Frayed Knights: A God Complex

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 23, 2010

This post has nothing to do with my previous post, but I was just tickled by the similar titles. I am easily amused, apparently.

Speaking of being easily amused, one source of minor amusement around our tiny little Frayed Knights development team has been the number of temples in the game. Starting with the Temple of Pokmor Xang, god of boils, blisters, pimples, and apparently pus –  which was in the (now horribly outdated) pilot release, we’ve got two more in development as adventuring areas.

Last night, Brian and I decided that I had been overusing the word, “temple.” So we’ve officially renamed some of our dungeons.

The Temple of Pokmor Xang remains unchanged. It’s in the pilot, and a slightly updated version will remain in the final release.

The Fane of the Rat God is in act two. And I love the name. “Fane of the Rat God.” I mean, it totally sounds like an old-school D&D module, doesn’t it?

And we’re currently finishing up the Chapel of Anarchy.  It is broken up into an outer, more public entry / worship area and a more-sacred inner area. The inner area was formally referred to as the “Anarchy Sanctum Sanctorum,” but that’s a pretty longish name, and the shorter acronym was highly unfortunate, so most of the time the whole structure was referred to as simply the “Chapel of Anarchy” instead.

Why do I have a preoccupation with attacking houses of worship of evil (or at least not-too-friendly) deities? Is it some kind of  deep-seated psychological issue? I hope not. Not that I’m a shining example or anything like that, but I do actually take my religion seriously in real life.

But as far as fiction is concerned, I think it’s my influences. Unlike my wife, Tolkien wasn’t my gateway drug to fantasy. Nope, for me, it was  Robert E. Howard and the whole “sword-and-sorcery” counterpart to Tolkien’s “high fantasy.” And I loved reading stories of his most famous character, Conan. The mighty-thewed one was regularly taking on dark, monstrous “gods” and their cults – with names like “Thog” and “Jhebbal Sag.” And evil, corrupt priests. And temples and sacred towers full of loot for our enterprising barbarian and his occasional cohort.

Incidentally, if your opinion of Conan is based purely on pop references, games, and a couple of lame movies, you really need to read the books. Less than half are by Howard himself, but the other authors (a bunch of total unknowns that you have probably never heard of like L. Sprague de Camp, Poul Anderson, Harry Turtledove, and this Robert Jordan guy…) often did a pretty good job as well.

As far as the gods of Frayed Knights, you all know about Pokmor Xang. If you played the pilot, you have heard of Neutoxis, the goddess of disease. The Rat God is Nom the Devourer. Nokram is a goddess of battle, of whom Florentine is a follower. The Chapel of Anarchy was not devoted to any one god — the “chief deity” of the cult changing almost as often as their leadership, when they actually recognized any (usually only after violence and some unexplained accidents helped followers to see the collective will of the gods). There are others in my notes, but as they don’t have an appearance in the game yet I’m just leaving them as subject-to-change background material for my own entertainment. It’s a silly, inconsistent pantheon – which is exactly as it should be.

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