From: [M--O] at [infoboard.be] (mathew lowry)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.advocacy
Subject: FE IIB. Magical Forms +  Pantheon (LONG)
Date: Sun, 28 May 1995 13:46:31
Summary: Magic forms + pantheon for Fantasy Europe

Fantasy Europe: IIB. Magical Forms and The Pantheon

PREFACE
This posting follows on from my previous one (Fantasy Europe: IIA. Introduction to 
Magic). It explores what Forms of Magic could be put into a Fantasy Europe Campaign 
and what possible Pantheons that could fit in the gods of the Ancient world (Egypt, 
Greece, etc), the Christian God and Devil, and Allah.

MAGIC FORMS

What types of magic could be introduced into a Fantasy Europe campaign? In a 
sentence, how about Sorcery, Pagan Magic and Faith Magic (i.e., all monothesitic 
religions). Does my RQ heritage show through a little here? Well, are there any others? 
If so, add them to the picture. Here are these three in very brief summary:

1. Pagan Magic

- this is the magic of the native peoples, local spirits, shamans, druids and barbarians. 
This does not just mean the Celts - it also means the faeries they believe in and which, 
in Fantasy Europe, definitely exist (see III. Non-Humans).
- this style of magic will often be intensely bound up in the local environment and its 
spirits. After death the pagans spirits return to the local nature in some way, depending 
upon belief. They recognise no God as Superior to the rest. Whether they are right a\or 
not depends on your Pantheon (see below)
- the nomadic barbarians (Goths, Vandals, etc) were certainly not Christians, and I 
don't see them as sorcerers. Perhaps they worshipped the Spirits from their homeland 
which they 'carried ' with them in totems, idols, etc.

2. Sorcery

- The mechanics are up to your system, but this is the stuff of alchemy, grand rituals, 
chaps in evening gowns ("OK, OK, it's a robe ..."). 
- I personally see Sorcerers as the closest to what we would call scientists today - 
intellectual, studied, the product of advanced civilisation. Then you can play out the 'ole 
science vs faith, humanity vs science, 'Two Cultures' and other debates to your heart's 
content.

3. Faith Magic

I originally wanted D&D-style clerics or RQ Rune Priests and Lords heading the 
congregations, directing the power from God. I soon realised that once the God starts 
dispensing magic like that it obviates the need for Faith. The God-Human relationship 
would become a deal for power, not worship; fraudulent priests would be exposed 
straight away; church corruption could not exist ... this would change the course of 
European history and culture utterly. Besides, I like having fraudulent priests ...

Therefore God exists, but does not buy Believers with magic. There are some rewards 
on this Earth for the Faithful, but most are promised for the afterlife. 

But there has to be *some* sort of magic. Any good FRPer wants some, and anyway it 
is hard to see how the Church would have won converts without it, given that the pagan 
and the sorcerers had magic... There should be saints, miracles and angels, and 
Believers should have some magical powers as a result of their Faith (measured using 
'Piety points', or something like that?) 

Before any details can be worked out, however, several questions needed to be 
answered regarding God, the Devil and other Spirits - in a word, how does your 
Pantheon work? Hence the next section.

THE PANTHEON

The Church as an institution plays a central role in Europe, and hence Fantasy Europe. 
Working out the nature of God, the Devil and any other Spiritual Beings - particularly 
the Ancient Gods and Allah - is therefore vital. The first question the GM has to 
answer (but not necessarily share with the players) is fundamental:

Q1: Is God the only god? Are Allah, all the local woodland spirits and the gods of 
Egypt/Mesopatamia/ Greece etc all illusions? 

 To create a starting point for further discussion I'm going to provide *an* (not *the*) 
answer to this question, see what new questions arise as a consequence, and try to 
answer them and stay consistent. The motives lying behind my choices are:
1) I want a God and Devil as similar as possible to the Beings that the Mediaevals 
believed in, making it easy to keep in line with European culture and history. 
2) I want the relative powers/influences of Christianity, Islam, Pagan magic and sorcery 
to be roughly in line with European history. Essentially, this means that sorcery and 
pagan magic slowly fade away against the onslaught of Christianity, which is only 
resisted successully by Islam.
3) I want to allow as much flexibility as possible.

Other answers are *welcome and sought* - I'd be fascinated to see other people explore 
other possibilities. Here goes:

GOD
- The Earth was created just as in Genesis, by God, the Universe's Creator. 
- God lives in Heaven, surrounded by angels and saints. All Christian souls go to 
Heaven (St Peter bars the Pearly Gates to everyone else).  Heaven is an impenetrable 
fortress at the 'summit' of the Spirit World. 
-  Angels could be Spirits (see below) which have converted to Christianity, or they 
were created by God as part of His Court or Family. I'd lean towards the latter, and 
then also have Spirits who have converted to Christianity
- Saints are humans who are so devout they became powerfully magical and joined the 
Angels after death. Like all Christian souls, angels and saints reside in Heaven, but are 
on 'active service' for God, working in the world.
- Christians are not perfect, just forgiven, so Christians can still do Bad Things. As 
long as they Believe and love God, God loves them. However only believers with 
real piety, who follow the tenets of the Faith, can expect anything more.


THE DEVIL
- the Devil is a fallen Angel who tempted Adam and Eve from Eden. he is the 
distillation, if not the cause, of all the Evil of the world, and is the sworn enemy of God 
and the Church, converting people to the Dark Side of their soul with his Evil Powers. 
he does his best to block the onward progress of the Church because he's in direct 
competition for their immortal souls. 
- he has his minions - demons, sprites etc (what's the demonic version of a saint?). 
They all hang out in Hell - the place with the toasting forks, not the town in Norway. 
On Earth, his followers are known as Diabolists, they receive powers from the Devil 
just as Christians do from God. 

FOLK SPIRITS
- there are neutral Spirits (big S), the Local Spirits who are worshipped by the Pagans 
and/or do bargains with sorcerers. Some Spirits may be nasty, some nice, most both 
and difficult to understand, but they're not Diabolic. Maybe Spirits don't understand the 
distinction between good and evil, and when they look at the struggle between God and 
the Devil all they say is 'A Curse Upon Both Your Houses'. However, maybe some 
Spirits could be Converted to Christianity, others to Diabolism...
- then there are 'Monsters' - basically magical creatures. Bears are not monsters, they're 
just dangerous creatures. A fire-breathing dragon, however, is inherently magical. Most 
monsters could be like the Spirits - inherently neutral - but some could truly be Godly 
(e.g., Unicorns), and others Diabolic (uuuh ..., Balrog?)

Well and good, but these answers leave us with more questions: 

Q2. Where did the Folk Spirits come from? 

Perhaps they are the results of leftover magic, spinning off and coalescing from the 
Magical Event of Creation. Perhaps they are in fact the creation of pagan peoples, who 
willed them into creation before discovering the One True God (ie they were 
Converted). Any other ideas? Don't forget, some Folk Spirits are supposed to be 
immortal - but you could stretch that by making them just very long-lived.

Q3. What about the Ancient Gods and Allah? 
- There's not much chance that the Egyptian or Greek civilisations would have 
succeeded to the extent they did if Ra, Osiris, Zeus and Aphrodite were complete 
illusions! They're also pretty powerful for Folk Spirits, even if they did fade away...
- Equally, it strains credibility to call Allah, the God of such a sophisticated and 
successful civilisation, a 'local Spirit'. Even more so, because Islam, unlike the worship 
of Zeus, did not and has not faded away.

The Church's answer to all of these questions would be simple: All non-Christian forms 
of magic - Folk Spirits, the Muslims, even members of other Christian sects - are all 
Diabolic, the work of the Devil, and must be crushed (and would be if we were all 
more Christian). This is reasonably historically accurate. 

But is it true? Is that what I'd want as a GM? No thanks! Having the Church wrong 
about the Folk and sorcerers is an excellent plot device, and making everything non-
Christian automatically Diabolic cuts out too many grey areas. 

What we need is a Pantheon that explains why God is Supreme in Europe and Allah in 
North Africa, while permitting the Egyptians of the Middle Kingdom to gain magic 
from Ra and Athenians from Zeus. 

One answer is to postulate that all Spirits gain in power as people believe in them. 
Worship, sacrifice etc all boost a Spirit's power. Thus the occasional snowball gets 
rolling as a tribe wins a few battles, converts the captured, boosting their god further 
which helps them to win more battles, etc. There can be groups of Spirits, all related in 
some way in the Spirit World. These groups form polythesitic pantheons, sharing the 
power around. Allah, however, did it all on his own.

Thus God is still the True God, but other gods can spring up if the people stray from 
the True Path. God lets people stray in this way because they have to find Him - He's 
not going to buy their Belief with a miracle every Sunday.

Or, one could say that the whole lot - God, the other gods and Spirits - reached their 
status in this way. In this picture, all the gods (Greek, Christian, Allah) were born with 
the Earth and were boosted to their station by human belief alone. But that's another 
Pantheon entirely....the classical gods fade away simply because people lose belief in 
them, being converted to Christianity. Then you'd have to explain why. 

Any thoughts, other answers, impressions and suggestions ...? The next posting 
continues on the above line of thought, asking more detailed questions about this 
approach to the Pantheon and the Church, as well as exploring some 
alternatives.