Dwarven gods

[Green Knight]

Just wondering if anyone has made any notes on the dwarven gods.

I use Moradin as their chief god. I use the 8 children mentioned in the B-A book as a basis for the rest of the pantheon.

Any ideas or suggestions?

[Lord Eldred]

I think you are doing the right thing according to everything that I have read. I know that there is a website about Moradin somewhere that Princess Emerald found somewhere perhaps she could share that address with us again.

[Green Knight]

FR also have a varity of dwarven gods. Perhaps some of that material could be adapted for BR?

Is anyone interested in working on a dwarven pantheon based on Moradin as the creator god, and his eight children as basis for the rest of the dwarven gods?

[Bryon]

I know that there is a Dwarven Cosmotology already on BR.Net

I agree that it should be brought alittle more in line with the sourcebooks. I'll take a stab at it and see what I can come up with.

NO disrespect ment to the original author...;)

[Green Knight]

Moradin's children:

Torvald - Dwarven god of Smithing (LN)
Mirvald (his wife) - Dwarven godess of Stonecraft (LN)

Sivia - Dwarven godess of Mining (LN)
Kalvia (her husband) - Dawarven god of War (LN)

Zohra - Darven god of Tradition and Law (LN)
Zahra (his wife) - Dwarven godess of family and home (LG)

Kalmirn - Dwarven godess of Wealth (N)
Kalgraf (her husband) - Dwarven god of Green (NE)

These are just suggestions.

[Lawgiver]

Who is Moradin's wife or does he spawn children at random?

Does anyone find it the least bit proposterous that 'gods' have children, marry, etc. as if they are 'human'???

[Green Knight]

The above gods are based on the children of Moradin. He managed without a wife :P

[Lord Eldred]

Lawgiver, no more proposterous than Jesus being the SON of God! If you believe that why couldn't you believe that the gods of myth have children?

[Princess Emerald Greybear]

I found a pretty good link for Moradin.

http://www.geocities.com/hollywood/6750/de...ty-moradin.html (http://www.geocities.com/hollywood/6750/deity-moradin.html)

[Bryon]

I must agree and disagree with Lawgiver.

I think it is also sort of strange for gods to get married and have children since they are suppose to be devine. But, since D&D allows gods to have these relationships, I think that this shows the flaws of these myths and gods. They still have human tendancies and fail to be true Gods.

I am sort of offended by Lord Eldred's comment about the son of God. As most know Christianity teaches that Jesus is God and God is Jesus. God created a son from himself in order to help the people understand him and find a place in heaven.

Please, I do not want to start a debate on real world religion and hope that this does develop into more. Let us stay talking about D&D Birthright and keep fantasy and reality apart. :)

[Lawgiver]

Not to bring worldly views into it, but even when I was an aethiest I found it laughable that any polytheistic religion would assign gods such human attributes of being married and having children, etc. To me that defeats much of the very nature of their divinity. Suddenly a gods has a child and the child is just given a branch of authority. i.e. you are now the god of smithing... all smiths draw power and worship you. Tell me there is not humor in that.

At what point do the gods stop "reproducing"? Do the children not have their own children? What about another generation? The process could go on indefinately. Unless these immortal beings suddenly develop a method of death... mortality... (which would no longer make the "gods" )then the heavens would be filled with more gods then Forgotten Realms!


I did not mean in any way to bring worldly religion into the mix I just thought I'd point out the fallacy and in IMO the absurdity of the idea of "families" of gods and their reproductive ability. Yes its a fantasy game, but even in a fantasy world are people that mindless in their religion...Well I guess the romans and greeks were so its plausible. I just still cannot understand it. Christian or not the idea is nuts. I'd be fine with the idea of polytheism in a game setting, just not the idea of "families" of gods.

[Lord Eldred]

Perhaps I mistakenly took you as a Christian, Lawgiver. You still do not answer the fact that Jesus is the Son of God. You are arguing the concept of gods having children as just plain wrong, how do you explain Jesus.

Outside of that, if God made man in his own image than why wouldn't he/she marry and have children?

Genesis I:26 God said, "Let us make mankind in our image and likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the cattle, over all the wild animals and every creature that crawls on the earth."

This also brings up the subject who is "us and our" that God is refering to? You will probably say it is the royal we but are you sure? Who is to say God is not sitting in heaven right now with his wife and his son Jesus?

By the way in Birthright a set of Gods does die!

[Green Knight]

This is all very interesting, but quite off topic. We can debate the nature of gods and religion until we are blue in the face, but I for one would just like to stick with the "gods" as portrayed in the very silly BR game. In fact, we could start a thread just for that.

Is anyone interested in assigning domains to the new dwarven gods, or are there any other ideas as to how a dwarven pantheon can be constructed. Perhpas there are other dwarven pantheons that can be used as a model?

[Lawgiver]

I'd like to formally apologize for drawing this entire discussion off base. This will be my final "out of context" post

In answer to Lord Eldred:

With regard to the Jesus being the ‘Son’ of God this can be interpreted in several different fashions. Jesus often refers to God as his father. However, so do several other biblical figures. Father in this sense is referring to him as our overall creator, thus a father like figure not a literal father as defined in earthly terms. Additionally Jesus is often referred to as the Son of Man, a couple of minor examples:

Matthew 8:20 ‘Jesus replied, ‘Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.’’

Matthew 9:6 ‘But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins....’

If Jesus is the Son of Man who then is his father? How can he be both the Son of Man and the Son of God? The answer is that these are titles representing spiritual concepts of Jesus being manifest on earth from God’s spirit not using earthly defined family relationships.

The ‘we’ you refer to in the passage of Genesis is at the least two entities: God and his Word (which was manifest in Jesus). Arguably there may have been more: the Holy Spirit, or angels depending on their time of creation, which is not entirely clear in scripture though VERY strong inferences can be made.

John 1:1-15
1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was with God in the beginning. 3Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4In him was life, and that life was the light of men. 5The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.
6There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. 7He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe. 8He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. 9The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world
10He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. 11He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. 12Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God-- 13children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God.
14The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
15John testifies concerning him. He cries out, saying, ‘This was he of whom I said, 'He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.' ‘ 16From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another. 17For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father's side, has made him known.

With regard to the marriage of God and a potential ‘wife’... There are no direct references in the Scripture to God having a spouse. In fact the opposite is suggested:

Mark 12:18-25
18Then the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him with a question. 19’Teacher,’ they said, ‘Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, the man must marry the widow and have children for his brother. 20Now there were seven brothers. The first one married and died without leaving any children. 21The second one married the widow, but he also died, leaving no child. It was the same with the third. 22In fact, none of the seven left any children. Last of all, the woman died too. 23At the resurrectionwhose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?’
24Jesus replied, ‘Are you not in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God? 25When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.

I would love to continue the debate regarding the Christian faith, but such action is out of context of these discussion boards. Without at least 15 supporting members and/or Arjan’s permission I will no longer continue to discuss the Christian faith here. If you wish to continue the debate in another format I would be more than willing to continue this discussion.

[Lord Eldred]

I should have known better than to debate with you over the scriptures, Lawgiver. However, I refuse to apology for supposedly taking this off topic. I do think it applies in the sense that if Lawgiver's argumentation is right, the answer to Green Knight's question becomes there should just be Moradin for the Dwarves. Moradin would be who the Dwarves worship because there is only one god and not all this marriage and sub gods and so forth. For humans it could be Haelyn. It is possible that Moradin and Haelyn are the same entity by different names by the different races.

Lawgiver, I appreciate the time you have taken in this debate. I found it very interesting even if others could not see how it was on topic. Also isn't your patheon system in your Birthright world reflect your beliefs that you have been espousing in the last couple posts?

[Lawgiver]

Orginally posted by Lord Eldred
Lawgiver, I appreciate the time you have taken in this debate. I found it very interesting even if others could not see how it was on topic. Also isn't your patheon system in your Birthright world reflect your beliefs that you have been espousing in the last couple posts?

I thoroughly enjoyed it as well. And IMO its not that far off topic.

The religious structure in my campaign reflects a time period similar to the Reformation in Europe. The main state religion is largely a a version of Catholicism (not that I codone the Catholic faith). It just seemed far more fitting to me to have a religious structure that reflected a time period in our history that was similar to Birthright. In addition, regardless of the religion, I love having a strong central church that has influence in all of Anuire than the multi facitated churches of several gods that do not truly have enough power and influence to change the course of event in Anuire.

A final comment on the polytheist dwarven religion. I think it would be fine to have several gods if thats your pleasure, but a fixed number of gods rather than a family structure that would allow the spawning of new god is by far more reasonable IMO.

[Perhelion]

I've been thinking long and hard about what a proper dwarven religion should be. I'm still not entirely convinced that what I currently apply is the best option. The approach I prefer is similar to a LotR kind (dwarves created by Aule, set free in the world to live their lives).
I hold Moradin to be the creator god, who created the first Dwarves (7 males, 7 females) who set off to found the seven ancient holds of Cerialia. Also revered are Dwarven heroes of yore, who hold no divine status but inspire the younger generations to greater deeds.
The dwarves in my world are Monotheistic but not in a human sense (Humans plea for help, thank for bounties, moan during catastrophes etc., as if a god was responsible for all that occurs). They could almost be seen as atheistic in the sense that they do not revere/worship anybody/god, but follow a path shown by their creator. They see Moradin as a Father/Guide figure, to be emulated but from whom no help should be expected. Moradin can and does help at times, most often without direct or visible intervention, but most of the work should come from the dwarves. Some dwarven priest receive spells (but few clerics of any religion gain spells in my magic-rare world), but they do not pray to Moradin (read plead: please give me the power to...) but are granted in reward for/preparation to furthering the Dwarven cause.
Dwarven priests in my world are not entitled to more respect due to their status, but due to their efforts to help dwarven advancement. As such, many are also artisans, warriors or engineers or even leaders, and show the way through example. They might perhaps be compared to Bhuddist monks, minus the ascetism but always seeking the dwarven ideal. Others are the custodians of the dwarven way, masters of lore and law.
There are still many things I'm not satisfied with about this point of view, as I strive to make Dwarven religion totally distinct from what humans may conceive.
Comments?

[Green Knight]

Orginally posted by Lord Eldred

However, I refuse to apology for supposedly taking this off topic.

No apologies were ever asked for. The subject is both relevant (in a general sort of way) and certainly interesting (enough to warrant a new thread). In fact, we're showing the subject disrespect by NOT talking about the matter.

There is, however, quite a difference between:
A) Wanting some concrete suggestions about dwarven deities within (the perhaps unsuitable) context of the standard DnD framework.
B) Discussing the nature of gods and religion.

Humm, seems I'm a bit off topic myself :) In fact, I'd like to apologize if a have offended anyon - that was not my intent. I think I'll just make a new thread...