Immortal
-- at Least for a While...
This
week, Requiem for a God
hits store shelves. This is a special kind of 64-page
sourcebook -- we call it an event book. It helps DMs incorporate
a large-scale event into their campaigns. This book, specifically,
deals with the death of a god.
Requiem
for a God offers a lot of advice about working a deity's
death into your game. However, if you'd like to do some
additional reading as you prepare to enter into this fascinating
but strange undertaking, you may wish to examine some
mythological and fictional references that deal with gods
dying. The links below take you to suggested reading titles
at Amazon.com.
First
off, in Greek
myth Chronos, father of Zeus, was slain by his children
before he could kill them all. Zeus then ascended to take
his place as ruler of the gods. In
Egyptian Mythology Set killed his enemy Osiris and
chopped him into pieces, scattering them into the Nile
River. Isis had to gather these bits of divine essence
once again and reassemble her husband in order to restore
the god. The
Norse gods faced their ultimate demise in the time
of Ragnarok. Thor himself died fighting a huge dragon.
The death of these gods, of course, would change the world
completely.
In
fantasy fiction, both Michael Moorcock's antihero
Elric of Melnibone and Robert E. Howard's hero Conan
dealt with the death of gods -- mostly
at their own hands. Elric in particular, with his
powerful artifact-level magic sword Stormbringer,
slew a number of gods, from the minor fire god Kakatal
to his own evil patron, Arioch. As in the myth of Ragnarok,
Elric's actions and the slaying of multiple gods wrought
changes upon the world that made it almost unrecognizable
from what it had been.
In
a science fiction, James Morrow writes the critically
acclaimed The
Eternal Footman, Towing
Jehovah, and other titles dealing directly with
the corpus dei and the effects its presence has upon the
world.
You'll
find other gaming sources that deal with the death of
gods, at least on some level. These include the TSR game
setting Birthright,
where the divine power loosed by the death of many gods
instills itself in the great heroes of the land of Cerilia.
Similarly, in Sword & Sorcery Studios' Scarred
Lands
setting,
the Titans died in a terrible war, and the loosed power
resulting from this event gave birth to many of the races
of Ghelspad. Lastly, the D&D Planescape
adventure Dead Gods addresses both the issues of
what happens when gods die and when they come back.
So,
if any of this sounds interesting, check out Requiem
for a God, in stores now. It's the first of an exciting
new series of books, soon to be followed up with When
the Sky Falls, by Bruce Cordell and Cry Havoc
by Skip Williams.
