Fleshing out a world's dieties

Ok, I originally was going to have a two deity system but have decided on three.

Here is what I have so far:

In the beginning was the One. The One, the creator brought forth the twins. The god of light and the goddess of darkness. Through them the universe was created and there was harmony.

In time though the goddess of darkness grew jealous of her brother for light dispelled darkness. She then in her jealously sought to destroy anything the light touched. The God of light to protect his creations created his 10 (avatars) To stop her. She then created a mockery of his avatars by creating her own. The heavens shook as they battled.

It was then the One intervened stopping the fighting. Wishing for unity to be restored between the siblings a forced intervention was enforced by the one. The divine beings could not directly fight each other but only by influencing the universe that was created by the three.

Now those who follow the goddess of darkness seek to destroy or pervert anything relating to the God of light.

This means that clerics are of two persuasions. Those who follow the God of light and those who follow the goddess. Clerics though are all apart of orders and each order represents a particular avatar. So one being a cleric of light also picks an order such as the order of justice.

Area of discussion 1: so any suggestions or thoughts so far for the overall mythos. One of the items is finding a possible name change for avatars, not sure if I like that name or not.I

Next is the determining of the avatars and the clerical orders.I am thinking that the religion of the God of light is on a form similar to the Roman Catholic church and it's orders but no "pope" let say. Each order has its own leaders and one overall leader. These ten leaders make up a council where decisions are made.
The orders of darkness though worshiping the same goddess do not work together in and formal way.

This is the area I need some good suggestions. So far for I have:

Orders of light
1. Justice
2. Valor and honor
3. Life/family/home
4. Nature
5. Protector
6. Charity

For darkness:
1. Vengeance
2. Deceit
3. Death/ separation
4. In life
5. Murder
6. Envy

Discussion Area 2: other orders that would fit and/or refinement and improvement in those listed. Also any possible cool name for each one. Also any regiments on the religious orders.

Discussion Area 3: This area is to discuss other ideas that one may have for me.


I do ask that when you comment you label it as area 1,2, or 3. This is to allow me to keep track of what is being discussed to help me keep track as I work on this.

Aspects instead of Avatars?

I like this

Just off the top of my head you could go with a Greek theme and have the avatars be the demi-god children of the gods. That would fit if you used a Norse mythos as well. If you go with a more modern western religious theme you could select Saints to be the avatars, humans who did wondrous things. I'm not as familiar with eastern religious philosophies or older forms like early Mezzo-American or pre-christian African philosophies.

As for Area 1 details it makes more sense to me to make the orders to be as diametrically opposed to each other as possible. I think you were trying to go that way but it needs more work. A good opposite to Charity could be Cruelty. The opposite of Nature could be Emptiness. A good opposite for Protection could be Destruction. Some good opposites for Honor could be Corruption or Depravity. That's enough for me. It's starting to get late and I have other roads to travel yet this evening.

Aspects are neat. I'm not sure if this would help or not, but maybe take a look at the outlines of the "Tree of Life" and "Tree of Death" from the Kabbalistic traditions. You might could draw some inspiration from there.

Tree of Life

Well I am not sure of aspect though it did cross my mind. The idea was originally to have "saints" who personified different aspects of their god and that is where i got the idea of avatars.

One thing I do not want to add is more dieties. I want to limit it to the three.

Just a brain fart when thinking and deciphering your comments:

Are the Gods personified? Do they have real forms/take action on mortals directly?

I think it would be interesting if each Order has their leader be dubbed "the Avatar of..." maybe this means the orders select their leader via conclave (Roman Catholic church style) where they pray/meditate/commune with the One to lead their votes to who ascends to Avatar. This allows for some corruption in even the most pure religions (maybe one time in history a member of the literal Order of Corruption infiltrated the Order of Purity and "ascended" fraudulently) edit: just want to add that is also a GREAT storyhook for a campaign for a group that follows an Order of the light to sniff out a fraud in a conclave or something like that