Behind the Screen: Divining Divinities I - Vaanti Wisesword

This week's Behind the Screen looks at one of the, in my opinion, most enjoyable parts of world-building: creating the gods. This time will contain my favorite method when I need a god and don't have anything that I need to tie into: randomly generated portfolio. While this can be used for any edition, the page that I will be utilizing is a list of domains from D&D 3.5.

d%	Domain	d%	Domain
1	Air	51	Liberation
2	Animal	52	Life
3	Artifice	53	Luck
4	Balance	54	Madness
5	Cavern	55	Magic
6	Celerity	56	Meditation
7	Celestial	57	Mentalism
8	Chaos	58	Metal
9	Charm	59	Mind
10	City	60	Moon
11	Cold	61	Necromancy
12	Commerce	62	Nobility
13	Community	63	Ocean
14	Competition	64	Oracle
15	Courage	65	Orc
16	Craft	66	Pact
17	Creation	67	Passion
18	Darkness	68	Pestilence
19	Death	69	Planning
20	Decay	70	Plant
21	Destiny	71	Pleasure
22	Destruction	72	Portal
23	Domination	73	Protection
24	Dream	74	Purification
25	Drow	75	Renewal
26	Dwarf	76	Repose
27	Earth	77	Retribution
28	Elf	78	Rune
29	Endurance	79	Shadow
30	Evil	80	Slime
31	Exorcism	81	Sky
32	Family	82	Spell
33	Fate	83	Spider
34	Feast	84	Spirit
35	Fey	85	Storm
36	Fire	86	Strength
37	Force	87	Suffering
38	Glory	88	Sun
39	Gnome	89	Time
40	Good	90	Trade
41	Halfling	91	Transformation
42	Hatred	92	Travel
43	Healing	93	Trickery
44	Herald	94	Truth
45	Hunger	95	Tyrant
46	Illusion	96	Undead/th
47	Inquisition	97	War
48	Joy	98	Water
49	Knowledge	99	Weather
50	Law	100	Wrath

Using the above, lets see what the first aspect of this new deity's portfolio is. Using a d100, the result is 19 - Death. So we know that our new god is a death god. Good start but not enough on its own to get the creative juices flowing quite yet.

Second result is 40 - Good. Now that's interesting, we have a good aligned death god. So this deity is not your typical god seeking the death of all life to be replaced with undead. At this point the creativity is beginning to percolate. Let's see if the next roll can help.

And the result is 88 - Sun. So a good aligned death god that is also a sun god. Not your standard death god, that's for sure. Let's roll a few more times to help flesh out our new god.

The next five rolls resulted in 41, 8, 70, 17, and 99. So that adds Halfling, Chaos, Plant, Creation, and Weather. So currently this god's portfolio contains Chaos, Creation, Death, Good, Halfling, Plant, Sun, and Weather.

Alright, that's enough rolling and we have enough to work with. Our new god is a Chaotic Good halfling god with ties to the sun, plantlife, creation, and death. The thing that comes to my mind is agriculture, plants grow, they are harvested, they die and a new crop is planted the following year. So our god is a god of agriculture, with halflings as his crop.

Okay, this god, needs a name. I'm going to hop on over to Fantasy Name Generators, great site by the way, and look up some halfling names. But first we need to determine if this deity is a god or a goddess. To fit with the theme of this post, we'll roll a d6: 1-3 god, 4-6 goddess. The die says 2, it's a god.

We have three possibilities to choose from: 4e D&D, Pathfinder, and The Witcher. Since this is basically a Pathfinder blog, we'll go with that one. None of the initial results look good, so reload the page to get ten new names and now we're talking! Vaanti Wisesword is the name of our example sun god!

Now Vaanti Wisesword needs a holy symbol and favored weapon. He's an agricultural god tied to both the sun and death. I'm thinking a bushel of wheat crossing a sickle over a sun for a holy symbol. For his favored weapon, it simply must be the sickle. We have the minimum needed to run a game with Vaanti Wisesword, but it feels cheap to cut it off here without providing any hooks or descriptive material if you decide that you want to use Vaanti Wisesword.

1. As the party passes through a rural halfling village, they see that each fence post has a skull mounted on top of it with a bright yellow sun painted on the forehead.
2. A halfling PC receives news that a family member has died, and they must return home for the funeral. A spectacle of light, color, and splendor before the body is cremated and the ashes are used to fertilize the fields.
   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
   
   If you like my work and want to support me, check out my homebrew race book here.