Pantheon of the Labyrinth

The Labyrinth Worldbook is Kobold Press's planar setting for Tales of the Valiant or any DnD 5e variant. This is my review of chapter 6: Pantheon of the Labyrinth.

Like magic, I personally don't think you can ever have too many gods in a fantasy setting. I was always fascinated by mythology as a kid, with my first interest being the ancient Greek pantheon because that's what you got in school by default, and then in the ancient Egyptian pantheon because it felt like the pantheon-they-don't-tell-you-about in school. Also, you can't be raised in the USA without internalising Judeo-Christian mythology, and if you're really into research then you end up with a bunch of Dante and Jewish expansions. Even a mediocre pantheon is usually of interest to me, so the pantheon chapter of the Labyrinth Worldbook can essentially do no wrong. That's a good thing, because so far the concept of the Labyrinth is pretty muddled. It's a series of pathways between worlds, not a world itself, but a painfully generic fantasy city called the Smithy is its hub, and there are encampments and cities within the Labyrinth, which isn't actually a labyrinth at all. For once, I think a nice look at a cosmological pantheon might just help this setting feel grounded.

The pantheon presented in this book are the gods known within the Labyrinth itself, and on some of the core worlds of the Labyrinth. There are 6 gods, and 9 dark gods.

Gods of the Labyrinth

If you're already a fan of the Kobold Press setting of Midgard, and specifically the Southlands, then some of the gods of the Labyrinth will be familiar.

• Cartokk, the dreaming god: God of mysteries, visions, seekers. It is said that his dreams created the Ten Thousand Worlds.
• Herak-Mavros: God of war and thunder, lord of battle and rebirth, patron of warriors, and husband to the White Goddess. He's sort of a male Athena.
• Nakresh: A god of Nuria Natal in the Southlands, Nakresh is the many-handed god. He is the god of thieves and rogues. He loves stealing things, and he loves wealth.
• Rava: Goddess of industry and craft. In the book,there's a spider depicted near her name, but there's no mention that spiders are her symbol. She has 6 arms in all her avatars, and she is considered the mother of golems, the merchant goddess, patron to weavers and smiths.
• Sabateus: A god of the desert lands and the Corsair Coast of the Southlands, Sabateus is worshipped only at night and is a scholarly god. He promotes knowledge from the movement of the stars, and by studying ancient mysteries and ages past. He is associated with magic and wizardry.
• Solana: Goddess of the sun, matron of steel and silver, healing, and radiance. This is probably the god you want if you're just looking for a really nice and pleasant goddess to take with you to Ravenloft or some other dark and foreboding land.

It's a short list, but there are obviously plenty of gods in other pantheons that would be just as relevant in the Labyrinth. For characters born and raised in the Labyrinth, or very used to traveling the Labyrinth, these gods would probably be familiar.

Dark gods

As with the gods of the Labyrinth, some of the dark gods listed in this book are from the Southlands.

• Addrikah: Appearing as an elderly derro, Addrikah babbles "wisdom" constantly but her wisdom never answers any questions. She's the mother of madness, and patron of the derro.
• Baal-Hotep: From the Southlands, Baal-Hotep is the god of fire and rulership, but also the god of rain and dew and fertile fields. He's common among dragonkin and kobolds especially (and one of his avatars is a great dragon), but he tends to be feared otherwise.
• Black Goat: Bacchana, the queen of decadence, deity of night, wealth, influence, fertility, and might. She is associated with excess, and the elven god of wine, and is popular among the outcast, the broken, witches, and oracles.
• Marena: Goddess of winter, sickness, lust, and death. She is considered a goddess of ghouls and vampires, and is popular in shadowed lands and even among void cultists.
• Mot: From the Southlands, Mot is the god of mass slaughter, necromancy, and obliteration, the underworld, and of undeath. He rules the underworld and the afterlife from a black throne in a land of mist near the River Styx.
• Nidhogg: As in Norse mythology, Nidhogg is the serpent god that lives among the roots of the World Tree. He seeks to consume the World Tree and to destroy all the worlds of the cosmos. He is the serpent that devours.
• Srenda Mara: The description provided in the book says that she "comes disguised as a helpmeet to the weak, the lost, and the dying" but it doesn't say exactly what her disguise is concealing. Through a lot of context clues, it seems that she may appear friendly but then tricks those that come to her by turning them into demonic or undead creatures. I love the idea of this goddess, but I don't feel that the entry describing her is very clear.
• Vardesain: Gluttony to the point of cannibalism, endless hunger, bottomless maw.
• White Goddess: From the Southlands, the White Goddess is patron to orcs and ogres, and is the matriarch of blood and strength. She appears as an albino orc, and revels in any display of power.

Minor gods

Obviously there are plenty of other gods you could use in a Labyrinth adventure, and the final section of this chapter lists 20 of them. I recognise most gods in this list from the Southlands and the Northlands, and I wouldn't be surprised to find the others in the main Midgard source book.

This is very much a source for all the other cosmological domains that inevitably come up in a campaign. Fortuna is the goddess of fortune and luck. Ninkash is the goddess of beer and community. Hecate is (another) goddess of night and magic. Of course there's Bastet, the goddess of felines. And several Northland gods are listed here, including Fenris and Wotan and Loki.

There are a lot to choose from, each with just enough detail to help you fake your way through questions about the faith.

All fantasy gods are good gods

Gods are a quick and easy way to give character to a world or an NPC. As a player, when you hear about a god you're unfamiliar with, your mind is flooded with questions and ideas. Who is this god? What does the god demand of its followers? What does the god promise in return? Why do people here worship that god?

It's instant world building, and as a game master I love having interesting gods to choose from. In my experience, Kobold Press has always been really good at creating interesting gods. Nothing's ever simple with Kobold Press gods. Any one god can have a seemingly unrelated or even conflicting collection of interests. They're complex and unknowable, and there's rarely one that feels exactly right for any given purpose. And that's pretty perfect, because contradiction and conflicting interpretation is exactly what religious faith is about.

I don't use many gods in my planar adventures. Having discovered inter-dimensional travel through Planescape, I'm a fan of the idea that once you step outside of reality, gods that are isolated by crystal spheres floating in flotsam just don't seem that powerful any more. But it's an intriguing idea that in the Labyrinth setting, there are those gods that wander the space between worlds. It's not an idea I'm exploring in my Labyrinth Adventures campaign, but it's nice to have a different take on an inter-dimensional setting and gods.