Pantheon of Calistaph

Veneration of the gods is nearly universal in Calistaph. Seeking to keep the power and guidance of the gods flowing through the world as if they still walked among mortals, most civilizations have temples aplenty as well as roadside shrines, blessed statues in alleyway nooks, and private miniature altars in people’s homes. Virtually all temples are centered on one of the Elder Gods and have nooks for the veneration of mortal gods who are similarly aligned. Smaller places of worship tend to focus on one mortal deity with close ties to the locality. Since the Elder Gods preside over all of Calistaph, their worship is moderately consistent across the continent. The main difference is which mortal gods the people venerate alongside the Elders.   The Elder Gods are pre-humanoid and have otherworldly forms. Most statues, however, will depict them in a humanoid body with some identifying features from their true visages.   Most vocations, cities and towns, and even countries have one or two patron deities. People will primarily pray to the patrons of their trade and home, but also other gods as needs arise. The different temples and priests are mostly cooperative, willing to support and pray for each other in times of need.   Some of the Elder Gods have grown disinterested in Calistaph over the millenia. Worship of these gods has naturally dwindled to the point where some of them aren't remembered even in name outside of scholarly circles. Some gods have only a very specific set of worshippers, such as Shigarus's scribes, and they couldn't care less about mortals outside their cults. Some are content to exist in the world without making any spectacle, becoming the source of folklore instead of a formal religion.  Here are the gods I presently think would have something other than the traditional religion centered around an active deity:

• Shigarus - maintains a cult of scribes that write all truths in the multiverse and store them in a secret library. Ostensibly, Shigarus is taking the power of forgotten knowledge and using it to sustain Prison, but he's shifted to simply hoarding what knowledge would otherwise be forgotten in the library that he thinks of as a protective vault.
• Ivlar - accepts the worship of Calistavians, but finds them broadly too chaotic. He has travelled to other worlds where he rules perfectly lawful evil civilizations. His worship began to decline when he started his travels and was unable to provide the divine presence and magic that his followers were accustomed to. Now there a few fanatical groups that still worship him. Broadly he's considered to have died. 
• Iuna - Has no temples, and historically she has personally sabotaged mortal efforts to build one. She prefers to be invoked in curses and prayed to privately for the success of shady work. She doesn't cultivate a formal following, but is still active enough that she's believed in by the poorer folk. 
• Omra - Has very little interest in worship. Her clergy found schools and labratories. She is known and believed in, prayed to for inspiration and guidance, but she has no temples.
• Rhudon - Since he gave up his divinity, he's been unable to maintain a tradition of worship. He makes no effort to be in contact with the mortal world and stays hidden, leading most to believe that he is dead. The Dwarves believe that he gave his life to live on in them, that they were born from his flesh and he is therefore their first ancestor. 
• Vyra - doesn't lend herself to popular worship, but she adores the fanatics who kill spectacularly to please her. She has no trouble making her pleasure known to them and cultivating small cults of the most twisted and deranged murderers. 
• Xaos - Doesn't interact with mortals, and those who follow him actually follow the written teachings of one his earliest priests, before the division of the realms. It's treated as a philosophical religion, divinity being it's origin but not involved in its continuation

  This leaves the following gods to be widely active, known, and worshipped on Calistaph:

• Mithrais
• The Four Kings
• Zerus
• Zudea
• Dageir
• Yaris
• Odarr
• Ivmera
• Calistae 

 

Origins of the Gods

The gods of Calistaph are grouped into 3 generations. The 1st is the Elder Gods, the original creators of the world. After the Elder Gods shaped the world, two separate waves of mortals ascended to godhood, forming the 2nd and 3rd generations of gods.   The Elder Gods were born of the primordial chaos, known as the void by most, but referred to as the Atnun by theologians and scholars. Whether time yet existed when they emerged is an open topic of debate, but many say that Calistae was the firstborn and thus had the authority to name the world after herself when she and her siblings got to the work of inventing material existence.   Twice in ancient history, the void produced hordes of horrific monsters, known as demons. The mortals of Calistaph fought alongside their deities to prevent the complete destruction of the world. Both times, the power released by the slain demons was enough the elevate heroic mortals to a lesser divine status. It was then that the Elder Gods acquired the title "Elder" and the new gods were known as "Mortal Gods". At the conclusion of the second demon war, the Elder Gods believed that the void would continue issuing forth hordes of demons at irregular intervals, and so they worked together to create a barrier that would separate the material and divine worlds. The gods, Elder and Mortal alike, would no longer be able to walk the earth. But, whatever spewed forth from the void would also be unable to reach Calistaph. Thus, the cosmos was divided and mortals were left to find their own way in the world they were given.  

Other Religions

Unnamed religion of Eshia   God-king of Iscar (not sure that's the right name)   Unnamed ancestor worship: Believe that when you eat the flesh of the dead, they take a portion of their soul into your body. Then, when people eat you, they get portions of your soul and portions of the souls of anyone that you ate when you were alive. Thus, by consuming the dead, they are preserving the lives of generations of souls. They believe that this, not parentage, is the cause of heredity. Thus, everyone who eats a dead man will share ownership amongst them of everything the dead man owned, will have familial ties to all the fragmented souls (and their living descendants!) that the dead man had carried, and so on. Once a soul has been divided so many times, on account of multiple people eating each decedent, it dissolves into a collective with all the other highly-fragmented souls. The closest thing that this religion has to a deity is an avatar of this collective, probably named The Lost or He-Who-Is-all-ancestors or something. Some members of this religion believe that you can help a soul resist dissolution, no matter how many people are carrying fragments of it, through worship or other homage. One division in this religion is the origin of souls of infants. One group says that infants have a soul born purely of one parent (usually the father), another says that the infant has a blended soul from both parents, and a third group says that the infant has a blended soul of both parents and all the fragments of souls they carry.

Where did this religion originate? Why there? What natural conditions led to religious philosophies that fostered the evolution of this particular religion?

Fenian Carcaryn absolutely believes there might be some truth to this, and he often cannibalizes victims that he doesn't intent to reanimate.