Are the gods worshipped in different forms or names?

[Cèsar de Quart]

The Romans and the Greek had a concept, known in Latin as "Interpretatio Graeca", which is to say, the way the Greek translated other cultures (and by extension the Romans) into their own.

This way Tacitus understood Thor and Jupiter (for the lightning atributes), Odin and Hermes (in his condition as a messenger and a giver of secrets and knowledge), for example. The Romans adopted many foreign gods, but they always gave them either a new character (Anubis was equated with Hermes, Amon with Zeus, etc) or mixed atributes.

My question is; Grugni is a dwarf god, but when he's worshipped by humans (since he's real and it'd be stupid not to), is he worshipped as a dwarf? Are the gods of the Pantheon intepreted as other than the image we have of them? (Grimnir is a troll slayer, Sigmar is a mix of Thor and Odin, Teclis is an Elf, Malerion is a shadowy dragon...

My guess (and my hope) is that he's not, he's worshipped in whatever shape the culture in particular thinks of him. Maybe the people of Mighty Myrmas worhsip him as a towering smith called Valens the Wielder, while the Terrastrans known him as a sickly little man who gives wisdom and secrets to mortals called Chalceus. Maybe the Solonians worship him in his architect of the world as the mighty and noble Daediccas, and the Ten Tribes of Or know him as the Great Baboon, he who knows secrets and crafts tools for its survival.

Gorkamorka may be the most extreme example if you think of him as an Orc. But if you don't, then Gorkamorka is little more than he Greek Ares, a god of wanton and senseless violence, savage war. Different from Mars, the Roman protector of fields and defender of civilization, who may be an aspect of Sigmar. I don't think I've seen this explored, the way different peoples see and interpret the actual, real gods that exist and can walk the Earth (except for Grimnir, who's dead).

 

[Gecktron]

Im not sure about the other gods but in Glymsforge Nagash is worshipped in the form of Nagash-Morr, shepard of the souls. He guides the souls of fallen warriors to their deserved rest. 

[amysrevenge]

This is always such an interesting angle.  It calls into question things that can get too deep (and personal) for a tabletop game discussion.  Do the words "faith" and "worship" really mean the same thing when applied to that guy over there that you can see and who can directly grant your boon if he decides to? 

I think it's a fundamentally different concept, and since the concept of that godly figure sitting just over there that you can look at and go visit and have a two-way conversation with is so utterly fictional that we haven't naturally developed the language to differentiate between that and an unseen/behind-the-scenes object of veneration.  So we use the same words, as they are all we have.

"Adulation" might be more appropriate - but I'm not sure how to twist the tense to match "worship".  "Adulate"?  Sounds dumb.

But to move away from this aside, and address your actual question: it depends on whether Grungni and friends are locked in their forms, or can appear in culturally appropriate ways as they desire.  Is Grungni always a duardin-looking smith?  Then he'll be worshipped (adulated? haha) as such everywhere.  Can he look like an aelven smith to a bunch of aelves if he wants to?  Then he'll have a culturally appropriate form for them.

[Clewz]

14 minutes ago, Gecktron said:

Im not sure about the other gods but in Glymsforge Nagash is worshipped in the form of Nagash-Morr, shepard of the souls. He guides the souls of fallen warriors to their deserved rest. 

In the undying king theres a few aspects of Nagash mentioned. Ones the Forlorn child who leads those who died before their allotted time to gentle slumber. Another one is the black priest

[TheButtons]

Well there is some president for varied interpretation with Slaanesh. I dont have access to the book right now, I'm not home, but isn't one of the three alliegence options inspired by the pretenders, various people or demons who actually say they are literally Slaanesh. I dont think that's exactly what your saying but it seems close. There are disparate groups of Slaaneshi followers basically following totally different Slaaneshs. That's kind of interesting to me, are there some groups that's focus more specifically on the sex, others the drugs, and others still the rock and roll? I'd like to see that explores some more. I like misplaced faith as a drive for story though, DoK kind of do the same thing in that they think they are acting in the service of Khain but actually Morathi is manipulating on a huge scale.

[Urauloth]

This is one of my favourite subjects, and I'm always interested to look at how interpretations of gods and similar figures might work in speculative fiction. I think in Age of Sigmar there's definitely room for this, but like @amysrevenge says, when you're dealing with such immediately tangible gods, a lot depends on what they actually do and how they appear.

Sigmar seems to look pretty similar to everyone, but even then, he's an odd one with a lot of facets to his personality and he made a wide variety of impressions across the Age of Myth which became the foundation for a multitude of cultural outlooks. It's clear just from reading Josh Reynold's works concerning the Hallowed Knights that various stormcasts with memories of their lives worshipped Sigmar quite differently, and that's quite likely the tip of the iceberg.

On the other hand, Nagash doesn't seem to have any set form at all, and appears in, and as - or perhaps more likely is - numerous aspects, many of which relate to other gods whose domains and powers he has taken. Not only is he worshipped in many forms and by many names accross the realms, it's very possible that he is all of those figures of worship, but neither independently nor simply as guises he adopts. When they say "all are one in Nagash, and Nagash is all", I think it's a lot more than a figure of speech. Eating other gods is probably really complicated.

The Blood God should be pretty straightforward, but he has a wealth of names, and it's likely different barbarian tribes who worship him would give you different accounts if you asked them to describe him* too. In some of the old WHFB Chaos books there was a lot of material about the ruinous powers being worshipped in almost as many ways imaginable by people from every kind of civilization, and that must hold for the almost infinitely vaster Mortal Realms as well. To come back to the Blood God, though, his demands of his followers are the most simple (blood with a side of skulls) and his interactions with them the most bluntly direct (he rewards you, he destroys you, sometimes he gets carried away and does both) but as the Black Rift illustrates, his varied worshippers have a lot of ideas about exactly how he'd like them to go about honouring him and bringing him those skulls he ordered. Their cultural backgrounds, professions and personal ambitions all exacerbate these theological splits to the point, fittingly, of bloodshed - maybe that's exactly how he likes it? You should read the Black Rift though, if you haven't. It's the best work penned concerning Chaos worship since The First Heretic, which I wouldn't say lightly.

*don't do this

[Skabnoze]

Do the gods have different names?  Sure, some call him Gork, some call him Mork, and others call him Gorkamorka.  

All the rest can have as many names as they want, but none are worth remembering.

[Cèsar de Quart]

5 hours ago, amysrevenge said:

But to move away from this aside, and address your actual question: it depends on whether Grungni and friends are locked in their forms, or can appear in culturally appropriate ways as they desire.  Is Grungni always a duardin-looking smith?  Then he'll be worshipped (adulated? haha) as such everywhere.  Can he look like an aelven smith to a bunch of aelves if he wants to?  Then he'll have a culturally appropriate form for them.

Well, I don't think the gods can stroll around all the land, all the time. Memories of them may vary, and people do tend to shape memories in a familiar way (kinda why you usually remember your present self in your past memories, even if you were different back then).

So even if the gods are locked into their form (which I hope they're not), different people may think of them differently than they look. The gods themselves may want to appear differently to different people; Sigmar may prefer to look like the barbarian warrior to the savage tribes of Ghur, like a venerable just king to the empires of Hyish, like a noble, fierce knight to the medieval realms of Aqshy... so that this way he ensures that he's accepted.

 

5 hours ago, Clewz said:

In the undying king theres a few aspects of Nagash mentioned. Ones the Forlorn child who leads those who died before their allotted time to gentle slumber. Another one is the black priest

I knew about the aspects of Nagash, but are they perceptions of the god by different people, or are they actual aspects of him? I think it's in Undying King where is discussed that Arkhan the Black may be a vessel for Nagash' better qualities (loyalty and justice), cast aside from his own self because of the burden they may be in times of war. That's something interesting that I'd like to see other gods try and pull off. So far I haven't seen the gods be affected by the source of their power much, except for Alarielle and her circle of death and rebirth.

Even so, it's not hard-coded into her nature that she needs to sleep the winter... it'd be neat to see Alarielle recreate Orion so that he can be the vessel for the winter (maybe even around a Kislev-like civilization. A man can dream) and she can go on fighting, with the side effect of making the growth of all life rampant and violent without a winter to kill off the bad weed and give plants a chance to sleep and reproduce. Life may become vicious and disease-like. The irony!

Sigmar is the embodiement of the heavens, but his only power so far is A) being clever, B) being charismatic, and C) throwing ligthning bolts out of his fingernails. The Heavens should have a theme (astrology, clairvision...) and this theme should affect Sigmar somehow.

 

5 hours ago, TheButtons said:

Well there is some president for varied interpretation with Slaanesh. I dont have access to the book right now, I'm not home, but isn't one of the three alliegence options inspired by the pretenders, various people or demons who actually say they are literally Slaanesh. I dont think that's exactly what your saying but it seems close. There are disparate groups of Slaaneshi followers basically following totally different Slaaneshs. That's kind of interesting to me, are there some groups that's focus more specifically on the sex, others the drugs, and others still the rock and roll? I'd like to see that explores some more. I like misplaced faith as a drive for story though, DoK kind of do the same thing in that they think they are acting in the service of Khain but actually Morathi is manipulating on a huge scale.

The Chaos Gods are very loosely understood by different people and I love this about them, but also, the gods are not actual people like Sigmar,Alarielle, Nagash... they're sentient coagulations of the humans' feelings and emotions. Sigmar doesn't need worshipping as far as we know, nor does he feed off the people's fascination with the sky. 

Although I'd like GW to maybe try and explore a bit more how different are the Gods of the Reams from the Chaos Gods.

 

4 hours ago, Urauloth said:

Sigmar seems to look pretty similar to everyone, but even then, he's an odd one with a lot of facets to his personality and he made a wide variety of impressions across the Age of Myth which became the foundation for a multitude of cultural outlooks. It's clear just from reading Josh Reynold's works concerning the Hallowed Knights that various stormcasts with memories of their lives worshipped Sigmar quite differently, and that's quite likely the tip of the iceberg.

Josh Reynolds really seems to be the only one who overthinks stuff the way I like. I feel as if the rest of the writer staff at Nottingham, Phil Kelly included, are just tossing out ideas from the top hat, throw them onto a wall, see what sticks and run with it. They didn't start from the base but from the top, and now Reynolds is the one doing base-building through novels, which to me, it should be the other way around.

[AaronWilson]

Tzeentch is known by a lot of different names and I could imagine seen in a lot of different forms by his followers. 

[EccentricCircle]

I'm pretty sure none of it is canon now, but in some of the older Warhammer fantasy material there were definite hints that some of the Gods were just aspects of the Chaos Gods, being worshiped in different guises.

The most obvious was Khaine, who's original iconography was almost identical to that of Khorne, with the implication that if you were an elf, Khorne looked like a really backstabby elven murder-god, rather than the blood drenched barbarian worshiped by the humans. As I understand it the original idea was that each of the Ruinous powers was a different aspect of Chaos Undivided, and that potentially all other gods were aspects of them, taking whatever form got them the most worshipers. I've seen an interview with one of the designers, where they say as much, but don't know that it was ever canonised per se.

I've always been somewhat suspicious of Sotek. He is explicitly the only Lizardman god who is not an Old One, and demands vast, bloody sacrifices much as Khorne does. I think its quite possible that a certain ruinous power came to the aid of the skinks and somehow convinced the most anti-chaos faction of the old world to set up a state sactioned Chaos Cult.

I don't think that much of this translates to the AoS setting, where the gods are much more immediate, and the gods of Law are explicitly ascended mortals, rather than nebulous cosmic forces which may or may not be what their worshipers think they are.

However I do think it gives an interesting template for how different cults could see a god in different ways. Each culture interprets the god's powers and virtues through the lens of what they consider important. We know that belief shapes reality in the warhammer settings, since that is how the Chaos Gods came to be. This has the intriguing implication that as public perception of a god shifts on a universal scale it might influence the reality of that god, and how they behave. If Nagash devours a popular death god, doe he then assume its form and responsibilities, developing a different aspect, shaped by that belief?

To what extent does Sigmar's current personality represent that of the actual First Emperor, and to what extent is it a gestalt of what his worshipers want him to be? Have thousands of years of religion in both the mortal realms and the Old World turned him into something quite different to his original mortal self? Does he even remember his life as a mortal? I've been reading the Soul Wars book, and some of the Nagash and Sigmar chapters definitely suggest that they are not omniscient, and that their memories of the Old World are hazy if not gone.

[Cèsar de Quart]

The new core rulebook has a segment in the Hyish chapter that essentially says this (paraphrasing):

+++ The Gods' power grows with worship, and every faithful soul expands their reach, sight and might. Sigmar can see Hyish if someone loyal to him is wandering about in Hyish, and he can't see Shyish if Nagash has killed every living Sigmarite there. +++

Which is odd to me, but allright, let's follow this logic to its conclusion: either the Gods unite again in a single pantheon so that they're worshipped equally, or they vie for murdering every single one of the other gods' followers.

The gods of Order seem to be doomed to become the new gods of Chaos... 

But, jokes aside, if that's true (and not just something added in as a throwaway, never to be brought back again)... then I'm wondering why is Malerion powerful at all. He has very few followers that we know of, and I'm not sure a god of shadow, night, suberfuge, betrayal and double-entendres is a name many people would have on their lips often. I mean, engineering and craft? Sure. Sky and thunder? Mighty. Light and knowledge? Indispensable. War and violence? Necessary. Life, growth, fertility? Of course. But... Shadow? Unless Ulgu brings the promise of a new understanding, in a way mirroring the mysteric cults of Dyonisus, Hecate or Mithras, I see Malerion got the short stick... again.

[EMMachine]

16 hours ago, Skabnoze said:

Do the gods have different names?  Sure, some call him Gork, some call him Mork, and others call him Gorkamorka.  

In case of Gorkamorka it was mentioned that he is a twoheaded god (Gorkamorka) or some times split into two gods (Gork and Mork)

One thing I definitly know is that Humans and Aelfs are worshipping Alarielle with her name (don't know if she has the same appearance for all of them, but on the other side, she is fighting in the Realmgate Wars so people would see her).

As for Grundni, there is the story Pantheon, where Sigmar and Alarielle watched a story about Bayla. When Bayla wanted to get to the edge of the realm one of the tasks was to get through a closed door without a key and he wanted to talk to Grundni but wasn't allowed to go into the temple. When he was sitting at the camp fire, he met a Duardin giving him the key. This Duardin could have been Grundni in a disguised form.

36 minutes ago, Cèsar de Quart said:

Of course. But... Shadow? Unless Ulgu brings the promise of a new understanding, in a way mirroring the mysteric cults of Dyonisus, Hecate or Mithras, I see Malerion got the short stick... again.

The rotation between Ulgu and Hysh is the day and knight cycle. And we saw the abilities of Clan Eshin (mentioning dark masters in Ulgu), but yeah, we don't know much about Ulgu.

[Baron Klatz]

 

Surprised no one mentioned Sigmar's worm god aspect yet.

"Sahg'mahr

This is his title in Shu’gohl, the Crawling Citywhere he continued to be worshiped through the Age of Chaos through the Vurmite Order - The Order of the Worm. A ­large temple complex to the god was raised in the Sahg’gohl, the Storm-Crown. Following the worm cities liberation from the Skaven, Lector Calva was sent by the Grand Theogonist herself to see to the reorganization of the Order."

Iirc, Josh said that if this version of Sigmar was running the reconquest of the realms he'd focus on a slow and steady reclamation  and the growing of his territories for an inevitable, but long drawn out, victory as opposed to the God-king aspect's lightning assualts and precision victory campaign.

You can look up the Lexicanum for more info on the pantheon for both their recorded manifestations and aspects.

 

[Urauloth]

2 hours ago, Cèsar de Quart said:

I'm wondering why is Malerion powerful at all. He has very few followers that we know of,

Well, you wouldn't know about the followers of the shadow-god, would you?   As for why he might be popularly worshipped, remember that for centuries much of the Mortal Realms were overrun by the Ruinous Powers. A god, even the most sinister one, who has the power to hide his worshippers and let them move among the shadows probably looks like a really good prospect if you live in a land overrun with daemons and possessed cannibals. Especially a god who not only hates the Ruinous Powers, but is prepared to take the fight to them and might just be having some success... depending on what you've heard.

 

1 hour ago, Baron Klatz said:

Shu’gohl, the Crawling City

Whoa, I didn't know anything about this? I haven't read either Sylvaneth or Pestilens yet, so I totally missed out here. I read the Lexicanum piece and I'm adding the book to my BL wishlist right now, this looks wild. I should probably just adopt a policy of reading everything Reynolds does for AoS, honestly.

[Cèsar de Quart]

3 hours ago, Baron Klatz said:

 

3 hours ago, Baron Klatz said:

 

Surprised no one mentioned Sigmar's worm god aspect yet.

"Sahg'mahr

This is his title in Shu’gohl, the Crawling Citywhere he continued to be worshiped through the Age of Chaos through the Vurmite Order - The Order of the Worm. A ­large temple complex to the god was raised in the Sahg’gohl, the Storm-Crown. Following the worm cities liberation from the Skaven, Lector Calva was sent by the Grand Theogonist herself to see to the reorganization of the Order."

Iirc, Josh said that if this version of Sigmar was running the reconquest of the realms he'd focus on a slow and steady reclamation  and the growing of his territories for an inevitable, but long drawn out, victory as opposed to the God-king aspect's lightning assualts and precision victory campaign.

You can look up the Lexicanum for more info on the pantheon for both their recorded manifestations and aspects.

 

That's nice, precisely what I was looking for.

[bsharitt]

I'm working out design/back story for a Slaves to Darkness barbarian army that are less devoted followers of Chaos, but are just a simple barbarian tribe that happens to include the Chaos gods as part of the Pantheon they worship. Lets say they're going on a an overseas raid, the ship crews will pray to the Storm god Sigmar for clear weather, the soldiers will make blood sacrifices to the war god Khorne asking for victory and the families will pray to the death god Nagash that the souls of their loved ones will make it too the afterlife safely if they fall in battle.  My basic thinking is that they've heard the names of these gods in their trade and contact with others, and while they get the basic gist of their personalities, they've basically come up with the full religion itself over time. So far the full pantheon looks like this:

Khorne - God of War

Nurgle - God of Life

Tzeentch - God of Change and Fortune

Sigmar - God of Thunder

Nagash - God of Death

Gorkamorka - God of the Hunt

Allarielle - Goddess of Fertility

[Avatar Rage]

It's very possible. We know that the Chaos god have a butt-ton of names due to how sneakily then can enter into community worship. We also know that Nagash (The Undying King, The Great Necromancer, The Black Priest, etc). I think I read somewhere that Sigmar is referred to by another name (quick google gave me Sahg'mar). 

 

So there is president for the gods to have different names depending on things like region and why they are worshipped. 

[Skabnoze]

9 minutes ago, Avatar Rage said:

So there is president for the gods to have different names depending on things like region and why they are worshipped. 

Exactly.  Gork, or Mork, or Gorkamorka.

The rest is not worth remembering in any way.  You should just smash those fools with silly other named gods in the head with your choppa or feed them to squigs and then get on with the rest of your day.  Bunch of time-wasting nonsense...

[TheMuphinMan]

I still think Khaine came to be when Khorne punched Slannesh, some captive elves that escaped in the confusion and misheard misheard their savior's name as "Khaine". Then worship of "Khaine" eventually caused him to be willed into existence

[Necroshadow]

Well gorkamorka is a very good example of different names and aspects for gods, considering most of the  different destruction factions have at least a slight variation on the perceived  nature of their god. Speak to the shaman of the spiderfang tribes and they will tell you of the great powers of the spider god, the ogors may still believe in the great maw as being his true form and then you have melcavuk’s suneater migrations who believe in the suneater aspect of their mighty deity. All in all gorkamorka seems very fond of doing cosmic dress up in between brawls. 

[Cèsar de Quart]

3 hours ago, bsharitt said:

I'm working out design/back story for a Slaves to Darkness barbarian army that are less devoted followers of Chaos, but are just a simple barbarian tribe that happens to include the Chaos gods as part of the Pantheon they worship. Lets say they're going on a an overseas raid, the ship crews will pray to the Storm god Sigmar for clear weather, the soldiers will make blood sacrifices to the war god Khorne asking for victory and the families will pray to the death god Nagash that the souls of their loved ones will make it too the afterlife safely if they fall in battle.  My basic thinking is that they've heard the names of these gods in their trade and contact with others, and while they get the basic gist of their personalities, they've basically come up with the full religion itself over time. So far the full pantheon looks like this:

Khorne - God of War

Nurgle - God of Life

Tzeentch - God of Change and Fortune

Sigmar - God of Thunder

Nagash - God of Death

Gorkamorka - God of the Hunt

Allarielle - Goddess of Fertility

It's a cool concept. This way your band of barbarians are more "Alaric at the gates of Rome" and less  "WE WILL EAT YOUR CHILDREN WHILE YOU WATCH JUST BECAUSE". Having an army of comically cartoonish villains can subtract from the experience (unless the setting is comically cartoonish, which is sometimes, but not often, the case here).

If I were you, I'd look for Indo-European roots for the names of common divinities, or maybe Mongolian. You can get plausible and cool sounding names this way. One of my Free Cities dudes worship the Pantheon but with an Etruscan twist.

[MightyMetro]

On 7/5/2018 at 8:34 AM, Cèsar de Quart said:

So far I haven't seen the gods be affected by the source of their power much, except for Alarielle and her circle of death and rebirth.

Even so, it's not hard-coded into her nature that she needs to sleep the winter... it'd be neat to see Alarielle recreate Orion so that he can be the vessel for the winter (maybe even around a Kislev-like civilization. A man can dream) and she can go on fighting, with the side effect of making the growth of all life rampant and violent without a winter to kill off the bad weed and give plants a chance to sleep and reproduce. Life may become vicious and disease-like. The irony!

This is an interesting idea.  Tbh, i dont know a great deal about Sylvaneth other than they turned their back on the Wanderers.  

Is there any link between the Sylvaneth winter and the Beastclaw Raiders Everwinter? If nature takes its time to regrow after the winters its understandable that the growth is unnoticed by slow ogors that tend to live in the moment

I like the idea of two apparently unrelated races, Sylvaneth and Beastclaw, being unknowingly linked by  different opposing yin-yang aspects of the same elemental force, Alarielle / Everwinter.

On a related note, could the Beastclaws be inadvertently destroying the laylines that the Wanderers are seeking to repair?

[Baron Klatz]

I wouldn't be surprised if that happens. Beastclaws kinda have a running theme of being a random force in the background that screws up somebody's plan with their casual destroying/devouring of anything in their path.

An example is the Lantic empire who were mentioned to be on their 13th attempt to rebuild their empire as the previous attempt got ruined by wandering Ogor tribes.

11 hours ago, Urauloth said:

I should probably just adopt a policy of reading everything Reynolds does for AoS, honestly.

I 100% agree that this is a wise policy.

[EccentricCircle]

I've got a few chapters further through the soul wars novel, and theres an interesting reference to a desert tribe in Shyish, who worship Sigmar as their sky god, and think that the Azyrites version of him is really weird.

[Cèsar de Quart]

1 hour ago, EccentricCircle said:

I've got a few chapters further through the soul wars novel, and theres an interesting reference to a desert tribe in Shyish, who worship Sigmar as their sky god, and think that the Azyrites version of him is really weird.

I've liked Reynolds' since "Breinheimer's Gun". He writes with a deep sense of setting, character and layering. He's not Frank Herbert when it comes to philosophising and worldbuilding, but he's not bad at it. He always spins some throwaway line from the army book into a fully fledged character and ties the world together.

You can also tell he's watched a lot of the good movies.