Since we sometimes get questions about this, here is a quick and dirty primer.
Why do you want to throw glitter on the Pantheon?
Well, I think some of us are hungry for really powerful, yet seductive deities. The players in the Pantheon were aristocratic and extremely powerful, so there is potential for high-octane fabulousness. I mean, look at Flemythal, she can get it.
The Glitter Pantheon is, at base, imagining the elvhen pantheon in the context of Empire. With the aesthetic caveat of glam rock debauchery.
Why not horror-monsters? A horror-monster Pantheon could be cool.
Yes. But. Think about the truly terrifying prospect of a mortal confronting the Divine and having to face their own inborn horror at seeing their mortal failings reflected back at them. The elvhen pantheon has the potential to enact such a gaze. That would be a powerful story. The villains would be fully-toothed but understandable–terrifying in their excess but with motivations that are not alien, with desires that are all too familiar, too human.
Moreover, yes, the “glitter pantheon” is hyperbolic in its terminology. And we do have fun with it. But that does not discount that such imaginings also evoke a primal sense of power, eros, excess, and tragic decay latent in such imaginative spaces. There are so many tantalizing pieces of pantheon’s story that feel like they have the potential to really enrich and enflesh such a narrative. The relationship between Dirthamen and Falon'Din reads as a mystery–one that is, at turns, poetic and deep and tragic and dark. They are forever interlaced. Their narratives interpenetrate. It’s a potentially thorny and compelling story. Then there is Andruil’s entire tragic arc. Or the pieces we get from the tale of Ghilan'nain’s apotheosis, which marries scientific discovery to horror to sublime and sacred knowledge.
Also, such imaginings speak to power: theocratic power, the power of seduction, the role of the human up against the Pantheon as an aristocratic, social institution.
The Inquisition, in game, is very concerned with questions of power and how powerful institutions change the arc of history. Cassandra asks if you are doomed to repeat the past. Solas struggles with the proposition that real, social change can actually happen. Can the march of history actually be progressive, or will it just circle back on itself like a snake eating it’s own tail?
Making them alien horrors would be so, so disappointing. See also grey, boring robes. Or sweat pants. DO NOT WANT.
Also, I like to think of them as less “fabulous” like we would us the term in modern parlance and more seductive, sinister, and
Bacchic:
Imagine a Dionysiac Arlathan steeped in eros, understanding abandon, but not Dionysiac in the sense that is of representative of nature in opposition to Apollonian ideas of culture and civilization. But a Dionysian City that understands that at the heart of the city-state lies both transcendental serenity and order as well terrifying violence and frenzy.
Such is our idea of Glitterotica Arlathan.
A note on Falon’Din as being “too glittery”: a digression on Bacchus:
It’s worth noting the Bacchus/Dionysis was a male god with a special relationship to women. He is terrifying and androgynous, representative of both masculine and feminine. He signifies both horrible violence and tragedy as well as transcendental frenzy and the sublime; both the sacred and the profane. Basically, I want a bacchic Falon’Din.
oxox Amans and crafted by the vhenantrash collective
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