Religion In Proxima (And For Fantasy In General)

One serious complication in setting the tone for any bog-standard fantasy world is the tendency of designers to mix setting elements from the medieval world -- dominated by the Roman Catholic Church and its rivals in the Orthodox and Islamic world -- and polytheistic religious views more suitable to the ancient Greco-Roman world. I think (following JMal and Delta) that this is a potential philosophical defect in the Default Fantasy Setting. Real polytheists shouldn't be creating societies that resemble medieval Europe or its Tolkienesque pastiche. Instead of simply writing out clerics entirely or leaving their religious views undefined, I see some merit in making the implicit Christianity of early gaming a little more explicit -- and making it a source of in-setting philosophical tension. This is easier when the "monotheistic" mace-wielding clerics of D&D have to contend against imported pagans and cultists.

There are three basic schools of thought in fantasy gaming:

1. Muted monotheism: This is some thinly disguised variant of medieval Catholicism, with a muted version of the Abrahamic depiction of god designed to be minimally offensive (aka Crystal Dragon Jesus).
2. Baroque polytheism: The "Forgotten Realms" approach of having lots of deities with highly specialized portfolios, all squabbling with one another in the absence of any apparent ringmaster to keep them in line. If there is a "king of the Gods" around, he's probably an absentee divinity with no real worshipers (see Eru Iluvatar, Lord Ao, etc)
3. Nihilistic apatheism: In most sword and sorcery settings, the gods are not particularly involved the affairs of mortals at all. They exist mostly to give heroes the opportunity to use more colorful curses. Conan's Crom is the archetypical example of a god that might not even exist at all, as far as the setting is concerned. On the other hand, evil cults (and the dark spirits and demons they worship) are quite active in the world. Out of the TSR settings, Dark Sun comes closest to implementing this model.

Since Proxima is a refugee world populated by outsiders who have escaped from calamities in their original worlds, I figure it makes less sense to enforce one of those models to the exclusion of the others. Instead they'll just be forced to coexist alongside one another, with predictably violent results.

I also see some advantages in using existing and easily identifiable gods, like Howard did for Conan's Hyborian age. Tell your players that they're dealing with a cult of <random fantasy name>, and they'll be a lot less impressed than if they're dealing with a cult of Dagon, with all the historical and literary baggage attached to that name.

Religions of Proxima

Civilizations in Proxima were sometimes founded by those escaping from a distant era of antediluvian history (Atlanteans, Hyperboreans, etc), but sometimes also by dwindling populations of demihumans (elves, dwarves, etc) seeking to begin a new life in a different world where their magic would endure rather than fade, or by human explorers who actually navigated into curious vortices like the Bermuda Triangle and couldn't find their way back out, or by dabbling amateur magicians who accidentally transported themselves out of their own worlds. As a result, Proxima has religious traditions dating from a variety of periods in human history.

The Church of Durnovar

The Sea-Kingdom of Durnovar (and the greater coastal empire it has more lately founded) was originally settled by Celtic, Scandanavian, and Icelandic explorers from the early medieval period, some of them military raiders and others wandering pilgrims like St Brendan or St Amaro. With no bishops to sustain a formal Catholic hierarchy, the Church of Durnovar reorganized itself as an autocephalic jurisdiction of the faith, appointed its own patriarch, and declared Durnovar to be a spiritual successor to Rome.

While devotional prayers to various saints continued to produce only minor and questionable miracles of the traditional sort, prayers to angels and archangels began to produce spectacular results. This resulted in serious introspection and refinement of theological views, with a stronger understanding of the idea of angelic authorities exercising authority across multiple worlds. When the first Archbishop of Durnovar (Patriach Brannag) died, he was proclaimed a saint and prayers made to him (and to later saints born after migration to Durnovar) also produced similarly dramatic outcomes.

Raphael

While formally monotheists who worship a single God in the Abrahamic model, most Durnovaric congregations also select a specific patron from the archangels (Gabriel, Michael, Raphael, Uriel, Raguel, Remiel and Sariel) or from their own roster of new saints. Prayers for spiritual welfare or forgiveness from personal sins are typically made directly to God, but prayers for temporal or material welfare are made to the patron. Certain patrons tend to be associated with certain types of miraculous power (and thus with certain character classes): for example, the messenger Gabriel with scholarly ascetics (as Wonderworkers), the warrior Michael with companies of militant war priests (as standard Clerics), the healer Raphael with the hospitals run by nuns at various convents (as Priestesses), the guide Uriel with consecrated orders of holy virgins (who in time of distress will take up arms as Bladedancers), the avenger Raguel with crusader knights (as Paladins), the seer Ramiel with prophets (as Mystics), and the angel of death Sariel with ruthless enforcers (as Assassins). (Custom divine classes would be created by creating a new "saint" to match the associated spell list and special abilities of the class.)

Most Durnovaric communities trend toward Lawful alignment. The various angels (and the consensus implementation of God's purposes that they represent) are often described collectively as Heaven, and many larger Durnovaric armies with mixed forces fight in the name of "Heaven" rather than any specific patron. They grudgingly tolerate (but seek to convert) adherents of the Atlantean or Hyperborean pantheons, regarding them as flawed depictions of the purity and unity of Heaven; they seek only to eradicate the cults of the Boreal Basin.

Exiles of Atlantis

The lost cities of legendary Atlantis lie somewhere beneath the Panthalassic Ocean, but a few survivors were able to escape and relocate to Chukchi or Durnovar, or to found their own small settlements with new local followers (both human and elven). Most Atlanteans are proto-Hellenic polytheists, worshiping various popular deities of the early Greek world. Virtually any Mycenaean deity might be found in a population influenced by Atlantean exiles.

Artemis

As with the patrons of the Durnovaric church, different Atlantean deities are associated with specific types of supernatural gifts. Some examples include: the earth-mover Poseidon responsible for sinking Atlantis with priests commanding the raw elemental forces of nature (as Shamans), the harvest goddess Demeter with village wise women (as Antiquarian Witches), or the goddess of mountains Artemis with sacred virgins trained in hunting and riding (as Bladedancers).

Most Atlanean-influenced communities tend toward Neutral alignment. Atlanteans and their followers respect all Atlantean deities, but see them as having a gently adversarial rivalry with one another. They deny that their deities answer to any single High God, unlike the Church of Durnovar, and regard this as a pleasant but naive fiction that glosses over the moral ambiguity of the struggle between imperfect spiritual forces.

Exiles of Hyperborea

Woden

The Hyperborean cities of Thule and Nerigos were more unified in their defiance of the gods, and few of them still worship any deity at all. Originally the Hyperborean pantheon had a similar organization to the Atlantean one, with different proto-Germanic names for essentially the same gods (i.e., Thunraz/Thor for Ares, or Woden/Odin for Hermes). It might be possible to still find some non-human followers of these deities among dwarves in the mountain strongholds around the perimeter of the Boreal Basin, but otherwise they are mostly forgotten. Instead, the surviving human lords of Hyperborea have set themselves up as new aspiring gods devoted to their own self-interests, creating their own twisted races of followers in addition to enslaving various human populations to use unwillingly in ceremonies.

The ultimate objective of every campaign: Kill Orcus

Some Hyperboreans have made alliances of convenience with various outcasts from Heaven -- corrupted angels who are now classified as devils and demonic princes in the underworld. Typically both partners to such an alliance regard the other as a pawn to be used for a time and then later discarded. The various rulers of the underworld are again associated with specific followers (but drawn from a mixed variety of classes like cthonic witches, warlocks and anti-paladins): the demon-lord Orcus with necromantic cults that raise the dead, the prince of darkness Demogorgon with cults that seek to restore the power of pre-human elder races of reptile-men, and the king of wind-demons Pazuzu who guards and conceals the desert ruins of Nerigos and Thule against discovery.

Hyperborean rulers who have rejected their own gods are typically Chaotic and breed chaotic followers, even though their original pantheon was Neutral. Any remaining worshipers of that pantheon will actively work to oppose the impiety of the Hyperborean lords in the name of those spurned gods.