Question: With the Nemetondevos, how much information about them is still available in the world? Is your write-up about their temperament and powers backed up by actual facts? Or are you just kinda making things up for them?
Well, first of all, we are not making anything up. We try not to do that. But the Nemetondevos stuff on this site is under the “inactive pantheons” cut on its page for a reason, and that’s because the supplement detailing them is for the most part scraped together with a butter knife and filled in with cement.
There is information left about the Nemetondevos, but there isn’t very much. Several of them are clearly cognate deities with Irish or Welsh gods of other pantheons (especially the smith god Gobnhios, who is clearly borrowed from the Tuatha Goibhniu), while others gained Roman cults among the conquering armies of Caesar (the most famous of these is the horse goddess Epona, who became the patron of the Roman cavalry). But for those who are purely continental Celts, there is very little to go on; their peoples were pre-literate and therefore did not write down any stories, the majority of their worship centers were open-air and made from natural materials which means they fell apart over time, and the conquest of Rome replaced a great deal of indigenous belief with transplanted mythic ideas from the Roman pantheon. For many Gaulish gods, we know only vague associations, such as the fact that Belenos’ name comes from a root meaning “light” and therefore he’s probably a sun god, or the fact that Borvo’s shrines are almost always located near springs and therefore he’s probably a god of water. For others, we know only their names.
In Scion’s framework, the Nemetonevos are probably, as a majority, not Legend 12, and so while we have used them in our games occasionally, they are no longer on our major rosters and will probably be dispersed to appropriate places later on. A few of them do make the cut, with Cernunnos probably the most famous, but in general most of what you see on them came from the Biblioteque Interdite supplement and was invented for Scion, so it has only a little grounding in what the ancient Gauls themselves might have believed.
Yeah, it wasn't long after I posted this question that I started exploring all your older blogs, and I learned that the Nemetondevos information on the site is pretty much just copy-pasted from the French pdf that I've never been able to download.
ReplyDeleteStill, I do find the idea of a formerly conquered Pantheon with an axe to grind with one of the big boys kind of intriguing. I really hope either you guys or the 2nd Edition crew might consider exploring the concept of one Pantheon conquering another. The World at War chapter of Companion was HORRIBLE, but it DID present some interesting ideas as far as inter-Pantheon warfare goes.
.....And it just suddenly dawned on me that you guys ARE on the 2nd Edition crew, aren't you?
DeleteA scenario of The Nemontedevos that wants to use the player characters to gain cult following again, and thereby rise to what they used to be could be very intriguing too!
Deleteand yeah, they're at least associated with it somehow, though its even more secretive than even the secret project!
that was one more even than i planned for... well, memo to self: when you read your own message, do actually use your eyes :P
DeleteTo me, the Nemetondevos illustrate one of the pitfalls of trying to "make up" historical pantheons. Was there a specific pantheon of gods we could call Gaulish. Yup. Different enough that we can't lump them in with the Tuatha (and whatever you want to call the Welsh gods, so long as you don't call them the Mabinogi ), like we lump the Roman and Greek gods into the Theoi? Almost certainly. Can we put that pantheon into Scion in the same way as the Teotl, the Theoi, the Inue, etc. Nope. There are a lot of cultures out there that just don't have the information recorded to do more than "make up" the pantheon from whatever archaeological and folkloric remnants might remain... The Anasazi leap to mind, but there are many, many more. So either you have to glue together what you do have with spit, baling wire and whole lot of filler (mostly filler) or you have to leave them be... as something else.
DeleteSince the worship of mortals is incidental and non-vital to the pantheons in Scion, there shouldn't be any "dead pantheons" per se. (Unless they got offed by Titans or other pantheons or something.) All those unrecoverable pantheons should be out there in their own Overworlds, etc. In which case, I guess the Nemetondevos represent about the best case scenario for what you can do to represent them. (As opposed to the Atlantean pantheon, which is entirely fictional with no archaeological basis - they were probably Minoan/Mycenaen, and, no folkloric basis, since the Atlantis myths are pretty definite on it being Theoi & Theoi associates who were the gods there).
Personally, where possible, I have usually handled them as the extant remains of some sort of mythical race instead of a pantheon. Something like the alfar or giants (jotuns and others). So the Anasazi weren't a human culture with gods of their own. They were a supernatural race that was associated with the pantheons of the area. (It worked out nicely, especially since a lot of the legends and myths of the area treated the Anasazi EXACTLY like that).
Not sure how to work the Nemetondevos in the same way (except maybe as something elf-like or the Vanir or something) without puttering around and looking into it.
in an earlier post/comment you said that polytheists often imposed their religions on each other. While this is the case during Roman conquest, Is it purely religiously motivated, or is it more political and economic, imposing the cult of the emperor to make it easier to rule the conquered people and extract tiths and taxes from them?
ReplyDeleteReal life is complicated....so could be all of the above? Its hard to know peoples intentions from history. And some people had different intentions then others in the same movement.
DeleteHellenistic (Greco-Roman) theology more or less specifically states that their gods are the only gods, and if they encounter another pantheon, they automatically assume it's their own gods worshipped under different names. (Incidentally, this is also why the early Christians were blamed as atheists by their Hellenistic neighbours - "They claim our gods are false, how can they be anything else?") Hence why the Greek and Roman pantheons are so similar - they sort of merged over time into the same pantheon, as Roman figures borrowed qualities from their Greek counterparts.
DeleteSo whenever the Romans encountered another culture (and they were just as adept at handling culture clashes as they were quelling rebellious barbarians), they dealt with native cults by associating the native gods and godesses with their own, which created hybrid divinities that gradually lost their uniquely native features, turning into the Roman god in question. Rarely, like in the case of Epona, Isis or Mithra, a native god or goddess would find a following along a subset of society (usually the legions), and give rise to mystery cults.
And then you had the emperor cult as an extra layer, which served to promote Roman law, culture, taxation etc. (i.e. primarily social in function).
Followers of Mithras were never condemned as atheists despite being essentially monotheist, how do you explain that discrepancy?
DeleteI don't know how I feel about moving Epona and Cernunnos to other pantheons, with what little we know about the Gauls we do know the two of them were very important to their culture and moving them to other cultures doesn't feel right to me. And I really understand the others not being legend 12 because there legends obviously haven't survived the test of time, but I still like having them around. I'm sure I'll end up liking what you guys decide to do.anyway though, I almost always do :)
ReplyDeleteWe obviously haven't made and firm decisions yet. :)
DeleteYou have talked earlier about having a specific page for "obviously Legend 12 Gods without enough peers to warrant an entire pantheon". Cernunnos and Anansi were both specifically mentioned, I believe. So, with any luck we might see it on the polls someday.
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