The Gods of Grevared

[image error]One of the biggest issues I’ve had with creating Grevared is deciding which gods survived the Catastrophe. Since the gods’ existence is vital to the survival of the world, who’s who matters. In some cases, this hasn’t been that big of a deal; I just had to pick an object, and that was the god who survived. Other cases weren’t so simple.

For example, in The Chronicles of Ethan Grimley III: Revenge of Cronus, I needed both Saturn and Cronus to play a part. While the two of them do have different traits, there’s enough similarity that having them both in Grevared was a problem. Fortunately, this was solved by the end of the book and was, in fact, the basis for the story.

The mad gods have been even more difficult. I wanted one to be a dream god, someone who could manipulate the mind, but the only culture that had a well-defined set of dream gods was the Greek culture, the Oneiroi. Since Greek gods are so popular in other stories, I wanted to limit their presence in mine.

The lack of dream gods actually surprised me since so many ancient cultures placed such importance on dreams, but I decided to fix this problem by creating a god to fulfill the role. I figure that if we’re dealing with the remains of multiple planes and almost limitless dimensions, then there have to be gods around that we just don’t know about. The same is true with the antagonistic god in the Gwennyth story. He comes from the fourth level of hell and is the only being from his plane to survive.

Most of the other gods of Grevared, at this point at least, come from mythology, though I have absolutely no problem altering them to fit my needs. It’s over 5,000 from now, and the entire universe exploded, so I’d think they would change a bit as well.

In a nutshell, that’s how Grevared gets its gods. Mostly, it depends on what kind of object I need at the start of the story and whether  I’ve already used one with dominion over the same aspects of life. I haven’t decided just how many of the ‘real’ gods I want to use. In some ways, I want Grevared to be its own world with its own gods and culture, but I also want some remnant of the mother societies to continue.

Best wishes!

Lissa Dobbs

http://www.lissadobbs.com