There will be an Ancient Osirion Pantheon of Gods, that are going to include some of the traditional gods of ancient Egypt (with a Golarion twist) not sure if there will a stat block with a listing of portfolios, domains, favored, weapons first or a detailed description of each god. I'm betting on the former coming out soon.
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Pathfinder #80: Empty Graves will include an article detailing the "core 20" Ancient Osirian deities, including Apep and Wadjet. And the article includes all of the relevant information you need to be a worshiper - alignments, areas of concern, domains (and subdomains), favored weapons, and a brief description. Oh, and art! Lots of cool art!
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The Ancient Osirian gods are "ancient" because their worship was most popular during the heyday of Ancient Osirion, way back when. Over the intervening millennia, other Inner Sea gods (i.e., the core 20 PFRPG gods) have become as popular in Osirion as in the rest of the Inner Sea. But there are still some traditionalists who worship the "old gods," and there are still temples to them in Osirion. So there is nothing preventing a character (PC or NPC) in Osirion from worshiping either one of the "standard" gods of Golarion, or one of the "ancient" gods of Osirion.
Besides reiterating my unbridled enthusiasm to play a paladin of Ra, I'm really impressed that there's going to be twenty Osirian deities. That's enough to make an entire homebrew "Egyptian campaign" out of!
Quick questions: Will Sobek be one of the 20?
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Well it mentions that both Wadjet, Apep and one other (which name escapes me) are still worshipped in Osirion in other products. I dont really view those 3 at least as 'ancient' gods.
The third Osirion "secret cult" deity that I described in the religion section of Osirion: Land of the Pharaohs was Khepri, the dung beetle, who was essentially a patron of the downtrodden lower classes and something of a trickster archetype that poked fun at the pretensions of the rich and powerful. I don't know if Khepri will be among those 20 deities getting full write-ups in #80; I would guess probably not, as he's not exactly one of the big stars of the Egyptian pantheon, but we'll see.
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The third Osirion "secret cult" deity that I described in the religion section of Osirion: Land of the Pharaohs was Khepri, the dung beetle, who was essentially a patron of the downtrodden lower classes and something of a trickster archetype that poked fun at the pretensions of the rich and powerful. I don't know if Khepri will be among those 20 deities getting full write-ups in #80; I would guess probably not, as he's not exactly one of the big stars of the Egyptian pantheon, but we'll see.
Thanks for coming up with those guys, they're awesome!
I like to ponder about domains for them.
Wadjet seems to be in the area of Good, Knowledge, Law, Protection and / or Water. (Scalykind, less so. That Domain is super rare, and even gods who are actually kinda scaly don't seem to offer it!)
Khepri could be Animal, Earth, Protection and / or Strength.
Apep, woof! Evil yes, and possibly Chaos as well. Darkness, Water and Animal are all also very much on theme for the write up. You could probably make an argument for Scalykind (crocagators!) or even Destruction, but he's already all full!
At least, thanks to Achaekek, Besmara, Groetus, etc., there's precedent for 'lesser' gods having five domains, so Wadjet and Apep don't have to be cut down to four domains!
I think the prestige class Scion of Tem-Et-Nu from D&D 3.5 book Sandstorm would work well for a priestess of wadjet in the form of Scion of Wadjet. Just change the animal relations from hippopotamus to aquatic serpents.
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Set: I think we will find Hippopotami are Wadjet's favorite animal (as they are a national symbol of Osirion)
Re Apep: Is there a Snake domain? I certainly see Darkness/Chaos
Scalykind, but Apep is gonna have a tight squeeze to include stuff that's more relevant to him, like Darkness, Evil, Water and Chaos. Being associated with dangerous river critters (hippos and crocs) means that Scalykind isn't as relevant as Animal might be (since Scalykind wouldn't cover the hippos).
We'll see when the second AP book comes out. While Wadjet seems a lock (since we've already seen a cleric of Wadjet statted up), Apep and, especially, Khepri might not even make an appearance.
Gotta save some room for Isis, patron goddess of necrophilia (and inventor of necromancy!), after all. :)
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I wouldnt associate Apep with Water. Water is the spring of life in a country like Osirion and Apep seems more associated with death than life. Likewise I wouldnt neccesarily associate him with any animals bar the dangerous ones: crocodiles (and their paizo created alternate versions: mega croc!) and snakes. Since there is no croc domain, Scalykind is the closest fit.
If we look to Set as an example, not only was he the God of War.. he was also the God of Chaos, the desert and foreign influences. All things with a negative impact.
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I wouldnt associate Apep with Water. Water is the spring of life in a country like Osirion and Apep seems more associated with death than life. Likewise I wouldnt neccesarily associate him with any animals bar the dangerous ones: crocodiles (and their paizo created alternate versions: mega croc!) and snakes. Since there is no croc domain, Scalykind is the closest fit.
I'm just going with what little we have on him in Osirion, Land of Pharaohs.
Apep represents the hidden dangers that lurk just below the surface, the deadly whorls and eddies that drown and swallow, and the prowling crocodiles and river serpents that prey on those that venture too near the water's edge. Apep is the raging rapids, the boundless flood that inundates and sweeps away all that mortals seek to build.
So the Water imagery is pretty baked into that, although, re-reading it, my faulty recollection that hippos where among the dangerous river beasties he's associated with seems off. Crocs and snakes, which means that Scalykind is far more appropriate than Animal. Woo!
If we look to Set as an example, not only was he the God of War.. he was also the God of Chaos, the desert and foreign influences. All things with a negative impact.
Let's not look to Set as an example. :)
Especially not as a god of Chaos, since he spent so much of his existence standing on the prow of the sun-barque fighting the *actual* snake-god of Chaos and Darkness, Apep, Devourer of the Dawn, only to later get conflated by lazy foreigners with Apep and / or Typhon**, and darkness, and snakes, and wanting to eat the sun, and for that portrayal to serve as his defining characteristic in Robert E. Howard novels, Marvel comic books and Vampire the Masquerade...
Given their near universal support of maat, *most* of the Egyptian gods would be some shade of Lawful. Rules-breakers like Set and Isis might have fallen to Neutral X (and gods portrayed as outsiders or hedonists, like Bast or Ptah, on the cusp between Lawful X and Neutral X), but Chaos (defying maat / going outside the natural order) was far more 'evil' to their mythos/pantheon/whatever than what we'd call actual Evil (cruelty, violence, slavery).
Like most mythological gods (particularly the Greeks and Norse), almost none of the Egyptian gods acted particularly 'good' as we would define it (forcing us to 'grade on a curve' and pick the least overtly evil by modern standards to call 'good'), since the ancients didn't seem to be overly concerned with notions of how 'lopsided' their pantheons would look when gamers tried to slot them into made-up alignment categories thousands of years later. :)
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**Interesting how many cultures have great seas of primordial darkness that contain serpent-gods of chaos that want to destroy the sun and bring the universe back into darkness. Tiamat. Apep/Apophis. To a lesser extent, maybe even Typhon or Jormungandr.
That's one funky thing about Apep-in-Golarion, is that he's pretty much in the slot where a mythologically-tied Tiamat would go. The more he gets solidified into that position, the less likely we are to ever see Tiamat, as he's pretty much taking her schtick. (Which could be deliberate, as Tiamat in fantasy role-playing is pretty much locked into the expectation of a five headed chromatic dragon, like we saw on the cartoon.)
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I dont need to see Tiamat in another setting. I dont. Nor Bahamut.
Agreed.
I really really liked 5-headed Tiamat, in old school D&D (and two-monkey-headed Demogorgon), but we can't have those in Golarion, and I'd rather not see any other version of them.
It's not like there aren't a *ton* of other awesome dragon-critters, both totally original, and / or cobbed from different mythologies, out there to play with, like Azhi Dahaka or Nidhogg or Jormungandr or Ouroboros.