I was pondering about the deities of the sun and the moons and their actual connection with those celestial bodies.
What gives them their link to or influence over those things and how do they ALL have a connection to them? (i.e: how do you justify more than one deity of each?)
Do the Sun (Sol/Liga) and Moons (Celene/Kule & Luna/Raenei) have spirits within them akin to the Beory/Oerth connection? Could Nola and Pelor in fact be faces of the same entity for example?
The obvious deities are;
Pelor - the sun
Rao - formerly a moon god
Pholtus - the sun and moons
Lydia - daylight
Nola - Touv sun-goddess
There are also a couple of Olman gods with sun & moon links and they're not even from the same world.
Perhaps there are there other deities you have made a connection to one of the celestial bodies with (I know I have made several!)?
What gives them their link to or influence over those things and how do they ALL have a connection to them? (i.e: how do you justify more than one deity of each?)
The default assumption for the Greyhawk setting is that there are multiple pantheons, each with its own rival claim of dominance over reality. Gary Gygax was, I think, thinking of the real world with its many competing faiths and pantheons, where the Norse pantheon, Greek pantheon, Aztec pantheon, Slavic pantheon and so on each have their own sun and moon gods, and so on. In the same way, Oerth has a Flan, Suel, Baklunish, Olman, Touv, and numerous nonhuman pantheons that each represent a distinct cultural world view.
So much like Helios and Ra are both sun gods on a multipantheonic, mythological Earth (such as Gygax's Ærth) where both are considered real, Pelor and Pholtus can exist as two divine entities with powers related to the sun. Neither actually is the sun; they're beings of the Outer Planes, not the Material Plane. They symbolize the sun and can shine very brightly, but the sun is a celestial body independent of them. They didn't create it and can't completely control it. Arguably, they have no true link to it at all; they're just powerful entities with an affinity toward sunlight, and one sun is as good as another to them.
Some of Oerth's gods, particularly the greater gods, may be worshiped on multiple worlds and be equally associated with a number of different suns. Iuz the Evil mentions that Nerull is known on many worlds.
The alternate model is one I think of as the Dragonlance model (though other settings, including Kalamar and Birthright, use it as well), where a setting has a single pantheon in which each god is known by various names in different cultures. In this sort of campaign the gods literally created the world and personify reality in its various spheres and domains. The advantage of this sort of model is that you can establish a single creation myth and have it be the objective truth with real metaphysical consequences. The disadvantage is that religions have a little less variety across cultures and religious differences may be more likely to have a single right or wrong answer.
On Oerth, it's likely that the gods did not literally create the world. They may have arrived from elsewhere (this is definitely true for the Olman pantheon) or been born from mortal faith. The Olmans have a sun god because there are Olman gods with an interest in sunlight; this doesn't mean he is particularly connected to Oerth's sun (Liga), but it also doesn't mean he has less of a claim on Liga than Nola or Pelor, whose claim to dominion over sunlight may be equally spurious.
Gygax's thought was that, for example, conflict between the Baklunish and Keoish would be more convincing if they lacked even gods in common. In any case, a campaign in which two warring cultures have the same set of gods is a different sort of place than one in which warring cultures may have their conflicts spurred on by warring pantheons.
So much like Helios and Ra are both sun gods . . .
Another Greek comparison would be the variant "Sun God" aspects represented by the two gods Helios and Apollo.
Apollo was also considered a type of "Sun God," the difference between the two being that Helios was said to represent the Sun itself, as he drove his chariot across the sky, whereas Apollo represented the Sun's healing Light.
So much like Helios and Ra are both sun gods on a multipantheonic, mythological Earth (such as Gygax's Ærth) where both are considered real, Pelor and Pholtus can exist as two divine entities with powers related to the sun. Neither actually is the sun; they're beings of the Outer Planes, not the Material Plane. They symbolize the sun and can shine very brightly, but the sun is a celestial body independent of them. They didn't create it and can't completely control it. Arguably, they have no true link to it at all; they're just powerful entities with an affinity toward sunlight, and one sun is as good as another to them.
Additionally, it is likely (in my opinion) that those dieties draw much of their deific power from the sun, which they represent, just as other deities would draw much of their deific power from the entities or concepts that they represent.
Which implies that the suns, moons, positive and negative energies, death, war, love, nature, etc. are more powerful than the deities themselves.
Thanks for your thoughts! I was interested to see how other people viewed the topic.
Although I definitely like the neatness of a single pantheon worshipped by many names it does remove a certain dynamic from the setting which makes more sense with different gods.
It keeps things more flexible having gods with different connections to the planets too.
Has anyone introduced celestial elements to other gods that perhaps isn't cannon?
I added a few to the Suel pantheon. To Wee Jas I gave a moon connection, representing her pre-Cataclysms role as a goddess of magic & law, the moon's light shining down in the night watching for and illuminating those who would break the law.
To Jascar I gave guardianship of the sun representing a belief that the sun slept within a mountain where it was guarded by Jascar, in the morning Lydia must sing to call the sun out and bring the dawn and in the evening the sun returns to the mountain where it heats Fortubo's forge at the end of each day causing the red glow in the sky before it returns to Jascar's guard.
I added a few to the Suel pantheon. To Wee Jas I gave a moon connection, representing her pre-Cataclysms role as a goddess of magic & law, the moon's light shining down in the night watching for and illuminating those who would break the law.
To Jascar I gave guardianship of the sun representing a belief that the sun slept within a mountain where it was guarded by Jascar, in the morning Lydia must sing to call the sun out and bring the dawn and in the evening the sun returns to the mountain where it heats Fortubo's forge at the end of each day causing the red glow in the sky before it returns to Jascar's guard.
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