Gods Game GM Guide+Pantheons Description+Rha Pantheon Notes

RHA dft 3

4/12/19

 

Themes: Knots, Order vs Chaos, Diversity of Life, Leadership, Egyptian Mythos, Death, The sky, stars, moon, and sun

 

- Name and summarize the four gods that start the pantheon

- An origin story with these gods from the Magic Era

    - Points if it includes tricking an elder being (giant, titan, etc)

    - Highlight points there player might change the story

- Outline how the pantheon changes through out the six eras

    - The gods will onlyappear in 3-4 of them

NOTE FOR SHIPPING:

Give a special thanks credit to Ahmed Khalifa

- an Egyptian ame developer that offered some insight about modern egyptian myths/urban legends

 

 

KA (for now) PANTHEON 

Name Possibilities: 

Ank

Ka

 

THE FOUR GODS & Their original intentions (summary via all the documentation)

 

RHA-OHM/WRY - portrait: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/255214591275958272/448694193091641356/rha2.png

- Amun-Ra

RHA-ELA -ela helps define the style/char. The base colors of the soul or social life

- Hapi or someone lesser known?

RHA-DAU - fire, summer, fishing, grappling, wrestling,

- Set

RHA-SACE - Love, hate, bonds of friendship/passion, anger/fire, intimacy, 

- Horus

 

*THE EIGHT ORIGINAL CREATORS OF EGYPTIAN PANTHEON & THEIR FORMS

- were called the Ogdoad, and for some reason all the men sometimes took the form of frogs, and all the women of snakes,

so I've paid homage to this. The men here turn into aboleth and the women Uraes - a god cobra (symbol for a unified egypt known as the Two Ladies)

 

KASYS - 

RHA-OHM/Wry

Mainly Ra inspired (based on art)

- Name possibilites/name pieces - 

https://www.britannica.com/topic/ka-Egyptian-religion

- Kasys (for now)

- Ka

 

- God of the first ever star - to this star all other celestial objects are anchored by unbreakable and undetectable celestial chains and if the god were to die, all other objects would lose their internal heat, their correct orbits, and begin to fail on certain physical principles  

- The star is the source of their power. If the star were ever to be located, they would be owned.

- So great measures are taken to hide and move the star every day, and rest in the underworld at night 

- with this star he lights all other stars and brings light, life, and energy to worlds

- sometimes an aboleth

 

THYSX

Rha-Ela

Inspired by Isis

Name Possibilities:

Izyxz

Aeshotep

Thsyx(for now) - ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knot_(hieroglyph)

 

- Fray goddess

- Capable of tying, knotting, fusing, and gluing things to other things

- For every fray she magics, she is forever bonded with the entities lives

- This number is of course lost, but is countless many in different places and kinds (oceans, animals, ideas)

- For this reason she has a deep respect for all things and allowing them to defend themselves, balance the meek (stone) against the mighty (mountain)

- Her power politics are of course  of a god's perspective, and therefore not exactly straightforward from a human POV

- Early on she criticized the supremacy of FIRE and AIR, by fraying them to create the first dragon, for which she considers a balancing force

- sometimes an Uraeus

 

 

Rha-Dau

Inspired by Sekhmet

Name: TBD

- Goddess of the fire plague

- Rha-Dau convinced Rha-Ela to wrestle the sky (Ra) for a sun's love, and when she wins the love spreads - this love was "borrowed" by rha-ela in the creation of dragons 

- When she has finished her fires, from the ashes she builds the moon which she floats on the hot embers into the sky, like a hot air balloon

- Head of a lioness

- Her grappling with the sky can cause natural disasters: eruptions, storms, tsunamis, disease, fire from the sky, etc

- Defends the land with arrows made before the beginning of time 

- sometimes an Uraeus

 

Rha-sace

Inspired by Hathor

Name: TBD

- Goddess of Friendship/kindness/love/partnership (Note: still refining this)

- In love with the chaos/void

- The mother of Ra

- The arms around chaos - From everything came the chaos, but what holds us near to it is Hathor's arms

- Sister of Sekhmet - sometimes helps the moon on its way

- sometimes an Uraeus

 

 

 

 

Potential elder beast inpirations:

https://www.thoughtco.com/egyptian-monsters-4145424

Apep/apepi/aapep - evil demon, darkness, chaos, snake, possibly early and spited god?

- Battles the sun each night in hell/duat, except on the occasional eclipse (sun devoured by Ra)

- People spat upon physical models of him, also burn, and deface

- storms, night, the underworld,

THE SET ANIMAL - used by  set to destroy his enemies

BAST - goddess of protection and cats, defender of Ra, protected women, children, domestic cats,

 - goddess of sunrise, music, dance, pleasure, fertility, birth, perfume. motherhood

- sometimes hopeful mothers would wear bast emuletts with the number of children they hoped to have

Ammit - soul eater, devourer of the dead, eater of hearts, guareded lake of fire

- crocodile + hippo + lion

- seen as good since she destroyed evil, but also feared

 

- GIVE A SPECIAL THANKS CREDIT to Ahmed Khalifa

   - an Egyptian game dev who provided these sources:

 

Modern Egyptian culture ( more potential gods/elder beast inspirations):

- El Nadaha/The Caller - the siren on the underworld side of the nile. If you reach her, you dissappear

- Ra'fat El Hagaan

- The Curse of The Pharaohs

- Moms tell chidren to finish their food and if they don't, the rmaining food will chase them down on judgement Day

- Seboo'a - If a baby survives a week, they are tossed in a strainer while a hammer/bell is clanged and there is a party!

- Mom's- if you play with matchesm you will wet yourself at night

- Mom's - if you cut a flower, you'll turn into a flower on Judgment  Day that flower will cut you

- Some kind of homage to Zaynab - the first modern novel of Egypt?

 

 

FRAME 1:

 

Dear my friend - The Bird,

 

How are you doing? It's me again, Kashaf. The stone. Yes. Okay. Call me a mountain, but it's still rude.

Apologies for being so long in writing to you.

I've had the time. And it's pretty easy to throw this all into the wind where you'll undoubtedly find it after you're done pecking for whatever it is

you eat. 

 

Dust?

 

I don't know. I feel sort of mopey lately.

And on top of that I know that I promised for a long time to tell you what I know.

We are good enough friends, now that I think about it, and some thing should know that isn't a stone.

And as rude as you are, we are that certain kind of bound, even apart.

I wish you would visit and stand atop my peak awhile. But I know you follow the warmth and, I guess, I don't know what else.

What are you doing out there The Bird? I know so much, but somehow only you, for a short time, get to see it all from a reasonable distance.

 

Anyways, I guess I've been avoiding these letters, since I knew they'd make me introspective like this.

But perhaps writing this out will help me understand why I'm feeling this way.

I know your eyes are short and mine are long, but it still can be hard to see it really. 

It can be terrible.

 

Sometimes I'm jealous. Or maybe it's nurturered. You and your family are the only ones around here taller than me.

I don't feel small very often.

 

I don't know. I'm measuring if this is right.

When we first discussed this I told you, again and again, that there is no one past, and that there is so much of it,

 that by the time I get it all out on the wind, you will have died. Better to live and ask me what's needed.

But I don't want to deny you and create some kind of vision of ego, even though it's honestly precaution. Please ask me to stop at some point.

I'll portion it out as I can, but it's easy for me to lose track of the scale of things like these. 

 

Okay. I'll begin.

 

    ***

 

THE MAGIC ERA

 

To settle an argument we once had, no, I do not remember everything. 

I do not want to remember everything.

Do you remember everything? I didn't think so.

 

I haven't seen it all. But you're right in saying I've been around for a good while. 

Longer than you have or ever will be anyway.

 

Now you know I've spoken of gods before, and great magic, 

and I know your disbelief, but you'll just have to listen.

There are gods. I've met one, I think. 

On this I've always been somewhat unclear.

What is it when your first memories are not your own? 

When sometimes you see things that aren't in front of you?

Well, that is how it is between myself and Thysx, 

a great goddess. She's never said this explicitly.

But I don't know what else it would be. I'm not in love with her.

She hasn't been around for thousands of years anyhow.

So, yeah, moving on.

 

Whenever that happened, it wasn't the start of it all,

but it wasn't late enough that I couldn't ask around, you know?

The desert remembered a lot. The rivers kind of don't shut up about it honestly. 

Which does make me doubt it sometimes. But we all somehow know her.

 

Anyways, here is a short account of the order of things back in the age of gods. 

It was mostly told to me by an old river.

 

 

NOTES FOR REVISION:

- Add some true name magic!

 

Once Chaos became jealous of the Void's ultimately 

eternal existence and as always impatient with Order,

 they took matters into their own hands.

From the Void Chaos created Sace, a goddess of sex/creation/birth/death.

 Though she viewed Chaos as

a loving father, it was the Void she loved truly and most intensely. 

She spread her arms as far as she could around it, 

and this is what holds us close to the void still.

They were immediately in love, and from their love was born Kasys.

 Kasys was born upon the first light and first star, 

which made the Void admittedly less chaotic for a time.

Annoyed by this, Chaos pulled from the Void a sister for Sace, Dau

. She was a great wrestler made of fire, 

and neither Kasys or any other thing could hold onto her without causing some dismay.

While Kasys brought the stars across the sky, Dau would bring them down.

 And when Kasys brought the light and energy 

to the world, Dau no sooner wrestled Kasys for it and in the 

result spread storms and natural disaster and ultimately death. Now Chaos 

was pleased. And so the light in 

the sky came to be challenged and represent a kind of necessary but temporary order.

And the moon, made from the sky's ashes moved along by Dau, came to be known as 

something of a sigil for Chaos and the underworld.

 

As Kasys chained the celestial bodies together, once again Order began to restore itself. 

Chaos, Sace's father, 

and Dau - her sister, looked down upon Sace for not being able to control her offspring Kasys.

 Afraid of Chaos, Kaysys had begun to hide among the stars

in hope of preserving himself, and in doing so had taken a deep interest in 

leading godly and mortal business upon worlds, where stars and moons

can have great effect upon fields and seas and even life in nature.

Sace began to resent her sister and father, and this drove her further inward and into the void.

Part of her is forever bound  with the void, but in that time even more of her was lost, and 

for a time Chaos did not know

if Sace was speaking as the void itself, and it feared that in this time Sace could swallow 

even Chaos up. [Player opportunity]

However, at the end of this time Sace bore from her breasts a god named Thsyx instead. 

 

Thsyx learned quickly of Chaos' terrible influence upon her family, and set out to resist 

against it. 

Thsyx called out to her brother and hatched a plan.

Thsyx goaded Dau into wrestling Ra.

Kasys always lost  this fight.

But this time the goal was to neither win nor lose, but prolong Dau.

And so Kasys did. The god of Sky and the God of Fire tumble for eternity, and it was at this 

time that Thysx fused them as the Goddess of the Fray.

From this came the first dragon who Thsyx was bound to, as she was now bound to her brother 

and her aunt, Dau.[Player opportunity] 

And so it was that the gods unified in this little way, protected by the first dragon, in 

defiance of Chaos.

This was not the end of their disagreemants, but it began an era of balance, nature, and the

 creation of life.

 

***

 

It was around this time I came into creation and was bound, like the first dragon, to Thsyx.

Or so I believe.

The river I got most of this story from is nearly dried up, 

and the silt beneath it does not remember a thing.

What I remember is something - I don't knoww - 

something still diificult to focus on. And only after some time do I remember really knowing

I could articulate this way at all. And for a time she was with me or was a part of me.

And speaking was as if multitudes of life had decided to eject their words in every direction, 

which is as confusing as it sounds. 

That was when this place was more green and the life hadn't spread yet.

And then less so or at least she said less.

 

So that's all I really know. 

That and what the desert tells me, which isn't much, but sometimes I can see it hiding 

things behind the sand. We can be this way towards one another, us old things. 

You go from naive to intimately familiar, to a kind of vulnerability so blaring

you become paranoid of your oldest associates.

 What they know. What they remember about yourself, that you yourself forgot ages ago.

 

I would like a nap. I'll speak to you soon again.

 

 - Kashaf

 

 

NATURE ERA STORY

 

Dear The Bird,

 

 

 

 

 

As participants of the Great Game the family of Sace took many forms of life.

However it was most often that goddesses took the forms of giant golden cobras.

And gods took the form of golden (more frog-like) aboleths.

It had been for a long time that the only one of them who had experience with life on the worlds

was Ra, and so he went about explaining the seas, the mountains, and so on. 

Through this tour the family noticed the great emptiness of the world,

and sought to fill it with life. 

Ra, an aboleth, created the frogs, the lizards, and the flying lizards, of which would monitor the world for him.

Sace and Dau made many kinds of snakes, eels, worms, and flying worms, of which monitored the world for them.

Finally ela frayed with all of these first animals, and it became part of her mind, her body, and her spirit.

This was the first time she had experienced mortality and as such was driven closer to madness than the others.

It was at this time Chaos found an opportunity in Ela. But try as they might to befriend her, Ela's

investment in life drove her further from understanding a god like Chaos's wants and fears.

Chaos wished for her to create something so fertile or destructive that it would upset any Order of life.

Chaos went as so far as to begin creating their own animal. A beast with great lust and great anger.

The head of a crocodile, and the body of a hippo and a lion, and the heart made from the same shroud of void from which Chaos made Sace.

It was called the Amisys and Sace could feel its making. 

Chaos and Sace had grown to be enemies in all of this time, and the creation of Amisys proved to be the most recent betrayal.

 

To honor the stars, Ra laid his first life in hot deserts along a great slow river. 

There a great star would shine all day, spreading his light and heat and keeping him powerful.

It was so that the animals lived along the river peacefully until the creation of the Amisys.

The Amisys was a quiet creature, and it would hide under the sand, the water and the shadows.

At night it would eat the eggs of the lizards, the eels, the worms, the snakes, and others.

Once again the gods looked to Ela to be the final check on Chaos, but 

she found herself unable to act in this.

Her mind had become a chorus of great life all clinging for food or survival.

She wanted only to find them a path, and so her family would provide one.

So it was that the lizards drank at the river and felt the sun.

And so it was that the snakes drank at the river and felt the sun.

And on that day Chaos felt emboldened. For all life rested on the river, happy and blissfully prone.

The Amisys approached the river and began eating up everything it found there.

Ela had been feeling such peace for life. And now she was forced to deal with what she now

knew was something new. Death. What she could not concentrate on. A foreign god.

And so she began to fear but respect Death, and in this found the need for order against it.

So she knotted her great twine between the first dragon, the river, and the Amysis, and what was born

was the first dragon of the world. And so she was bound to the dragon, the river, the Amysis, and,

inside it, the shroud of the void, that piece of her mother, Sace.

The dragon and the Amysis fought, giving the rest of life time to find safety.

Finally the Amysis was near death, but Ela could not kill a part of her mother,

and she knew the dragon, unchecked itself, may bring further suffering to the life there.

 

A court was called of all life around the river.

It was decided that the river should act as a dividing wall. Ahead of it rested the desert, the day, the dragons, the lizards, and snakes.

Below it laid a new place for the dead, the Amysis, Sace, and so a part of the void.

And between this was the river and Ela. 

In was not what the family had planned, but it was what had finally worked to drive Chaos from them.

When the river flooded, for a short time, the two worlds became one, and these were their short reunions, but for most forever  

this family of gods now remained occupied in their houses of Life, Death, and the inbetween.

 

 

ERAs OUTLINE

 

MAGIC

See story

 

NATURE

See story

 

TECH

Doubt they'd make an initial appearance  

 

SOCIAL

NOTES FOR REVISION: I figured we could take advantage of the diverse racial forms of the Egyptian gods to include more peoples than just the Sauren.  For example, Thrangers or Orcs might worship a jackal-headed god like Anubis.  Rha, more than the other colors, lends itself to a wide variety of personalities and peoples, so their society might be predominantly sauren with a healthy mix of other races (or perhaps it went through phases of heterogeneity and homogeny).

 

 This'll probably change with revisions to Magic & nature but: 

Now that Urypt has advanced to a civilization, the great number of them devote their faith to gods of the world - Ra, Dau.

And not the underworld (Sace, the Amysis, Ela).

The people (who are probably a lizard race like Sauren?)

of Urypt rise in worship of Ra and Dau, and wish to one day to conquer Death and the underworld.

One among them, a great golden Sauren, wants to lead this war agains the underworld.

They hatch a secret society to hamper the gods, and determine that Ra could be taken down if they study the stars.

And so they become star magicians, studying the stars, looking for the chains that hold them together.

Surprisingly it is Order that now takes a step to help this team. It believes Ra has become too powerful.

And it blesses the leader with great perception, and they learn the likely origin of the first star and Ra's power.

They confess this to Ra and ask them for a share of his power, in order to defeat the underworld. [What happens could be a spot for players to decide]

However, Ra would not attack his family.

He joins hands with Dau, and they bring an immense storm of fire to Urypt.

Those who survive pray deeply to the underworld, and begin a culture of death worshipe (mummification, etc.). 

 

 

MENTAL

 

 

PHYSICAL

 

CONCEPTS FOR  CURRENT/FUTURE FRAMING DEVICES FOR PANTHEON STORIES:

- fiction/whatever anthologies

- A newspaper & its sections

- Trade specific periodicals (maybe an industry has suddenly become fascinated with their connection to the culture of X)

- A TV guide is having an X week, and each show/movie centers around the story of an era

- A published collection of loosely connected things from the same source - like the acme novelty library

- The Collected Works of X (some writer)

- The Canterbury tales (framing it in a large poltical analogy/anthology quest)

- an educational TV show/pamphlet

- The story from someone/thing that never dies, an immortal

*ultimately individual stand alone stories are the path of least resistance at the moment

- an homage to Zaynab, considered the first modern novel of Egypt ? Perhaps each pantheon could be an homage to a great work produced from that real culture?

 

 

Revision of the Magic Era:

Dear Mountain,

 

I find it odd that you don't remember this.

I am almost sure we have had this discussion before.

But okay, if you would like me totell it again,

I don't mind.

 

   ---

 

Chaos was rather jealous back then.

The Void, which has never, in my memory, done

much to anyone especially, was as it has always been,

and Chaos found this initimidating. Or maybe belittling 

is the right word.

Furthermore Chaos had quickly gotten to odds with Order,

as you can imagine.

And so Chaos decided to make some moves.

First they reached into the Void, and created from it

Sace, the goddess of love, which, back then at least,

love was in fact quite a destabilizing thing. A kind of

element of change really.

 

Sace loved Chaos, her Father, but it was the Void 

she found

a deep sympathy for. It is hard to say even now what it is.

Not quite a friendship or a marriage. In some ways 

similar to what we have.

This connection compelled her arms to 

stretch around the Void entirely,

and forever hold it tight to her. 

And though you may doubt me, this is what holds us 

stll close to the void.

It is just a fact, as undetectable as it is, 

that is there.

 

From the bond between Sace and the unknowable expanse

came another god. The first I would consider

relevant to you and I, Kasys, god of the first star.

He's the sun you know. He really is.

 

Kasys was the first light in not just this desert, but at all.

Little Kasys.

Honestly I have no clue his size. 

Gods are so hard to look at. Oh but you wouldn't know.

 

Anyways, with Kasys regained some place for Order, and this

Annoyed, Chaos went again to the Void and pulled from it

the great wrestler of fire, Dau, sister of Sace.

 

Now Dau was made of a fire so intense and everlasting,

that there was not much point in wrestlnig her and 

expecting to win.

Gods will attempt imppossible things anyway, of course.

And they did have some fun in both the chaos and fun of 

testing Dau's limits, and further, when they hadn't the interest,

Dau was a natural instigator, and constantly picking fights.

For every fight between Dau and another, dismay would result.

It is she who brings the sun down from Kasys,

and in the process always spreads something against his light:

storms, disaster, death.

 

And so Chaos was rather pleased with this situation, as you can imagine, and if

Daus was his daughter, Kasys very much became  more of Sace's son

the family divided.

 

It is in this time that chaos became maligned.

Before it was thought of as rather neutral.

But now, what many of us remember still, is this angry god.

But who can say what Chaos really feels? 

It's a mistake to say we can truly understand them.

Still, most of us have yet to forgive Chaos eh?

It's not as if you consider it nearly as valuable as Order.

Anyways. 

 

This situation compelled a cycle.

The light of day would spread Order from Kasys.

And then Dau would bring the sun down, burning so hot

that by the time it reached the below, it was a grat ball of ash.

And this ash we know as the moon, and naturally it began to be 

the symbol for Chaos.