Fictional Religions and the Deities that are worshipped?!

I wrote a bit of a pantheon for worldbuilding Your Fate Like Clockwork, but only ended up referencing the deities significant to the story.

The Church of the Night Mother: Not to be confused with the heretical practice of worshipping the Night and its many monsters, practitioners under the Night Mother pray for deliverance from Hell’s rising horrors. Most people pray to this deity to some degree, but monster hunters especially rely on the Night Mother’s compassion more than any other figure, as their work calls them to hunt humanity’s own predators.
Within the Church exists a faction deemed the Cleanse. Hoisting the banner of a dismembered raven in defiance of ill omens, hunters of the Cleanse engage in indiscriminate slaughter of entire populations at the first signs of evil taking root. They face little criticism for this due in part to their efficacy, but mostly for a fear of their unopposed absolutism (a point the protagonist takes issue with as the Cleanse’s judgment of what constitutes evil often includes technological and medical advancements).

The Serpent Cult: within the valley the story takes place in is a lake whose waters reflect no light. Beneath the lake, it’s believed, lives some kind of snake, constantly on the verge of starvation after a maiden of light reached down its throat to pull the moon’s reflection out from its stomach. Fearing what could befall their fertile valley if the Serpent should decide to eat itself in its hunger, folk from the nearby town have paid monthly tributes of flesh to the lake for generations, some of the elderly missing entire limbs by the time they die.

The Idolatry of Wolframme: within this same town is a secondary practice, more reverence than worship, but considered equally heretical to those outside the valley aware of it. Throughout the valley are signs of an old war hero who left enough of a mark that artists, sculptors and writers still venerate deeds done (though so much of the town’s history has been lost at this point they no longer have records of anything more than a name to honour, and there seems to be disagreement between Church and State over what gender their idol even was).

Other than maybe a reference to a figure known as “The Almighty”, the rest of the pantheon went unused. Given I may want to write a sequel someday, I’m not gonna say anything solid about the rest, in case I wanna make changes.

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gulp

That’s quite a lore you got there…

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I’m writing a fantasy world with many religions and beliefs and legendary figures, here are a few

The Lady of the forest

CW:transphobia

Historical figure turned legend
Trans woman of color who fought for the rights of people like her. She established awareness for queer people and youth in her village and a lot of people seemed to like her ideas. Sadly, some more powerful people didn’t They depicted her as immoral and dangerous, ambushed the village she was running and turned her and most of her followers into birds. Not any birds, precious birds from all kinds of myths and fairytales. It is said she herself was turned into a Phoenix and flew away the moment of her turning into the bird. Other versions of the story say she stayed with her people. The former version of the story adds that in the nearby forest, if one goes in deep enough, one might be able to catch the singing of the Lady as a Phoenix, mourning her curse and looking for her lost people. No one knows how many of them are left exactly, or where they reside, although rumor has it, here and there exist small communities and gatherings of her followers, old and new.
The main band of characters comes across a follower of the Lady of the Forest who guards some of the original followers (who were cursed to be birds) and another one who lives around the forest where the story says the Lady resides, trying to find her.

The Four Statues

really, really long

Another religion set in the same universe tells the story of 4 statues, built by a human community.
The first statue was dedicated to the deity of justice, determination, diversity and strenght in unity. This statue was made of gold. From what is left nowadays, we cannot discern whether this deity was ment to be a woman, man, or otherwise
The second statue was dedicated to the God of Love, support, friendship, loyalty and dedication. He was honored by gifting friends nice things, being grateful for them and being a good friend oneself. This statue was made out of stone, and steel. From what we found back, it resembled a sort of faun, but sheep instead of goat, with ram’s horns and curly hair on its head and legs.
The third statue was dedicated to the deity of energy, excitement, happiness. Their statue was made of gravel, glittering in the sun.
The fourth statue was dedicated to an unknown deity, but was made entirely of steel and represents an androgynous, but very muscular character. The statue contains steel, leading us to believe this deity represented strenght and character. However, upon closer inspections it was found only a layer was made of steel, the rest was a much softer material.

Here is the story of what happened.
Legend has it these four statues were built to honor their respective deities, but one after the other, unrelated to their represented abilites, for no detectable rreason, they started to crack. First the stone one, small cracks, then the golden one, crevices, quickly growing larger, then the gravel one, a medium crack around its point of balance. The first to fall was the golden one, it split open and a swarm of deadly insects came out, killing people left and right. Everyone fled and only a small percentage of the community was killed, but still many lives were lost. Then the gravel statue fell, which a racket it snapped in two around the legs, the upper part shattering on the ground. From this statue emerged a grey, heavy mist. It was not harmful, but made people feel sad and weary, although strangely comforted. By this point the stone statue was cracking too, and people had gotten very scared. They hid and waited in fear. When the third statue fell, people cowered and did not got outside for a long time. When they finally did, the statue was gone. Not a trace of it was left, except for the marks where it had stood all those years. At this point in time the steel statue also showed cracks, the steel layer flaked off too, but before it fell, people were long gone so we don’t know what happened to it.

Then there is the legend of the Laureled Badger. It’s a universal myth that has a version for every race in my world, which means there are many, many versions that all have their own little details. The main story is about a hero, wearing a badger’s maks (hence the name) who took it up against a strangling, plant-like monster that was terrorizing the region, and won, nearly dying in the process. The story is about heroism, being brave and small against great. It works like a charm to inspire people and make them proud of themselves. A classic and an all-time favorite.

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gods vary from planet to planet, but there can be more than one god on the planet.

there’s a chief god who rules the galaxy, and above them is the Universe itself.

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Hmm, it’s less “religion” and more “co-living” for the major religion because everyone knows those Deities exist and they interact with the people on a more or less regular basis. Because they literally created the God Worlds and became part of the culture and daily life, that’s how that started.

There “minor” religions are basically everything that aren’t Primordial/First Being Deities beneath the God Worlds. Like, eg, all the Earth religions. These people know they exist but there’s rarely ever any interaction, and the Lower Planes don’t always know whether or not the Deities are real

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Not much religion in my stories are thought out because religion isn’t a big part of my own life, so I often even forget to think about it. It won’t appear in my stories unless it plays a big role in the plot, and I won’t go into it so deeply. Only as much as I need for the plot.

In Elgana, there’s several religions, and it all depends on how much or how little you believe in the moon goddess. The native Elganians saw the physical manifestations of the moon goddess, seen her magick, some even talked to her in dreams or visions, so they worshipped her quite heavily. Then humans came and the natives were reduced in number, and the humans imposed their own interpretations of the moon goddess on the planet population (a goddess you pray to and who judges your sins, but that’s about it). The manifestations of the moon goddess became a thing of legends. Those who believed in any physical form of the goddess were called “crazy”. The only race to actually keep their beliefs alive about the magick of the moon (not the physical manifestations) was the feline race Kathula, the only surviving native Elganians.

In my magic realism story, the fictional US-like country, United Arcan, is heavily religious. There’s demon worshippers, angel believers who believe in god and those who don’t believe in god, and there are people who believe in one god, and people who don’t believe anything at all. There are real mediums and real exorcisms. There are people who are not mediums, but who can go to the spirit realm and talk to dead people.

In other stories, characters look up to wise old people, masters of something, or philosophers instead of deities. I do have one story where the wise person the people follow is enlightened, so the religion is more like Buddhism.

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I don’t think so… Unless you’re the qualeshia from a parallel world without realizing it XD

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