In addition to the obvious choice of Xathoqqua, Thaumagorga is associated with Hades and is literally supposed to dwell deep beneath the earth.  So he might do well as an "underworld" god.

Ghul wrote:

I would also think about all the Class VI demons.

I just bet you would!

How organized is organized religion in your games? My idea of Hyperborea has it as a very syncretic places, with rites and rituals all mingled in their objects for most people. Clerics, clearly, have a more single-minded devotion (since it comes with actual power, after all), but even they, I figure, have to do a little go-along-to-get-along from time to time. Xathoqqua worship is, of course, universal, and its clerics should be the most common.

In my game so far, the only real purists, religionwise, that I think of are the Amazons, the Ixians on their island, the orthodox Picts, and the Druids (mainly in the Gal Hills). Everyone else is a mishmash with Xathoqqua ruling the roost. I like rolling up animals on the random encounter table and having them worshiping at a Xathoqqua shrine near the path.

But I haven't really decided how organized anything is, except the Druids in Gal. So, for example, in a town in Brigands Bay, how many temples would there be? How many gods might be represented? In the brief writeup I made of a town there, I placed the headman's center of power (the Kybernetes) in an ancient Hyperborean temple complex that has still been used all down the years. It's your classic Huge Ruined Pile:

I wrote:

Huge, crumbling structure of black stone and strange metals. Originally served as shelter and hideouts for bandit gangs, eventually grew into a town. Never uninhabited by clerics, esp. of Xathoqqua and Rel. Now all the gods are represented, though the numbers of their servitors wax and wane, and even the location of the various temples within the ruined pile shifts as their fortunes ebb or clerics set out as adventurers and fail to return. Only Xathoqqua’s fane is unchanging, and sometimes animals and even monsters make their way through the town on strange pilgrimages to honor the Toad-Sloth. These are considered holy and are never molested as they pass in or out.

Though even here I haven't decided how organized things are. Can the PCs go buy CLW, remove curse, etc.? Can they hire clerics? Only from Xathoqqua? It hasn't come up so I haven't had to decide. Maybe a random table would help!

I figure Khromarium, of course, is filled with all kinds of temples, fanes, mystery cults, secret societies, brotherhoods of sewer paladins, dark pacts, alien intelligences, and rent traps. But one crucial thing about Hyperborea, it seems to me, is how *disparate* it is, how culture is very likely to be extremely local, given the vast and dangerous distances between inhabited areas. Most of the cultural exchange is going to be at the coasts since, maelstroms or no, it's just safer to sail than to walk!

Edit: Hey, 600 posts! *There's* the heightened sense of self-esteem!

Last edited by Handy Haversack (11/12/2014 9:06 am)