Campaign guide plight of the tuatha (1) 27

Campaign Guide
was created by the Multi- Planar gods after the Prime Plane
was formed. She is tied to the lands of the Tuatha. Most of
her worshippers hail from the Tuathan lands, and while she
is within her lands she is all-powerful able to resurrect at
will and smite enemies down with impunity. Outside her
traditional lands, her powers become more limited. She is
still able to grant her clerics their spells if she or they travel
to far off lands, but her own abilities diminish.
Because of these limitations, these types of gods are
sometimes referred to as regional gods.

Natural Religions
Natural religions differ from the two above religious types
as the objects of worship are not gods, but spirits inhabiting the natural world. As Prime Planar gods compare to
Multi-Planar gods, so too do Natural Spirits to Prime Planars. Natural Spirits are still powerful creatures, but their
sphere of influence is once again reduced. A Natural Spirit
is usually tied to a specific geographical feature, such as a
river, forest, or mountain. Spirits can also be tied to smaller
features such as particular trees, springs, or caves. On rare
occasions, spirits might also manifest in conjunction with
artificial constructions such as temples or crossroads.
When a Natural Spirit is within their realm they can
be quite powerful, able to heal/ injure those nearby, able
to direct their realm such as causing landslide on their
mountains or their river to flood. But outside of their realm
they are essentially powerless. Many spirits are unable to
leave their realm except under special circumstances. As for
planar travel, nature spirits do often travel to the Ethereal
Plane, or perhaps an elemental plane that is intimately tied
to their realm (such as the plane of water for river spirits),

but further travel is impossible.
Clerics in natural religions do not worship singlenature spirits. Instead, clerics tend to learn how to interact
with whole groups of spirits. For instance, a cleric with the
domains of water and earth has learned how to interact
with spirits tied to those elements and so interacts with
river, lake, mountain, cave, and ocean spirits.
It is by making deals with these spirits that such divine
casters get their spells. Unlike the other two forms of religion,
the clerics do not pray to the spirits as clerics of Multi-Planar
gods pray to their divine entities. Instead, natural clerics
have learned how to appease and make gifts or deals with
various spirits in order to be able to gain spells. Where other
clerics spend time in prayer, a natural cleric will leave piles
of food or trinkets, or perhaps tell tales for the spirits they
wish to commune. What actions the natural cleric performs
is dependent upon the deals they make with these spirits.

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Effects on Game-Play
All in all, this has very little effect on actual game-play. All
clerics still gain their spells at a predetermined time, such as
dawn or midnight. Clerics are able to cast their spells and
refresh their spell lists as laid out in the Core Pathfinder
books. These distinctions mainly show how different clerics
might act and interact in the Imperiums setting.

Gods of the Empire
There are two levels of divinity in all forms of Imperial religion: the level of godhood and the level of sainthood. Both
are similar in that they both grant spells to their followers,

but those who are gods are more universal while those who
are saints are more area or family specific.
The saints are akin to household gods. They are the
accumulation of the spirits of a family’s ancestors which
become the equivalent of a Natural Spirit bound to the
family itself. Many families end up being guided to worship
their ancestors in the form of one who most personified the
best qualities of their lineage. Some worship several of their
ancestors as a type of pantheon. Most families in the empire
worship their ancestors and have little shrines to them but
only a few families end up with actual saints/gods which can
bestow actual spells. These families have been blessed by one
of the three gods and their ancestors become divine.
The emperor has, in recent years, declared himself
canonized as a major god while getting a sizable portion
of House Spiritus to agree. There is some confusion as to
whether he can bestow spells or not. He has canonized
four other saints to be worshiped at the same level as the
original three gods.
These theological divisions have caused a schism in
House Spiritus and the religious population in general. So,
in the Empire, there is the Orthodox Church and the New
Church, both claiming to be right. The Orthodox only
worship the Three as ultimately divine along with house
gods while the New Church claims that there are seven
gods. Within the New Church there is also a split as to
whether or not to accept the emperor god as divine as well
(which refers to itself as the True Church). This third True
Church is the official religion sanctioned by the empire and
is composed of the seven plus emperor god plus house gods.

Needless to say there is a little confusion by everyone as
to how, who and what to worship. Rumors of pogroms and
crusades are on the horizon.
Below are the gods that are accepted by the Orthodox
Church as divine.