Wednesday, April 18, 2012

The Eye

Question: Do you guys have Wadjet in your Egyptian lineup? Or is she not considered a high enough god to rank?

Question from the fabulous Aynie! We actually did consider Wadjet and her sister goddess Nekhbet when we were digging around for Egyptian deities that ought to be included, though we ended up not adding them to the playable roster (Hathor, Nephthys and Sekhmet made the cut, though!). While they're both very cool and certainly had important roles, we couldn't find a single concrete myth about either other than the poisoning of Ra (which, depending on the version, may or may not have been a bite from Wadjet or some other snake). Bastet and Sekhmet were stealing pretty much all the Eye of Ra thunder, and Wadjet and Nekhbet seemed to have more symbolic roles in the pantheon than active ones (albeit very important symbolic roles). In the end, we decided that they were probably Legend 11 - massive importance and symbolism, but not doing anything to give them that final push over the horizon, especially as they faded to give prominence to deities like Bastet and Sekhmet or Horus and Set.

However, I do think they're pretty excellent go-to characters for cool things in Egyptian-flavored stories - the green cobra and the white vulture have loads of cool symbolism attached, plus you could get some interesting stories if you assume that Wadjet was the perpetrator of Ra's downfall (what a thing to have on your resume!).

A little off-topic, but the parade of Eyes of Ra - which includes Hathor, Bastet, Sekhmet, Wadjet, Menhit, Tefnut, and a pile more goddesses, usually leonine and violently bent on doing whatever Ra wants - is one of my favorite cool things about Egyptian myth. As each Eye of Ra calms down and becomes a goddess proper, we consider Ra to just create a new one to do his bidding, which leads to a sort of neverending goddess role fulfilled by a bunch of different people. It's a lot of fun, especially when PCs get involved (quite a few Egyptian mortals are currently convinced that Eztli, who rolled through the country and murdered a good percentage of its population of Apep-spawn, must be the current Eye and are busily trying to avoid or placate her).

2 comments:

  1. I figured you had her ranked as a Legend 9-11 goddess but was still curious. The question came up as I was looking for Oracles to send the players too and she had one dedicated to her in Buto.

    As for the Eye of Ra theory, I really like that! It's a pretty nifty way to include the PCs into the whole shebang without detracting from the other goddesses. Hey, maybe the older Eyes mentor the new ones as time passes and that's why they settle into roles and there's need for yet another Eye of Ra /rambles off incoherently

    ReplyDelete