Building a setting that uses christian mythology as background

>What are those classic fuckers with horns and goat feet called?

Satyrs?

I thought saytrs have horse ears and tails?

I like the idea of a Carolingian setting, a setting which would be drenched in Christianity. It would also be very atmospheric as this is probably when Christendom is at its nadir, with 2/3 of the Christian world overrun by Islam, the Teutonic woodlands still thoroughly pagan and Francia right at the middle of it all. This is as close as you can get to the popular myth of the "dark ages", right before the Carolingian renaissance.

Loads of room for interesting adventures, though it would require a lot of system reformatting.
>Saints are a big deal, any adventurer above a certain level (5-10?) is seen as a living saint
>There's no such thing as "magic"*, there's only two things: miracles from God or fuckyouhereticgoworshipyourdemonssomewhereelse. Frankish "magic" is mostly the former, pagan and Islamic magic mostly the latter beware of easily butthurt progressives
>Monsters may or may not be a real thing, dead saints may or may not show up in battle to aid you, Irminsul may or may not be a divine connection to the demonic realm that needs to be purged in holy fire et cetera
>Big Charlie himself may or may not send you on missions to right wrongs or drive the Moors out of Spain
It also gives you the opportunity to play an O.G. paladin.

>W-What about the Byzantines?
What about 'em, faggot?

*though if you want to play fast and loose, you can just have Christian wizards and simply refluff them as saints or prophets.

the most important monster in Christian mythology is the Leviathan

And obv Red Dragon and the Beast with 10 heads and 7 diadems or something like that

Imps? or just demons/devils in general

The various types of angels.

Nephilim

Some Lords of Hell (read the first two chapters of Paradise Lost)

Don't forget that becoming a witch is surprisingly easy. Low level magic would be illicit, but widespread.

Also Lilim

The absolute amorality of angels is great for this. They don't really give a shit about our notion of Good or Evil, they act according to a plan in service of a plan we can't see both sides of. Which means one might ride in, unfold the 17 wings that cover its body made of eyes, and murder an entire village.

Also, the Inquisition.

How will the players navigate this world?
Will this be a simple change in window dressing or is there more to it?

Oops, wrong pic.

Also, what exactly is your setting?
Ancient Middle East?
Christian Europe?
The time before the flood?

Lost my shit hard.

Yeah, this is important. Is there room for pagan city states, or have they all been smited?

where can i learn more about this shit?

I too read the Mysterious Stranger

youtube.com/watch?v=fMN3i4tUy8M

Great source of legitamate Christian witch superstitions. Primary source of info came from the Compendium Maleficarum, so if you dont wanna read th Inquisitor's handbook, you can just watch the movie version

I always thought the Watchers were interesting.
They're angels who were sent to keep an eye on the humans but eventually came to love them. They were cast out from heaven because of their love for humans and because they taught humans forbidden arts like astrology and the creation of cosmetic items, ornaments and weapons,

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watcher_(angel)

>you can just have Christian wizards

gifts, extraordinary powers of distinction of the holy spirit
>speak a message of wisdom
>express a word of knowledge and understanding
>wonder working faith
>healing
>working of miracles
>prophetic insight, interpreting divine will and purpose
>discern and distinguish between utterances of true spirits and false ones
>speaking various kinds of unknown tongues
>interpreting such tongues

where's the part where it turns out the old gods never died and then it's you and those piece of shit saracens against Genghis 2: Khan's Revenge

It's a mish-mash of christian traditions from everywhere. The primary parent cultures are a blend of traditions shared by a branch of Christianity

>Nestorians (blend of Persian, Assyrian, Mongol, Uighur, Chinese, and Indian believers)
>Orthodox (mix of East Slavic, Balkan, and Anatolian culture)
>Catholic (classic old western Frankish influenced Christendom, Knights & Castles and all that fairytale fun. But also more exotic branches like Kongo Catholics, Japanese Christians, etc)
>Oriental Orthodox (Coptic Egyptians, Ethiopians, Syrians, Armenians, etc)
>Protestants

The world itself is not really like ours. It has four continents for example.
Pagans are somewhat caricatures of what people have called heathens. I.E. Vikings, Romans as portrayed by early Christians (complete monsters), Steppe hordes, Man-Eaters from the tropics, etc.

Look up medieval and early Renaissance European beliefs about Muslim religion and make that the canonical evil faction.

I want to see an army of darkness worshiping the unholy trinity of Mahomet, Apollyon, and Termagant.

For a more contemporary Christian monster, use the Rougarou, the werewolf that only attacks you if you break Lent.

Interesting fluff, but what is the mechanical significance?
Was it a player request, why this particular setting?
>canonical evil faction
Don't go with 1 dimensional portrayals. Just give them a relatable yet antithetical motivation from the time period. Makes for better villains.

Labor of love. I saw the Passion of the Christ a while ago which got me interested in Christian mythology and folklore. Even got into the apocrypha. I hear GURPs is good for this type of homebrew. Even my players don't know I'm working on this one.

But they enjoyed my Indian setting years ago so I figured why not try Christian folklore?

Go on /x/ and ask for old testament Jewish demons.
There a ton of them, with a lot of sigils, pentacles and shit related.

If you're doing a Christianity inspired setting, it would be a crime not to include Pentecostals, Mithraists, Quakers, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Unitarians. It's an absolutely massive, ancient religion, and there's an absolute pile of mainstreams denominations, fringe cults, and badass figures to clean inspiration from. Read the books of Genesis, Exodus, Lamentations, and Revelations to get into the right mindset, and research some of the most significant biblical heroes, prophets, and villians here,

>> bibleblender.com/2014/biblical-lessons/biblical-history/complete-list-of-major-minor-characters-in-bible

If you're going to include Islamists, be sure read up on the Qu'ran, all things considered, it's a relatively short book and if you aren't a brainlet, you should be able to finish it in an afternoon. Also, it might help you to ask /x/ or /pol/ about their September 23rd doomsday prophecy, and to read up on the older pagan Caananite religious beliefs and Hebraic traditions. Best of luck, be sure to post your notes in the worldbuilding general when you've finished!

>*to glean inspiration from

Saints are a thing and so are their relics. Supposedly, relics carry power because they belonged to the saints. Pilgrimages and visions are solid quest excuses. Demons and aspects of sin can all make good villains.

These.

...

Is it really that easy? I assumed contacting a demon or the devil would be difdicult.

According to tradition, no, not at all, the devil and his demons are always tempting mortals and listening for the signs of sin.

Which demon came up with the idea to use that font at that resolution?

IIRC there was a Berber sect OBSESSED with martyrdom so they'd harass and attack travelers until they got killed

Some kind of martyrs they must've been. So they were basically papist bandits? Who exactly did they harass? Pagans and heretics, or literally anyone? I must know more.

The Vikings had an interesting idea of Jesus in the past. At first they said he sounded like a pussy because missionaries used the "martyr" angle. So instead, later missionaries presented Jesus Christ as a warrior God. Who let himself die (like Odin) but for the sake of his subjects. Viking Jesus had most emphasis placed on the 3 days he spent in Hell, battling with monsters and demons to rescue the souls of the righteous damned and triumphing over death and wyrd itself.

Vikings liked this Jesus more.

The Circumcellions. They hated slavery, private property, and debts.

They also hated bladed weapons because Jesus told Peter to put down his sword. So they'd attack travelers with clubs and fists while screaming "Praise God!" in Latin.

>while screaming "Praise God!" in Latin
not even from /pol/ but this reminded me of nothing so much as allahu snackbars
I guess we're not so different after all, huh

Reminds me of a missionary journal I read from Ghana. In the old days, they explained Jesus to the Akan tribes as "the greatest of all hunters and the greatest of all fisherman, he has entered the bush (the bush is basically an eldritch hell in African folklore) and wrestled Asanbosam (an extremely feared, blood sucking, fire breathing, bush-demon and lord of all witches). The native preachers say "Jesus has wrestled him effortlessly, and twisted off his head! Never to trouble any of you again!".

Yeah OP, angels were weird as fuck.
The Thrones appeared as glowing wheels with eyes on them. This is why when most angels encountered humans their choice of words were "Fear not"

This is incorrect.

t. anthropologist

Elaborate

make your angels weird (like they should be)

If we repeat it enough, it will become true.

Samson's firefoxes

Really? I'd always understood it was something like that.
What actually happened? A long boring conversion by convenience or something like that?

He's full of shit

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_Christianity

Vikings loved them some macho Jesus Christ

If we're talking about Christian folklore and not Christianity itself, don't forget to throw in the Hounds of God.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiess_of_Kaltenbrun

Also Prester John maybe.

Abyssal Locust are cool.
Hordes of large, armored, fast moving, ultra-aggressive, intelligent monsters that have a debilitatingly painful sting.

Early Judaism was monolatrist rather than monotheist, so it *could* work. That time the Medianites came to challenge God to a fire-off was seen as quite literally a holy war: the Medianites, representing their pagan gods, challenged Moses, who represented his God. You could either assume there were no Medianite gods in the first place, or that they were too busy getting their shit wrecked by God to respond to the pleas of their followers for holy fire. Assume the latter and burning trees becomes a lot more important.

Now I regret already having used the "Germany was a mistake" Charlemagne pic, because it sure is fucking appropriate right now.

Don't forget to include the lilim.

...

Look in the noncanonical gospels and "acts of saints," a style of literature popular in the early Christian world. There's one story of St. Paul baptizing an intelligent lion.
>Traditional Catholic
>Love early Christian heresy and popular literature of the time.

This Hierachy doesn't seem quite right.

Archangel is more of a title than a rank. Hence Archangel Micheal, Heaven's Number Two.

>Viking Jesus had most emphasis placed on the 3 days he spent in Hell, battling with monsters and demons to rescue the souls of the righteous damned and triumphing over death
Viking Jesus was Doomguy

Who was the guy who got executed with arrows?

St. Sebastian

Metal

Don't forget St Bartholomew, who was skinned alive (and is patron saint of Tanners as a result).

Fuck me

larzm42.github.io/dom4inspector/
check like this

I tthink it's supposed to represent proximity to the throne, rather than power.

In any case, it's pretty inconsistent, like pretty much everything in the Bible.

>weird angels
No, make them cute so players can love them and find spiritual waifu that protects them.

Given that the angelic hierarchy is never actually described in the Bible, it's fair to say that the various representations of it are at best educated guesses. Inconsistency is to be expected.

>Thrones
>givers of positive energy

Well, damn. So how do they feel about those 'sending you positive energy(and likes)' Facebook posts?

>Jesus Fanfiction in action

Basically.

Most of Christian tradition is fan fiction.

It's like how Buddhist tradition is mostly fanfiction.

>Yeah, and then Buddha smooshed the monkey king under a mountain!

What about Saint Denis?
>Be sent to evangelize the Gauls
>Reach (proto-)Paris
>Gauls decapitate me
>Zero fucks given
>Pick up head, keep evangelizing
>Walk to another hill in the city and die there
Legend has it that he was decapitated in what's now St. Denis and truly died in what's now Montmartre. Both are Muslim infested shitholes now.

I also find it weird that he has a very noteworthy sculpture on the Notre Dame cathedral, but it's never featured in the Disney adaptation of the Hunchback of the Notre Dame. Not even during the scene where the sculptures explicitly judge Frollo. Maybe some guy holding his own head would be way too scary for the kids?

>I also find it weird that he has a very noteworthy sculpture on the Notre Dame cathedral, but it's never featured in the Disney adaptation of the Hunchback of the Notre Dame. Not even during the scene where the sculptures explicitly judge Frollo. Maybe some guy holding his own head would be way too scary for the kids?
Was the statue around at that point?
IIRC Notre Dmae has gone through quite a lot of sculptures.

Nephillim are a thing

Humans with angel blood and incredible powers

>weird angels
They aren't, only thrones are.
+/- cherubims,depending on interpretation.

Pan.
Or Kallikantzaros

So Mithra?

Did you learn that from professor Drout?

That guy's a G

They do get pretty weird or at least non-humanoid if you go back to Judaism and Kabbalah.

>Hasmalim, Ezekiel 1:4
As I looked, behold, a storm wind was coming from the north, a great cloud with fire flashing forth continually and a bright light around it, and in its midst something like glowing metal in the midst of the fire.

The Ophanim are wheels of fire, Ishim are described in the wikipedia article as being made of fire and snow.

Christianity has some interesting theological concepts, but it ('s modern pop culture form) being so heavily anthropomorhized and human-centric really makes it quite boring for fantasy settings.

>Building a setting that uses christian mythology as background.
Medieval Europe?

If you mean folklore and mythic/hagiographic stylings rather than the actual religion, it's going to be hard to avoid being cliched and also hard to distinguish it from either Old Testament/Jewish or Christian national mythology.

>Building a setting that uses christian mythology as background.
>What sort of creatures can I pull from Christian folklore?
>building a Christian setting
>focuses in the monsters
Pleb tier OP. When done right, the Christian theology, I would assert, offers one of the deepest, richest and most unique perspective you can get. But to do such requires a lot of study and learning about the Theology of Christanity and even more work to depict it in a way that does it justice without seeming like a lazy ripoff.
If you mean legends that come from Christian traditons, you mean European medival legends, which is to say the "generic" fantasy setting.

It looks like it's based more off Jewish mythology rather than Christian, esspecialy Catholic and it's offshoots, theology. Hence the inclusion of beings from non-canon works

Not sure if he can be mentioned without being jumped on here, but I like what I've watched so far of Jordan Peterson's Biblical Series.
Really has changed how I view the bible.

>Not sure if he can be mentioned without being jumped on here,mbut I like what I've watched so far of Jordan Peterson's Biblical Series.
While I disagree with some of his stuff, especially on that topic, it'd be unchristian to "jump on" you because of it.
>Really has changed how I view the bible.
How so? What exactly did it change?

>go back to Judaism and Kabbalah
A good thing real christians only follow new testament :^)

>heretics leaving out great works like Job, the prophetic books, psalms, wisdom, etc.
Though I guess removing books that don't agree with you is heretic's M.O. ;^)

> he doesn't acknowledge the Old Testament history

Borderline blasphemy.

Well, I didn't have much of an opinion on that book, but him explaining how the book captures knowledge about, for example, our evolution really made me appreciate the book.
Why humans are good at perceiving motion for example is partially rooted in us having to be aware of quite stealthy killers like sneks. And in the biblical story the snek is also a force that moves humans towards being more perceptive.
Basically similar with how fruits played a role in evolving good perception of colors to avoid poisonous ones. The apple in the bible also made humans more perceptive.

Those are just the basic notions that I've remembered - and can manage to reproduce (badly) - regarding parts that particular story. Forgot many other details also woven into that one story of the snek, Adam, Eve and the Tree.

>jew's fairy tales
>relevant
>listening to false prophets
lil

I see. Some interesting points, but it sounds like you missed out on the really good stuff, like Job and how it handles the problem of theodicy.

>>listening to false prophets
>being a heretic

>but it sounds like you missed out on the really good stuff
Oh definitely, I'm sure of that. I do want to read the whole book at some point and watch his whole series on it.

>I do want to read the whole book at some point and watch his whole series on it.
You should, even from a non-religous perspective it's a fascinating read. May I ask what religous traditon you do adhere to, if any?

>Catholic
lel

>>jew's fairy tales
>>relevant
> not only ignoring, but insulting Christ's words in Matthew 5:17, Matthew 5:18-19, Luke 16:17, and John 7:19

Outright blasphemy.