Desert Campaign

Religion and Gods

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Version: 1.0
Canon through: September 17, 2026

Outline

Religious Worldview

The gods are active and politically consequential. They can communicate with clerics, manifest through physical avatars, walk among mortals, issue proclamations, grant power, and interfere in institutions.

Most people recognize many gods while maintaining a particularly close relationship with a patron whose concerns match their work, values, or personal history. Patronage does not require exclusive worship.

The region’s religious life is defined by a conflict between public doctrine and forbidden truth. The central question is not merely whether the gods exist, but whether they are honest, rightful, or truly divine.

Divine Presence and Material Limits

The gods are immensely powerful but are not omnipotent, omniscient, or omnipresent. To perceive, communicate with, or act within the material world, a deity requires a point of connection created or maintained by mortals.

Established connections include:

  • A sacred symbol incorporated into an Eye, through which a god may choose to see and hear.
  • A personal holy symbol, through which deity and follower may deliberately communicate without granting the god unrestricted access to the follower’s mind or senses.
  • An idol or statue, which provides a stable place for observation, prayer, and sustained presence.
  • A willing living vessel, through whom a god may speak, act, manifest equipment, and channel a limited portion of divine power.

These connections provide access, not automatic awareness. A god must direct attention toward a particular Eye, symbol, idol, or vessel and cannot attend every connection perfectly at once. Destroying or obscuring an Eye can therefore blind a god to that location if no other connection is available.

Possession requires a willing, devout host at the moment the connection is established. A host remains conscious beneath the divine presence and may later attempt to force it out. The mortal body limits how much power can be expressed and may collapse or die when the sustaining presence leaves after severe injury.

See Divine Presence for the complete framework, including processions, manifested equipment, resistance, and the physical cost of possession.

Ra and Amun

Amun-Ra / Ra

Amun-Ra, commonly called Ra, is the dominant public god. He is associated with the sun, kingship, divine authority, and the central temple in Amarna.

Public teaching says:

  • Amun was the ancient creator and father.
  • Ra killed Amun.
  • Ra consumed him.
  • The two therefore became Amun-Ra.

Ra’s manifested presence or avatars appear differently to different observers:

  • Most people see an angelic ideal shaped to the viewer.
  • Clanks perceive brilliant light.
  • The damned perceive a fiery demon.

Ra knows the party exists and considers them a possible threat, but he is not omniscient. He cannot automatically locate or continuously observe them, creating a need for the Sun Dogs.

The precise connection Ra used for each prior appearance has not been established. Do not assume a living vessel, idol, or other specific anchor unless later campaign material identifies one.

Amun

The forbidden belief is that Amun was not consumed. Ra defeated and imprisoned him in the Bowels of Anubis.

Amun is worshiped by the Pharaoh as “the eternal god of the deep.” The Pharaoh claims Amun spoke to him and instructed him to declare himself Amun’s reincarnation. Whether the voice was Amun and whether its instructions were honest remain unresolved.

Some believe the prisoners suspended in the oasis feed or sustain the magic that keeps Amun weak.

The Divine-Political Crisis

Ra recently appeared directly before the people rather than speaking only through priests. He declared:

  • The Pharaoh is not Amun’s reincarnation.
  • The priesthood will no longer answer to the Pharaoh.

This proclamation transformed a theological dispute into an open conflict among the god, priesthood, crown, and underground Amun believers.

Anubis

Patron of Nakhtresh “Nakht”. Nakhtresh is a Divine Wielder who serves Anubis and joins the party to assist them following Mulch’s death.

Anubis governs the proper ordering of death, mummification, burial, guidance of the dead, judgment, and the boundary between life and death.

His concerns make uncontrolled undead within a temple or catacomb sacred to him more than a physical danger. They are a violation of purpose and cosmic order.

The Oil of Anubis is intended to allow mortals to descend through the agonizing waters of the Bowels without suffering their ordinary effects. The party expects to earn the Priesthood of Anubis’s help by investigating a lost temple.

Character Patron Gods

Wepwawet

Patron of Altennis. Known as the Opener of the Ways. Wepwawet is associated with scouting, routes, movement, infiltration, dangerous passages, mercenary work, and going ahead of others to find the hidden path.

Altennis’s devotional principle is that an apparent barrier may conceal another way forward.

Thoth

Patron of Sedric Runeborne. Thoth represents knowledge, writing, language, wisdom, scholarship, records, sacred texts, calculation, and memory.

For Sedric, deciphering a forgotten scroll or preserving a lost history is a sacred act.

Ma’at

Patron of Sylvester Dalone. Ma’at represents truth, justice, law, balance, fairness, responsibility, and proper cosmic and social order.

Sylvester’s investigations serve Ma’at when they expose lies, correct false accusations, and restore what has been deliberately made crooked.

Neith

Patron of Intrepid. Neith represents weaving, creation, protection, justice, endurance, restoration, and continuity.

The people within Intrepid understand themselves as individual threads woven into one functioning whole. Unity strengthens them without requiring any thread to cease being itself.

Renenutet

Patron of the late Mulch “Fungi.” Renenutet represents nourishment, harvest, agriculture, sustenance, stewardship, family continuity, and the practical survival of the community.

Mulch’s devotion emphasizes a morally neutral and pragmatic view of nature. Living systems are neither kind nor cruel; they endure when their members take what they need, waste little, preserve what sustains the whole, and leave enough for those who come after. Tradition and ancestry matter because they preserve generations of hard-earned survival knowledge, but they are not immune to change when survival requires adaptation.

For Mulch, conservation is not sentimental reverence for untouched nature. It is the practical duty to protect the systems that allow family, community, and future generations to continue.

Ma’at, Isfet, and Nekhar

Isfet

Isfet is the disorder, falsehood, violence, and unmaking opposed to Ma’at. It is not simply unpredictable change; it is the active corruption of right order.

Nekhar, the First Lich

Nekhar is a campaign-created demigod and the first lich: one who returned from death specifically to reject the natural order. He is described as an Exiled Akh whose journey beyond death granted power rather than reconciliation.

Nekhar’s representation is the crow. He embodies rebellion against Ma’at and the deliberate creation of Isfet. His existence treats lichdom not only as necromancy but as a theological act of refusal.

See Nekhar visual asset.

Vecna and the Remade World

Vecna completed the Ritual of Remaking after defeating the previous heroes. His preserved consciousness survived within a magical singularity while the multiverse was unraveled and rewoven according to his will.

Early campaign planning described Vecna as the overt supreme creator god of the new reality, appearing as an idealized blond figure in purple robes and gold vestments. Later setting development centers public religion on Ra instead.

GM Note — Public and Metaphysical Religion

Both layers remain relevant:

  • Metaphysical truth: Vecna remade reality.
  • Public religion: Ra is the dominant acknowledged god.
  • Unresolved: Whether Ra is an independent remade deity, a mask or instrument of Vecna, a power Vecna could not fully control, or something else.

Soul Concepts

These concepts support the campaign’s treatment of death, memory, identity, and rebirth.

Ka

The sustaining life-force or spiritual double associated with continued existence. In campaign use, Ka is the aspect most closely tied to vitality and the continuation of the person.

Ba

The mobile, individual personality or identity capable of movement beyond the body. Ba is useful for representing the recognizable self that travels, remembers, and returns.

Akh

A transformed or effective spirit produced when the elements of a person are properly reconciled through death and sacred order. Nekhar’s title as an Exiled Akh signals a spirit that rejected that completed state.

A simple mnemonic used during planning is: Ka keeps alive; Ba is who you are.

False-God Theories

Some people do not accept that beings called gods are truly gods. Proposed explanations include:

  • Elder beings older than the recognized pantheon.
  • Aliens or entities from beyond the world.
  • Extremely powerful magical beings.
  • Rulers who altered history and monopolized worship.
  • Remnants or agents of the remade multiverse.

The setting deliberately leaves room for faith, skepticism, propaganda, and metaphysical discovery to conflict.

GM Notes

  • Religious claims are not automatically objective fact simply because a god says them.
  • Amun’s imprisonment is a central belief supported by evidence and testimony, but the party has not yet personally confirmed every detail.
  • Character patrons provide personal values and quest hooks without dictating exclusive faith.