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today I'm taking a look at a great project: 3pps have long time suffered from generic deities and today, this is remedied by the open content of PDG's
Gods of Porphyra
This pdf is
45 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 2 pages of SRD and 1 page
advertisement, leaving 40 pages of content - quite a bunch for this new
pantheon, so let's check out these gods!
Porphyra,
until recently, as the aptly written introduction tells us,
was a world without gods - and then elves and orcs united and saw their
world almost torn asunder by the arrival of gods and the integration of the
respective divinity's domains. That's
about the general gist on the fluff-side. Beyond that, this pdf is also the
open faith project, making all these deities actually open content and thus
potentially available to other 3pps - but should one rejoice and hope people
take up on the offer this pdf provides? It should be noted, that each of the
gods herein has 4 domains and 4 subdomains - Speaking of them: The pdf provides
the new art and time domains, with the movement, sound, future and past
subdomains before providing a nice two-page spread-sheet of the deities that
includes all domains, favorite animals etc. - all the essential information
you'd need on about two pages.
After that,
we delve into the individual write-ups of the gods, which follow a similar
style as in "Gods & Magic" -
i.e., we start with a selection of epithets, worshipers, domains and
sub-domains, favored animals and weapons and get information on the legend of
the god, the church that worships him/her/it, information on the god's
respective unique spell preparation ritual, a unique full-color artwork of the
god's symbol and also two new religion-traits per deity.
But what
about the deities? Well, they actually are rather interesting - take for example
the "Voice of Corruption" Eshalqua, dark patron of business, crime
and arts - yes, you read right. What at first may seem eclectic actually makes
sense when reading the god's entry. Fenris Kul, as the name promises, is a god
linked to the end times - born of a deific purge, the deity now seeks to craft
a burning throne from the remnants of the world and its gods. In contrast to
these dark ones, e.g. Ithreia stands in her 3 forms (old, young, mature) as the
goddess of the sea, storms and prophecies while Forgefather Linium, the god of
clockworks, blacksmiths and labor (btw. associated with spiders!) serves as a
surprising twist on the type of deity. And then there is Mâl - god of the
apocalypse, destroyer, chained god, destroyer of worlds and creature that seeks
to transform everything into the likeness of his dread domain.
Nemyth Vaar,
god of betrayal, revenge and murder also has a place in society, it seems -
able to draw truth from the gibbering madness of the insane, these
"holy" worshippers are predisposed to staffing asylums - or ending up
as inmates. Nemyth Vaar also gets an extra page of origin fluff! Not all gods
are evil, mind you: There is also a goddess of soldiers and darkness, waiting
and creating opportunities for mortals to take, a god of the sun and knowledge
and the oracles of the dreaming goddess Neria that seeks to serve as a
benevolent guide of fate. The absolute opposite would be Rajuk Amon-Gore - a
child that lived through the NewGod wars of Porphyra, the deity ascended by
immorally stabbing and consuming a nascent godling fated to heal the world,
signifying and propagating thus the ultimate immoral end of existence, not with
a scream, but with a whimper - to paraphrase T.S.Elliot.
More
suitable and enticing for players, perhaps, would then be the worship of Tulis,
goddess of martyrs and defiance or of the grand lion Thoma Thule, the King of
Kings and newly risen god of absolute rule and order. Ul'Ul, mad maiden and
mistress of dance once was a regular goddess of rain and dance that was driven
insane by captivity through one Eshalquan mage, representing a dangerous, if
not malevolent form of unpredictability.
It should
be noted that this review has only scratched the surface of the gods contained
herein and that the pdf also contains additional content in the form of new
creatures: We get the new M^lite-template that makes creatures appropriately
disturbing, resin-spined and gigeresque and two sample Mâlites, one of which,
the Custodian, can be seen as a walking Mâlite factory, spreading the taint of
the dread divinity. Both creatures get awesome, beautiful full-color, one page
artworks - Nice! 13 new spells complete the offering of this pdf, mostly
dealing with the new domains and its concerns.
Conclusion:
Editing and
formatting are very good, I didn't notice any significant glitches. Layout
adheres to PDG's printer-friendly 2-column standard and comes with a nice
plethora of full color artwork I wouldn't have expected from this pdf, much
less at this price-point. The pdf comes with extensive bookmarks.
I'll say it
right away from the bat: didn't expect
to like this pdf.
Porphyra,
yet another fantasy world it seemed. I expected generic gods that had to stick
to confining, general profiles. I was wrong.
Instead, I
was positively surprised by the cool ideas (NewGod war, patchwork nature of the
world etc.) I could glean of PDG's setting and the fact that the deities herein
are not boring: Each and every god and goddess herein features at least one,
most of the time multiple twists on the basic concepts of a god - you'll find
no run-of-the-mill fire/blacksmith-god, no foe of the undead/sun god and
instead get a nice array of deities with intriguing, exciting concepts, cool
imagery etc. - in the end, I wanted to know more about the world, more about
the deities, more about their holy books and clergy - and that is a great sign.
The team of authors has managed to walk the line and create a pantheon that is
both easy to use by other 3pps or DMs, while still making the individual
write-ups feel unique. Seeing my lack of complaints and the top-notch level of
quality this pdf provides for its low price, I'll settle for a final verdict of
5 Rudii, only omitting my seal of approval because I would have loved a sample
holy tome for each deity.
All right, that's it for now, expect a new entry here soon, as I'm currently reading about an interesting "family" indeed!
As always, thank you for reading my ramblings,
Endzeitgeist out.
As always, thank you for reading my ramblings,
Endzeitgeist out.
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