Verence Wrote:FFXI religion was deceptively varied, really. Granted nearly everyone worshiped Altana, but each nation had a rather unique take. The San d'Orian Cathedral was sort of Roman Catholic Church and the 'standard' but there were hints of interesting doctrinal differences between that and the Church of Tavnazia. Then we had Bastok, which was sort of post-religious. The only nod they had to religion was a small forgotten shrine with a cracked and peeling statue. Windurst had an odd take in that they seemed to believe that the Sibyl was an avatar of the Goddess and the medium through which the prayers of the people were conveyed to the stars in the heavens. In a sense, they almost worshiped the moon and stars more than the Goddess. Then we had the Mithra, who worshiped the spirit of the land... Whether they equated Altana with the land was entirely debatable. Then of course we had the divine serpents in the East and the Walahran philosophy but they never really got into that. There are the barest hints of other gods, most notably in the Memoria de la S'tona, but keep in mind that to the Eastern mindset, 'god' means something fairly different. All of the avatars, terrestrial and celestial, are "gods" in the Eastern sense.
I don't really think FFXI suffered from a lack of variety on the religion front, but we only really got any in-depth information on the San d'Orian and Tavnazian church beliefs due to the Chains of Promathia plot. I'm hoping there will be a lot more religious lore in this setting, and the idea of polytheism interests me greatly. I've only ever had the chance to RP a polytheistic character once, in a tabletop chronicle, and it was a fairly interesting experience. He was technically a warrior-priest of the greatest of the gods, but encouraged people to pay reverences to all of them. It sparked an interesting in-character discussion or two.
This is very true. Since the plots in the game focus mostly around the the various Altana sects people often miss the other religions only touched on.
I've had fun having a mithra with traditional beliefs and a Galka from the East that had been trained as a monk from a shrine devoted to the Pheonix before he became a showman. It just took making up a little bit and I never created an entire system, but it is possible within reason.
![[Image: 33104_48d6215903dff562.png]](http://sigs.enjin.com/sig-ffxiv/33104_48d6215903dff562.png)
