A Devastation of Demigods

In my last blog post, I talked about running a game where the player characters ar demigods  -- I used the term "fantasy superheroes" to describe them, and compared them to Marvel's Thor.  Though I don't want to run a "Thor" campaign, or even an "Asgard" campaign, I've begun to think of the world that such a campaign would exist in... and dang, if I didn't come across another Marvel comics illustration that captures the feel of what I want:

I like the idea of different "worlds" connected together by an "axis mundi" of a sort. The idea of climbing a "world tree" is very appealing, but again, it's very connected in the popular imagination to the Norse pantheon. Other possibilities that spring to mind are a cosmic dragon, clutching the worlds in its coils (which brings up images of Cthulhoid tentacles as well); a road, with hosts of heroes riding grimly to war against against an army of Giants; or a river, with tributaries, rapids, whirlpools, and waterfalls. All of them have possibilities... but I like the tree-metaphor. Many other European and Asian mythologies use the tree-metaphor, so I might keep it.

In Norse mythology, the number and nature of the "nine worlds" varies according to the source, but the term "the nine worlds" crops up in many cases (including the scholastic works of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in their seminal periodical, "The Mighty Thor").  Each of them is home to a particularly family of beings. Some of these worlds are:

1. Asaheim: home of the Asgardian gods such as Odin and Thor.
2. Vanaheim: home of the Vanir (Freya, Freyr, Njord)
3. Jotunheim (home of the Jotuns, or giants)
4. Midgard: home of men
5. Alfheim: home of elves
6. Hel: home of the dead, ruled by a goddess named Hel or Hela
7. Svartalfheim: Home of the Dark Elves (who may be the same as the Dwarves, to the chagrin of many fans of R. A. Salvatore)
8. Muspellheim: land of fire
9. Niflheim: land of ice

None of these are detailed to any significant extent in Norse mythology, so I am pretty free to do what I want to make these playable worlds. For one thing, there's a fire world and an ice world, but no sea world.  Some random thoughts on these issues:

1. Different families of gods living in different worlds. How do the gods of the sky-realm differ from the gods of the earth-realm or the air-realm?
2. Dwarves: since they're obsessed with smithing and creating, make their world a sort of steampunk/gearpunk technology. Gloranthan dwarves (Mostali) have an idea that the world is a broken machine and they're trying to fix it.
3. I see the area between the worlds as filled with weird, alien horrors (of a Lovecraftian variety), which is why the World Tree is the main path between the worlds.  
4. There is no "ocean-heim". Does each world have its own sea, or are they all connected?
5. How do ordinary mortals fit in? They won't be the main focus of the campaign, but do they even exist?
6. What beings regularly travel between the realms?

This is a world-in-progress, and continues to evolve. Comments are much welcome.

 

"By the Power of Asgard!!!" Fantasy + Superheroes = a Demigods Campaign

In the interests of full disclosure, this post isn't about the new Thor movie (which I still haven't seen), but the movie did remind me of a half-baked Champions campaign I worked on a long time ago. It took place in a magical universe, similar to the Norse concepts of a number of magical realms linked together (presumably, a World Tree, a cosmic river, or something else like that). The PCs would be demigods, sort of like fantasy superheroes (CF the aforementioned God of Thunder).  The landscape, the winds, the rivers, the celestial bodies, all could be alive and interacted with the PCs; too, there would be obviously-magical featues, such as the River of Flames, the River of Forgetfulness, the Undeworld, the Upper Sky, and other myth-laden places.

The PCs would be demigod-like beings. My working concept is that these beings, while possessed of amazing abilities, are not divine in the sense that the Olympians and Asgardians are, in that they don't receive worship (though they probably do receive tribute in the form of worldly goods). They do possess mighty abilities that set them apart from other mortals; they are the leaders of powerful tribes.  If you read my post on using divine epithets for Questing Dice in Risus, these might be used for the cliches for these characters (e.g., "Shooter from Afar", "Protector of Fugitives", "The Earthshaker", "Sacker of Cities", "The Cloud-Gatherer").  I thought it would also reinforce the mythological feel if the characters used divine weapons and vehicles such as Thor's hammer (instead of just casting lightning) or Athena's Aegis, or summoning up a wind to carry them or changing into an eagle to fly instead of flying like a superhero. Another convention is that they wouldn't refer to themselves as "God (or Goddess)of ___", since they don't regard themselves as gods. They could be "Lord of the Dead" or "Mother of the Harvest".

If this isn't a superhero campaign, it also isn't a traditional fantasy campaign.  There are a lot more potentially world-destroying monsters, such as Typhon, the Midgard Serpent, or the Fenris Wolf to cope with. And that's the kind of beasts the PCs should be encountering. This is an age when these threats have not all been locked away; they remain to threaten the ordinary mortals whom the demigods protect.  Perhaps even the previous generation of "titans" is still around, provoking a revolt by the PCs themselves!

As is evident by the illustrations I've chosen, I was greatly influenced bt the Walt Simonson run on Marvel Comics' THOR in the 1980s. He played up Thor's mythological elements while infusing it with an epic, heroic style that most previous witers and artists had neglected. Especially impressive were Thor's battle with the Midgard serpent (while suffering from a major curse from the death-goddess Hela), and Thor's invasion of Hela's realm of the dead against impossible odds. The heroic sacrifice of Skurge the Executioner, one of Thor's former foes, holding the Bridge of Death while the other heroes escaped from Helheim, is a crowning moment of glory in a superbly told epic that elevated Thor beyond a mere comic book character.