Thank you for having me. This is my second guest post, so let’s get this thing going! I want to talk a bit about religion in my fantasy world today.
Divine politics have always intrigued me. Looking back, I think I remember the interplay between different pantheons more than any other stories: Hera and Zeus, Journey to the West, Loki and Baldur, etc. This really influenced my own storytelling by giving me examples of divine interplay. It always happens in such big picture way, but gods appeared so childlike in their simplistic desires.
So when I started creating the religions for my book, I did not want to stray too far from some fantasy precepts, such as multiple gods with specific purposes. I personally think this is a mainstay that a lot of readers, myself included, have come to love and rely upon to anchor them to a world. I wanted to create a pantheon that was easy to understand, so I made a sixteen-god pantheon, with four gods per an alignment. I thought it was also important to keep an overarching theme of divine politics, too. The conflict had to have long reaching consequences without being too complicated. The last thing I really wanted to touch on was pairing particular gods with specific races.
Religion is incredibly important to the social structures of different races. The rahlien fire giants worship the Vae’firon, the goddess of betrayal; the anthra worship Syff’ron, the goddess of nature; and the therrans worship any god, but the god Dol’ron is prevalent because he is the patron deity of justice and retribution. That comes into play quite heavily when Dol’ron unleashes a demon on Therra to right an age-old wrong.
The rahliens come to Deiyil to broker a truce with the Anthra. However, the rahlien’s religious propensities make it impossible to trust any pact brokered with them. This is the center of one of the main conflicts in the book. It leads toward the epic conclusion and is a part of the setup for the follow-up book as well.
Penndarius is one of my favorite characters in the book because he is thrust into an impossible situation he never wanted. It is easy to sympathize with him because he does not adhere to any one deity, and yet he becomes a part of this divine whirlwind of intrigue. He tries to make sense of it, something no one in history has been able to do before him. As the saying goes, knowledge is power.
Thank you for reading this guest post. My book is available on Amazon and you can help get the sequel published by pledging to the kickstarter that is going right now! (Both books are available as backer rewards)
Once again, thank you for having me and have an absolutely fantastic day!
Herrick C. Erickson-Brigl
Herrick Erickson-Brigl has been reading fantasy since he first learned to read and writing it nearly as long. While in college, Herrick’s passion for writing culminated in his first novel, entitled *A Scholar’s Journey: The Divine Tempest*. He is currently completing his second book in that series.
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