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Worldbuilding Project : Day Eleven - Focus In
Once again the quoted text comes from 30 Days of World-Building by Stephanie Bryant.
Day Eleven - Focus In
I'm going to use today to talk about the religions of the two regions I'm dealing with in this project. It probably needs to be said that the Gods of this world are a spec element in that they manifest often enough that atheism would require being in denial. On earth the Romans thought that any foreign god was just one of their gods with a different name (the Celtic Sulis was Minerva for example) if they'd have lived here they'd have been right. This means the gods with similar purviews in north-west and desert are the same. What humans think of them varies a lot though.
1. The North-West
The North-Western religions both believe in a single creator and a group of subsidary deities. Some of these deities were created for their purviews. Others like the gods of medicine and science were elevated to that role having been human once. The primary difference between them is how they honour the subsidary gods. The Northern religion requests aid directly from the gods while the Southern varient asks the creator to send the gods to help them.
2. The Desert
The Desert people are aware of the creator but view him/her as aloof and direct all their worship to the lesser deities.
The Walashe are sun worshippers who detest the great moon as father of the moon-beasts who regularly attack them and who they have an age long rivalry with. The worship the moon but only in terrified placatory way.
The Ilashe are moon worshippers (of the great moon) due their dependence on the tides and because she (the moon deity manifests to the Ilashe in female form - all the Gods have two forms one male one female) was the one who taught them to survive and thrive in their harsh enviroment when the sun seemed bent on killing them (sun, hot desert do the maths on why they don't like the sun). They treat the sun in much the same way the Walashe treat the great moon.
The Sanashe don't especially fear either the Sun or Moon but they do fear their neighbours. They honour both but prefer a practical religion that deals with the god of desert and oasis. They dance a precarious dance between their settled neighbours managing to avoid offending either while playing on their differences to make them focus on each other.
That's it for today.
Once again the quoted text comes from 30 Days of World-Building by Stephanie Bryant.
Day Eleven - Focus In
Today's exercise is to expand on one area of the culture you've created for your world. We have a bare-bones timeline, the bare-bones elements of a language, the bare-bones of an economic and political scene. Today, select one of these areas to flesh out. If you're writing a novel with a more political plotline, flesh out the politics and economics. If you're writing something really "alien" in feel, or if you're writing high fantasy, flesh out the languages. If you're writing a story whose plot hinges on the past, fill in your timeline (probably not needed if this novel is a sequel, though).
I'm going to use today to talk about the religions of the two regions I'm dealing with in this project. It probably needs to be said that the Gods of this world are a spec element in that they manifest often enough that atheism would require being in denial. On earth the Romans thought that any foreign god was just one of their gods with a different name (the Celtic Sulis was Minerva for example) if they'd have lived here they'd have been right. This means the gods with similar purviews in north-west and desert are the same. What humans think of them varies a lot though.
1. The North-West
The North-Western religions both believe in a single creator and a group of subsidary deities. Some of these deities were created for their purviews. Others like the gods of medicine and science were elevated to that role having been human once. The primary difference between them is how they honour the subsidary gods. The Northern religion requests aid directly from the gods while the Southern varient asks the creator to send the gods to help them.
2. The Desert
The Desert people are aware of the creator but view him/her as aloof and direct all their worship to the lesser deities.
The Walashe are sun worshippers who detest the great moon as father of the moon-beasts who regularly attack them and who they have an age long rivalry with. The worship the moon but only in terrified placatory way.
The Ilashe are moon worshippers (of the great moon) due their dependence on the tides and because she (the moon deity manifests to the Ilashe in female form - all the Gods have two forms one male one female) was the one who taught them to survive and thrive in their harsh enviroment when the sun seemed bent on killing them (sun, hot desert do the maths on why they don't like the sun). They treat the sun in much the same way the Walashe treat the great moon.
The Sanashe don't especially fear either the Sun or Moon but they do fear their neighbours. They honour both but prefer a practical religion that deals with the god of desert and oasis. They dance a precarious dance between their settled neighbours managing to avoid offending either while playing on their differences to make them focus on each other.
That's it for today.