Norse Gods for Pathfinder


Homebrew and House Rules

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This is still a work in progress.

It is an open-source pantheon of Norse deities for use in your Pathfinder RPG game.

This is NOT a conversion of the Deities & Demigods section on Norse mythology. This is an independent attempt to create something usable for gaming but still close to the actual mythology.

To that end, I admit that some fudging did take place where the source mythology was lacking. For example, some deities I just made up a favored weapon that seemed to suit them because none of the stories about them really mentioned a weapon. If however, a weapon was mentioned associated with them at all (like Odin's spear) I made sure to make that the favored weapon.

Also, some sources cite different names for different gods or say that some are just other names for the same gods. For example, Was Freya the same deity as Frigg? Was she the same deity as Gullveig who was in turn the same deity as Heid? Could she be the same deity as Idun who was also the same as Ostara? I tried to separate the deities by portfolios and personalities. Hence, Freya is separate than Frigg and Idun. However, Idun and Ostara were just too similar in portfolio not to be the same deity.

I will be tweaking and expanding this based on feedback I receive. I will also be writing descriptions of each deity and an explanation of how to use Norse cosmology in your game.

Norse Gods for Pathfinder


May hat is of to you sir! This is something I've been looking for. My girlfriend is an active asatru and somewhat of an expert on norse mythology. I'll forward it to her and I have a couple pdfs you may find useful. Let me know if you are interested. :D


Wicked K Games wrote:
May hat is of to you sir! This is something I've been looking for. My girlfriend is an active asatru and somewhat of an expert on norse mythology. I'll forward it to her and I have a couple pdfs you may find useful. Let me know if you are interested. :D

Yes, always looking for more info to improve this.

Liberty's Edge

Cool Writeup

I've always had a thing for norse gods/ mythology and this is pretty nice.


Whenever you get a chance, contact me via email and I'll send you some resources.

Kakarasa at gmail dot com


Excellent! Thanks for providing this. :D


I was looking for this free suppliment all morning to no avail.

Does anyone else have this to contribute?

Super Genius Games

I'm currently running a Norse themed game and this is perfect. Thanks!

Hyrum.

Liberty's Edge

HyrumOWC wrote:

I'm currently running a Norse themed game and this is perfect. Thanks!

Hyrum.

This. Is. Awesome.

I always sorta thought of Odin as Lawful Neutral or Neutral, though.


Orannis wrote:
HyrumOWC wrote:

I'm currently running a Norse themed game and this is perfect. Thanks!

Hyrum.

This. Is. Awesome.

I always sorta thought of Odin as Lawful Neutral or Neutral, though.

I considered that. However, he is almost always considered a good guy. He brings children sweets in his Yuletide proto-Santa Claus aspect and in the myths he walks the Earth and helps common people, so he does seem like a good guy. On the other hand, his rape of Rind is definitely not a good act either. Then again, he was punished for it by being sent to exile and was accepted back as Leader of the Asgard.

It is hard to pin an alignment on him. He's not evil, that's for sure. Lawful? He doesn't strike me as overly concerned with rules and duty. His obsession with knowledge leads him to neglect his leadership duties from time to time (i.e. hanging on Yggdrasil, questing for the well of Mimir, tricking his way to the Mead of Poetry, etc). So I feel Lawful just doesn't work on him. Neither does chaotic either though.

Hence, I went with NG. It just seemed to fit.


Odin is at the very least Lawful. He is the king, and all the rules and custom of the Gods flow from him. Also he is the source of law and Justice for his people.

Remember much of his questing occured when he was a young God and did not have the responsibities of being King.


Wicked K Games wrote:
May hat is of to you sir! This is something I've been looking for. My girlfriend is an active asatru and somewhat of an expert on norse mythology. I'll forward it to her and I have a couple pdfs you may find useful. Let me know if you are interested. :D

Just noticed this today, very well done. I had thought to incorporate and idea of older faiths into a campaign and this will fit nicely. As a devotee of Ullr, thanks!


christopher myco wrote:

Odin is at the very least Lawful. He is the king, and all the rules and custom of the Gods flow from him. Also he is the source of law and Justice for his people.

Remember much of his questing occured when he was a young God and did not have the responsibities of being King.

Good points. I changed his alignment to Lawful Good.


If you can get your hands on thr 1E book "Dities and Demi-Gods" you might find it useful. There is a section on the norse gods. Some of the art work is preety good too.


darth_borehd wrote:
christopher myco wrote:

Odin is at the very least Lawful. He is the king, and all the rules and custom of the Gods flow from him. Also he is the source of law and Justice for his people.

Remember much of his questing occured when he was a young God and did not have the responsibities of being King.

Good points. I changed his alignment to Lawful Good.

Sad mate, I don't see him as Lawful at all. On this boards it's easy to get someone to say anything is lawful, anything that has ANY code ends up being lawful here, and it doesn't make any sense.

Odin abandons Asgard several times to walk the earth, his thirst for knowledge is such that he lives it all behind to achieve it, his "rules" are broken by him most often than not and the most important thing is, he is TRYING REALLY HARD to break DESTINY by stopping ragnarok and avoiding it. HE KNOWS that's the way things should be, and yet, he's fought against it his whole life, and done all the chaotic stuff he could think off to do it.

He isn't lawful, not in a million years. Next thing people will say is that Zeus is lawful too... geez.


Xum wrote:
darth_borehd wrote:
christopher myco wrote:

Odin is at the very least Lawful. He is the king, and all the rules and custom of the Gods flow from him. Also he is the source of law and Justice for his people.

Remember much of his questing occured when he was a young God and did not have the responsibities of being King.

Good points. I changed his alignment to Lawful Good.

Sad mate, I don't see him as Lawful at all. On this boards it's easy to get someone to say anything is lawful, anything that has ANY code ends up being lawful here, and it doesn't make any sense.

Odin abandons Asgard several times to walk the earth, his thirst for knowledge is such that he lives it all behind to achieve it, his "rules" are broken by him most often than not and the most important thing is, he is TRYING REALLY HARD to break DESTINY by stopping ragnarok and avoiding it. HE KNOWS that's the way things should be, and yet, he's fought against it his whole life, and done all the chaotic stuff he could think off to do it.

He isn't lawful, not in a million years. Next thing people will say is that Zeus is lawful too... geez.

You proved that it requires more thought. I'm considering going back now to NG, but I will leave it as is for a while.

If anybody else has any thoughts, please post them here.


darth_borehd wrote:
Xum wrote:
darth_borehd wrote:
christopher myco wrote:

Odin is at the very least Lawful. He is the king, and all the rules and custom of the Gods flow from him. Also he is the source of law and Justice for his people.

Remember much of his questing occured when he was a young God and did not have the responsibities of being King.

Good points. I changed his alignment to Lawful Good.

Sad mate, I don't see him as Lawful at all. On this boards it's easy to get someone to say anything is lawful, anything that has ANY code ends up being lawful here, and it doesn't make any sense.

Odin abandons Asgard several times to walk the earth, his thirst for knowledge is such that he lives it all behind to achieve it, his "rules" are broken by him most often than not and the most important thing is, he is TRYING REALLY HARD to break DESTINY by stopping ragnarok and avoiding it. HE KNOWS that's the way things should be, and yet, he's fought against it his whole life, and done all the chaotic stuff he could think off to do it.

He isn't lawful, not in a million years. Next thing people will say is that Zeus is lawful too... geez.

You proved that it requires more thought. I'm considering going back now to NG, but I will leave it as is for a while.

If anybody else has any thoughts, please post them here.

Aside from that beautiful work, really, I'm impressed.


Xum wrote:
darth_borehd wrote:
Xum wrote:
darth_borehd wrote:
christopher myco wrote:

Odin is at the very least Lawful. He is the king, and all the rules and custom of the Gods flow from him. Also he is the source of law and Justice for his people.

Remember much of his questing occured when he was a young God and did not have the responsibities of being King.

Good points. I changed his alignment to Lawful Good.

Sad mate, I don't see him as Lawful at all. On this boards it's easy to get someone to say anything is lawful, anything that has ANY code ends up being lawful here, and it doesn't make any sense.

Odin abandons Asgard several times to walk the earth, his thirst for knowledge is such that he lives it all behind to achieve it, his "rules" are broken by him most often than not and the most important thing is, he is TRYING REALLY HARD to break DESTINY by stopping ragnarok and avoiding it. HE KNOWS that's the way things should be, and yet, he's fought against it his whole life, and done all the chaotic stuff he could think off to do it.

He isn't lawful, not in a million years. Next thing people will say is that Zeus is lawful too... geez.

You proved that it requires more thought. I'm considering going back now to NG, but I will leave it as is for a while.

If anybody else has any thoughts, please post them here.

Aside from that beautiful work, really, I'm impressed.

Here's the thing about Odin, he's f%!*ing crazy.

He pissed off a lot of entities, especially the Norns (the three Fates), in his pursuit of power and one of the prices he paid was the foreknowledge of his own death.

Almost every single thing Odin does afterwards is part of some increasingly desperate and murderous plan to save his own ass while still holding on to all his power.

Imagine if Stalin or Castro had a vision of their deaths at the hands of their enemies, and that everything they tried to forestall it only made the vision come true faster, how would they have acted? THAT'S Odin.


Xum wrote:
darth_borehd wrote:
Xum wrote:
darth_borehd wrote:
christopher myco wrote:

Odin is at the very least Lawful. He is the king, and all the rules and custom of the Gods flow from him. Also he is the source of law and Justice for his people.

Remember much of his questing occured when he was a young God and did not have the responsibities of being King.

Good points. I changed his alignment to Lawful Good.

Sad mate, I don't see him as Lawful at all. On this boards it's easy to get someone to say anything is lawful, anything that has ANY code ends up being lawful here, and it doesn't make any sense.

Odin abandons Asgard several times to walk the earth, his thirst for knowledge is such that he lives it all behind to achieve it, his "rules" are broken by him most often than not and the most important thing is, he is TRYING REALLY HARD to break DESTINY by stopping ragnarok and avoiding it. HE KNOWS that's the way things should be, and yet, he's fought against it his whole life, and done all the chaotic stuff he could think off to do it.

He isn't lawful, not in a million years. Next thing people will say is that Zeus is lawful too... geez.

You proved that it requires more thought. I'm considering going back now to NG, but I will leave it as is for a while.

If anybody else has any thoughts, please post them here.

Aside from that beautiful work, really, I'm impressed.

That is not correct. He fights against ragnorok because it means the death of everything, fighting a fight you cannot win to save everyone is not chaotic. it is heroic, esp when it means the death of everything there is a differenc. Again Odin wandered when he was was young God, this is when he met Loki. However when he became the king and older, he was VERY LAWFUL, at that point it became LOKI and Thor who did most of the Adentureing. Almost every story containing the olde Odin is him laying down law or passing Judgement. Yes Odin was Chaotic in his youth, when he lost his eye, but that's not where he ends up, and in the totality of the stories about him, and the history of the norse people, he is venerated far more as the law giver, while the stories of his youth are more who he used to be, and in fact that aspect of the choatic wander passes to thor.

ZEUS is extremely lawful, just because he has flings does not make totally chaotic. Is his Zeus who determined how the gods should interfere with the trojan war. It is zeus who first gives law to man. It is zeus who would come disquised as a traveler to judge the lawfulness of man. It is zeus who determine who should marry aphordite in a lawful matter. It is zues who imposes punishment on hercules, even though he loves his son because hercules violated the rules.

What people who just have a superfical knowledge of the myths don't realize is that zeus has these affairs, because to the greeks only a son of a God could be a true hero. All of Zeus children from these trysts become Hero's and these Hero's go and fight the monsters in the world.

Also to the greeks marriage vows did not exist for the male, for the women yes but not the man, thats why it was ok for odysses to sleep his way home, but not something his queen could do. Other than his flings which are not chaotics acts according to greek law, there is not a single chaotic act that can attrubited to zeus.


christopher myco wrote:
Lawful stuff...

Well mate, I know myth, I've studied it, and for you to say Zeus is VERY lawful breaks it up for me. He was NEVER portraited as lawful in any of his stories, he has done lawful things, yes, who hasn't? But he IS ruled by his emotions, that's not lawful.

Regarding Odin, as I stated earlier, you can paint him as non chaotic, not anymore by the way, but that's FAR from lawful. And for the Record, Ragnarok is NOT the end of everything, and he knows it, it's end of the old and restart of mankind and Gods alike.

It seems to me that your perception of the Myths is acurate, the only problem is what is chaotic and what is lawful.


Xum wrote:
christopher myco wrote:
Lawful stuff...

Well mate, I know myth, I've studied it, and for you to say Zeus is VERY lawful breaks it up for me. He was NEVER portraited as lawful in any of his stories, he has done lawful things, yes, who hasn't? But he IS ruled by his emotions, that's not lawful.

Regarding Odin, as I stated earlier, you can paint him as non chaotic, not anymore by the way, but that's FAR from lawful. And for the Record, Ragnarok is NOT the end of everything, and he knows it, it's end of the old and restart of mankind and Gods alike.

It seems to me that your perception of the Myths is acurate, the only problem is what is chaotic and what is lawful.

1. zues is not ruled by emotions, he is very lustful, and very tricky, but for its not unlawful for zeus, because its not unlawful for him to have flings and trick moral women. You keep applying our modern rues for fidelity which didn't apply to men. There is nothing choatic about zeus. If you ready the tragadies, the illiad, etc, zeus is the epitome of order. The entire function of zeus is to give order to the world.

to break almost any law one must knowly break that law. you can't do some unlawful unless you know it's unlawful. it's not unlawful for zeus to have flings. if zeus were ruled by emotion he would never have punished his favorite son herules.

I would suggest you read more stories, because unless zeus is chasing after women he is protrayed extemely lawful. When he punished prometheus, when he punshied hercules, in the illiad, in the story of the three ages of man, in the creation story, when he gives law to man. In many of tragadies, in the story of phersephone, in the stories where he gives a mortal his word, and he always keeps it.

Generally it is easy to identify law/chaotic Greek Gods because thier personalities merge with thier domains

ZEUS - lawful- god of law and Justice
Athena- lawful - goddess of wisdom and the just war

The actual chaotic gods had inherently chaotic domains
Ares-the god of battle- the greeks considered him particulary capricious becuase the tide of battle was capricious and the few stories about him tend to demonstrate that inherent capricous nature

Aphrodite- goddess of sexual love/love- by far the most choatic greek good- again the stories about her all warn of her caprious nature.

Hercules- chaoctic, a by product of being the strongest and stepmom out to get you.

Odin- for odin ragnorok is the end of everything for him. some gods will survive, but he, won't, most everyone he's love wont' He knows he not going to win, he's no different from us. At the end of day death is going to win, entropy is going to win, We fight death, and we fight entropy everyday, that both are inevitable, we are not more chaotic because we choose to fight and truth only delay inevitable outcomes.


This is awesome. My brother would love to read this... he's got a homebrew game coming up, and I might suggest this for his gods since he's been into the old mythology lately (some elective classes he took in university got him into it).

On the subject of Odin and aligned domains...

I would think that the only time you'd need to put an aligned domain is if it's a concern for that deity.

Yeah, sure, Odin can be lawful or not, good or not. But really, is his agenda about promoting Lawful or Goodness in Midgard? Or his his primary concern Knowledge, etc.

Beyond that... 7 Domain choices for a single god is a bit much. Take out Lawful and Good and leave the rest and you get down to a respectable 5.

Dark Archive

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Pretty cool stuff!

The alignment thing is a derail, IMO. Every god has a dozen conflicting presentations, and many range from being draconian and restrictively 'lawful' in one presentation, and wildly capricious and 'chaotic' in other depictions. It's best to just ignore alignments for the gods, and make any alignment restrictions only apply to their priests, and only if it matters to that god.

With fantasy gods, like Rovagug or Torm, the writers can design tales to highlight their pre-selected alignments (and, even then, some inconsistencies creep in, and we end up with Pelor, the Burning Hate). Odin has been lawful, chaotic, good and evil, in various tales, even if he's a thousand times more consistent then the average Greek god. He'd probably scoff at the whole concept.

I'd definitely pitch the alignment Domains from Odin (and alignment in general, he's a great choice for Neutral). Knowledge, Magic, Rune, Trickery and Weather are must-haves, from what I've seen of him. If one gets swapped out (Magic, perhaps), Repose might be a decent choice, being the master of the Valkyries and a kinda/sorta death-god (the god of the valorous dead, anyway, who don't go to Hel in Nifleheim). Then again, my vision of Odin seems to fold in the dieties you've got listed as Od and Thrud (since I've heard both Odin referred to as the traveler, who sometimes curses those who don't offer him hospitality, in his guise as an old man, and as the 'boss' of the Valkyries and Einherjar).

I like smaller pantheons, and, after trimming some fat, I'd probably go to the scandalous route of making Frigga and Freya the same goddess, with Odin having married her to 'seal the pact' between the Aesir and Vanir, and her being a goddess of Animal, Charm, Community, Magic and Weather, to fold in the various aspects of the two goddesses.

Shadow Lodge

Xum wrote:
Regarding Odin, as I stated earlier, you can paint him as non chaotic, not anymore by the way, but that's FAR from lawful. And for the Record, Ragnarok is NOT the end of everything, and he knows it, it's end of the old and restart of mankind and Gods alike.

Eh...some believe that the return of Baldar and the other hopeful aspects of post-Ragnarok are merely the result of Christian influences on the Norse myths. Certainly the bit with Baldar is HEAVILY reminiscent of Jesus's return.

I myself prefer the bleaker, more existential interpretation of Ragnarok...where it truly is the end of everything.


Kthulhu wrote:

Eh...some believe that the return of Baldar and the other hopeful aspects of post-Ragnarok are merely the result of Christian influences on the Norse myths. Certainly the bit with Baldar is HEAVILY reminiscent of Jesus's return.

I myself prefer the bleaker, more existential interpretation of Ragnarok...where it truly is the end of everything.

I would be curious as to when the return of Balder myth popped up in Norse/Germanic mythology versus that of the Resurrection story. Of course, there are other resurrection stories that predate Jesus', but that's not the topic for this thread. ;)


Everyone is ignoring the fact that Odin was worshipped as a lawful of God. He was never worshipped as anything else. His non lawful side was like, oh, when Odid was young he did blh blah, The actual God the norse praised was lawful. It is perfectly reasonable that the norsemen would want thier king, to have been wild and crazy in younger days, but wise and lawful in his older days when he was king..

The problem everyone is doing is there are giving equal wait to temporal actions which is silly. It's like saying Malcom X should be NE because he spent most of young life in prison. Or saint paul should LE becuase he was saul before and took great pleasure in torturing christians, or than Satan should be Lawful Good because he was the highest Angel for a longer time than he was satan.

For a diety esp, it needs to be how the God was worship, when he was worship and what time period. The fact is ODIN is never worshipped as anything other than the lawful aloof king, because all his non laful actions are referred to as being past events.


Odin was most worshiped by warriors specialy The Berserks and was entitled as granting the berserker rage to his warriors.

Ceremonies in his honor included human sacrifice by spear and by fire...

He was the god of Battle, Wisdom, magic and poetry... His name means FURY...

Several myths depict him as a treacherous being...

Yeah, seems lawful to me...

Once again, don't even get me started with Zeus.


The biggest problem with statting out mythological gods is... they were mythological.

Myths grow and change and evolve. And everyone has their 'favorite' version of that myth which they believe is the essence of the myth.

Add on to that all the 'romanticizing' of the old Myths by authors, playwrights and screenplay writers over the years and you end up with each mythological personage being a giant flashy gem of some type with a thousand facets.

In other words, everyone is right and everyone is wrong about Odin, Zeus, etc. It's hard to go back and get the original stories about either as well, since even the experts don't agree all the time on what stories were recorded actually referred to the same gods.

The thing is you have to pick something to go with, and honestly any choice (be it historically accurate or the romanticized version or a PG-13 cleaned up cross between the two) is just as valid, and will have just as many adherent's and detractors as any other choice. So go with what you prefer, and if what's written down doesn't agree with you, change it. :)


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Wicked K Games wrote:
May hat is of to you sir! This is something I've been looking for. My girlfriend is an active asatru and somewhat of an expert on norse mythology. I'll forward it to her and I have a couple pdfs you may find useful. Let me know if you are interested. :D

Looks great!

A couple of minor things.

Jotnar is the plural of Jotun.

I don't believe Aegir should be Evil. He is one of the Jotnar (like Skadhi) that "plays well with others". In the eddic poem Lokasenna, for example, he serves as the host to all of the Aesir and Vanir. Perhaps True Neutral? He is far too hospitable to be Evil.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Joseph Mandato wrote:
Wicked K Games wrote:
May hat is of to you sir! This is something I've been looking for. My girlfriend is an active asatru and somewhat of an expert on norse mythology. I'll forward it to her and I have a couple pdfs you may find useful. Let me know if you are interested. :D

Looks great!

A couple of minor things.

Jotnar is the plural of Jotun.

I don't believe Aegir should be Evil. He is one of the Jotnar (like Skadhi) that "plays well with others". In the eddic poem Lokasenna, for example, he serves as the host to all of the Aesir and Vanir. Perhaps True Neutral? He is far too hospitable to be Evil.

I changed the Jotun plural.

As far as Aegir, who says evil can't be hospitable? Have you not seen any James Bond movies? The bad guy always likes the finer things in life and puts on fantastic parties.

While Aegir is known for his feasts attended by all the gods with goblets that refill themselves, he also demanded human sacrifices from every ship crossing the seas. Slaves and prisoners were tossed overboard to appease him and his priests would sabotage vessels of captains who failed to sacrifice to him.


As others have mentioned, I put Odin more towards LN than LG, but I can see what you're saying about being one of the "good guys". That said, I think he should replace the Good domain with the travel domain. Odin is known as a wanderer much more than he is known as a bringer of goodness and light.

Edit: Sorry, forgot to mention. Great work!

Liberty's Edge

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One problem inherent with assigning a particular alignment to this or that deity is that, essentially, the original writers didn't have Dungeons and Dragons when they were statting Odin and Zeus up for their stories, so they weren't constrained to write within those strictures.

Not to mention the fact that damn few people can agree what an alignment even means without inevitably agreeing to disagree in some fashion.

Nor the fact that, in some of these guys' instances anyway, there were more than one writer, or even more than one deity whose backstory was crammed in to a particular deity's final draft, if you will.

Can't find the exact source anymore, but I think I read that Bast originally was a lion headed sun/war goddess whose people got pwned, was absorbed into another pantheon, and who lost a lot of her portfilio and influence. What her "alignment" was could vary drastically depending on who you asked, or when you asked it.


I've made more updates to the document. It is still a work in progress though.


I'd pin Odin as Neutral Good myself. He's the sort of leader that's willing to make sacrifices (and sacrifice other people) and cut more than a few corners in so doing. There's more than a little ruthlessness in his character but you can't deny that his underlying reason for everything he does is to attempt to insure the survival of what's worth preserving in his world. Odin almost seems to act like a PC who has prophetic foreknowledge of what's going to come to pass, and is looking for loopholes and alternative interpretations of said prophecies. He knows, for instance, that Fenris is going to eat him on that dark day, and there's nothing he can do about that, but he meticulously plans so that his son...the archetypical 'strong silent type' can 'put his foot down' and insure that Fenris's reign will be short.

Mike Havel, from the Dies the Fire series by S.M. Stirling has a lot of similarities to Odin, and, I think, the same alignment.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
darth_borehd wrote:


As far as Aegir, who says evil can't be hospitable? Have you not seen any James Bond movies? The bad guy always likes the finer things in life and puts on fantastic parties.

While Aegir is known for his feasts attended by all the gods with goblets that refill themselves, he also demanded human sacrifices from every ship crossing the seas. Slaves and prisoners were tossed overboard to appease him and his priests would sabotage vessels of captains who failed to sacrifice to him.

Regarding Aegir and hospitality, in Lokasenna, Aegir's hall is firmly established as a fridhstead, a place where no blood should be spilled. Even though Loki breaks fridh*, killing one of Aegir's servants, Aegir remains passive. Though I acknowedge your point that hospitality need not always translate to good, I would submit that an evil host wouldn't simply let a malcontent party crasher kill his servat. At least we agree he definitely isn't chaotic :-).

* there really isn't a great translation for "fridh" from Old Norse, but "an actively maintained and productive peace" is somewhat close.

Regarding the demand for human sacrifices and his priests sabotaging vessels - I'm not aware of any sources that support this, and would be interested to hear of any you might have come across. Aegir's wife Ran comes across as a little "greedier" than him in the lore (between her net and her name meaning "theft"), so I'm with you on her being evil.

Anyway... the site is VERY well done. I've looked at similar efforts, and they usually drive me batty with dozens of blatant errors. Your's is a cut above.


Joseph Mandato wrote:


Regarding the demand for human sacrifices and his priests sabotaging vessels - I'm not aware of any sources that support this, and would be interested to hear of any you might have come across. Aegir's wife Ran comes across as a little "greedier" than him in the lore (between her net and her name meaning "theft"), so I'm with you on her being evil.

Anyway... the site is VERY well done. I've looked at similar efforts, and they usually drive me batty with dozens of blatant errors. Your's is a cut above.

I found it in a few places, including these two. I can't remember where else I saw it.

http://www.monstropedia.org/index.php?title=%C3%86gir
http://www.pantheon.org/articles/a/aegir.html

And thank you.


VERY nicely done.

I really should start doing the same thing for a Celtic campaign.....

Dark Archive

nighttree wrote:

VERY nicely done.

I really should start doing the same thing for a Celtic campaign.....

I'd love to see a good write-up of that.

The Olympian gods get beaucoup love, and the Norse are generally a step behind them, but the Celtic, Slavic, Egyptian, Babylonian, etc, etc gods tend to get less exploration, and finding a halfway decent writeup of any branch of African or Native American mythology for D&D use is quite rare.

The Morrigan has always been my favorite Celtic figure, but, as my avatar / screenname suggests, I have a fondness for the less-loved dieties... (With exceptions. Loki's a tool. Heimdall and Freya are my favorite Asgardians!)


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Set wrote:


The Morrigan has always been my favorite Celtic figure, but, as my avatar / screenname suggests, I have a fondness for the less-loved dieties... (With exceptions. Loki's a tool. Heimdall and Freya are my favorite Asgardians!)

Not hard.....

I would probably go something like this....

The Morrigna
Badb (War/Repose/Death)
Macha (War/Glory/Protection)
Nemain (War/Madness/Destruction)


When Norse mythology is complete, I'm planning on doing a Native American version.


Cool, I love Celtic Myth :)

And for me I always saw Odin as Neutral Good, able to do the Law, but be Chaotic as well. And you couldnt opt out on Magick for his portfolio as he was the God of Magick, Death, Wisdom, and Battle among other things ;)


Yeah, and he went by Grimm and old one eye as well....


Frejya and Frigg are not the same Goddess, etc :)


And Idune is seperate as well :) Frejya is a Goddess of magick, and Frigg is fertility, and Idune is youth :)


Loki belongs with the Aesier even though he is a midget Jotun, the Jotun Loki is Utgard Loki and is the King of the Jotun and is the God of Magick and Illusions, he put the Ocean in a cup for Tor to drink out of and made the Midgaar serpent look like a dog for Tor to lift :)

Tor had a Jotun mistres, who I forget the name of ;)


Grendel was a Troll and was killed by a Hero :) Grendels mother was killed by same hero Beauwulf


Nice work! The Norse pantheon has always been my favorite and this is excellent material. Thank you.

Contributor

Very pleased to have this here. It's a wonderful summation.

I'd like if a Germanic extension were done with the names as well, as I just watched the first part of Wagner's "Ring" cycle and it would be nice to have Wotan, Fricka, Loge and Donner added in there as alternate names. A minor point for the most part.

Another thing to note, as in my own campaign, is what part of the history of the gods it is you're drawing from. For example, Loki before the death of Balder is viewed rather differently than after, and we're playing where this hasn't entered the picture yet and he's basically the jerk uncle of the gang and Odin's old buddy.


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EWHM wrote:

I'd pin Odin as Neutral Good myself. He's the sort of leader that's willing to make sacrifices (and sacrifice other people) and cut more than a few corners in so doing. There's more than a little ruthlessness in his character but you can't deny that his underlying reason for everything he does is to attempt to insure the survival of what's worth preserving in his world. Odin almost seems to act like a PC who has prophetic foreknowledge of what's going to come to pass, and is looking for loopholes and alternative interpretations of said prophecies. He knows, for instance, that Fenris is going to eat him on that dark day, and there's nothing he can do about that, but he meticulously plans so that his son...the archetypical 'strong silent type' can 'put his foot down' and insure that Fenris's reign will be short.

Mike Havel, from the Dies the Fire series by S.M. Stirling has a lot of similarities to Odin, and, I think, the same alignment.

I have a heard time making a god who accepts human sacrifice and battle for its own sake as Good, and who is the god of madness. I say this respectfully, since I take Asatru seriously -- even though I don't practice (and I'm descended from the guy, being a Norman-Welshman). He seems LN or N to me.


Good point, Neutral.

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