Not gonna start a whole thing here but almost all mainstream christologies in history disagree with this - including catholicism which you cited to prove your point. The divine aspect of the holy son never died and in fact became the lord over death - it was only the mortal man who died.
On topic: Really interesting project that I’ve been thinking about since the days of Warlords of Draenor. Hopefully it turns into something bigger - I’d love a more thorough take on some of the religions one day. It’s tantamount to heresy that they are as bare bones as they are atm.
For deities to consider: the Earth Mother and An’she/Mu’sha are interesting entries in the pantheon of Warcraft gods, as well as the orcs’ brand of totemism (since you’re already sorta doing the nelf variant) - although orc religion in most cases doesn’t seem very theistic (except in the case of Lo’gosh?) so it might fall outside of the scope of your project.
If it gets enough interest, I will definitely be considering fleshing out the possible practices/customs/beliefs that can be attributed to the respective deities.
I can’t promise it will be soon or immediate, because I’m looking to have a broad spread to begin with - get a baseline for each down and established for my own reference if nobody else’s. A starting point for anyone interested in it.
They are all on my list too, so I’ll get to them eventually (unless someone is willing to contribute their own thoughts for one or more). I want to emphasise the diversity in belief that used to be a comfy staple in WoW religion - the Earth Mother can be attributed to someone like Therazane or Azeroth herself, but I’d like to make sure it’s clear that these would likely all be revered in their own separate manner.
So the Avatar died? I mean that is what I said, as in exactly what I said. And hang on, ‘Lord over death’ Just when I thought Catholicism couldn’t get any more weird, now it is a death cult as well?
I’ll pounce on this because while some of the Zandalari loa have a clear list of domains, some of the others and almost all of the non-Zandalari loa have no real lore behind them. Lots of them are just animal spirits with no addtional domain that could really do with a bit of extra love.
What is Mam’toth, other than a loa of mammoths?
What is Bethekk, other than a loa of panthers?
What is Nalorakk, other than a loa of bears?
It’d be nice to add a little more flavour to them, even if it’s just extrapolating from the few things we hear about them and from the animals that they represent.
Hence ‘a’ rather than ‘the.’ It’s known that multiple loa can possess the same domain, with Gonk, Rezan, (possibly) Kimbul and presumably others all being loa of the hunt, Bwonsamdi and Mueh’zala both being loa of the dead and so on.
It’s not a small pantheon of gods where certain deities have absolute authority over certain domains that no other god’s allowed to touch. There’s a massive number of loa who probably tread on each other’s toes all the time.
That might be smart, although for the loa that you do cover, you might want to look up anything they’ve done in the game and base a few things off of that.
See Quetz’lun, for example. She’s a loa of wind serpents, but most of the content featuring her revolves around her dragging the trolls that used to worship her into an afterlife of eternal torment, as punishment for their treachery.
Extrapolating from that, perhaps she could be considered a loa of spite, pain and/or vengeance, the spirit that the Drakkari prayed to whenever they wanted to make another suffer for their crimes? It would certainly fit the mannerisms she shows when she damns her followers to endless suffering.
Yeah, of course. I didn’t mean to say it was the only thing I would do, but it could definitely add some extra nuance to the Loa and they may represent to their followers.
On my hunter I try to have him still partly cling to a deity from the human old days before the discovery of the Light. The only religious figure who is largely confirmed from that age is Tyr.
There is also talk about myths and legends still lingering with humanity today of giants who were their guardians and guides, refering to the Vyrkul who first came with humans to the Eastern Kingdoms and through these I would assume more of the Vyrkul pantheon might be lingering even beyond Tyr.
With this in mind on my Hunter I have him worship what he calls The Green Lady usually but sometimes does name Freya, which is just an ignorant understanding of the Keeper, worshipping the Keeper as a God in much the same way they did Tyr. This mostly takes the form of nature worship, tending to what he views as the sacred groves of the continent, fighting against the corruption the undead have settled into the land.
The Tyr worship can be a pretty cool twist on the Light, I’ve known a few who RP Tyr as the source of the Light (from an IC PoV). Obviously a pretty small minority and somewhat headcanon.
Yeah I mean technically I guess he would be a “pagan” deity who the Church of Light embraced seeing as how we still have Tyr’s Hand as one of the seats of power for the faith millenia later. But that’s common enough in the real world to take such figures and make them heroes/saints/etc.
It isn’t quite confirmed that he was seen as a god but this line is the best soruce for it really.
“Thus Thoradin and his personal guards made a pilgrimage to the region’s shrines and sacred groves. At each site, the king performed rituals as was the custom of Lordain and his kin. Thoradin even wore a pendant of the silver hand, an image held sacred by Tirisfal’s humans.” from the Warrior Order Hall artifact lore on Strom’kar