A recent facebook post that I spotted got me thinking about this:

Were there ever really priests of the Elemental Lords? During the 3.5 days, this was not really an issue as the Elemental Lords were dead and gone, but their presence continued to be felt by the need for Elorii having to choose one of the Elemental Domains appropriate to their Bloodline should they choose an Elemental Domain. Additionally, the Eldest Sons book provided a full list of Domains for each of the Elorii Elemental Lords, implying that they were straight up deities.

But were they?

In the Arcanis Roleplaying Game, only certain 'divine' beings can have a full-blown priesthood. Anyone else (ie: some Elemental Worshipers, the Cult of Jeggal Sag, the worship of the Herka) falls into another branch of casting based on minor deities or creatures of extreme powers giving a bit of their essence to their followers to wield to further their aims.

These are Shamans.

So, my question is, were the former Priests of the Elemental Lords Shamans, or did they have their own priesthoods? We know that the Elemental Lords were mighty powerful, but often viewed (by my read) as lesser beings compared to Illiir or Belisarda or Kassagore. More powerful than Valinor and probably even that one Elemental that one time in the Hinterlands, but are they as powerful as Jeggal Sag? Were they of the correct level of divinity to be considered "Divine" in the same breath as those other Gods listed above?

Cody,

You know I won't answer that question. Whatever the answer is would lead to a series of conclusions and suppositions that would ruin the fun of the reveal (when and if that happens).

Meh, all good. I was mostly throwing it out there to see where other people took this

Well, Belisarda is the elemental lord of life right? That is the 5th element or something? She has a priesthood. Wasn't she considered one of the Elemental lords? Or is she something completely different?

Though I always found it odd that a bunch of bio-constructs/people had deities. Frequently, in creation myths deities create the race that worship them. So how did Belisarda start being worshiped by the Elorii? Also, sometimes slaves become indoctrinated to worship the dominant groups religion and obviously that is not the case currently, but was it in the past? (recently we learned that Elorii of the past were backstabbing manipulative people (and still are) and had a fairly strong caste system, which seemed to substitute for an ethical code of conduct.)

I feel that there is some large reveal here about Belisarda and who/what she is really. There are just too many questionable things here. What was Belisarda doing before she was being worshiped by the elorrii? Did she exist? Were there other worshipers? Did some earlier race that was destroyed have her as a deity? Was she a Goddess fleeing from a different realm and found people in need of a goddess of their own? Is she some part of Yig, like Anshar.

I believe there was once speculation that she was formerly part of the Pantheon of Man before the pantheon came to Onara and she recognized the "other" and that is why she helped him in the beginning. She could be the "sister" of illiir that was lost, and who Yig impersonated to become Anshar.

Yig - The prime example of multiple personality disorder? or should it be multiple deity disorder?

Anyway, if we are likely to find answers to any of those questions then the first City is one of the few plausible places they would exist.

From Arcanis cosmology, Belisarda is the living avatar of the world of Arcanis, and is considered a Goddess--a 'young' one, but still a Godess--in her own right. The Elemental Lords were simply Elemental beings of Divine (or near Divine, depending on the source) power that were summoned from another plane onto that of Arcanis by the Ssethrics. While the story of the 'capture' of Belisarda by the mortal Ssethrics is unclear--with at least two different versions--the story about how the Mages of Yasshremore summoned the Elemental Lords is fairly consistent by my reading. If the Ssethrics were able to summon GODS, and that those gods were willing to deal with such 'minor' beings as the Ssethrics (on the grand scheme of things) to get those who worship them as gods, to me that smacks that they are NOT gods, but simply powerful beings who WANT to be gods.

I'm pretty sure that is all propaganda.... to hide the truth about Belisarda. We'll see

I have three brief thoughts in support of the Elemental Lords being sufficiently "god like" to grant cants:

1) when it came time to fight with them, Illiir sent 4 members of the Pantheon and not a flock of valinor ... and though the PoM went 4 for 4 none of the fights was described as easy.
2) the elemental lords were worshipped at multiple (essentially standardized) temples and not a bunch of ad hoc shrines.
3) the elemental lords supposedly got a power bump by commingling their essence in some way with Belisarda (and may have received another bump by being worshipped by 10 million elorii).

Just a thought, for the sake on continuing this discussion.

The Elemental Lords may have started out as just elemental beings (albeit very powerful ones). After all, they did need Belisarda to make the Elorii do more than just sit there with a blank stare. However, many cosmologies (Dungeons & Dragons in particular comes to mind) have a little clause that makes a being's power relative to the number of worshipers. So, by creating an entire new race (or 5, depending on how you look at it) that worshiped them exclusively, they increased their own power. That might also explain why they were willing to let the Elorii be total slaves to the Ssethregore for centuries.

That's my 2¢, anyway.

There was an old theory (perhaps confirmed out of character) that a characteristic of a true God in Arcanis was having no alignment. Now putting aside that alignment is gone mechanically I think the idea could still hold true.

Take the Varn. From what's known about them they are varying facets and flavors of Evil. Rampaging Evil, Indifferent Evil, Rapacious Evil, Corrupting Evil etc. And they're not Gods. They're hyper-powerful extra-planar quasi-deities. They hope to become Gods, but we also hope to stop them!

The Pantheon of Man are Gods with, as Eric has put it, the capital G. And they possess the required facets of behavior. Kind of a tautology put like that, but true all the same. The Myrantian Pantheon makes for some interesting possible exceptions as it's many-splendored horrors haven't ever (that I know of) exhibited any Good facets and the Myrantians themselves mostly either wish the attentions of them upon their enemies, or hope to supplicate them and/or avoid notice. There is the Hero-God Shu, who I've never heard of acting, but supposedly he's a Good guy.

Now I think there's some interplay between how a God acts and the expectations of their followers, but there's no real proof for that.

As for the Elemental Lords the questions endure, and the answers remain distant.

Also, remember that evil is subjective. There are plenty of evidence of the Gods of the Pantheon doing "evil" things, as well as "good" things. It was kind of evil for Illiir to doom Millions of Celestial Giants to have their souls lost forever (as far as they are aware), but it was good when he raised the God's Wall to protect Humanity from the Infernals. It was evil for Sarish to use the suffering of the war between Neroth and Illiir (and the other Gods) to increase his own power and that of his Valinor instead of trying to end the fratricidal conflict, but it was good of him to offer a way out for the Dwarves (even if it wasn't necessarily out of the goodness of his heart). The Gods move in mysterious ways, and what we humans consider "good", the Gods view as probably quaint or even selfishly evil in its own right. You want to risk the lives of 10 people to save one? That seems evil to throw away the many lives for the one, no? But to Humans, this is viewed as almost romantically good.

I don't think the Varn being 'evil' makes them gods instead of Gods. I think it is an objective measure of power which makes them the 'little-g' gods. Illiir, Kassagore, and Belisarda are Gods in that they could probably bitch-slap the Varn in the same way that a full grown man could dominate a toddler in a straight-up fistfight. That said, a toddler could still destroy a mosquito if they wanted to, which would be the comparison of the Varn to the mortals (and Elorii) of Arcanis.