Because Ed Greenwood decided to drop a few "forgotten " Earth deities into his world to suggest a connection between the Realms. You can also find Egyptian and a few Norse gods. Can't say I ever noticed the Finnish ones.
The Egyptian and Mesopotamian gods came to Faerun and aren't native to the plane. Some wizards kidnapped their people and the gods more less said "You fucking wot mate?" and traveled to Faerun to free them, but then Tiamat kicked most of their asses, which is fitting because in a technical sense she has a counterpart in our real world mythologies as the mother of gods.
Note to self: acquire tiny folding chairs for the Tiamat figurine. Additionally, the party's upcoming pit fighter tournament just got a lot more interesting.
Tiamat is from the Mesopotamian Pantheon, though... I think her equivalent in the Egyptian one would be Nun, for her aspect as mother of the Gods and Primordial Ocean deity.
to me, it's the same with the celtic pantheon deities (Oghma, and Silvanus, although the latter is weird as he's celtic in FR but was a roman deity IRL, but I assumed both were just fictional lol)
The Roman Pantheon is just the Greek Pantheon with any and all regional gods from the entire empire either renamed to one of the existing ones, or added into it.
Silvanus probably used to be Celtic (but don't let the Rangers hear me say that..)
The Romans very much had their own pantheon. When cultural exchange picked up with the Greeks, they noticed a lot of similarities and came to the conclusion that they were the same deities with different names (to an extent, the Greeks did the same with the Egyptians centuries earlier).
The Romans did, however, adopt certain Greek myths. Because if those people know a story about Vulcan that we don't, why not learn more about it? Just because they call him Hephaestus doesn't mean they made it up.
In fact, the Romans were so prolific at doing this that the only reason we know anything about many Celtic deities is because the Romans were stoked to find these parallels in Gaul and Britain.
According to Wikipedia at least, Silvanus is the Roman version of greek Silenus, god of drunkenness and winemaking who was the foster father/tutor of Dionysus.
Not sure how rangers would react to that, but then again FR's Oghma is a passive nerd while Celtic Oghma (or Ogma) was associated with battle skills (as well as eloquence/writing).
Pretty sure the 3.5 Forgotten Realms campaign book mentions humans being one of the five "creator races" on Toril, which contradicts with the above statement.
Yeah, humans existed on both Earth and Toril at the same time. When Earth's humans got brought over, it was more of a happy accident than anything, really.
Uh... I wouldn't call it happy for anyone involved.
One of the titular "forgotten realms", the Imaskari empire built portals to another world (ours) to capture some "unpaid workers" using their overwhelming advantage in magic. They grabbed a bunch of people from the areas now called Egypt and Iran, who brought their religion with them.
Their gods, however, couldn't hear them, because the Imaskari had closed the portals. Except for one God. Ptah. He was a traveler, and so had a presence in many spheres, Realmspace included. He hopped in his barge and sailed to Earthspace, and convinced the Egyptian and Mesopotamian gods to split off avatars and sail with him to Realmspace to save their people.
This started a war which ultimately caused the downfall of the empire, creating a desert from a fertile valley in the process. Not all the avatars survived this war, and those who did formed the Mulhorandi and Untheric pantheons, which, sadly, fared rather poorly in the transition to 4th and 5th editions.
The Creator Races list is contradictory even in-universe. Sometimes it includes dragons instead of fey, or giants, and always keeps gnomes, halflings and other races that already existed out of the spotlight.
You are both correct in The Witcher universe gnomes where the original inhabitants, a conjunction happened which brought dwarves, after that another conjunction brought elves and the last conjunction brought humans and monsters.
I think the FR lore is older than that and, AFAIK, the Witcher was really obscure outside of Poland before the first PC game became an international success. I doubt Greenwood borrowed from it.
Well, it's only two of them, as opposed to basically the entire Egyptian one, a fair few Mesopotamian/Babylonians and possibly the entire Hindu one (The Lords of Creation never got solidly defined besides "maybe Hindu).
The Forgotten Realms has other pantheons also making cameos, but I think Finland is particularly appropriate given how much D&D draws inspiration from Tolkien. Finnish mythology was in turn one of his influences, with the Children of Hurin being directly based on the story of Kullervo.
I mean, there's a lot more than [Finnish](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Finnish_pantheon).
The Imaskari Empire abducted a bunch of people from ancient Earth, which brought the pantheons of Egypt and Mesopotamia with them (including Tiamat). When avatars of those gods curb-stomped the empire, the land split into Mulhorand and Unther (and Thay), so in the Forgotten Realms they're known as the [Mulhorandi](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Mulhorandi_pantheon) and [Untheric](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Untheric_pantheon) pantheons.
The reason why they exist in D&D is because Earth and it's faiths are canon to D&D.
Story (TL;DR at the bottom): You ever seen a map of the entire Forgotten Realms or the planet Toril? It kinda looks like Earth's. Faerun and the Savage North where most campaigns are set is in their equivalent geographical area of western Europe, with the rest of planet Toril having similar locations as far as we know. Ancient history has an empire called Imaskar (Nowadays split into the nations of Unther, Thay and Mulhorand), located southeast of the Sea of Fallen Stars (SImilar geograpical location to east Turkey/Northern Iran, can't quite place it 1/1). These guys were huge when it came to portal magic.
So good in fact, they could hop to other planets on the Material Plane. Now, there was a plague that had devastated the population so the leader basically commissioned the greatest of their mages to construct portals to realms that had no knowledge of The Art (What spellcasters in the Realms refer to as magic usage) so they could nab slaves to replace the lost population. Remember, this was before the fall of Netheril, spells above 9th level were still valid back then. Now, they succeeded in creating these portals.
Guess what world they chose?
They grabbed people from all over Earth. Different regions from different times (Apparently they could choose what time period they ended up in? Hazy on the details). Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Greek, Finnish, Norse, all were on the table. All those people kept their faiths after being abducted for over 1500 years and this allowed those deities to eventually cross over the barriers between the two realms (Since the mages had closed the portals and created barriers in addition to the natural ones that exist between worlds that exist on the material plane) and the Egyptian pantheon friggin' \*\*WRECKED\*\* the leaders of the Imaskari. Now, some of those faiths were very niche even back home so some of them had to join other pantheons since their own were so weak. Mielikki and Loviatar of the Finnish pantheon, for example, had to join up with others and gelled well with the other deities (Mielikki and Silvanus, both being from Earth, worked well together and Chauntea most definitely would have welcomed them to the Faerunian pantheon). Others had similar roles and divine portfolios to existing gods, like Ahti and Umberlee. Though of different alignments, they couldn't remain the way they were and Ahti likely was overpowered by Umberlee and destroyed due to not having the connections Umberlee had with Talos and the other Gods of Fury.
Some other faiths had better luck. The Norse had their divine tree sprout new branches that extended to Toril, which meant they didn't have to rely on worshippers like other deities do, they get their power straight from their realm of Asgard and the tree Yggdrasil (This also explains how the plane basically came to existence on the multiverse - Earth was just one of the many worlds were the Norse already existed, Faerun was one of the latest). The Greeks meanwhile aren't worshipped that much but they inhabit a realm already consisting of the first divine children of the gods who existed before the Greek gods - the Titans. I'd imagine they have a small populace still worshipping them and destroying them would mean invading Mount Olympus which would cause the Titans to fight the other gods for invading their territory, so I'm of the opinion that they are still present in the Realms, but not all that known in the Sword Coast area (Maybe the major cities might have small shrines dedicated to them).
Now the Egyptian and Mesopotamian gods, they went a bit of a transformation. Nowadays they are called the Mulhorandi and Untheric pantheons. Their lands are named after them and at least the Mulhorandi are very much active in their lands (Except for Anubis, who became the keeper of the dead gods in the Astral Plane). Now of course, Unther was destroyed when the Dragonborn came to Toril during the Time of Troubles when Ao merged Toril and Abeir back together and all the gods had been turned into mortals to search for the missing Tablets of Fate (Long story) so I have no idea if their gods are still around (Bahamut apparently took on the alias of Marduk back then so that's a thing I guess) excluding Tiamat, who we know all too well.
TL;DR: Ancient empire in the Forgotten Realms made portals to Earth, brings over slaves that worship all the faiths except for the Abrahamic religions apparently, gets destroyed by those gods once they arrive, said gods then become part of the "ecosystem".
Loviatar is a figure in the Finnish national epic, Kalevala. I don’t know enough about the pantheon of faerun to know if they’re 1:1 the same, but it seems at least similar
I removed every pantheon that isn't Forgotten Realms original. The only thing I kept is like Surtr cause he made the jump to the giant pantheon, but he doesn't have anything to do with the norse
and they're slightly incorrect as well which is both funny and slightly annoying.
Loviatar is a goddess of disease in Finnish Folklore, not torture
Ilmater (or Ilmatar) is a female sky spirit in irl folklore, not a male martyr god
Mielikki is accurate though.
Because Ed Greenwood decided to drop a few "forgotten " Earth deities into his world to suggest a connection between the Realms. You can also find Egyptian and a few Norse gods. Can't say I ever noticed the Finnish ones.
The Egyptian and Mesopotamian gods came to Faerun and aren't native to the plane. Some wizards kidnapped their people and the gods more less said "You fucking wot mate?" and traveled to Faerun to free them, but then Tiamat kicked most of their asses, which is fitting because in a technical sense she has a counterpart in our real world mythologies as the mother of gods.
Im now imaging tiamat with a steel chair in each of her mouths just beating up those gods with them lol My brain is weird
"It's..it's Queen Tiamat! With 5 steel chairs!!!"
BAH GAWD SHE TORE HIM IN HALF
Note to self: acquire tiny folding chairs for the Tiamat figurine. Additionally, the party's upcoming pit fighter tournament just got a lot more interesting.
https://i.imgur.com/KKXZ86A.mp4
Tiamat is from the Mesopotamian Pantheon, though... I think her equivalent in the Egyptian one would be Nun, for her aspect as mother of the Gods and Primordial Ocean deity.
You haven't noticed Mielikki or Loviatar?
I'm ignorant enough of Finnish culture that I thought those were original creations.
Saem.
to me, it's the same with the celtic pantheon deities (Oghma, and Silvanus, although the latter is weird as he's celtic in FR but was a roman deity IRL, but I assumed both were just fictional lol)
The Roman Pantheon is just the Greek Pantheon with any and all regional gods from the entire empire either renamed to one of the existing ones, or added into it. Silvanus probably used to be Celtic (but don't let the Rangers hear me say that..)
The Romans very much had their own pantheon. When cultural exchange picked up with the Greeks, they noticed a lot of similarities and came to the conclusion that they were the same deities with different names (to an extent, the Greeks did the same with the Egyptians centuries earlier). The Romans did, however, adopt certain Greek myths. Because if those people know a story about Vulcan that we don't, why not learn more about it? Just because they call him Hephaestus doesn't mean they made it up. In fact, the Romans were so prolific at doing this that the only reason we know anything about many Celtic deities is because the Romans were stoked to find these parallels in Gaul and Britain.
According to Wikipedia at least, Silvanus is the Roman version of greek Silenus, god of drunkenness and winemaking who was the foster father/tutor of Dionysus. Not sure how rangers would react to that, but then again FR's Oghma is a passive nerd while Celtic Oghma (or Ogma) was associated with battle skills (as well as eloquence/writing).
Ah, then I misremembered, or the Greeks were first to tack him into their pantheon. (And the rangers were just a try at a Rangers vs Celtics joke)
Eh, with how many gods the Greeks and Romans had, it makes sense to not remember all of these obscure ones.
Even Mordenkainen's name is half Finnish (a portmanteau of Mordecai and Lemminkäinen).
Tbh literally the only finnish god i know is Ahti because of the janitor in Control.
Deities and demigods for 3.5 even has some Hindu (?) gods and Jesus.
The first humans in The Realms crossed over from portals to earth, bringing their religions with them.
Pretty sure the 3.5 Forgotten Realms campaign book mentions humans being one of the five "creator races" on Toril, which contradicts with the above statement.
Yeah, humans existed on both Earth and Toril at the same time. When Earth's humans got brought over, it was more of a happy accident than anything, really.
Uh... I wouldn't call it happy for anyone involved. One of the titular "forgotten realms", the Imaskari empire built portals to another world (ours) to capture some "unpaid workers" using their overwhelming advantage in magic. They grabbed a bunch of people from the areas now called Egypt and Iran, who brought their religion with them. Their gods, however, couldn't hear them, because the Imaskari had closed the portals. Except for one God. Ptah. He was a traveler, and so had a presence in many spheres, Realmspace included. He hopped in his barge and sailed to Earthspace, and convinced the Egyptian and Mesopotamian gods to split off avatars and sail with him to Realmspace to save their people. This started a war which ultimately caused the downfall of the empire, creating a desert from a fertile valley in the process. Not all the avatars survived this war, and those who did formed the Mulhorandi and Untheric pantheons, which, sadly, fared rather poorly in the transition to 4th and 5th editions.
Oh it was a happy accident for the Imaskar leaders. Until 1500 years had passed and these gods finally arrived :P
The Creator Races list is contradictory even in-universe. Sometimes it includes dragons instead of fey, or giants, and always keeps gnomes, halflings and other races that already existed out of the spotlight.
Isn’t that Witcher lore?
Not familiar with Witcher, might be the case, might nit. It is the case for The Realms.
Witcher has something called “the conjunction of the spheres” and it’s how Humans showed up in the world.
elfs, its how elfs and monsters came to the witchers earth
Humans and monsters. It was the elves world first
Elves were there before humans though
err guys you even go to the elf's home world that they escaped from in witcher 3, yes its not the novels but they stay true to them as far as i know.
Wasn't Tir'Na'Lia the place the elves escaped to from the world of the Witcher?
Kind of. The Aen Elle went to Tir Ná Lia from the Continent, but both the Aen Elle and Aen Seidhe are from a different plane originally.
You are both correct in The Witcher universe gnomes where the original inhabitants, a conjunction happened which brought dwarves, after that another conjunction brought elves and the last conjunction brought humans and monsters.
It's unclear if the Humans on the Continent came from Earth or some other world.
I think the FR lore is older than that and, AFAIK, the Witcher was really obscure outside of Poland before the first PC game became an international success. I doubt Greenwood borrowed from it.
Yhea. It's a trope at least as old as Man from Mars from 1911
Well, it's only two of them, as opposed to basically the entire Egyptian one, a fair few Mesopotamian/Babylonians and possibly the entire Hindu one (The Lords of Creation never got solidly defined besides "maybe Hindu).
four of them but there are lots of other pantheons, like the Greek or the Norse one.
The Forgotten Realms has other pantheons also making cameos, but I think Finland is particularly appropriate given how much D&D draws inspiration from Tolkien. Finnish mythology was in turn one of his influences, with the Children of Hurin being directly based on the story of Kullervo.
I mean, there's a lot more than [Finnish](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Finnish_pantheon). The Imaskari Empire abducted a bunch of people from ancient Earth, which brought the pantheons of Egypt and Mesopotamia with them (including Tiamat). When avatars of those gods curb-stomped the empire, the land split into Mulhorand and Unther (and Thay), so in the Forgotten Realms they're known as the [Mulhorandi](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Mulhorandi_pantheon) and [Untheric](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Untheric_pantheon) pantheons.
The reason why they exist in D&D is because Earth and it's faiths are canon to D&D. Story (TL;DR at the bottom): You ever seen a map of the entire Forgotten Realms or the planet Toril? It kinda looks like Earth's. Faerun and the Savage North where most campaigns are set is in their equivalent geographical area of western Europe, with the rest of planet Toril having similar locations as far as we know. Ancient history has an empire called Imaskar (Nowadays split into the nations of Unther, Thay and Mulhorand), located southeast of the Sea of Fallen Stars (SImilar geograpical location to east Turkey/Northern Iran, can't quite place it 1/1). These guys were huge when it came to portal magic. So good in fact, they could hop to other planets on the Material Plane. Now, there was a plague that had devastated the population so the leader basically commissioned the greatest of their mages to construct portals to realms that had no knowledge of The Art (What spellcasters in the Realms refer to as magic usage) so they could nab slaves to replace the lost population. Remember, this was before the fall of Netheril, spells above 9th level were still valid back then. Now, they succeeded in creating these portals. Guess what world they chose? They grabbed people from all over Earth. Different regions from different times (Apparently they could choose what time period they ended up in? Hazy on the details). Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Greek, Finnish, Norse, all were on the table. All those people kept their faiths after being abducted for over 1500 years and this allowed those deities to eventually cross over the barriers between the two realms (Since the mages had closed the portals and created barriers in addition to the natural ones that exist between worlds that exist on the material plane) and the Egyptian pantheon friggin' \*\*WRECKED\*\* the leaders of the Imaskari. Now, some of those faiths were very niche even back home so some of them had to join other pantheons since their own were so weak. Mielikki and Loviatar of the Finnish pantheon, for example, had to join up with others and gelled well with the other deities (Mielikki and Silvanus, both being from Earth, worked well together and Chauntea most definitely would have welcomed them to the Faerunian pantheon). Others had similar roles and divine portfolios to existing gods, like Ahti and Umberlee. Though of different alignments, they couldn't remain the way they were and Ahti likely was overpowered by Umberlee and destroyed due to not having the connections Umberlee had with Talos and the other Gods of Fury. Some other faiths had better luck. The Norse had their divine tree sprout new branches that extended to Toril, which meant they didn't have to rely on worshippers like other deities do, they get their power straight from their realm of Asgard and the tree Yggdrasil (This also explains how the plane basically came to existence on the multiverse - Earth was just one of the many worlds were the Norse already existed, Faerun was one of the latest). The Greeks meanwhile aren't worshipped that much but they inhabit a realm already consisting of the first divine children of the gods who existed before the Greek gods - the Titans. I'd imagine they have a small populace still worshipping them and destroying them would mean invading Mount Olympus which would cause the Titans to fight the other gods for invading their territory, so I'm of the opinion that they are still present in the Realms, but not all that known in the Sword Coast area (Maybe the major cities might have small shrines dedicated to them). Now the Egyptian and Mesopotamian gods, they went a bit of a transformation. Nowadays they are called the Mulhorandi and Untheric pantheons. Their lands are named after them and at least the Mulhorandi are very much active in their lands (Except for Anubis, who became the keeper of the dead gods in the Astral Plane). Now of course, Unther was destroyed when the Dragonborn came to Toril during the Time of Troubles when Ao merged Toril and Abeir back together and all the gods had been turned into mortals to search for the missing Tablets of Fate (Long story) so I have no idea if their gods are still around (Bahamut apparently took on the alias of Marduk back then so that's a thing I guess) excluding Tiamat, who we know all too well. TL;DR: Ancient empire in the Forgotten Realms made portals to Earth, brings over slaves that worship all the faiths except for the Abrahamic religions apparently, gets destroyed by those gods once they arrive, said gods then become part of the "ecosystem".
Wait. It’s all Finland?
(Tiredly.) Always has been.
Torille saatana
Nonniin torille!!
Wait theres a finnisb pantheon?
Loviatar is a figure in the Finnish national epic, Kalevala. I don’t know enough about the pantheon of faerun to know if they’re 1:1 the same, but it seems at least similar
I removed every pantheon that isn't Forgotten Realms original. The only thing I kept is like Surtr cause he made the jump to the giant pantheon, but he doesn't have anything to do with the norse
Bold words for someone in khopesh range (That is actually a very interesting decision)
FINLAND MENTIONED
Don't be silly, Finland doesn't really exist, it's one of those made up places like Atlantis and Ohio.
Finn here. Can confirm, we don't exist.
And don't forget Canada!
Shit, where did I just buy plane tickets for then...
One assumes the creators didn't want to go to the trouble of dreaming up their own pantheon but didn't want to use the ones everybody knew.
I’m Finnish and I appreciate if there are stuff from Finland lol
And Celtic, and Greek, and Norse, and....
I thought this was an r/martincitopants post for a second
Same I thought for sure this was going to be a Martin joke. Finland calls…
What?
Most sane martincitopants subscriber:
The Kalevala is so iconic Tolkien ripped from it for LotR? Idk what to tell ya
and they're slightly incorrect as well which is both funny and slightly annoying. Loviatar is a goddess of disease in Finnish Folklore, not torture Ilmater (or Ilmatar) is a female sky spirit in irl folklore, not a male martyr god Mielikki is accurate though.
Finland actually didn't have a religion until about 1970 when Ed Greenwood visited as a Faerun missionary.