Hi all!
I wanted to talk a little bit about some work I did in the past on a game setting called A Deadly Affair. It was a game run by my husband +John Sheldon, originally in a modified D&D 3.5 system, then later a modified Pathfinder system. One of the biggest elements of the game was that players were able to build parts of the setting – species, religions, cultures, historical events. It was really cool! I got to be really involved in setting creation and John allowed me to build one of the religions for the game.
The religion was called the Nord. You can read some about it on the Deadly Affair wiki page on Obsidian Portal. In the religion, there are five gods. “Norric the cruel god of ice and cold, Eitne the chaotic god of the winds and herald of change, Shima the benevolent lord of the earth representing growth and life, Raer the demanding deity of fire and warmth, and the Unnamed – a treacherous god of magic, spirits, and deceit.”
I spent a long time while I was growing up reading myths and legends about Norse and Greek polytheistic religions. I was a huge fan of them. This is part of why I wanted to create a religion specifically for A Deadly Affair.
One of the first things I did was determine whether I wanted to do a polytheistic religion, or stick with a single god, or something different. I was most familiar with the myths of polytheistic religions, so I picked that. I then wanted to pull from something recognizable to begin the definitions of the gods, and I picked a compass. Norric was the North, Raer the South, Shima the West, the Unnamed the East, and Eitne as the center, ever changing.
Once I had that down, I spent a lot of time on my own just thinking about it. I wish I’d taken the time to write down everything I thought of. Hindsight, you know? If I had written it down, though, there would have been a lot about the behaviors of the gods, the rituals of the priests, and the habits of the followers. There would have been descriptions of the avatars of the gods, and of the symbols carried by the followers.
I guess, I regret not writing them down. And I’m hoping to play the game again, so maybe I can get my stuff together and write down some new information to put in the Wiki, or on here. I hope that people enjoy whatever I choose to share when the time comes.
<3