Friday, April 27, 2012

Kings in Obscurity

Question: How exactly do the gods feel about monotheism pretty much wiping out their worship? (I say monotheism because the Jews were the ones who wiped out the Elohim's people, the Christians pretty much everyone else and Islam Arab paganism.)

I'd say there's no hard-and-fast rule; it probably depends on individual gods and their feelings rather than there being any broad answer. With the exception of people like the Aztlanti who get direct power from their faithful followers, worship doesn't actually grant any particularly special perks to gods, so some of them (particularly those that were never all that big on humanity in the first place) may not really care. So what if humans don't believe in them? Doesn't mean they don't exist, or that whatever silly monotheistic god they've invented does. I doubt figures like the Morrigan or Loki are very worried about the fact that nobody believes in him anymore; it's not like they were doing much for them when they did.

The more prideful among the gods, however, may be cranky that they're no longer renowned and beloved the world over; after all, they're great and everybody used to acknowledge that they were great, so for some of them it may be pretty galling to watch humanity blithely ignoring, disbelieving or misrepresenting them, especially if the monotheism that most humans adhere to instead is being run as a purely human religion or a construct of a Titan. People like Osiris, Zeus or Amaterasu probably feel it's their due to be worshiped and adored, so the prevalence of monotheism is possibly a sore spot for them.

Of course, the gods intentionally withdrew from the World to avoid the looming spectre of Fatebonds, so it's likely that for most of them this is not a surprise. If you stop hanging out impressing people with your divinity, it stands to reason that they will stop being impressed, and even eventually forget or disbelieve that you ever existed. It also stands to reason that they might invent something to fill that religious gap in their lives. Some gods may have been surprised, assuming that keeping all the gods out of the World would have prevented humanity from worshiping anything, but others, especially the smarter ones, had to have seen that coming.

Of course, some religions are still strong; there's probably not too much reason for the Devas or Celestial Bureaucracy to get all bent out of shape over monotheism (they seem to have taken even Buddhism in stride, after all!). I'd probably generally assume that cultures that experienced gradual assimilation like the Greeks are a little less cranky over the whole business than ones that went up in smoke overnight like the Incas, but again it'd really depend on the god in question and how much they care about whether or not humanity pays them lip service.

The Aztlanti are probably pretty peeved, though - as a pantheon that actually gets tangible power from their religion, losing hundreds of thousands of humans sacrificing to them had to be quite a blow.

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