Oh my GOD, encyclopedias take forever to read! I FINALLY finished the thing at 2am today and then writing them up this evening. So I am, needless to say, and once again, not as far as I wish I was today, but at least maybe I can get you something interesting next week. The Osha's Religion Scrap is updated to include some new Great Spirits (I forgot some important abstract concept gods and a couple of others) and the rest of the possible Small Spirits I'm considering stealing and making my own. The last Small Spirit on the list is my own invention, which is why it isn't in alphabetical order like the others. Let me know if any of them strike chords in you and give you ideas for how to expand and use them in the story--I'd love to hear ideas.

Besides the boring stuff, I have started doing some more thinking about some other aspects of the religion.

First up, there is an important point I realized a couple of days ago that I should share. There is only one pantheon: the people of Osha and Drumlin worship the same beings with the same patronages, but with different names and appearances. IE, the Leader of the gods, in both places, will be a male god/Spirit who is the patron of Ruling, Logic, and the Sun but he will wear different skins and use different names depending on whether you're from Osha or Drumlin. Mind you, all gods are shapeshifters and so are not always in the same shapes anyway, but they do have forms they prefer and forms they know people are more comfortable with. Since the function of the gods is to herd, care for, and rule the mortal beings they created, part of that, they decided, is to appear in guises that will work towards those functions.

Second up, I am trying to figure out where the gods "came from"--a question that may be helped to solve when I finish the creation myth. The Greek gods, for example, are brothers and sisters born to common parents who then proceeded to marry among each other. I would like some of the gods to have those nifty sibling bonds and marital bonds, but I don't want any of them to have both! Which means I need to figure out where they came from. Sigh.

Third up, the creation myth I have partially figured out--very partially. Fractionally. Anyway, in the beginning there were two realms mushed together: the Realm of the Gods (a place somewhat like the world we know where the gods live) and the Unformed Realm (a place where all the life force and magic in reality that was not part of the Realm of the Gods was). The Gods were not big fans of this situation because the Unformed Realm tended to leak into their realm and create problems because both realms were very different and yet filled with magic and power and life. Finally the Leader of the gods takes charge and decides that the logical thing to do is to separate the two realms with a type of buffer zone. So the gods push the two realms apart until they no longer influence each other so much, creating a whole new realm between them. They tacked the sky up with stars to hold it still, and held the ground down with mountains and bodies of water. This realm was the blank canvas that became the mortal realm. Once the gods saw how much fun it would be to populate a whole realm with plants, waters, and mortal beings of all sorts, they immediately divided their labor and began to create, resulting in the world we know. The life force in the Unformed Realm (soon to become the Realm of the Before and After) to give life to their new creations. The magic of the Realm of the Gods and the Realm of the Before and After leak continuously into the Mortal Realm, which is what keeps everything alive and where magic users and magical critters get their magic. This is also why the gods are believed by all peoples of the world to reside beyond the sky and the Realm of the Before and After to be far below the earth. The exact roles of each god to follow.

Okay, so that's it for this week. Love to you all!