My friends and I have recently started up a new D&D campaign which also happens to be our first crack at a published adventure: The Rime of the Frostmaiden. Though I’m personally an avowed home-brewer, I have to say that the premise for this adventure is tantalizing. Basically, a northerly part of the world has been cast into perpetual winter by the Frostmaiden, the goddess of winter’s wrath, and it’s up to the adventurers to see that spring comes again. The threat of perpetual winter is a theme that surfaces repeatedly in the western mythos. Modern examples include Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather and Wintersmith, and C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, but this is a truly ancient theme. The Greek tale of Persephone’s imprisonment in Hades, the Brythonic duel between Gwyn ap Nudd and Gwythyr ap Greidawl, the Irish celebration of Beltane, and the Germanic Yule are all stories or celebrations centered around the transition between winter and spring where the cycle of the year must be encouraged to turn. I even include this theme in the final book of my Kellan series. It’s safe to say that I really adore the turning of the seasons as a subject for mythology and other storytelling.
The Rime of the Frostmaiden presents a problem straight from the deepest storytelling instincts of the Indo-European peoples, if not humanity at large, but it is perhaps this classic choice that really highlights some our modern issues in understanding the myths and gods of ages past. I think the point is neatly demonstrated by my struggle to create my character for this campaign. My friends and I decided to go with an all-dwarf party for the storytelling potential. I decided that I would create a religious character dedicated to a fertility goddess. The dominance of winter, the failure of crops, the withering of forests, the death of animals both wild and domestic, all these things would be an affront to one aligned with a deity of growth, harvest, and life. I really struggled to find a class that aligned with these principles. The life domain cleric was the closest candidate, and even mentioned fertility goddesses as appropriate deities for the class. My issue is that the life cleric is a healing class. There isn’t anything inherently wrong with a healing class, but healing injuries seems only tangentially related to deities of growth and life. The more nature oriented classes, spells, and abilities exclusively focus on wild nature as an enemy and antithesis to the agricultural world.
What Wizards of the Coast have created with the life cleric is something that is probably more motivated by concerns for game mechanics than it is by a mythological understanding, but it is exactly that sort of thing that really damages the way we’re able to understand mythology. We like to put gods into neat boxes so we can put them all into a list that covers most of the aspects of the world. Poseidon is the god of the sea and that’s all we’ll say about the matter. What we leave out is that Poseidon is also the god of horses, springs, and earthquakes. He’s fathered monsters and heroes, built the walls of Troy, and fought in the Titanomachy. He has evidence ancient worship as a sacral king in Minoan temples, with Demeter and Persephone by his side. He is the god of the sea, but he is not simply the god of the sea. When we pigeonhole a god into a domain we create a poor caricature of real mythology.
Real mythology is complex, layered, and may be confusing to the uninitiated. I grew up going to a Christian church and have continued going to church as an adult. I have read the Bible and attended a lifetime of sermons, discussions, and classes on biblical stories and church history. When I read something with a biblical theme or symbol, I can usually understand the reference without even pausing to think about it. One of my friends from high school wasn’t brought up in the church and had received anything but a passive and cursory education on biblical matters. We took a western literature class together and he had a difficult time because he simply didn’t understand most of the biblical references, symbols, or themes. For me, an ox may bring to mind the gospel of Luke, Christ’s ministry to the poor, the patience and long-suffering attitude of a good Christian, God’s command to be kind to animals and pay laborers their wages. For my friend, an ox was just a dopey farm animal. We modern readers are like my friend from school. We are on the outside of these ancient mythologies. The symbols, themes, and language in these ancient stories is not our own. Our only exposure to much of this material has been through the distant echoes that linger in our civilization, but which only tell a fragmented, bastardized version of the old tales.
When we craft stories (through any medium), we must resist the urge to create something fragmented and reductive. It’s easy for me to create a pantheon with gods and goddesses that are all “god of” one or two things. It’s easy to set these deities at the head of a religion with a formal clergy and stone temples. What’s exceedingly difficult is to create a mythology that even has the appearance of real depth. It’s hard to write about gods in a way that makes them feel foundational, not only to society, but to the very earth. The Rime of the Frostmaiden presents a mythic problem: the seasons won’t turn properly. Yet I feel that there is little chance of a properly mythic solution. The gods of Faerun are flat concepts. They seem divorced from the land and the seasons, with no grip on the real world beyond a papier-mâché religion. I want to write mythology that pays proper homage to the real thing; I want to write myths that feel like they are living things that have bearing on the earth. I’m just a player in this campaign, but I’ve got some ideas.