Planar-Pantheon Analysis: Elemental Tetratheon

I’ll be writing up some sample planes for Planar Trappings, to show how it fits together. (In draft) I’m expanding the list of traits so it includes the core domains (which include alignments and elements, as well as major societal abstractions).

This both expanded the sorts of traits available (which is handy to me) and gave me an immediate source of planar ideas. If the nature of a deity affects the plane the god lives on, and there is high congruency between deific domains and planar traits, it seems evident that the home of a pantheon can be determined at a high level by the domains assigned to the deities of the pantheon.

	Subpantheon
Domain	Air	Fire	Earth	Water
Air	1000
Animal		0	1000
Artifice		100	0
Chaos	0	0		0
Charm
Community			100	0
Darkness	0			1000
Death	1000	0
Destruction			1000	0
Earth			1000
Evil	0		0	0
Fire		1000
Glory		0		100
Good		0	0	0
Healing	0	100
Knowledge		1000	0
Law	0	0	0
Liberation	1000			0
Luck		100		0
Madness	1000		0
Magic	100	0
Nobility	0	1000
Plant	0		1000
Protection			0	1000
Repose	100		0
Rune		0	100
Strength	0		100
Sun		1000		0
Travel	100			0
Trickery		0		1000
War			0	100
Water				1000
Weather	0			100

I’ve started an analysis to see how good or bad this idea is. I created a spreadsheet with all the domains listed and marked correspondence between the domains and the pantheon. ‘1’ indicates that a deity exists in the pantheon having the domain as a primary domain, ‘0’ indicates that a deity exists in the pantheon with the domain as a second domain.

Last one for today, I’m looking at the elemental tetratheon. Four subpantheons oriented around the hermetic elements, the sets are largely disjoint with some small overlap between them. Let’s see what they look like, though.

The air subpantheon, once worshiped by the Ostechen before the deadly wind swept their land, has Air, Death, Liberation, and Madness as their greatest domains, and Magic, Repose, and Travel as lesser domains. There are no good deities in this subpantheon. I imagine the deities’ plane is largely barren, full of abandoned settlements, wind that howls with the sounds of madness, and the few inhabitants constantly wandering, seeking salvation.

The fire subpantheon, worshiped by the Sretan, are literally much brighter. The deities’ primary domains are Fire, Knowledge, Nobility, and Sun. Their lesser domains are Artifice, Healing, and Luck. There are no evil deities in this subpantheon. It seems likely that the mortal culture is much like ancient Greece and Rome, a building and bustling civilization full of enlightenment. This will be reflected in the deities’ home plane, with idyllic terrain, wondrous engineering and architecture, and many philosophers and artisans among the ruling deities.

The earth subpantheon, who currently are patrons of the Kamen, are somewhere between the two. The subpantheon’s primary domains are Earth, Animal, Destruction, and Plant. The secondary domains are Community, Rune, and Strength. The subpantheon has no chaotic deities, but is largely and coldly impartial to the plight of mortals, watching civilizations rise and fall in time. The deities’ plane is well-grown with forests and wild animals, and full of the ruins of settlements overgrown and lost.

The water subpantheon is worshiped by the Moreplovas, a seafaring society who lives near, at, and on the ocean. The subpantheon’s primary domains are Water, Darkness, Protection, and Trickery. The secondary domains are Glory, War, and Weather. There are no lawful deities in this subpantheon. The Moreplovas culture is full of acts of derring-do, of buccaneers and pirates and privateers, of wild and risky plots and plans. The deities’ plane is largely water, with various groupings of islands where ‘permanent’ settlements can be found of inhabitants of all types… and not all settlements are on islands. Some float about the surface of the infinite ocean, some are deep beneath the waves. All interact in a wild roil of activity.

I think I could make this work on a single major plane, with four subregions of different nature. I’m not sure that’s how I want to do it, though, if only because it is unclear how they interact along their borders, or what might be between them. I think I’ll treat them as four distinct planes, perhaps even as replacements for the common elemental planes, but with connections between each pair of planes.

In each subpantheon there are three deities, each with one of the major domains of a different neighboring subpantheon. These deities, or the demenses, might be the major links between the subpantheons. I will explore this idea in another post tomorrow.