Moon Priests/Priestesses

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

No idea which gods and goddesses the people sailing to Dilmun and Meluha worshipped. We probably know for the West Semites, but they had another set of gods.

The people who were abducted from Earth came from the area that would become Babylon in the period between the 22th century BCE and ca 1750 BCE, I seem to recall. Makes them mostly Akkadians, but with some mercenaries from nearby 'wilder' tribes and a substrata of professional clergy using Sumerian for liturgical purposes.

After many, many centuries of slavery, the people were led to freedom by incarnations of their gods, who could take physical form in the magical Realms. Earth was no longer home and they settled an area of the Realms that was inhabited only by hunter-gatherers. This led to a society self-consciously refounded in the mould of the Akkadian and Sumeric gods, the core of which has existed with astonishingly little change over millenia under undying God-Kings.

I don't have anything against surviving cultic traditions which venerate minor powers that originate with Assyrians, Amorites or even Phoenicans, but the vast majority of people have a worldview shaped by the clergy of the few politically powerful gods, all of them Akkadian (but some with Sumerian aspects).

Originally Posted by Polydamas

I would not do much with tides because there are not big tides anywhere that South Mesopotamians sailed (pretty sure that the Strait of Hormuz and the Chaldaean marshes have a similar effect to the Straits of Gibraltar). I seem to remember that the sea next to this country is an inland sea in the Realms?

The Sea of Fallen Stars (also known as the Inner Sea) is an inland sea and shouldn't really have powerful tides. On the other hand, there canonically exists an island in it with a sheltered inlet which pirates use for a hideaway, but which experiences powerful and dangerous tides once a month (the pirates believe a monster dwells there, but the sourcebook states that the explanation is natural).

Originally Posted by Polydamas

It was also common for the priests of a rising god to explain that a bunch of other falling gods were only aspect of their patron. There are some tablets laying out relationships like that.

Just so. I want each religion to have their own versions of divine myths and mutually contradictory views on the relationships between various gods.

Originally Posted by Polydamas

The genders in Sumerian are personal (gods, women, ...) and impersonal (rocks, slaves, cattle, ...) and its easy to write divine names logographically as "storm god, sun god, ..." so sexing deities is not always straightforward. The logograms also encouraged equating deities in different places with each other.

True.

[jason taylor]

The moon could be a patron of anyone and anything nocturnal: bandits, and police by contrast. Symposiums and night gathering spots of whatever kind. Even fairies, vampires, or Creatures of the Night. And of course your mundane nocturnal animals.

[simply Nathan]

In my setting, there is an evil sun god, a not so evil sun goddess, and a moon goddess.

The morning sun is the cruel and wicked awakener, destroyer of dreams. He's basically a parody of Zeus given a solar theme in appearance, attitude, and action (hence, evil by my Judeo-Christian standards).

The evening sun is the patroness of agriculture, marriage, and the home. She doesn't care much about love or passion in the marriage, but only the duty towards reproduction and the honoring of vows.

The moon is the patroness of hunting, dreams, navigation, and passionate intimacy. She loves nothing more than finding young couples of superficially unlikely pairings (knight/thief, elf/dwarf, princess/dragon, cat/mouse, etc) that would complement each other and giving them dreams to guide them toward each other. She is the sister of the evening sun.

[roguebfl]

Artemis was the Moon Gods as Apollo's twin sister. Moon Gods often have an important relationship to the Sun god, but unlike Night not necessarily an optional one. Sometime the Sun and the Moon are lovers who rarely get to see each other etc

but for DF style, Faerûn has Selûne goddess of light, the moon, stars, navigation, navigators, wanderers, questers, and goodly lycanthropes. She has the following Orders

• Swords of the Lady:

  One order of fanatic Selûnites is known as the Swords of the Lady, who are often referred to colloquially as the "Lunatics." Its members are led by a few Selûnite crusaders who tend to act rapidly in response to threats from Shar and her priesthood, although their behaviour is often viewed as bizarre by the public at large.

• Oracles of the Moon:

  The Oracles of the Moon is a group of female diviners who worship the Night White Lady. They perform fortune-telling rituals and are some of the highest bards and priests in the faith.

• Pact of the New Moon:

  Consists solely of lycanthropes sworn to Selûne, carrying out the most secretive and violent aspects of Selûne's work. Selûne grants these lycanthropes abilities other lycanthropes lack, such as an ability to speak in wolf form, also allowing her followers to invoke prayers and cast spells, rapid shapeshifting and increased strength. Was once declared heretical and anathema for espousing the Heresy of the New Moon but was renewed by Selûne's direct order in a vision to one of her lycanthrope priestesses.

[Dustin]

For divine abilities, Moonlight control could provide significant tactical advantage at night, if your enemies were all limned in moonlight while your friends are shrouded in darkness.

The deity seems to have a focus on protection from supernatural threats. Making the invisible (spirits, ghosts, demons, etc) visible seems appropriate, as does granting the ability to hurt or bind insubstantial enemies with hands or weapons (silver only?). Warding, banishing, and exorcism would seem to fit as well, with lunar symbolism added for effect ("Hold him down long enough for me to draw a crescent on his forehead!")