Question: So were the Vanir basically their own complete pantheon like the Dodekatheon or Amatsukami, and the Aesir just decided to put a flag down in their territory? Could this conceivably happen to other Pantheons?
Yes and no. In Norse mythology, yes, absolutely; the Vanir were another distinct pantheon and the Aesir conquered them, thus gaining their best deities to add to their own ranks and the security of knowing they could never attack them. In history, not so much; while the well-known Vanir (Freya, Freyr, Njord, Nerthus, etc.) were historically worshiped alongside the Aesir, they're not separate discrete pantheons but rather all the gods of the Norse and Germanic religions together, making them a single pantheon that just happens to have a story about once having been something else. Basically, the Vanir and the Aesir are both gods worshiped by the same set of people, often at the same time, and are not separate pantheons in a historical sense, but in mythology, they started as separate pantheons and were fused after the Aesir victory over the Vanir.
The Aesir like to sell their conquest of the Vanir in simple, easy terms, like, "We kicked their asses because they're sissy nature gods!" and "We are the best at battle ever!", but it was not even close to that clear. Both the Vanir and the Aesir fought well in the war against one another and neither side was clearly winning; there are fearsome figures on both sides (the Vanir broke in the walls of Asgard, in fact. It was serious business), and the end result was that they called a truce rather than either side "winning" through sheer brute force. The two sides exchanged hostages (Freyr, Kvasir and Njord went to the Aesir and Hoenir and Mimir went to the Vanir) and declared that they'd be held in trust, so that if one side started getting uppity, the other could threaten the hostages to keep them in line.
Unfortunately, the Aesir did get uppity, and the Vanir ended up killing Mimir as a result, which turned out to be bad for them as the Aesir clearly did not give a damn and now they had that much less bargaining position left. The Aesir win, basically, because they are able to keep the Vanir hostages (joined by Freya, who one assumes must be there to hang out with her Aesir husband) and the Vanir dare not move against them, and therefore the Vanir get to fade quietly into obscurity while the Aesir do whatever they want. For the Vanir, a shitty deal gone wrong; for the Aesir, a pretty sweet setup.
Theoretically, while these sorts of political shenanigans could certainly happen among any of the pantheons, it's highly unlikely that any of them are going to invade one anothers' Overworlds and win a decisive victory that subjugates another entire pantheon. Pantheons are ridiculously powerful conglomerations of ridiculously powerful people, and trying to have a war between them escalates way past nuclear really quickly. Even if somebody eventually won, nobody would win; the collateral damage and insane destruction would make sure of that. And no pantheon operates in a vacuum, and starting such a war would certainly escalate out of control as each pantheon's allied pantheons got in on the action (and those who weren't involved took their own shot at taking over some real estate while everyone else was busy). Most pressingly (at the moment, at least), doing such a thing would be incredibly stupid when the gods need to be focusing all their energy on fighting the Titans rather than each other.
This does not, of course, mean that no pantheon will ever decide to go for it anyway, but there are a lot of hefty deterrents against it, so just as all the nuclear powers of the World don't blow each other up because it's a bad idea for everyone, so most of the pantheons don't declare outright war. It's just bad for business all around.
It depends on how you look at things from a Scion-based perspective vs a Real History perspective, but there are some other places I can see similar things having happened. Not identical to the situation of the Vanir and Aesir, but maybe close.
ReplyDeleteThe Greeks could well have politically absorbed the Roman and Etruscan Pantheons at this point. The same situation repeats with the Teotl and their Toltec and Mayan 'friends'.
How much of such relationships is the Gods being culturally-independent and the same divine figure appearing in different places vs different divine figures being killed or absorbed.. its sticky and murky. Are Mars and Ares two different Gods? Did Ares kill Mars and take over his place? What about Maris, the Etruscan maybe-version? Then there's Quetzalcoatl vs Kukulkan.
Even the Loa have a bit of that going on, though with them it's easier to say there's an actual distinction between, say, Papa Legba and Eshu Elegba.
Were there wars that involved the assimilation of these Pantheons into their modern forms, or did it happen 'naturally' somehow? I think if you wanted to play up the political strife angle, you could easily say that the existing Pantheons have a history of 'absorbing' neighbors. That's kinda what nations do to survive and expand, after all.
Yeah, from an in-game history point of view, you can always play with the idea that smaller/older/less well-known pantheons were absorbed or conquered by larger ones. Since we tend to assume that less well-known often equates to lower Legend, this isn't very surprising; the Etruscans were clearly not rocking the same power level as the Dodekatheon, as we see it.
DeleteOof, distinctions between Loa... a giant series of posts for another day. :\