So...yeah...I bet some of you will want an EXPLANATION for this, right.
While planing my next long running campaign, I needed to make some additions and subtractions to the gods of Golarion. Other additions include many Asgardians, while Rovagug, Irori, Abadar, and Shelyn were removed or changed (Shelyn into Balder and Abadar into Odin). After the edits, I was left short 1 CE deity so i figured "What major race in this game is missing a god...Trolls and Goblins will play a big part in the early part, what could their god be...dam..."
And thus the God of Goblins and Trolls became...David Bowie (Named Bowie).
So now...HELP!
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Domains: Stretch Pants, Ambiguous Sexuality, and Torture
Favored Weapon: Orbs
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When I read David Bowie in the thread title the first thing I thought of was the movie Labyrinth.
Anyway for some reason I could see your god (Bowie) with the temple sword as a favored weapon (no reason except it creates a cool image). As for domains; trickery, Luck, and chaos would be my suggestion. Those would fit a goblin god pretty well, don't know how well it would work for trolls (since they're less traps and tricks and more of a brute type of monster).
When I read David Bowie in the thread title the first thing I though of was the movie Labyrinth.
Anyway for some reason I could see your god (Bowie) with the temple sword as a favored weapon (no reason except it creates a cool image). As for domains; trickery, Luck, and chaos would be my suggestion. Those would fit a goblin god pretty well, don't know how well it would work for trolls (since their less traps and tricks and more of a brute type of monster).
Well, it's a 9 realms setting so the gods are less "OH GREAT BEING ON HIGH WHAT IS THINE WISH?" and more "You want me to take care of that, sure thing boss."
He rules the realm of trolls (in Norse mythology the word troll is used interchangeably for ogres, trolls, goblins, changelings, and some giants). Before he took control of both trolls and goblins and turned their aggression outward, they were slaughtering each other.
He replaces Midgardian (Golarion) babies with changelings, in order to raise potent spellcasters because goblins are stupid and trolls are...also.
Favored Weapon of "Jareth" the Goblin King... Hmmm...
He liked Crystals... : Achemist Fire? Acid Flasks?
His goblins liked long pointy slashing weapons... Horse Chopper?
My favorite: Flames (so he can "set the world on fire")
Domains: Stretch Pants, Ambiguous Sexuality, and Torture
Favored Weapon: Orbs
You beat me to it. Orb = ball and chain? Failing that, simply a dagger.
Domains: charm, knowledge, magic, trickery
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He would also have a following of Bards.
Creating a Dark Humor Domain would be fun. "Well, laugh...".
His favored weapon could be improvised weapons. He fights in ways that you would not expect.
Bump for the morning.
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I have been off for a few days, so I haven't had a chance to respond to this yet. Given that I have literally followed Bowie around the country on his last few tours and dedicated much more money and time to my fandom of him than I'd care to admit with more detail than this sentence, I can't help but respond (with over 1,100 words on the subject, no less).
Domains: Artifice, Chaos, Charm, Madness, Void; Favored Weapon: battleaxe
I think, looking at Bowie's work over the last 40 or 50 years, there are a number of throughlines that tie in well with the established domains in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. First, however, we need to determine what alignment he is so we can ensure the requisite alignment domains are out of the way before we start slotting in others. I'd place him firmly in the CN alignment, primarily because he's undergone so many shifts in style, persona, and collaborators over the years. That means he would have the Chaos domain, at the very least. This leaves four domains to fill with his portfolio.
Throughout his career, Bowie has possessed a nigh-unquenchable thirst to create and expand his artistic horizons, a drive that has only (visibly) lessened in the last decade. In addition to the 26 studio albums, 9 live albums, and 3 soundtracks he wrote, recorded, and released, he has appeared in dozens of films, 17 of which contained roles larger than simle cameos, he has also dabbled in painting and sculpture, most notably in the mid-90s while working closely with Brian Eno and Reeves Gabrels on the album Outside, which was itself inspired by the Peter Aykroyd book Hawksmoor, about an 18th-Century London architect who needs human sacrifices to complete his work and the investigation of such murders centuries later. With such a strong need to create and to do so in a fashion that propels the mediums in which he works forward and in new directions, I'd give him the Artifice domain as well. Currently, the Pathfinder core pantheon only has one god (Torag) who grants this domain, so adding another one will balance things out, and open it to nearly every alignment that couldn't get it from Torag's LG alignment.
Since he first stepped onto the world stage in 1969 with the release of Space Oddity, through his infamous persona of Ziggy Stardust, to his debut starring role in Nicolas Roeg's The Man Who Fell to Earth, space, aliens, and the vast expanse of the cosmos have been a theme in Bowie's work. From the haunting lyrics of his debut single (he had no singles released from his [first] eponymous album released in 1967), about an astronaut lost in space, to his adoption of the extraterrestrial androgyne persona of Ziggy Stardust, the concept of man traveling to the stars and of visitors from other planets coming to earth has effused his work. Thus, I'd give him the Void domain, which in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, is very much about the nothingness in space and the celestial bodies that can be found within, especially when once considers the subdomains thereof.
Another common theme in his work is madness, if not in the subject of his material, then in his personal and public life. Fame played a number on Bowie in the mid-70s, and he was documented in such films as Cracked Actor exhibiting all the signs of insanity, mainly due to the incredible amounts of cocaine he was consuming at the time. Songs such as “All the Madmen”, "Quicksand", "Time", "My Death", "I'm Afraid of Americans", "Breaking Glass", "The Last Thing You Should Do”, “Ashes to Ashes”, “Everyone Says Hi”, and others have all dealt with mental illness in some form or another, some more overtly than others. Bowie’s older brother Terry committed suicide when David was young, and between that and the consequences of his fame and such, Bowie himself dealt with a number of substance abuse problems and depression, paranoia, and the like. Thus, I think Madness is a very fitting domain for him, bringing his total up to four and leaving just one left.
This is a really tough choice, as I could go with either Magic, in part due to his obsession with the occult in the early 70s and his propensity to dabble in magical realism in his stage shows, movie roles, and music videos, as well as Charm, because he’s defined by little more than his enigmatic charisma. Between the two, I think Charm is a better fit, because it covers both him as a person as well as the content of his work, and provides him with a variety of domains that leave for a lot of neat character options to make a Bowie-like character.
I know that this doesn’t necessarily lend itself perfectly to being the god of goblins and trolls, but I think that one could make some fairly good goblin clerics of Bowie with these domains.
Now, as far as favored weapons go, that’s tough, because Bowie hasn’t really done a lot with prop weapons either on stage or in movies other than the six-shooters he used in Gunslinger’s Revenge (Il mio West). I thought that rapier might be a good fit for him, or even scimitar given his famous Ziggy Stardust “pirate” costume (inspired by a nice case of conjunctivitis), but neither really worked. There’s a knife called a Bowie knife, named after American pioneer Jim Bowie, after which then David Robert Haywood Jones named his stage persona, both because Davie Jones of the Monkees was already a famous musician and because “it’s sharp on both edges.” So dagger might work, but again, it didn’t seem right. Finally I settled on the ultimate pun favored weapon—an axe. You know, because that’s slang for electric guitar. Sure, I know that Bowie has always had a lead guitarist who was far superior to him in axe-skills, from Mick Ronson to Roberto Alomar to Reeves Gabrels to Earl Slick (who’s admittedly the least accomplished of the bunch). Nevertheless, Bowie has been playing guitar on his albums since day one, and almost never performs live without at least doing rhythm guitar on a number of songs. And even if Bowie himself isn’t known for his string stroking, “Ziggy played guitar” is a pretty iconic final line to what is arguably his most defining song. Thus, I’d go with the battleaxe as his favored weapon, since there isn’t just a generic axe in the game.
If you really want to dig into Bowie’s career, his music, and the symbolism in both, I highly recommend the blog Pushing Ahead of the Dame, and the seminal biographies, The Complete David Bowie by Nicholas Pegg, and Strange Fascination by David Buckley.
Next God: Johnny Cash.
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