Clerics and the Gods

“Gods? You can take them or leave them, honestly. Real people work for a living.”

• The purported last words of Squire Bruzzik Faeh, shortly before he was struck by lightning (1763)

The gods are mercurial and temperamental, consistent about the matters which make up their domains and portfolios, and little else. Nevertheless, there are some apparent restrictions on their exercise of power, overcome or ignored only rarely – chief among equals, the gods very rarely directly intervene. Instead, most gods act through clerics, serving in one as agents of a god’s interests, and a catspaw for their inscrutable whims.

Clerics, for their part, will often remark that they worship a god in specific aspects: the worshippers of Callis, god of fire and the sun, might raise up fire as a tool of civilization, while disavowing those of their fellows in faith who act as arsonists (or vice versa).

Divine Intervention

Gods mostly interact with the world through servants, empowered to speak and act in their name. Among mortals, these are mostly clerics – mortals who have pledged themselves to further a god’s interests in the world, and who take on tasks that advance that agenda. In exchange, proportionate to the amount that they have learned the holy secrets of a god’s worship, they are given power to work miracles in that god’s name, in the form of divine spellcasting. Gods may also work through other agents, such as Infernals or Elementals (the latter mostly for the elemental gods).

In some rare instances, gods may directly intervene, making their will known. This can take the form of sending Celestials, physical manifestations of a god’s will, to educate, protect, make war, inspire, securely transport messages, or take on other tasks. Alternately, gods may appear themselves in person, under extremely specific circumstances, like Hemulis appearing before his followers on his holy day, to train them in righteous combat. Doing so outside of these circumstances may be theoretically possible – but the situation would likely have to be so dire to inspire these actions, that few would ever wish to see it happen.

The Changing Nature of Gods

The gods will always maintain their core portfolio – Time, Love, Death, Water, and so forth. This will be generally consistent, and clerics who act in ways that support this portfolio will generally find that their actions are smiled upon by their deities.

Where clerics may find the gods to be temperamental is on a more personal level. While few clerics will ever get direct communications from their patron, the gods have ways of making their intents known. Gods that have been patient or understanding may be impatient or demanding, gods that have been responsive may seem distant. With the thousands of calls on a god’s attention, different parts of that god – different aspects of their personality – may come to the fore for a period of time. The gods care about their clerics – but how that care manifests changes based on systems and influences too vast in scope and complex for the mortal eye to see unaided.

Perhaps more intriguing to some is that the gods do not have the same names and stories everywhere. It is rumoured that in distant lands, the common names for the divine are different, although their portfolios remain much the same. This may go a ways toward understanding how much the gods can differ.

Shared and Opposed Deities

The powers that gods offer to their followers are influenced by their relationships with other gods. Most gods share power to allied or aligned faiths, often those that share some values, or where the relationships between the gods is a positive one. Although it takes more energy to cast a spell granted by a deity that shares spells to a cleric’s own faith, this willingness between gods to share power helps to bind the pantheon together – and gives clerics a greater range of abilities than they might have from their own god’s spell list alone.

Most gods also have other deities whose portfolio or personal history is in opposition to their own. Sometimes this is elemental, like Callis, god of Fire, and Beldon, god of Water, and sometimes it is ideological, like Alejandro the god of Love opposing Iccula, the goddess of Pain and Cruelty. These gods will offer power as well, but by way of temptation to stray, rather than as a boon. Some clerics have argued that subverting this power toward their deity’s own ends is a benediction to that deity… but most gods find themselves unamused by their followers seeking aid and comfort with the opposition.

Prayer and Devotion

Clerics build and retain a pool of spiritual energy which they are able to manipulate through their studies of theology and their faith in their deity. They channel that energy, allowing their faith to give it shape, and expend it, casting spells in the name of that deity. They can regain that energy through acts of Prayer and Devotion.

Prayer is a direct petition to a god – reinforcing the connection between cleric and deity, and through this meditative or spoken act, refilling a cleric’s pool of spiritual energy. Devotion usually encompasses a small act that welcome’s a deity’s power into a place – such as creating and tending to a fire for the god of fire – and then absorbing the ambient power that has been welcomed in through this act of faith. In both cases, having an area that is already dedicated to the power of a god will make the regaining of energy easier and more efficient, as the connection to the god is easier to make.

Turning Away from a Faith

In the fullness of time, it may come to pass that a cleric finds that their vocation is not a true one: it may be that their allegiance has shifted, or that they have lost faith in the gods entirely. Such occurrences are rare – those few who become literal miracle workers often do so on the basis of strong faith to begin with – but such things do occasionally occur.

A lesser cleric simply choosing not to exercise their power through a lack of faith may find that their power simply withers on the vine. Those wishing to change to another devotion – or destroy their existing connection with their god – will often find the process difficult, and may have to undertake more drastic actions in order to truly sever their connection. Each instance is at least a little different, as much as faith varies from person to person, but true loss of faith is often dramatic, and requires great effort and sacrifice to enact.

Authored by: Andrew Dunlop
Fantasy Alive Lore Team 2026
Copyright © Endless Adventures Ontario