it doesn't really have any innate moral dimension. What does this god think about this?



    On a separate note, I'd like to offer a suggestion for an orc/ogre/troll god (whatever, as long as they are exclusively carnivorous, ideally maybe cannibals?), based on a rather silly one-shot I played in once:
    Spoiler: Precepts of Yog
    Show
    MEAT IZ GUD
    PEOPLE IS MEET
    THEREFOR
    MEET IZ PEEPLE
    WHEN EET MEET, MEET GO IN BELLY
    WHEN EET MEAT, GROW BIGGER
    I.E.
    WHEN EET MEET, MEET BECOME YOU
    THERE4
    WHEN EAT PERSON, PERSON BECOME YOU
    EAT MORE PEOPLE = BE MORE PERSON

    YOU AR WHUT YOU EAT:
    DON'T BE PLANT
    BE PERSON

    WHEN DIE:
    IF EATEN, BECOME PART OF EATER
    IF NOT, LIVE ON IN AFTERLIFE AS EVERYTHING EATEN:
    IF ATE WOLF HEAD: HAVE WOLF HEAD
    IF ATE BEAR ARM: HAVE BEAR CLAWS

    (the unspoken subtext to this is that most orcs in the afterlife look like hideous amalgamations of everything they ate during their life)
    Last edited by aimlessPolymath; 2017-12-02 at 10:01 PM.
    My one piece of homebrew: The Shaman. A Druid replacement with more powerlevel control.
    The bargain bin- malfunctioning, missing, and broken magic items.
    Spirit Barbarian: The Barbarian, with heavy elements from the Shaman. Complete up to level 17.
    The Priest: A cleric reword which ran out of steam. Still a fun prestige class suitable for E6.
    The Coward: Not every hero can fight.

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