Utgardloki's page

ujjjjjjjjjj wrote:

The thought that the abyss IS expanding that its INFINITE in its size while nearly every other plane is finite makes me somewhat depressed.

Infinite doesn't always match our intuitions about the same. For example, consider Gabriel's Horn; a geometric figure which has infinite surface area but encloses a finite volume.

If you think of the Abyss as a Gabriel's Horn on end, the surface of it is infinite, but the layers (and denizens thereof) exist in a finite space. Therefore, it can be infinite, and yet have limits.

** spoiler omitted **

Hmmm. I had not thought of considering the Abyss, or any other plane, to be based on Gabriel's Horn. I'll have to use that idea sometime.

Personally, I like the idea of each layer of the Abyss and the Hells to be infinitely large. A few years ago I was writing up some ideas based on that concept, and I think I came up with some pretty cool ideas.

For example, consider a "sunset" in the Abyss. What I mean, is a super-hot spherical body the size of Antares, that comes down to "set" on an infinite plane. That thing is going to vaporize anything within a hundred million miles, and it itself is something like four or five hundred million miles in radius.

Then if the thing "rises" again, you're left with a hemispherical hole about a billion miles in diameter and about half a billion miles deep. Such a hole might get filled in with waters from the river Styx. Now you have a huge, huge, huge ocean. And that is less than a figurative pin-prick on the vast plane of the Abyss.

But then I thought, why stop there? What if, instead of an infinite plane, the "surface" of the Abyss is really the surface of a vast globe the size of a galaxy. People on the surface probably wouldn't know the difference. But then there could be other such spheres, scattered throughout Abyssal space.

To put this in perspective, I have considered that in the "Great Wheel", the universe that we, ourselves, inhabit (we can call this "the Prime Cosmos"), is perhaps but a finite demiplane about 30,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles across. It orbits a vastly larger appendage of the Negative Material Plane the way that a speck of dust might be orbiting the Earth. And this larger appendage is itself but a speck on the Negative Material Plane itself.

Of course, our universe is believed to be expanding at the speed of light, so I suppose if Demons and Devils want a piece of it, there is plenty of room. We just don't want it to be our room.

I think this is a great idea. One caveat:

In another thread, I was arguing that anybody in a D&D/Pathfinder world who wanted to be a bandit would have to be either stupid or suicidal. But then, after watching a western, I realized that D&D/Pathfinder bandits would be more like the train robbers in the wild west.

Bandits would want to very carefully plan their attacks. They wouldn't jump out of the trees to rob random passers by, but would seek intelligence to find out what was being carried, and how well it was guarded. They'd probably ambush caravans carrying valuable cargo (but not too valuable -- ingots of platinum are probably too heavy guarded to make a successful robbery likely). A small party would probably be allowed to pass because the odds of jumping a pair of teenth-level monks would be too great.

Robbers will probably only attack parties if they think they can win.

This is all very fascinating.

I have trouble believing in a world, even a fantasy one, in which one out of every 2,000 or 3,000 people or so is a 9th level PC.

That would mean that every town of 10,000 or so would likely have a 9th level cleric who can raise the dead. Pretty much anyone who is reasonably near an established town can resurrect their buddy. (Sure... provided that they can take the negative-levels hit and they can afford the price, but this makes death way less significant in a campaign setting for my tastes.)

My thought on this is to remove the spells for raising the dead from the spell lists, and then offering a feat to restore it to an individual's list. To make up for this 'feat tax', grant a bonus feat to the classes that get this spell by the book. The player can then decide whether to take the spell, or use the bonus feat for something else.

So most NPC clerics, even if high enough level, just would not have been favored by the gods with this power, and only the PCs (assuming one of them went this route) and a few NPCs would. These characters would probably take efforts to conceal their ability in order to avoid being besieged by requests.

On the other hand, a Wizard or Bard could gain this spell, which opens up other characterization options.

A character with Commoner levels built for combat can indeed hold his own a bit better...but those people pretty much don't exist. They just take a level of Warrior instead. I mean, why wouldn't they? It's simpler, easier, and better in all ways.

Unless he is a woman.

In my Audor setting, both girls and boys are routinely given weapons training, because it is a dangerous world with orcs and what-not. But even though the setting is egalitarian with respect for women's rights, female NPCs are less likely to want to become warriors than male NPCs (the stock hot female 4th level sheriff notwithstanding). So she spends most of her time farming and sewing and tending animals, but she also is is a pretty good shot with her crossbow -- a masterwork crossbow handed down from her grandmother's grandmother.

The numbers I was using in my 3.5 campaigns:

1 out of 10 NPCs have PC classes (Fighter, Wizard, et cetera).
About 10% of NPCs with PC classes have arcane spellcasting classes (Wizard, Sorcerer, Bard)
About 20% of NPCs with PC classes are clergy (Clerics, Druids, Bards).

So about 1 out of 100 NPCs is a Wizard, Sorcerer or Bard. Bards would be the most common. This is what kept barons from employing legions of fireball-wielding wizards.

Among all NPCs (not just the ones with PC classes, but the Commoners and Experts too), I assumed that each level was half as common as the level below it. Therefore

50% of NPCs are 1st level
25% are 2nd level
1 out of 8 are 3rd level
1 out of 16 are 4th level
1 out of 128 are 7th level
1 out of 1024 are 10th level
1 out of a million are 20th level.

Putting it together, if you want to find a 9th level Cleric, you'd need a population of about 2,500. If you want a 13th level Wizard, you'd need a population of about 120,000. (1/100 are arcane casters. 1/3 arcane casters are Wizards. 1/4095 Wizards reach 13th level or higher. This is ignoring all the Wizards who multiclass, so the number might be more like 1 out of 200,000 NPCs have 13th level Wizard capability.)

Of course, it is possible that the nearest 13th level Wizard just happened to settle into your own home town.

An interesting idea I found on Wikepedia here regarding Zisa, the wife of Tyr is that Tyr had a wife called Zisa, and that Zisa is another name for Isis.

On the other hand, my theories about a nonchristian medieval europe would associate Baldur with Osiris, and thus Isis would be his consort.

Also, apparently, the name Tyr is derived from a cognate of Dyeus, so perhaps Tyr is another son of Zeus, who might have made a visit to the Asgardians at some point in time?

Thor had a girlfriend, a Giantess named Jarnsaxa or Iarnsaxa who was the chief rival for Sifs affections. She bore him two sons Mangi and Modi.

Mangi- Magni's strength almost match that of his father. Magni was given the horse called Gullfaxi, "Golden Mane", when he rescued his father from the frost giant Hrungnir.

Modi- Apart from his association with his father (Thor) and brother Magni, and that he survived Ragnarok, not much is known about Modi. Magni and Modi survived Ragnarök, inheriting their father's hammer, Mjollnir, Modi appeared to be both a poet and a warrior, in the kennings found in Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda. Yes Thors son with a Giantess inherited Mjolnir!

Thor and Sif- Thor married Sif, the golden-haired goddess. He was the father of a daughter, named Thrud. Goddess of corn and fertility(?). She was goddess with beautiful golden hair. Not much is known about Sif. Sif was possibly a Vanir goddess originally, like the goddess Freyja.

Sif was the wife and consort of Thor. She had a son named Ull.

Originally, Sif was probably a prophetess known as the Sibyl, which Snorri Sturluson mentioned in the prologue of the Prose Edda. This Sibyl married Tror (Thor), who she had met in the realm of Thrace, which Sturluson called Thrudheim. If this is truly the case, then she became the goddess of prophecy and divination, though in the usual Norse mythology, she doesn't appeare to have any gift with divination.

Gotta love those old stories ;)

It's a pity nobody did anything with the concept of Sif as goddess of divination while Thor was the god of kicking Jotun butt.

I've been toying with a concept of the post-Raganarok pantheon (Baldur, Magni and Modi, probably Sif, et al returning about 2,500 years in the future. However, by then Mankind will have reached for and inhabited the stars and see the Norse gods as advanced aliens instead of divinities. Yes, the wheels in my mind are turning.

One idea is that in the "interegnum" between the death of Odin and the return of Baldur, Sif is running things, hatching plans on this world or that. I thus characterized her as a no-nonsense, pragmatic goddess with little patience for the kind of machiasmo that led to Raganarok in the first place. I've gone so far as to establish a setting based on the concept and actually tried to write a novel (I got about 70 pages written) and based a Dungeons and Dragons paladin PC on this concept.

Utgardloki wrote:

How could I have forgotten about Gerd, the wife of Frey? I even had a PC who was going to become a cleric of Gerd as some point if the campaign had continued.

The basic story is that Frey was sitting in the tower Hlidskialf, when he saw a beautiful jotun maiden named Gerd, whose arm shown with light. He sent his servant to get her to marry him. At first she refused, but finally she agreed to meet him, and she fell in love with him and married him. But to arrange the meeting, Frey had to give his sword to her father, to be used against him at Raganarok.

I saw Gerd as a goddess of ice and winter, but also of the spring thaw. She is an important nature goddess, especially of the northern realms. She is a goddess of beauty and light, but also of aloofness. Reading the Wikipedia article, I also see that she is a rival of Frigga, and that images of her and Frey are often found in buildings, so she might also be the goddess of enclosures and buildings.

I put her alignment as Lawful Neutral. I would assign her a Sword as her favored weapon. Her domains might include Charm, Earth, Glory, Protection, and Weather.

I can include her. What kind of sword do you think?

In general, I tried not to include too many minor deities who are only the spouses or lovers of the major ones. The list can be become quite long then.

It would probably be the kind of sword that Frey gave up to become her husband. A longsword, I think.

It's interesting, deities that I thought were minor turned out to have have more significance in ancient culture than I thought.

Gerd was listed as one of the "rivals of Frigga", but I've been wondering if (assuming that it is not an error, as some scholars believe it might have been), if it might have been a political rivalry instead of a sexual rivalry.

christopher myco wrote:

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.

This was probably beaten to death already, but...

Are you discussing gaming or real life?

The Vikings didn't start adopting the trappings of "civilized" living (including rigid nation states) until they started adopting Christianity. Their culture to that point is usually described as valuing strength and independence* (Cambridge History of Scandinavia). They were flexible*, adaptable* and tolerant of other cultures*. Any sort of central authority didn't start showing up in their society until they adopted Christianity and accepted the concept of the nation-state.

*(None of these are generally accepted as characteristics of a "lawful" culture in gaming terms).

Your assertion that Odin was "never worshiped as anything other than a Lawful aloof king" is completely culturally false. He was worshiped as what he was, the Patriarchal head of his clan, as the concept of the "Lawful king" wasn't part of the Scandinavian culture until...

Unlike other deities, Odin was a trickster god, which is why "Wednesday", the day of the Roman god Mercury, was named after Woden and "Thursday", the day of the Roman god Jupiter, was not.

I was thinking what might have happened if there was no Christianity. A thought is that the cult of Isis may have made its way north and Isis might have gotten worked into the Norse mythology.

But it could be interesting if the Isis worshippers take a different approach to magic than the Odin worshippers. I've also been reading a lot of philosophy recently, and think medieval Aesir-worshippers would be a lot more existential than the medieval Christians were, and that medieval Isis-worshippers would be more like Hegelian idealists.

The way I would see it playing out would be that the Odinist wizards would see magic as manipulating forces and power ("I'll blast him with my Rune of Evocation and then transmute the rock he falls on to mud"). The Isisian witches would see magic as manipulating forms and patterns ("By wrapping this string around this figure, I will bind him with immobile magical bonds.")

Maybe I'm thinking too much.

: he is the god of kings (LN), madmen and poets (CN), human sacrifice and war (NE/CE), and magic (CN); he is opposed to the (chaotic) giants (LN), pronounces doom on good and bad (N), and respects courage and bravery (CG). He's kind of all over the place,

This could be justification for the "Aberrent" bloodline of the Sorcerer class. It's not that they are into Cthulhuian mythos, it's that they are inspired by Odin but in a mad, crazy sort of way.

A Giantish bloodline, perhaps a tweaked variation on the Elemental (fire and water) bloodlines, might be an interesting notion, removing some of the movement related stuff for more fire giant and frost giant related effects.

Maybe the Giantish bloodline works as the Elemental bloodline, only it grants Enlarge as one of the bonus spells instead of Burning Hands.

Or perhaps the Giantish bloodline grants the ability to alter size, with benefits and penalties applying.

Deities

Frigga
In my Audor campaign, I established as one of the cultural differences between the "Dormacs" and the "Dora-Tachuks" that the former worshipped Frigga as the Queen of Heaven and as goddess of matrimony. The latter put more emphasis on Frigga as a goddess of Fertility and Childbirth.

Jorth
I read in a few sources that Thor was the son of a goddess named Jorth, who was a goddess of the Earth. I haven't read much about Jorth, but I made her a major goddess in my own setting, describing her as "the Monica Lewinsky of the gods". She's a Jotun, Goddess of Earth and Fertility and Sexual Desire, lives in a great hall under the ground, alignment is Neutral, and her favored weapon would probably be a club or quarterstaff. Since I was running a 3.5 campaign and included some of my own Domains, I don't have a list of domains for her, but from the Pathfinder Core book I would assign her Animal, Charm, Earth, Plant, and I assigned all War domain to all the Norse gods.

I portrayed her as the mother of all mortal races, and she does not favor one over the other. Many of her clergy are Druids and are concerned about the preservation of nature.

Hod
I read in one source that Hod may have been Odin in disguise. It's an interesting thought, but if so, it would definitely be a campaign secret known to very few.

The same book also suggested that Od might also be another disguise of Odin.

A note on Raganarok
For my Atlantis idea, the events were portrayed as being very early in the history of the Norse gods, and many of the adventures might not even have happened yet.

But for Audor, my idea was to keep it vague just where in the sequence of events the Norse gods were. Was Balder made invulnerable to all but mistletoe yet? Was he slain yet? If he was not slain, why not send someone to Asgard to give Frigga a helpful hint?

I decided to resolve the paradox at least secretly by invoking Einstein's concept of simultanity -- the events in the tales are both in the future and they have already taken place, depending on how you get to Asgard. The mortals on the ground are not aware of this and only know that they are confused about the whole thing.

Odin
I've decided to make Odin Neutral Good, because while he is the giver of law, he is also a trickster who is liable to break his own rules if he believes that it will serve the higher good.

Sigyn
Loki's Asgardian wife is another minor deity whom I've fleshed out some for my Audor campaign. As you may know, she stays by Loki's side as he is tormented, holding a bucket to catch the venom being dripped by the snake that Skade placed over his head. Thus, Sigyn is the goddess of mercy and of unconditional love.

Her alignment is Lawful Good. Her favored weapon would be a net. Her domains would include Charm, Community, Good, and Protection.

Narvi
The son of Loki and Sigyn is known for being torn apart so that his entrails can be used to bind his father for punishment. Thus, I've elaborated this god as the god of bindings, whose worshippers include wizards skilled at exorcisms and sealing of arcane portals. He would probably be a good patron deity for Inquisitors.

His alignment is Lawful Neutral. His favored weapon would be a lasso or net. His domains would include Law, Rune, and War.

Skadi
In Audor, I determined that many of the female Barbarians and warriors would worship Skadi because she does not lay down a lot of restrictions, and because they admire her attitude. I established that worship of Skadi was especially prominent in the border region between the "quasi-nordic" culture and the "eastern barbarians" who worshipped a different pantheon involving a sun god and a wind goddess.

I hope somebody finds these ideas interesting.

I find this very interesting. I've been using Norse mythology in my own games as well, so I have some thoughts. If you like them, feel free to use them, otherwise feel free to ignore them and/or consider me a crank who doesn't know what he is talking about.

Most of these ideas either have been used for my Audor campaign which was based on Norse mythology and run under the 3.5 rules, or are part of an "Atlantis" idea I've been working on in which the Norse myths are part of the world in which Atlantis exists.

It seems I have a lot of thoughts, so I'll break it up into multiple posts for easier reading

Worlds

For an "Atlantis" project, I thought about tying the Norse realms to the planets. I don't mean that Asgard is literally on Mars, but that the realm of Asgard is connected to Mars in some cosmic sense. The idea I had was that Ygdrasl existed in an alternate plane of existence and where Asgard was via the branches of Asgard corresponded to where Mars is in our own cosmos.

The associations I made were as follows:
Muspelheim is associated with Mercury
Vanaheim is associated with Venus
Midgard is associated with Earth (of course)
Nidavellir could be associated with the Moon*
Asgard is associated with Mars
Alfheim is associated with Ceres
Jotunheim is associated with Jupiter
Svartalfheim could be associated with Saturn*
Utgard is associated with Uranus
Niflheim is associated with Pluto**

* I always considered Nidavellir and Svartalfheim as parts of the Earth -- Svartalfheim being in Africa and Nidavellir being under the earth. If you wanted to, I suppose these could be Saturn and the Moon, respectively.

** Pluto is not considered a planet by a vote of a group of astronomers, but for this project I've considered Pluto as the first-seen of the Kuiper belt objects, and thus as a fitting analog to Niflheim. Ceres is also not a planet either, but is the largest object in a space where a planet is expected to be, so represents the major analog of Alfheim. I considered that the Atlanteans are aware of these astronomical objects and more because they were able to detect them using their magic.

Classes

Barbarians
While not for a Nordic culture, I have been toying with an idea of allowing Barbarians to chose a totem animal. If the Barbarian choses an animal known for speed and agility, then instead of gaining Strength during Rage, she would gain Dexterity instead. If the Barbarian choses an animal known for wisdom, such as an Owl, then she could gain Wisdom and Charisma instead of Strength and Constitution. I suppose these variants probably have a name other than "Rage" to indicate activation of their powers. "Trance" works for the Wisdom/Charisma Barbarians. I'm not sure what to call the activation of Dexterity/Constitution.

Sorcerers
When I was running a game based Norse mythology (called my "Audor" campaign), I held that Sorcerers were those who were given the gift of sorcery by one or more of the Gods. Odin or Freya would be the most likely to favor a mortal with such a gift. This was for 3.5, so I didn't consider how the different bloodlines would factor in.

I suppose with bloodlines, many sorcerers would gain their magic from draconic or fey ancestors, as in other Pathfinder campaigns. Sorcerers who are gifted with magic from a god would probably have the Destiny bloodline, although other bloodlines are possible.

I had fun one day when I had a group of gnolls, led by an uber Gnoll Barbarian so mutated with two templates that the PCs literally did not know they were hitting.

Mr. Uber Gnoll Barbarian With Two Templates went down in the second round. Meanwhile, standing next to him, Mr. Unremarkable Gnoll #2 got renamed to Mr. Caffeinated Gnoll because he kept saving vs the Wizard's Sleep spells, and kept going, and just wouldn't go down.

There's always one gnoll who refuses to die.