They are interesting enough, with Tempus being an actual structure, Shar's is a hidden place of worship with ties to novel plots, and Malar being a corrupted location that used to be place of worship for Eldath. The next chapter provides three places of worship, for Tempus, Shar, and Malar. The descriptions here mostly just cover their dogma, worship, and current affairs. These deities do not have stat blocks (or even divine rank) so it's kind of odd that they came up with the concept of divine rank, yet chose to only apply them to the deities in the previous chapter. The second chapter is probably the longest -it covers the rest of the deities is lesser detail, almost 90 of them, from various pantheons. There are stat blocks for all of them as well as detailed information on their worship, rites, ceremonies, and priesthood. It details about 30 Faerûnian deities, in a mixture of good and evil, major and minor. This section also explains deity statistics, and explains what are divine ranks. I liked that throughout this sourcebook, there are references to what happened in novels and other lore. The introduction basically provides information on the "structure" or "rules" of how pantheons work in the Forgotten Realms. It details about 30 Faerûnian deities, in a mixture of good and evil, majo This is a sourcebook for all things related to deities and pantheons in Faerûn.
This gave them influence over a broader area at the cost of concentrated influence on one plane.This is a sourcebook for all things related to deities and pantheons in Faerûn. Those who wanted to spread their strength on several planes did so. A pantheon that wanted to concentrate its strength did likewise. Blood-related pantheon members had a strong tendency to stick together and form a big divine realm on one plane. Where the base of operations of a pantheon was depended on the objective of the pantheon. Base of Operations ĭeities usually lived on the Outer Planes. When Lolth and Vhaeraun tried to overthrow Corellon, Corellon eventually solved the conflict by banishing the two. A particularly crass example of conflict resolution was done by the Seldarine. Whatever the reason, if the head had any interest in keeping face, he or she had to reign these conflicts in. This could be because the members tried to improve their station or because a member represented an aspect of a culture or people that was at odds with the rest. Pantheons suffered from time to time from internal strife. In fact, without this service, pantheon members did not have a reason to stay in their pantheons. As mentioned above, this was the barest minimum of intra-pantheon cooperation. Every weaker member of the pantheon gave what they had in information and intelligence to the head god who combined these and gave a holistic understanding of what was happening in their world and beyond back to the entire pantheon. However, every pantheon cooperated on one field, the field of information. They mostly consisted of individuals and groups who bickered among themselves and had no overarching purpose. There were pantheons who did not do that like the Faerûnian pantheon.
The above-mentioned activities were only possible if a pantheon was one that worked together in some fashion. Some were working towards strengthening their organization, others' entire purpose was to increase the standing of their leaders, others were about promoting ideals, and so on.
For example, the Faerûnian pantheon was ruled by the Circle of Greater Powers instead of one single deity like in the Seldarine.
Įvery pantheon nominated a head who led the pantheon. Their faith came from one defined group of mortals and each member was an exemplar of traits this group had. A pantheon was an organization whose membership consisted of deities.