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 | Vorubec | Jhesiri | Kouzelnik |
| Air | 00 | 10 | |
| Animal | 1000 | 0 | |
| Artifice | |||
| Chaos | 000 | 10 | |
| Charm | |||
| Community | 0 | 0 | 10 |
| Darkness | 100 | 0 | |
| Death | 00 | 10 | |
| Destruction | 100000 | ||
| Earth | 100 | 0 | |
| Evil | 10 | 000 | |
| Fire | 0 | 100 | |
| Glory | |||
| Good | |||
| Healing | |||
| Knowledge | 0 | 100 | |
| Law | 0 | 100 | |
| Liberation | |||
| Luck | 1000 | 0 | |
| Madness | 10000 | ||
| Magic | 000 | 100 | |
| Nobility | |||
| Plant | |||
| Protection | |||
| Repose | |||
| Rune | 10 | 0 | 00 |
| Strength | 10 | 00 | |
| Sun | |||
| Travel | 100 | 00 | |
| Trickery | 10 | 00 | |
| War | 00 | 100 | |
| Water | 10 | 0 | 0 |
| Weather | 0 | 10 | 0 |
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.
Looking at the goblin pantheon, there is much less consistency between the subpantheons. Much to my surprise, the three subpantheons all have deities with the Community, Rune, Water, and Weather domains. If the three subpantheons share a plane, there should be trappings for each of these common, if mildly presented.
The vorubec are insular and the least nomadic goblins, and somehow have the ‘least Community’. Their strongest domains are Animal and Luck, with Chaos, Darkness, Earth, and Magic fairly close. The Kouzelnik deities have slightly more Magic, but I didn’t expect the Vorubec to have this much. I picture the plane being closely forested hills, full of uncanny weather and shrouded in shadow and mist.
The jhesiri are more like stereotypical goblins, ravaging the land as best their little bodies allow… which is actually pretty effectively. Their deities have domains focused on Destruction (all the deities of destruction; no other goblin deity has this domain), with Fire, Travel, and War at lower levels. The jhesiri maraud the countryside tearing things up. I picture their deities’ plane as being hot and dry, with the shattered ruins of former civilizations.
The kouzelnik are the mad goblins, torn by conflicting dichotomies. Doomed to wander in search of something they cannot identify, their deities have the Madness domain most strongly (all the goblin deities with the Madness domain are part of this subpantheon), with Knowledge, Law, and Magic next, and Evil right behind it. Goblin deities with Knowledge, Law, and lots of Magic, it’s not surprising they’re mad. Their plane is probably pretty hellish — not full of fire perhaps, but teeming with purveyors of forbidden lore, screams of the tormented, and so on.
Unlike the Shu-shi pantheon’s plane, I’m not entirely certain the goblin deities share a single plane. There is some mild consistency between them, but unlike the Shu-shi there is little coherence to their cultures. The cultures share common background, and I don’t doubt they interact, but I’m not convinced they’re close enough that their deities would share a plane. I think I’m going to consider them three separate planes. They might interact somehow, but… actually, what if the planes are completely separated, and the subpantheons of the different tribes have to interact through mortal intermediaries? I think there might be a good path here.