Well, here's the thing: setting aside the fact that most of those heaps of writing are about trying, and not succeeding, to think of ways to make my world-building different from the default assumptions about Dungeons & Dragons, of all the information on the world that I have come up with... well, none of it matters.
I've been begging people for ages to help me out with this world-building, and they all tell me, world-building arises naturally from the telling of the story. Thing is, I have the story; at least, the first story set in this world. I wrote it. It's been written. It is done. And it takes place in a terrifying empty void instead of a world. Because no matter how much world-building I do, nothing I come up with is anything approaching relevant, none of it could possibly be important to a story... at least not in any way I can figure out. So that's why I started writing these educational shorts about the nature of the world, because even though I know the story from beginning to end, that story does not at any point cross paths with the world it takes place in. And that's unacceptable. This is a fantasy story, the world has to basically be the main character, not a complete nonentity.
So... I'm furious with myself, but for once, it's not because I've lost something. I used to read books by the truckload, now I just stare blankly at pages for hours. I used to be charming and entertaining; now I'm invisible, and even my loved ones only notice me when I'm miserable, at the end of my rope, and literally begging for someone to validate my existence. I used to be a renaissance man, writing hundreds of pages each week, composing songs, drawing the characters. I can still write. These blog posts are, after all, extremely detailed expressions of my thoughts which... seem pretty well-written, I think, maybe even excessively so. And my stories, mm, they need a couple of dots connected, I need help with them for sure, but I still have it in me to come up with a story and construct it fairly well. Music and art, however, are lost to me, the holes drilled into my brain by so many years of depression have taken them away from me forever... a loss that causes me untold pain every day.
But I've always been terrible at worldbuilding, in the exact manner in which I'm struggling with it now. I have a number of speculative fiction stories to my name. I have my world of Christalss, the first high-fantasy setting I created... abandoned it several years ago, but it may make a comeback as a Keys & Kingdoms campaign setting, distinct from Cosmos. I have Iris, my take on the young-adult dystopia genre. I have Mina, my fairy-themed stage play. Like Cosmos, these settings have quite a bit of meat-and-potatoes to them: countries and cultures, species and races, histories, religions, magic systems, historical figures. And just like The Choices and a few other small attempts I've made at telling stories on Cosmos -- at no point in the story of Mina, or the story of Iris, or any of the four or five stories I've written set on Christalss, has any of that world-building ever made its way into the story.
Because the only way I know how to tell a story is with characters; who they are and what they do, and just setting them loose. And I know what you're going to say: to lean into that, to just tell stories with characters. If you were paying attention, I told you I've already done that. The story is told, the characters are amazing, but the setting is nonexistent and that's not okay. A story needs a plot, characters, and a setting; I learned that on the first day of third grade and I assume you did too. Quit trying to wriggle out of helping me with my setting, you said you'd do it.
To sum up: I have a world. I have a story. Both are extremely unfinished and can't be fleshed out by me alone, but more importantly, the two have never met and I can't figure out how to introduce them.
Episode 4: Religion - written by Sage Mann & Archer Slam-Bam
In the early days of conceiving of Keys & Kingdoms, probably around the time I started watching my inspirational Disney collection and took note of the scene in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in which Snow White says her prayers before bed, I started thinking about the religion of Cosmos. The conclusion I came to was that the world should be led by three pantheons: the gods of the Ancient Egyptians, the Ancient Greeks, and the Old Norse.
Soon I discovered that there was a D&D supplement, 3rd Edition's Deities & Demigods, that included a "Fantasy-Historical Pantheons" section with instructions for integrating these exact three pantheons into your campaign (and just those three; they had also wanted to include a section on Celtic deities, but it wasn't in the budget, which, hey, works for me). Not all at once, though; the section was about creating a D&D world ruled over by one of these three pantheons; a world that includes all three of them I had to figure out on my own. Which is good; that's what RPG gamebooks should be for, helping you come up with ideas that are all your own.
Stacy spent a year or so on a commissioned project, drawing all 53 fantasy-historical gods depicted in that book, seen here in family tree form. A key to reading the family tree:
gold border: king of the pantheon
red border: greater god
green border: intermediate god
blue border: lesser god
purple border: demigod
red line: marriage
green line: siblings
blue line: parent and child
Which gods are deemed important enough to make it into the pantheon as anything more than "quasi-deities", and how they relate to each other in terms of power and morality, well, I'm just gonna lift all that straight out of Deities & Demigods and work from there.
Before I start talking about the information given in the "Religion" short film, there's something I have to mention before I forget: one thing I haven't thought of a whole lot is the role of these deities in a world populated by people other than humans. Deities & Demigods contains a few suggestions on the subject, indicating which deities would be worshiped by dwarves, elves, and so on. For instance, in a world ruled by the Greek pantheon, dwarves would probably have a fondness for Hades, due to his connections to wealth and earth, and Hephaestus, for obvious reasons. And, er, that's all I can remember, I'll check that book again, and hopefully, you know, also have some ideas that are actually mine. Percy Jackson is probably a good place to work from, since that series acknowledges that satyrs and centaurs and stuff are people too and have a role in this world of gods and heroes.
When discussing my world-building woes with Christine, she offered a significant contribution: the notion that long ago, dwarves were digging at the foot of Mount Olympus, like ya do, and ended up digging too deep, like ya do, finding themselves in the kingdom of Hades. That of course was an amazing idea, a perfect example of mixing modern high fantasy with classical mythology, and is now absolutely, most definitely, a thing that happened sometime in Cosmos's distant past. But, as we've established, I can't conceive of any situation in any story set on Cosmos that would provide anything resembling a reason to bring it up.
There are a lot of things storytellers do that I can't comprehend, just don't see how they're possible. Incorporating a world's history with the story being told now is one of those things. It just blows me away, because it's beyond the grasp of my mind how people even come up with the idea to do that. But what I do know is that all these things I can't wrap my mind around -- which range from foreshadowing and callbacks to catchphrases and meaningful echoes -- are all absolutely necessary components of a story. That's why I need help.
The Three Pantheons
The short film addresses some misconceptions the audience might have about religion in Cosmos based on their experience with modern-day real-world religion, in which every denomination believes theirs to be the one true religion and everyone else to be doomed to hell. Not a great way to live, I don't recommend it.
So, the gods of the three pantheons are described as "indisputably real as fuck". They are compared first to celebrities, in that no celebrity can sign every autograph or answer every piece of fan mail; likewise, while prayer works and each god can hear every prayer directed at them (and comprehend them all at once thanks to godly brainpower), they can't possibly answer every one even if they wanted to. Then they're compared to political candidates, in that people are encouraged to choose the one whose morals and ideals most closely match their own... and also that no matter which one you pick, you're never gonna find one who's 100% morally upright.
Finally, it's established that the gods have existed for approximately 12,000 years, roughly the lifetime of the universe Cosmos calls home, and therefore had free reign for a good 2,000 years before mortal civilization happened.
The Asgardian Pantheon
The Asgardian pantheon, also called the northern gods, can be found in the heavenly realm of Asgard, reachable by crossing the rainbow bridge in the far northern reaches of the country of Athundoft. It's established that we'll only be talking about the really important gods -- the ones who, on the family trees above, have red or gold borders -- because they have the most impact on everyday life and are most often on the minds of ordinary people.
- Odin: The king of the Aesir. A wanderer, a seeker of knowledge and a purveyor of victory. I included a reference to a rather amusing discovery I've made when promoting Stacy's artwork: evidently there are a whole lot of Odin fanboys out there, who claim there's so much more to Odin than just being the king of the gods that apparently it's somehow inaccurate, or something, to display him alongside Zeus and Re-Horakhti. I still don't get what any of these guys are trying to say. He's the king of the gods. The other two are also kings of the gods. That is a very cool job, you don't need to object that there's more to him than that. I'll accept opinions that Odin is the coolest of the three, maybe even agree, but how does that make me somehow wrong for displaying them all together? Friggin' nerds, man.
- Frigga: One of Odin's wives, presumably his favorite as she's the one who gets to be the queen. Goddess of love and motherhood, but also vicious animal life with cruel shredding claws.
- Thor: A son of Odin (but not Frigga), the most popular god among the common people and an adventurer in his own right. Armed with his mighty hammer and the power of storms, he is a champion of the people and a peacekeeper.
- Loki: A frequent companion to Thor on his adventures, of unknown origin and unknown motivation. Thieves and tricksters pay tribute to him.
- Frey: A member of the Vanir, former enemies of the Aesir who now live alongside them. The most popular of the Vanir due to his association with agriculture and the harvest, which are, you know, kind of a big deal.
The Pharaonic Pantheon
Also called the southern gods, this pantheon can be found in the northern reaches of the sprawling empire of Akhmis. Near the mouth of the largest river in the world stands a great pyramid, and beneath it is the entrance to an underworld, the Offering Fields, where these gods dwell.
- Re-Horakhti: The current leader of the pantheon and god of the sun; once called Horus, he ascended to his current form when his ancestor, Ra, retired to seek true perfect enlightenment far from the mortal world. The pharaoh of Akhmis is crowned in Re-Horakhti's name.
- Osiris: Father to Re-Horakhti, the undead god of nature and life, who supervises the Offering Fields and the lands of the dead just as his son oversees the southern lands.
- Isis: Sister-wife to Osiris and mother to Re-Horakhti, with dominion over fertility and marriage (kind of a common job title for those who are queens of their pantheon, ain't it?), as well as magic. Hot but crazy.
- Set: Brother to Osiris and Isis, the god of darkness and one of the most powerful forces for evil in the world. He unleashes sandstorms and pestilence across southern lands, and his cults are a constant, global force of corruption and temptation.
The Olympian Pantheon
The eastern gods, who live atop Mount Olympus, a supernaturally tall mountain in the dead center of the island kingdom of Magnae.
- Zeus: God of the sky, king of the pantheon, and leader of the twelve Olympians. Rules in the style of a stern, distant father... and in fact is a literal father to many people in the east. Legendary for his amorous encounters with all sorts of women, an ever-expanding roster of godlings, monsters, and exceptional mortals are his children.
- Poseidon: Zeus's brother, who lives in his undersea palace but sits at Zeus's right hand at meetings of the Olympian council. Poseidon reflects all aspects of the sea, sometimes being peaceful, bountiful, and full of life, other times full of destruction and death.
- Hades: The elder brother of Zeus and Poseidon. He keeps to himself and does not sit on the Olympian council, living beneath Mount Olympus instead of upon it... I put the underworld directly beneath Olympus. Instead of... where was it in the myths, I want to say you got there by sailing out of the Mediterranean, and then instead of the Atlantic you end up in Hades? Or did I make that up? Anyway, Hades (the guy, not the place) has dominion over earth, death, and wealth... which I just kinda like reiterating. Lots of "eath" words.
- Hera: Sister-wife of Zeus (I give points to the Norse gods here for nobody being married to their sister), seated at his left hand, the goddess of marriage and political intrigue. A jealous goddess, ever seeking to regain her former prominence in the pantheon.
- Athena: Seated at Hera's left, the favored daughter of Zeus, with a rather inexplicable origin. The goddess of civilization, who favors mortals with her inventions, creations, and strategic wisdom, making her largely responsible for the advancement of Magnae in particular and the east in general.
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