Last week I talked about the early history of religion in D&D, and how this discordant mélange of influences eventually led to a weirdly incoherent metaphysics in which:

• Gods are arranged into pantheons, a word literally derived from the Greek name for a temple which worshipped all gods, and yet…
• People (including the clergy) almost universally choose just ONE god to worship because…
• Every civilized god gets slotted into a church based on monotheistic Christian rites, architecture, and organization. (With “evil” gods being slightly more likely to get primitive fanes and the like.)

As we look across the vast landscape of roleplaying games in the modern world, of course, we can see that any number of efforts have been made, many based on real world mythologies, to break fantasy religions out of this box. But if we’re being honest with ourselves, we can also see that D&D’s religions, by default, remain heavily influenced by contemporary Christianity (probably because that’s most of the audience’s only practical exposure to religion): Monotheistic religious practices awkwardly grafted onto a pantheistic mythology.

And this tends to bleed over into other fantasy religions and our own worldbuilding.

FAITH & BELIEF

Here’s a common, yet also complicated, example of this: In a world where gods obviously and observably exist, why do we talk about people believing or having faith in their god? If you have proof that your god exists, you don’t need to believe in them!

In large part, this paradox exists because it’s how we think about God in contemporary Christian society: We think of the divine as something you have to “believe” in, and that way of thinking just kind of elides naturally into the fantasy world. (Often without any close examination.)

But this is also why I keep talking about contemporary Christian society. Because it turns out that this is not inherently how people think about gods in the real world; the idea that the existence of God is something you need to have irrational belief in is a way of thinking that developed over time. In fact, our very understanding of the words “belief” and “faith” have been shaped by that evolution of thought.

If you look at the etymology of “belief” (from Old French) and “faith” (from Old English), you’ll discover both words originally meant basically the exact same thing: To trust someone; to have confidence in them; to be loyal to them. (The last could perhaps better be understood as a mutual exchange: You trust them, they trust you, neither of you would betray that mutual trust, and therefore you are loyal to each other; i.e., you share or keep faith with each other — a phrase which survives into modern usage while maintaining the older sense of the word.)

The meaning of the word first bled from people into ideas: To have faith or belief in a particular idea meant that you trusted it; you believed it to be true. But just writing the word “believed” is misleading to a modern sensibility, because the meaning was still fundamentally rational: You believed something was true because you had evidence for it.

What caused the meanings of the words to glide into the irrational was, in fact, their application to God. People had faith in God the same way they might have faith in their feudal lord. And obviously the Church wanted them to believe in the ideas that the Church taught them. And so “faith” and “belief” became deeply tied to the worship of God.

(“Worship” itself was a word which originally meant one who was worthy of honor, glory, renown, respect, etc. The noun was turned into a verb – i.e., to worship was to give honor, glory, renown, respect, etc. to the worshipped – and then applied to God, who was obviously worthy of those things. You can see the remnant of the original sense of “worship” in honorifics like Your Worship.)

As time passed, however, European thought became more rational – in fact, the words “rational” and “irrational” were invented, along with concordant understanding that something could only be rationally thought of as true if you had evidence that it was true.

The trick, of course, was that there was no rational evidence for the existence of God.

It took centuries, but eventually this idea became so strongly enmeshed in European thought that it was actually reflected back into the Church and inverted: Sure, there was no rational evidence for God’s existence. But you still needed to believe in God; you still needed to have faith that God’s word and his love for you were true.

At that point, through religion, “faith” and “belief” were deeply connected to something which could only be irrationally accepted as truth. Give it another century or so and these words come shooting out the other side; they’re now applied to other irrational truths that must be believed without evidence and their modern sense. In the case of “belief” the meaning remains mixed (it can apply to both rational and irrational conclusions), but when it comes to “faith” the transformation is more or less complete.

FAITH IN A WORLD OF FANTASY

So one way of understanding how the relationship between worshipers and their gods would work in a world where gods actually exist is to basically turn back the clock on our understanding of the word “faith.”

In a fantasy world, to have faith in a god doesn’t mean that you believe the god exists: It means that you are keeping faith with them. (And I think, furthermore, that it’s worth the effort to truly grok the way in which “faith” described a two-sided relationship: Not just to trust someone, but for them to also trust you. For you to be able to count on each other.)

Once you’ve made this fundamental realignment, it’s interesting to see the impact it can have on other aspects of religious thought.

For example, consider the divine right of kings. In the real world, without any actual evidence of God’s existence, a king’s position as king was essentially “evidence” that God must want them to be king. (Otherwise, of course, they wouldn’t be king.) But the whole thing gets turned on its head if gods exist and are literally endorsing temporal rulers.

• Why would a god do that? It more or less turns “god” into just another tier on the feudal hierarchy: Counts swear to dukes; dukes to kings; kings to gods. And what are the feudal duties of a god to their kings?
• How can this be compatible with multiple gods being worshipped in a kingdom? Perhaps this is the function of a pantheon? It’s more or less a committee of gods who collectively agree who’s going to be king?
• What does this do to the concept of succession? Feels like the god(s) might endorse anybody to be the next king, not just the last king’s eldest son. Does this concept “trickle down,” so that you don’t really have any inherited nobility?
• What does this mean for the hierarchy of the church? In the real world there could be a struggle between the Holy Roman Emperors and the Popes because both could argue that they were the one with divine right, but if you can literally just dial up your god and ask him that sort of thing falls apart (and, assuming your gods are, in fact, endorsing kings, the division between temporal and religious power structures seems likely to collapse or never exist in the first place).

And so forth.

On the other hand, the concept of keeping faith with someone doesn’t necessarily require a one-true-way. You can be friends with Susan in a way that’s different from being friends with Debbie, and it might be the same way with gods. (Particularly if your gods are sufficiently ineffable.) Thus, for example, in my D&D campaign world both the Imperial Church and the Reformists worship the same Nine Gods in different ways… and the Nine Gods grant spells to all of them.

CODA: ATHEISTS

On thing I rather dislike is when “atheists” show up in a fantasy world where gods verifiably exist. An atheist is someone who rejects the existence of gods because there’s no rational evidence that gods exist: If you live in a world where there IS rational evidence that gods exist and you refuse to believe that they do, that doesn’t make you an atheist. It makes you a crazy person.

In some cases, the mythology of the world is that it’s not that “atheists” don’t believe that the gods physically exist; it’s just that they don’t believe that the gods are anything other than really powerful people and/or they simply don’t pledge themselves to any god (they refuse to keep faith with any of them). But even this is a perversion of what the word “atheist” actually means and what atheists actually believe. If you want characters who reject the idea that gods are worthy of worship or faith in your fantasy world with verifiable gods, I’d recommend using a term like “heretic” or perhaps inventing a new term like “godless.”

Ten years ago I wrote Xandering the Dungeon, a detailed look at the differences between linear and non-linear dungeons. In this essay I briefly used what I dubbed Melan diagrams — a technique created in 2006 by Melan for a thread on ENWorld where he discussed “map flow and old school game design.”

These diagrams are, unfortunately, not immediately intuitive to everyone looking at them, and because I used the diagrams in Xandering the Dungeon, I’m frequently asked how they’re supposed to “work.” In fact, I’ve been asked that question three different times in the last week… which brings us to today’s post.

You can see an example of what a Melan diagram looks like at the top of this post. It depicts the first level of The Sunless Citadel, designed by Bruce Cordell with original cartography by Todd Gamble. (Today, though, I’ll be using Mike Schley’s version of the map from Tales From the Yawning Portal.)

So… what’s the point of this thing? Well, as Melan said in his original post:

[They are] a graphical method which “distills” the dungeon into a kind of decision tree or flowchart by stripping away “noise.” On the resulting image, meandering corridors and even smaller room complexes are turned into straight lines. Although the image doesn’t create an “accurate” representation of the dungeon map, and is by no means a “scientific” depiction, it demonstrates what kind of [navigational] decisions the players can make while moving through the dungeon.

By getting rid of the “noise” you can boil a dungeon down to its essential structure. They also allow you to compare the structures of different dungeons at a glance.

It’s fairly important to note that you don’t actually use Melan diagrams for designing dungeons. They are an analytical tool, not a design tool: You use them to look at something which has already been created, not to create it in the first place.

But if you’re looking at a diagram what does it actually mean? How is the noise being stripped out and what does that tell you? How are you supposed to interpret the diagram? Or make one for yourself?

STRAIGHTEN THE LINE

The first principle of making a Melan diagram is to eliminate all the irrelevant twists-and-turns on the map. For example, consider this path through the Sunless Citadel:

It looks really interesting, right? All kinds of turns. You went through multiple doors. You even reversed direction a couple of times!

But as far as the Melan diagram is concerned, this is a straight line: Following a corridor when it makes a turn isn’t a meaningful navigational choice. Same thing for going through a door if there’s no other exit from the room.

FORK THE PATH

“But wait a minute!” you say. “In following this path the PCs did make choices! For example, in that first circular room the PCs had the choice of two different doors!”

You’re absolutely right! This is exactly what a Melan diagram is interested in looking at. On this little chunk of the Sunless Citadel, there are two forking paths:

And so, on a Melan diagram, this section would look like this:

The black path is depicted as a straight line and the alternate paths are shown in red. (Melan diagrams typically aren’t color-coded like this since all paths are equally valid. We’re using the colors here for clarity.)

The length of each branch of the diagram, it should be noted, is roughly proportional to its length in the dungeon. (I don’t carefully measure this or anything, but you could if you wanted to.) In this case I’m showing them proportional per the section of map we’re looking at. (As we’ll see in a moment, these particular spurs are actually much longer.)

ELIMINATE SIDE CHAMBERS

“Wait another minute!” you cry. “I can see other doors that you’re ignoring!”

The second principle of a Melan diagram is that we are going to eliminate all paths that are only one chamber deep.

So we could take this chunk of dungeon:

And draw a diagram like this:

But the reason we don’t do this is because such a diagram becomes meaninglessly noisy. Furthermore, these side chambers largely don’t represent meaningful navigational choices on the macro-level of the entire dungeon: You might choose to bypass such doors, but if you open one of them the only “choice” is to go back to the path you were already following.

Note that you can actually see this when looking at the diagram: It’s immediately apparent that all those little spurs don’t really “go” anywhere.

(You can argue that the same thing is technically true of longer sidetracks, but in practice these longer paths tend to be more meaningful to the overall structure of a dungeon and the experience of playing it. With that being said, there’s nothing magically relevant about one room vs. two rooms and in larger dungeons you may find different thresholds for what constitutes a “meaningful sidetrack” to be useful.)

You’ll similarly want to eliminate very short dead end hallways if they exist.

DIAGRAMMATIC TURNS

“Hey! What’s with that turn in your diagram? I thought you said we weren’t mapping that sort of thing!”

That’s true. In practice, however, Melan diagrams will introduce superfluous ninety-degree turns in order to keep the diagrams relatively compact or to conveniently make room for other paths.

So if you see a turn on a Melan diagram that doesn’t have a second path branching from it, you’ll know that it’s purely cosmetic. It doesn’t actually reflect a “turn” in the dungeon; and, although the turn in our current example sort of resembles a turn in the dungeon itself, such turns on the diagram may be present even when there are no turns in the corresponding dungeon tunnel.

ELIMINATE FAKE LOOPS

Dungeon paths will, of course, form loops. In fact, a well-designed, xandered dungeon will probably feature LOTS of loops. Ignoring routes that branch off from the loop for the moment, here’s one from the Sunless Citadel:

On the Melan diagram, it would look like this:

But what about this loop?

Well, on a Melan diagram this would actually be depicted as a straight line. To understand why, let’s start by eliminating the side chambers:

Viewed like this, you can clearly see that this is not a true navigational loop: It’s a fake fork. The navigational “choice” is a false one. After eliminating the side chambers, both paths lead immediately to the exact same place.

SECRET PATHS

When a path like this one goes through a secret door, this is indicated with a dotted line on the Melan diagram:

(Note that the other secret doors are not represented here because they lead to side chambers, which are eliminated regardless.)

An area is ONLY depicted as secret on the Melan diagram if the ONLY way of reaching that area is secret. However, even a secret door that leads directly from one “public” area to another would still be shown on the diagram as a short dotted line. (The secret path exists and is significant, even if the “length” of the path is only the width of the secret door itself, so to speak.)

LEVEL CONNECTIONS

The last functional element of a Melan diagram are the connections between levels. When a path goes from one level of the dungeon to another (by stair, elevator, sloping ramp, teleporter, or whatever), this is indicated by a break in the line with terminating lines on either side:

OTHER ELEMENTS

Melan diagrams may also include labels (e.g., “Goblins” or “Secret Lab” or “Teleportation Trap”). These are technically non-functional parts of the diagram, but can be useful to help readers orient themselves.

Some Melan diagrams of long, linear dungeons will be split into multiple columns, with the connection between the columns being indicated by a dotted line with an arrow.  (This is sometimes confused for a secret door, but it’s really just a tool for keeping the diagram relatively compact.)

CONCLUSION

If you’re reading this and still scratching your head over what the point of any of this stuff is supposed to be or what relevance the elements depicted by a Melan diagram are supposed to have, I’m going to do a full loop here and refer you back to Xandering the Dungeon, which is designed as an introduction to the sort of basic dungeon design techniques that the diagrams are designed to demonstrate.

Back to Xandering the Dungeon

DISCUSSING:
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 23F: The Pale Tower

At last, Aoska brought them before great valves of silvered adamantine. She turned to them then and said, “You shall have audience with Sephranos, the First Among the Chosen.”

At her touch the doors parted and opened, revealing a hall of ivory and gold. Atop a dais at the far end, upon a throne of mithril, sat a gold-skinned man with white-feathered wings. His eyes were pits of pale blue fire shining out from a face both regal and welcoming.

Aoska approached him and whispered into his ears, and then his eyes were turned upon them. And, most particularly upon Dominic.

“We are honored to give audience to the Chosen of Vehthyl.” Sephranos smiled and turned his gaze to all of them. “We thank you all on the behalf of Edlari. We were saddened to see him leave us once again, but glad that he is now free to find his own path again. What boon would you ask of us?”

When the dungeoncrawl is done, it’s time for the PCs to deal with the lingering legacies and unresolved elements of the dungeon. This is a kind of epilogue which, structurally, you’re going to repeatedly experience when playing or running roleplaying games.

The simplest version – which is more or less the default – is just liquidating your loot. If all you’re hauling out of the place are coins and gems, this can be a purely routine transaction that’s quickly dispatched with. But even in this simplistic form, , I think this still functions as a primitive yet important narrative beat: The primary purpose of the epilogue is to provide closure, and even something as simple as divvying up the treasure can accomplish that; can definitively declare, “We have done this thing and this thing is done.”

However, one of the reasons I like including treasure in more exotic forms (besides flavor, immersion, and highly effective worldbuilding) is that the logistics of realizing its value can create an opportunity for intriguing entanglements. And, as you can see in the example of Pythoness House, in a fully realized scenario this will naturally extend far beyond simply treasure. In addition to selling their spoils and spending their new wealth, the PCs had to deal with:

• The lingering effects of Freedom’s Key (plus what to do with the key itself)
• The tainted items
• The Cobbledman
• Meeting Edlari at the Pale Tower

Figuring this out saw the PCs forging new alliances, gaining new resources, and setting up future scenarios. All of these things will either have a dramatic impact on how events play out for the rest of the campaign, provide an interesting crucible for roleplaying, or both.

In other words, what emerges from these logistics are stories. And when I see GMs skipping past these logistical concerns, what I see is not only a failure to provide proper closure for the previous adventure, but also a failure to properly plant the seeds for the next adventure.

Some of these elements will emerge naturally from your prep. For example, I couldn’t be certain that the PCs would free Edlari, but I knew that if they did he would extend them an invitation that would almost certainly pull them to the Pale Tower (where I could reincorporate Aoska, who they had met previously).

On the other hand, in a well-designed dungeon there’ll almost always be unanticipated fallout. For example, I had no idea that they would befriend the Cobbledman or take such care to help him seek aid from the Brotherhood of Redemption. In fact, I thought it quite likely that they would end up fighting and killing the Cobbledman.

Conversely, we could imagine an alternate version of reality where the PCs ended up befriending the ratlings in Pythoness House (instead of slaughtering them) and ending up with a potentially very useful gang of allies.

Which I guess is largely my point here: As with any other good scenario, the players should be making meaningful choices. These choices should, pretty much by definition, have meaningful consequences, and the logistical epilogue is where we begin to discover and define how these consequences are going to spill out of the scenario and into the ongoing campaign.

Which, in my opinion, is kind of inherently interesting.

How much time you spend resolving the logistical epilogue depends on how many consequences are spilling out of the dungeon and, of course, how complicated dealing with those consequences proves to be.

Pythoness House, for example, was a dungeon of moderate scope. Over the course of several visits intermixed with other events, the ‘crawl spanned a total of four sessions. I wasn’t recording my sessions yet, so I’m not sure exactly how long we spent in the dungeon, but it was probably twelve to fifteen hours in total. The logistical epilogue probably took up another thirty to forty-five minutes of playing time, while also incorporating some background events and other miscellaneous business the PCs wanted to take care of.

NEXT:
Campaign Journal: Session 24A – Running the Campaign: Player-Facing Mechanics
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

SESSION 23F: THE PALE TOWER

June 7th, 2008
The 11th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

BROTHERHOOD OF REDEMPTION

Elestra led Dominic down to the Guildsman District. They found the public house of the Brotherhood of Redemption to be a rather small and unimpressive affair. When they knocked on the door, it was answered by a meek-looking man.

“Welcome. Can the Brotherhood be of some assistance to you?”

“I think so,” Elestra said.

“You have captured some bestial creature in need of the gods’ redemption?”

“Not exactly,” Dominic said.

“We met someone in need of help. He’s gentle. And kind. But a little lost and confused.”

“We are no common charity,” the man said. “If this creature is civilized, then he is beyond our purlieu.”

“Well, half of him is,” Dominic said.

“What do you mean?”

“He has two heads,” Elestra explained. “One of them is civilized, I guess. But the other definitely isn’t.”

“An ettin-like divided consciousness?” The man was not only intrigued, but excited. “With one turned against the other? Well, if you can bring him here we would certainly give him any help that we can.”

Taking their leave, Elestra and Dominic – primarily at Elestra’s prompting – decided to return to Pythoness House, by themselves, and try to find the Cobbledman.

They got no further than the courtyard, however, before they realized – given the possibility that a demon was still wandering about the place – that this might have been a good idea. Elestra called for the Cobbledman a couple of times and, when he did not come down into the courtyard, they left.

SHOPPING

They reconvened at the Ghostly Minstrel. Agnarr took the many rat tails they had collected and turned them into the proper officials for the bounty, feeling a great sense of fulfillment at finally managing to accomplish one of the first things he had vowed to do upon awaking in Ptolus.

Tee gathered up the items they were going to sell and led the rest of the group on a shopping trip. Ranthir chose not to go with them, instead remaining behind to continue his studies (while trying to find some useful way for Iltumar to contribute beyond petting little Erin), but did ask Tee if she could try to find for him an item with a particular enchantment laid upon it.

Ranthir described the enchantment in detail. Tee glossed over most of the technical details, but captured the gist of it: The item would attune itself to the rhythms of Ranthir’s own body. Once it had done so, it would be capable of nourishing him, intensifying the refreshment of mind and body during periods of sleep.

“Instead of needing to sleep for eight hours every night,” Ranthir explained, “I would only need two hours of sleep. And in the extra hours of the night I could be copying my scrolls or studying the many books we have discovered or anything of the like.”

Tee knew that Ranthir was frustrated by how little time he was able to devote to his studies and preparations, and she herself had worried that they weren’t spending enough time studying the various books of lore they were discovering. So she was quite happy to discover that Myraeth had recently received a ring with just such an enchantment laid upon it. Ranthir did not have quite enough money to afford it, but Tee talked it over with the others and they decided it would be in their best interests to pool their resources and help him buy it.

“After all,” Tee said. “The best wizard is a well rested wizard.”

THE PALE TOWER

They went back to the inn. Ranthir excused himself from Iltumar and joined them in Elestra’s room for a conference. They decided to follow-up on the offer that Edlari had made and go to the Pale Tower to speak with him.

Ranthir poked his head back into his room and spoke with Ilutmar, who was more than willing to wait for him to return. Ranthir smiled, nodded, and then ran to catch up with the others.

Standing in the northern reaches of Oldtown, not that far from Pythoness House, the Pale Tower stood in stark contrast to the structures around it, rising up from the midst of a perfumed garden more like a marble monument than a building. The windowless round tower was faultlessly white and seemed to shine as if newly built, and yet there was an air of great age that hung unmistakably about it.

There were two great knockers of gold upon the double doors of godwood at the front of the tower. Tee reached up and clapped one of them loudly.

The doors parted without visible hand, revealing an antechamber of marble. The rune-carved Graven One stepped forward to greet them.

“What business brings you to the Pale Tower?”

“Edlari asked us to seek him here.”

“I see.” The Graven One’s solemn face seemed to smile. “I shall seek him and return.”

At his gesture, they stepped into the antechamber and the outer doors of the tower swung shut behind them. The Graven One turned and went through an inner door. They caught a glimpse of a long hallway beyond it, making it clear that the Pale Tower’s interior was vastly larger than its exterior.

A few minutes passed, and then the Graven One returned, leading Aoska through the inner doors.

Aoska smiled. “The Graven One has told me that you seek Edlari.” Her voice was like honeyed silk.

“He asked us to seek him here,” Tee said.

“He did return here,” Aoska stood. “And told us of what you did for him. We thank you for freeing him from so foul an imprisonment. But he has left us again, and stepped through the Jewels so that he might stand once more before the Nine Gods and cleanse his soul of the taint that has been left upon it. He may not return, and Sephranos himself counseled that he should feel no need… but Edlari could not bear the touch of it.”

“We know something of the Taint,” Tee said. “We have suffered its touch in attempting to cleanse the evil from that place where Edlari was imprisoned.”

“I can sense it in you,” Aoska said. She seemed to think carefully for a moment. “Come. It is the least that we might do to see that such accounts are set to rights.”

She turned and led them through the inner doors, which parted at her approach. They passed in silence through many pillared halls and open gardens, each seemingly more beautiful than the last.

At last, Aoska brought them before great valves of silvered adamantine. She turned to them then and said, “You shall have audience with Sephranos, the First Among the Chosen.”

At her touch the doors parted and opened, revealing a hall of ivory and gold. Atop a dais at the far end, upon a throne of mithril, sat a gold-skinned man with white-feathered wings. His eyes were pits of pale blue fire shining out from a face both regal and welcoming.

Aoska approached him and whispered into his ears, and then his eyes were turned upon them. And, most particularly upon Dominic.

“We are honored to give audience to the Chosen of Vehthyl.” Sephranos smiled and turned his gaze to all of them. “We thank you all on the behalf of Edlari. We were saddened to see him leave us once again, but glad that he is now free to find his own path again. What boon would you ask of us?”

“When we freed him, Edlari healed us of the dark wounds we had sustained in the place where he had been imprisoned,” Tee said humbly. “After he had left to return here, we faced greater dangers and suffered similar wounds. We had hoped that we might find healing here.”

“This shall I do for you.”

Sephranos raised his hand and a golden light shone forth from it. For a moment it seemed as if they had had lost consciousness – but rather than darkness, it felt as if a bright white light had embraced them.

Then their eyes opened once more and all was as it had been – Sephranos upon his throne and Aoska at his right hand upon the dais. But their wounds had been healed without any lingering trace or ache – and even the soul-hung weariness which had afflicted Tee since using the golden key had passed from her.

Aoska stepped forward and led them out of the hall. As the valves of silvered adamantine swung shut behind them and Aoska led them back towards the entrance, Tee turned to her. “Aoska, we have in our possession many artifacts that bear the taint. We know that there are many people seeking them for dark purposes, and we can’t carry them safely. We know that a hallowed place would serve to hold them and even to cleanse them, but the churches we have approached have turned us away. Is there such a place here in the Pale Tower where they might be kept?”

“We could not bear to have these objects mar the purity of such a place as the Tower,” Aoska said.

Tee nodded sadly. “Yes, we’ve been hearing that a lot.”

Aoska smiled. “But there is a place in the Temple District. A hallowed vault and sanctuary where such items may be kept.”

They couldn’t help but notice, as Aoska gave Tee the directions to this vault, that their path back through the Pale Tower was not the same path by which they had come.

“There’s something else,” Tee said, hesitantly.

“What is it?” Aoska smiled encouragingly.

“We… lost some of the tainted artifacts,” Tee struggled to find the words and then, like a pent-up river bursting its dam, babbled the rest of it. “We were ambushed by chaos cultists. They were led by someone named Wuntad.”

“I know the name,” Aoska said. “A minor cultist of some recent years. We had thought he had long since fled the city.”

“He’s back,” Agnarr said gruffly.

“Is there anything you can do?” Tee asked.

“Perhaps,” Aoska said. “But there are many things of greater import to concern the powers of the Pale Tower. There are many such cultists, and their danger is not to be dismissed. But there are also larger dangers in this world.”

The thought of that didn’t sit comfortably with Tee, and she found herself changing the topic. “I was also wondering if you knew Eida Laevantha. I have met her and she once mentioned that she had affairs with the Pale Tower.”

“Yes, I know her,” Aoska said. “Our paths have crossed often in the Dreaming.”

And then they were back at the entrance of the Tower and saying their farewells to both Aoska and the Graven One (who waited there still).

REDEMPTION FOR THE COBBLEDMAN

It seemed quite strange to emerge out of the marbled wonders of the Pale Tower onto the common streets of Ptolus, but after taking a moment to orient themselves they decided that – since they were in Oldtown in any case – they should return to Pythoness House together and try to bring the Cobbledman to the Brotherhood of Redemption.

They found the Cobbledman sleeping in his tower again. Tee gently waked him (from a safe distance) and explained that they had found people who could help him. “You don’t have to live like this any more.”

The Cobbledman seemed trepidatious, but also hopeful. He followed them down to the Guildsman District, and there they placed him in the Brotherhood’s care. Ranthir gave him one last iron ration and, as they left, he was munching it contentedly.

THE FATE OF PHON

They headed back to the Ghostly Minstrel and then split up again: Ranthir returned to his room (where Iltumar was still reading). Agnarr decided that he was going to return to the caverns of the Clan of the Torn Ear. Dominic retired to his room to study the Book of Vehthyl.

Elestra went out into the streets. Most of the city was still captivated by the story of what Rehobath had done the day before. The newssheets had dubbed him the Novarch-in-Exile and public opinion seemed evenly split on whether Rehobath’s actions were weal or woe.

But Elestra also discovered that the day before Rehobath’s pronouncement, there had been another Flayed Man killing in the Warrens… and there were many whispers of worry coursing through the city.

There had been another atrocity that day, too: A house in the Temple District had burned down. Three dead bodies had been found inside and the rumor of the street was that the Balacazars were responsible.

A sickening suspicion entered into Elestra’s head, and asking further she confirmed it: The house had been Helmut’s. It appeared that Phon was dead.

NEXT:
Running the Campaign: Detritus of the Dungeon – Campaign Journal: Session 24A
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

Let’s talk about gods.

The history and treatment of religion in D&D is fascinating, and it’s had an enduring impact on the treatment of religion not only in roleplaying games in general, but in the fantasy genre as a whole.

Religion, of course, has always been a central part of the game. In the original 1974 edition of D&D, clerics were one of just three character classes (the other two being fighting-men and magic-users). But what, exactly, were these clerics and who/what did they worship? Gods are never explicitly mentioned and religion is only barely hinted at. In the rulebooks there are basically only two points of data.

First, the description of the cleric class, which is almost entirely dedicated to building strongholds at higher levels. Relevant quotes (with my comments in brackets):

• ‘When Clerics reach the top level (Patriarch) they may opt to build their own stronghold, and when doing so receive help from “above”. Thus, if they spend 100,000 Gold Pieces in castle construction, they may build a fortress of double that cost.’ [I don’t believe the intention is literally that the “above” will deliver cash money for the endeavor, but it could certainly be interpreted that way.]
• ‘Finally, “faithful” men will come to such a castle, being fanatically loyal, and they will serve at no cost.’ [Specific breakdowns of troop types are then given.]
• ‘Note that Clerics of 7^th level and greater are either “Law” or “Chaos”, and there is a sharp distinction between them. If a Patriarch receiving the above benefits changes sides, all the benefits will be immediately removed!’

A quick contextual note here: Arneson’s original Blackmoor campaign featured a Good vs. Evil dynamic in which those were literally teams: There was Team Good and Team Evil, with PCs belonging to one or the other. Gygax, heavily influenced by Michael Moorcock and Poul Anderson, changed that to Law vs. Chaos, but with the same broad idea that these were more or less ideological alliances. (Which is why the early editions of the game had actual alignment languages.)

The interesting implication here is that the cleric’s alliance to a particular god is irrelevant, only their loyalty to the metaphysical alliance is significant. Furthermore, this alliance only becomes significant when a cleric achieves the rank of Patriarch. And even then, it’s not relevant to their supernatural abilities – which they keep even if they “change sides” – only to the loyalty of the men who have flocked to their service.

Which, if you’ve read Moorcock’s Elric stories, probably also makes sense: Elric had a specific patron of Chaos, but in general people served the Chaos Lords or the Lords of Law or were neutral in their strife. (Note that there are no neutral Patriarchs, strongly implying that there are no Neutral gods/lords.)

The only other source of information on religion in the original edition of the game are the level titles for Clerics, which were (in order):

• Acolyte
• Adept
• Village Priest
• Vicar
• Curate
• Bishop
• Lama
• Patriarch
• Patriarch, 9^th Level
• Patriarch, 10^th Level

You could hypothetically try to intuit some form of religious institution from this, but the reality is that Gygax — as he often did — simply cracked open a thesaurus and wrote down random entries with little care or concern. The list is clearly influenced by a Christian hierarchy, although whether that’s primarily due to the linguistic bias inherent in an English thesaurus’ selection of words or Gygax’s bias as a Jehovah’s Witness is debatable, but it’s probably the former since the list is pure nonsense. (A curate, for example, is subordinate to a vicar. And then, of course, there’s the abrupt shift to Buddhism before jumping to Eastern Orthodoxy for the ultimate rank of Patriarch.)

TANGENT: THAT OLD SCHOOL RELIGION

But, just for fun, let’s do it. Acolytes and adepts are basically apprentices who are dabbling in the arts of Law and Chaos.

Then you have village priests, vicars, and curates. These are clearly the local or lowest level of religious hierarchy. For the sake of argument:

• Priests are recognized with doctrinal and institutional authority. In a village, there may only be one such priest who oversees the local temple or shrine. (Some villages will be dedicated to Chaos; others to Law. Some might have competing shrines with separate priests dedicated to each. But we might also imagine some local priests who are better thought of as the ambassador between the community and both Law and Chaos; it is less that they “serve” the Lords, and instead that they are diplomatically engaged with them.)
• Vicars are still in charge of larger temples, overseeing at least one priest.
• Curates oversee multiple temples. (This might either be in a larger community that can support multiple shrines, or country curates that oversee temples across a small region.)

Now, in Christian churches a Bishop is someone in a position of authority over a large swath of territory. That’s not compatible with the D&D stronghold rules, though, so let’s instead extrapolate from their claim of apostolic succession (a direct lineage to the original Twelve Apostles): A bishop is someone who, like Elric, has a face-to-face relationship with the Lords of Law and/or Chaos.

(This is arguably not consistent with the mechanics: A 6^th level Bishop does not yet have access to the commune spell. But I think a distinction can be drawn between someone who has become of sufficient interest that a Chaos Lord might appear to them for a chat and someone who has gained the puissance to contact the Chaos Lord for themselves – i.e., cast a commune spell.)

Here’s the key to understanding our old school religion, though: At the top of our hierarchy is the Patriarch, which literally means the head of the church. (Etymologically, the Patriarch is the one who rules the ‘family’ of the church.) We know mechanically that when someone becomes a Patriarch they “have control of a territory similar to the ‘Barony’ of fighters.” And we know that the Barony of the fighter is a territory containing 2-8 villages of from 100-400 inhabitants each.

What this means is that religion (or, at least, religious organization) is intensely local. There are no huge religious organizations with a central authority overseeing vast swaths of territory. (Or, if there are, they aren’t the religions that the PCs are part of.) Religion is still a patchwork of very small organizations (that almost certainly have some territorial overlap).

This brings us to the curiosity of the Lama, the stage through which a Bishop (who has opened some kind of personal relationship with a Lord or Lords) must pass in order to become a Patriarch. We also know that this is the point at which the cleric MUST choose to become loyal to either Chaos or Law exclusively.

The title of “Lama” comes from Tibetan Buddhism, but its use is thoroughly confused in English by inconsistent translation and mystic Orientalism. Broadly speaking, though, a lama can be thought of us the spiritual leader of a specific school of spiritual thought. We could therefore think of this progression as such:

• The cleric begins making personal contact with Lords of Chaos and/or Law.
• As they gain the ability to directly commune with these entities, they begin formalizing these relationships. This might be a spiritual synthesis of their religious belief or it might be a more realpolitik negotiated alliance with specific Lord(s).
• In this process, they have effectively created their own religious organization, culminating with the foundation of a religious center or stronghold: The appeal of their teaching, the strength of their spiritual power, and/or the support of the Lord itself causes followers to flock to them.

They have, thus, become a Patriarch — of which, as we’ve established, there are many, all struggling with each other.

One would not necessarily expect this state of affairs to persist: Periods of similarly turbulent religious revivalism in our own history have universally collapsed into one or two successful organizations that subsume or overwhelm the rest. So this might just be the short term reality of the world as it currently exists (perhaps because these Lords of Law and Chaos have only recently made contact with this plane of reality? or because the cosmos is in a liminal period of transition between Law and Chaos?) or it might only be true on the outskirts of civilization (where, conveniently, classic D&D-style adventures typically take place).

It might also reflect the internecine and tumultuous conflict of the Lords of Law and Chaos themselves. The ever-unsettled nature of the Lords reflects itself into the ebb and flow of earthly religions.

SO WHAT IS A CLERIC?

But I digress.

As I noted before, these level titles — and anything of interest we might intuit from them — are not really representative of anything meaningful in the actual worldbuilding of Arneson or Gygax.

So what was a cleric? What was religion at the dawn of D&D?

It’s Van Helsing.

Specifically, Van Helsing from the Hammer Horror Dracula films.

This is pretty well documented: One of the PCs in Dave Arneson’s Blackmoor game was turned into a vampire and became an NPC antagonist. He was so incredibly dangerous that Mike Carr, one of Arneson’s players and later a TSR editor and designer, proposed the idea of creating a vampire hunter.

The primary focus of the OD&D cleric can actually be seen rather clearly in the fact that although they receive no spells at 1^st level, they do receive the Turn Undead ability.

So although we may now think of a cleric primarily as worshippers and could scarcely imagine creating a cleric without picking a specific god for them to worship, the reality is that the original clerics were primarily hunters of the undead drenched in Christian imagery (there are no holy symbols in OD&D, only wooden and silver crosses) who didn’t actually need to make a decision about their religious affiliation until 8^th level (which was more or less the endgame of D&D at that point).

RELIGION THEREAFTER

Supplement I: Greyhawk is the first time D&D mentions specific gods. Specifically, magic-users get access to the 9^th level gate spell: “Employment of this spell opens a cosmic portal and allows an ultra-powerful being (such as Odin, Crom, Set, Cthulhu, the Shining One, a demi-god, or whatever) to come to this plane.”

Note: Although the Shining One here is sometimes identified as Pelor, I’m near certain that it’s actually Satan/Lucifer. There are some semi-convoluted Biblical debates about this, but the key thing is that this title is endorsed in a number of Jehovah’s Witness commentaries on the Bible… and Gygax was a Jehovah’s Witness who led Bible study classes. By contrast, I’m not 100% sure when Pelor gained “the Shining One” as one of his apellatives, but I don’t think it’s until the ‘90s.

Edit: Geoffrey McKinney, in the comments below, identifies the source of the Shining One as A. Meritt’s The Moon Pool. That is almost certainly correct. Note that The Moon Pool appears in AD&D’s Appendix N.

The other thing that happens in Supplement I: Greyhawk is the arrival of paladins as a sub-class of fighting-men. This further strengthens the Christian basis of religious character classes in D&D, because paladins are just straight-up Charlemagnic holy knights.

Supplement II: Blackmoor briefly discusses a “great struggle of the gods to control the planet,” including the fact that “mermen were created by the Great Gods of Neutrality and Law while the Gods of Chaos bent their will to create the Sahuagin.” (This material would have likely been written by Steve Marsh, or possibly by Tim Kask based on material from Steve Marsh.)

Note: Marsh has cited the inspiration of the sahuagin as being “an old Justice League of America animated show.” I’ve seen people point to “The Invasion of the Hydronoids,” a season two episode of The All-New Super Friends as Marsh’s inspiration, but the date is wrong. (The episode premiered in 1977, after Supplement II was published.) I’m guessing it was actually “The Watermen,” a season 1 episode from the original Superfriends series that would have aired in 1973.

Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry introduces the Orcus, the Demon Prince. Also notable for our discussion because his rod “causes death (or annihilation) to any creature, save those of like status (other Princes, High Devils, Saints, Godlings, etc.).” There is also the Throne of the Gods, “crafted by an ancient race in honor of their gods.”

In these references we can begin seeing more influence seeping into the game from sword-and-sorcery authors like Robert E. Howard and Fritz Leiber, where a patchwork panoply of mythological and fictional deities are sort of bouncing around.

What’s interesting to me is how the overwhelming Christian influence of both the player-facing character classes and, of course, the players themselves collide with this vaguely invoked pagan pantheism. You can see a rather clear example of the weird gestalt that results a couple years later in T1 The Village of Hommlet. The village church — the Church of St. Cuthbert — is straight-up Christian in its conception and organization: It’s shaped like a cross and named after an actual Christian saint (or possibly a lesser god who is named after a Christian saint).

This is basically not atypical of how D&D religions tend to work by default down unto today: Churches and religions following Christian models (cross-shaped cathedrals filled with priests and bishops), but with a non-Christian god slotted in for Jesus.

SUPPLEMENT IV

Obviously our discussion of religion in OD&D cannot be complete without talking about the elephant in the room — Supplement IV: Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes by Robert Kuntz & James Ward.

This is a really odd book. It consists almost entirely of stat blocks and short descriptions for a panoply of real and fictional pantheons, fleshed out with a few mythological artifacts and a handful of mortal heroes. There’s no real explanation of what you’re supposed to actually do with any of this stuff. It just kind of… exists.

In the foreword to the book, there are three things that Tim Kask, TSR’s Publications Editor, want you to know:

1. He loathed working on Supplement II: Blackmoor. (I cannot express how bizarre it is that the first paragraph of this book is literally dedicated to trashing another book that the company had published the year before.)
2. This is the last D&D supplement that will ever be published. “Well, here it is: the last D&D supplement. (…) We’ve told you just about everything we can. From now on, when circumstances aren’t covered somewhere in the books, wing it as best you can.” He later returns to this theme at the end of the foreword to say that everyone should buy TSR’s magazines. “Just don’t wait with baited breath for another supplement after this one. May you always make your saving throw.”
3. “This volume is something else, also: our last attempt to reach the ‘Monty Hall’ DM’s. Perhaps now some of the ‘giveaway’ campaigns will look as foolish as they truly are. This is our last attempt to delineate the absurdity of 40+ level characters. When Odin, the All-Father has only(?) 300 hit points, who can take a 44^th level Lord seriously?”

Of course, after reading this imprecation against overpowered characters, you will immediately turn the page to a book dedicated almost entirely to giving you combat stats for gods so that you can kill them.

Four years later when this concept was revisited for the hardcover Deities & Demigods supplement, editor Lawrence Schick was quick to say that the obvious purpose of these stat blocks was NOT in fact the purpose of these stat blocks:

But what exactly is it? Let’s see, it has a nice cover — open it up, inside there are lots of pictures next to sets of stacked statistics… it must be just like the MONSTER MANUAL! There, that was easy. Now that we know what it is, we know what to do with it, right?

Wrong.

DDG (for short) may resemble MONSTER MANUAL, and in fact does include some monsters. However, the purpose of this book is not to provide adversaries for players’ characters. The information listed herein is primarily for the Dungeon Master’s use in creating, intensifying or expanding his or her campaign.

Of course, the “Explanatory Notes” on the exact same page tell you that the gods’ Armor Classes are “a measure of how difficult it is to hit” them and their Hit Points “indicate the amount of damage a creature can withstand before being killed.” So… take it with a grain of salt.

Gary Gygax, in his foreword to the book, is more explicit about what the book is for:

In general, deities are presented in pantheons. You can select which ones, combinations, or parts of pantheons best suit your campaign. Players knowing which gods are “real” in the campaign world are able to intelligently choose to serve one (or more) suitable to the character’s alignment, profession, and even goals.

In this, Gygax makes explicit something that was only implicit in the organization of Supplement IV: That gods organize themselves into pantheons. This might initially seem like a, “No kidding,” statement, but it’s rather likely you’re only thinking that because D&D so heavily popularized this concept.

In sword & sorcery fiction like Howard and Leiber, various cultures — just like in our own world’s history — had collections of gods that they worshipped. But these associations were usually implied to be the result of the people worshipping them rather than because the gods themselves had stratified social circles. And, as a result, gods might be found in several different “pantheons” (i.e., worshipped in various locations that had overlapping sets of gods that they worshipped).

There were certainly exceptions to this: The handling of the Asgardian gods in Kirby’s Thor comics, for example. Or the divisive war between Moorcock’s Chaos Lords and Lords of Law. It just wasn’t the presumed default.

This de facto introduction of the pantheon more or less completes the weirdly incoherent metaphysics of D&D religion, in which:

• Gods are arranged into pantheons, a word literally derived from the Greek word for a temple which worshipped all gods, and yet…
• People (including the clergy) almost universally choose just ONE god to worship because…
• Every civilized god gets slotted into a church based on monotheistic Christian rites, architecture, and organization. (“Evil” gods are slightly more likely to get primitive fanes and the like.)

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