Pagan improvements

[vyshan]

Some thoughts for Pagans. Most of what I did get for these faiths, I got by scanning Wikipedia. I do appreciate any and all help from those that are familiar for more ideas as to how to improve these faiths. If I get any more ideas I will add them to this list.

All pagans
Offering festivals: These will reperesent larger and more elaborate sacrifices to the gods and goddesses of your faith, or the faith of other pagans under your control.

You will get a decision to do a sacrifices, and you get to decide who and what you offering to. Are you making a sacrifice to Frey for Fertility or are you sacrificing to Perun for victory in battle, or to more local gods of the province for happiness in said province and so on.

When the priest comes back it can be clear or cryptic, but in either case the Gods have provided an answer to your question. Thus you gain a bonus, or rarely, a negative to your question. So again, if you asked for Perun to grant you victory then you get a bonus to troop moral, a bonus to fertility if you asked Frey for fertility and so on. The bonuses are not all that great but a nice bonus that can sway things. It is weighted in your favor if the priest is your friend, and against you if he/she is your rival and hates your guts.

Minor Offerings: These represent more minor offerings that can be done at almost any time. In contrast to the Offering festivals above, these would be to the Gods in general. In effect it would function like either the indulgence or Sadaqah decision, where you pay money(Goats, chickens, cows and horses are expensive) to perform a general sacrifice to gain piety. If reformed with a head of the faith, then you gain a bonus with them.

Learn Magic: From what I can find, it seems that a number of pagan faiths tend to be more highly appreciative of magic. Mages and other mystics had more of a role in their societies. Thus one should have the option to learn magic, be it Seidr or the rites of a shaman and so on. Now there might be cultural taboos for example(women are fine learn Seidr but men get a prestige penalty and a vassal penalty since it is unmanly).

If you have a court Shaman, Volva and so on, they might ask you to teach someone in your family who is suitable to learning the magical arts. Again cultural values matter here, still general concept should apply to most. You would also be able to seek out a wise shaman, Volva, and other mystic people of how like Indians can seek out a Guru.

Court Chaplin action – Perform Augury: This is a new action for the pagan court Chaplin. Where your Court Chaplin(what ever he or she is called) is sent to a province to perform Auguries, Divination, sacrifices and the like for the local people. In general it would function similar to the Muslim action of giving charity, so it helps over all lower revolt risk(the peasants like active priests doing sacrifices) with successes giving piety bonus or relations with a vassals; failure can make the peasants upset and mob the priest or embezzling money(goats, horses, and other animals cost money to sacrifice)

Slavic
Festivals: There should be some more festivals then the Jarlio festival. Thus:

• Dziady: This festival was done twice a year once in spring and once in Autumn. This festival honors the dead. As a festival, you would invite your family members and vassals to come and partake in the festivities. At night there would be offerings to your decesed relatives and more feasting to remember their victories and seeking their aid.
  
• Kupala Night: A Summer festival. From what I can gather it involves couples doing bonfire jumping, finding fernleaves for good luck, power, and prosperity. Tossing Garlands down a river with candles on them seem to be something else that was done according to wikipedia.

Construct a Bałwan: Balwans are large pillars that are typically dedicated to a deity. This would function similar to the Norse Runestone mechanics. You get to dedicate to one deity of the slavic gods and goddesses to gain some benefits similar to the Runestone.

Baltic
Festivals:

• Ilgės: The autumn festival of the dead. Offerings, libations, songs, and toasts were given to the dead.
• Rasos: Similar to Kupala Night from what I can tell. It involves feasting, sacrifices, jumping over bonfires.

Vaidelutės: From what I can find, these were the sacred priestesses that tended to the hearth fires of the Goddess Gabija. Hearth fires played a central role in the life of baltic people and they were to take care of it. The order from what I can gather was similar somewhat to the Vestal Virigins of the Romans. Perhaps this is something that requires the reformed Romuva faith?

Snakes: Snakes seemed to be a highly auspicious creature among the baltic pagans from what I can find. They were honored and apparently kept around the home. I also read that the Vaidelutės who took care of the hearth also took care of these grass snakes. So perhaps some events related to them?

Heroic Cults: Pious Baltic Pagans should be able to be declared local gods or Goddesses. I believe that CK2+ has a sainthood, so using that mechanic should work for the baltic pagans.

Finnic
Festivals:

• Karhunpeijaiset: A festival that can be done at any time to celebrate the successful hunt of a bear and wish the bear a quick speed back to the forest. There was a feast following which the bones would buried and the skull placed on a pine tree.

Bear Cult: From what I can gather bears tend to play a major role in Finnic religions. They were one of the most widely respected and honored animals in their faith. There should be some events relating to this, as well as the festival when a bear is hunted, well brought down in Finnic belief.

Reincarnation: It seems that the Finnic people believed in reincarnation so perhaps they should get a reflavor of the reincarnation event that Indians get.

Norse
Shieldmaidens: Martial women can seek to become warriors. This is something that IIRC is in CK2+ and I think it could be nice to have them in Vanilla.
Festivals:

• Yule/Winter Nights: This would be a festival that occurs in Winter. There would be Drinking and feasts and sacrifices.
  
• Dísablót: This is a late winter and spring festival around February or March, in honor of the Dísir, the female spirits of importance. There was feasting and sacrifices for the peace they had and victory that they would gain. With the festival came the market fair, known as the Disting.

 

[Furion Matsuya]

Atenism did not catch on, but it might just be that the high priests of other Egyptian gods tried to systematically erase all traces of it from history?

Atenism was a failure, but the cults of Amun and Ra agreed to "fuse" their gods as a way to promote national unity.

While alot of what we know about Atenism is fragmentary it seems that along with opposition from the priesthoods of other deities, Akhenaten didn't go about things in a way that would make it catch on anyway, Aten was pretty much worshiped by the royal family exclusively from what I've read and the people had to worship the royal family even more then previously and in return they would ask things of Aten on their behalf or something like that (I'm not sure how to word this sorry so this might be off)

 

[Silversweeeper]

While it isn't a pagan feature, strictly speaking, I figure I should put my suggestion in the dev diary thread here as well as it is related to pagans:

Another thing that would be nice to have (and that would somewhat weaken the Norse) would be to have the ability to pay a Danegeld to Norse (or pagan in general, if it was named something more appropriate for a general mechanic) rulers via a targeted decision, which would block further raiding against you from that pagan realm for some time (possibly even for life) and that could also block county conquests and prepared invasions (having it block all CBs might also work, but then the AI would need to know to refuse being paid off if it has an important claim (and possibly less frequently if they border the payer as that might make the AI not press the advantage as much as it should if it already has started to invade that part of the world)). Vassals who have been paid off should also refuse to (or even be unable to) join wars against the target that use a blocked CB, ensuring that a top liege whose vassals have been paid off won't be able to use those vassals in his own war against the payer.

Of course, the AI should not pay a Danegeld to someone who has forcibly concubined a close relative (or, as an alternative, paying should release the concubine as well), and paying the Danegeld should free all prisoners of the payer's dynasty (and their spouses) to prevent it from happening a few days later (ideally, the Danegeld would also include the ransom, if it is possible to code that, so that you don't end up releasing valuable prisoners for much less money than they are worth). The payment should ideally scale with both the wealth/size of the payer's realm and the rank/size of the raider (a king should be harder to pay off than a count, and a large and rich realm should not be able to buy off raiders as cheaply as a poor tribal ruler with a single county), and a more greedy raider might demand an extra large payment (as it really would be a shame if someone came along and burned down that nice castle of yours).

Betraying the promise would ideally be possible via a targeted decision (as circumstances might change or a dishonourable character might change their mind), but unless you have a good reason like the payer attacking/raiding you/your liege, concubining a close relative/spouse of yours, or attempting to murder/murdering you/your close relatives it should be regarded about as badly as breaking a truce (and the AI should never consider paying off someone who already has betrayed such an agreement without a reason). Of course, to keep the payer from doing something they are going to regret the AI should be less willing to attack someone they paid a Danegeld to.


In short, the raider gets money up front with no risk to them/their men, but cannot attack (or can only attack with a few CBs, depending on the setup)/raid the payer again (for life or for a very long time), while the payer gets one less raiding/invading realm to worry about in exchange for paying some money directly out of their pocket.

I think this already is doable to some extent (I haven't tried it, but aside from including ransoms it should be fairly straightforward using the existing forbidden_raid_target opinion modifier), and as two common complaints about the Norse are that they are OP and that their raids are annoying it might be a good idea to include something like it in the base game to alleviate that to some extent.

Of course, it would add some slight flavour to the Norse (the horror!) if it was only possible to pay off the Norse, so a more generic name could be used and the concept could be expanded to nomads and other pagans as well even though they probably should be unwilling to agree to never attack someone on their borders as opposed to overseas (it should definitely not be possible to buy off the Mongols or the Aztecs unless you are willing to offer a massive amount of money (or sacrifices, in the latter case; Duke Backstabbus McTraitor and his sons probably deserve it!)).

 

[Pringles VII]

It really is a question of whether the religion would stop being an ethnic one. It sort of seems to me as if the various paganisms are tied to their culture a lot more than Christianity and Islam are.

That's an interesting point. I would point to how much more ethnic a lot of Christian sects became after the Reformation, though. You don't see a lot of Anglicans without English heritage, or Lutherans without German heritage.

But more importantly, since Greek paganism, originally tied to the Greek culture, spread from Macedonia to Egypt and all the way to India, I think that those religions could become more international. Granted, the religion was spread by Greeks crossing into new territories, but I think that it's not that much of a stretch if the Germanic pagans have their own holy book, seeing other pagans that don't follow that book, and then sending people to tell them about Yggdrasil, the origin of the world, Ragnarok, etc.

If the Greeks had a holy book (although some argue that the Illiad and the Oddysey are Greek holy books), there is no doubt in my mind that they would have tons of zealous preachers in Jerusalem and Memphis and Babylon converting the populace.

 

[Pringles VII]

I think we can go a step further and state that Islam is the reformed version of the Arabian Semitic paganism. It was formalized and canonized, and the general ideas and beliefs of the culture have been mixed with other faiths, such as Judaism and Christianity, where desired.

Yes. Islam was basically the reformed version of Arabic polytheism. Then, the Muslims formed a strong, powerful kingdom under the prophet who reformed it, and then his successors, carrying their religion, language, culture, and ethnicity all over their territory. But then, their kingdom fragmented.

It really is a question of whether the religion would stop being an ethnic one. It sort of seems to me as if the various paganisms are tied to their culture a lot more than Christianity and Islam are.

So if King Frirek the Just (hypothetical) formed the Empire of Scandinavia, and then reformed the Germanic faith, perhaps by inviting the various Godis and Gydjas from across Scandinavia to a council in Uppland, and they codified the faith by adopting formal liturgy, a formal catechism, and establishing King Frirek as the head of the religion, he could launch wars of expansion, similar to the Umayyad Caliphate of old, but his empire would crumble (like the Abassid caliphate) as the outlying regions gained independence under Norse kings which adopted local customs but kept their formal religion, for example in the British Isles, Germany, and the Baltic States, a bit like how Andalusia broke away from the Abbasids with a distinct culture, or how the Berbers broke away and formed a blend of Berber and Arab cultures, or how the Fatimids broke away and formed their own sect and culture in Egypt, or...

 

[moscal]

IMO - Paradox of fell into the trap materialistic interpretation of religion. Paganism is ethnocentric and primitivic; reform of pagan have only politically motivation etc. Therefore I don't believe. that we will get a good and modernized version of paganism.

 

[BlackEagle78]

What I would like to see is that pagan religions are limited to characters of certain cultures, e.g. only Germanic characters can have the Germanic religion, only Slavic ones can have Slavic religion, etc.
Paganism is often heavily imbedded in culture, and can be seen as an extension of that. We're not talking about religions like Christianity or Islam here, that accept converts from all religions, and aren't bound to a certain culture. Only when a Pagan religion is reformed could characters of other cultures convert to it, for the simple reason that it wouldn't just be the legends and stories of that one people anymore (Germanics, Slavs, etc.), but the codified and canonized beliefs and rules of all who wish to follow them.

 

[Harald Fairhair]

What I would like to see is that pagan religions are limited to characters of certain cultures, e.g. only Germanic characters can have the Germanic religion, only Slavic ones can have Slavic religion, etc.
Paganism is often heavily imbedded in culture, and can be seen as an extension of that. We're not talking about religions like Christianity or Islam here, that accept converts from all religions, and aren't bound to a certain culture. Only when a Pagan religion is reformed could characters of other cultures convert to it, for the simple reason that it wouldn't just be the legends and stories of that one people anymore (Germanics, Slavs, etc.), but the codified and canonized beliefs and rules of all who wish to follow them.

I think it would be very problematic to be a norse viking in Russia

 

[Silversweeeper]

Some pagans sending missionaries could make sense (though there isn't really a historical precedent from the medieval era to my knowledge), but some groups should have a much harder time getting converts, particularly from certain other religions (and possibly cultures; some religion/culture combinations could have a very hard time converting certain other combinations due to both the religions and the cultures being very different). Having the Norse have an easy time convincing a landlocked Mongol Tengri ruler that they should start building longships and focus less on horses would feel odd, and vice versa, but the Norse converting a German Slavic guy on the coast somewhere would likely be much easier.

 

[Harald Fairhair]

Some pagans sending missionaries could make sense (though there isn't really a historical precedent from the medieval era to my knowledge), but some groups should have a much harder time getting converts, particularly from certain other religions (and possibly cultures; some religion/culture combinations could have a very hard time converting certain other combinations due to both the religions and the cultures being very different). Having the Norse have an easy time convincing a landlocked Mongol Tengri ruler that they should start building longships and focus less on horses would feel odd, and vice versa, but the Norse converting a German Slavic guy on the coast somewhere would likely be much easier.

Håkon jarl av Norge was a pagan who dedicated his life to have the churches removed from Norway. He had a larger success in Vestlandet, but in Viken he where unable to enforce norse paganism. I have read that the gall goidel where also converting irish, norse and other gall goidel, but how large scale I'm not sure of. But could not have been a very large one.

 

[Gurkhal]

It really is a question of whether the religion would stop being an ethnic one. It sort of seems to me as if the various paganisms are tied to their culture a lot more than Christianity and Islam are.

Wouldn't one possibility be that when reformed the religion is "raised" from being an ethnical religion to the same kind of ideas that montheistic, and to my knowledge karmic, religions makes in that they hold not just "a truth" but "the truth"? As such it would be possible for reformed pagans to send missionaries but not for unreformed pagans?

 

[StarSword]

Yes. Islam was basically the reformed version of Arabic polytheism. Then, the Muslims formed a strong, powerful kingdom under the prophet who reformed it, and then his successors, carrying their religion, language, culture, and ethnicity all over their territory. But then, their kingdom fragmented.

Go back even further. Current archaeology says that Judaism is derivative of Canaanite paganism.

 

[Damarrocarion]

Should I make a separate thread where people can make suggestions regarding organized religions and religious groups?