The family tree of the Gods of Áereth

EDIT: 10/19/13:  Fixed some typos

EDIT: 10/30/12:  This was posted originally as a support post for the players in my game, so most of the explanations were verbal.  I get a lot of hits on this page so I figure I should add a little explanation to what all those squiggles mean. First and foremost I'd like to thank the folks at Goodman Games for creating the world of Aereth with their release of DCC #35.  A lot of the info in this chart was taken from my attempt to organize the Gods presented in chapter 2 of the DM's Guide to Aereth.  The rest is my spin on things for my version of Aereth.  I have take the liberty of changing the genders of some deities in order to provide for a more workable chart.

Organization

1. I broke the multiplicity of deities into 4 main parts: one family is the the Triad of Choranus, Centivus, & Ildavir (light blue); one family is the Sancturn pantheon (multi-colored); the lesser Gods became many of the offspring of the various marriages (white); and Zhuhn... the great evil one, enemy of the Gods and creation (black).   Like all family tree type charts, marriages and progeny are marked by solid lines.  The dashed lines represent temporary unions achieved via trickery or violence

 and along with any progeny.  NOTE: Zurvan died ages before the Sanctern pantheon arrived at Aereth; in his death he was split into the two lesser deities of Ormazdd and Ahriman. 

2.  There are still 12 deities, 5 devils, & 5 known demons from chapter 2 of the DM's Guide to Aereth that will eventually become the core of table 2... whenever I find the time.  And that doesn't cover any of the new material presented in DCC RPG :)

3. From top to bottom the chart sorts out the deities into good versus evil, with those closest to the top are 'good' aligned and those at the bottom are 'evil' in alignment and the 'marriage line' between Asuarr and Valdreth represents the 'neutral' boundary in between.  This is a general trend and may or may not correspond with the material in DCC#35.

4. From left to right represents a new way of sorting the deities specific to my version of Aereth.  In my creation story Oae presents the Gods with a means of trapping Zhuhn as the force of entropy.  In order to make this happen the Gods are required to sacrifice their physical form to create the world in a way that Zhuhn cannot destroy.  However, the Gods are not required to give all of themselves to the process and some of the Gods (the ones at the bottom of the chart plus the ones that will be on table 2) rebelled and abandoned the work of creation.  This is a new epoch of time I introduce to the Aereth meme and it is known as the God Wars.  The Deities on the right gave the most of themselves to Oae's great spell of creation and the amount of deific participation in creation drops off as you move to the right of the page.

5. The Gods of the Civilized societies are all clustered in the upper left quadrant, and Oae retreated into his special realm of creation that mortals understand as the place where Dreams come from.

6. The numbers on some of the deities represent their birth order and loosely translates to the hierarchy of the Gods.  It was chosen to mirror the order that the Gods created the races; as listed in the DCC#35 material.  this is important, because it is only the deities listed in white squares that have any serious interaction with the mortal world; the others are too tightly bound up in the 'machine of the universe' concept at the heart of Oae's spell of creation.

7. Special note on Pelagia: Zhuhn's last act before it was imprisoned was to kill her child, causing the sundered pieces to become the twin Rat Gods Nimlurun & Narrimunath.  Understandably, she went completely insane and her anger and sense of loss are mirrored by her children; the consequence  being that these deities have slowly become twisted... some are now considered evil by mortal standards.  The real world ramifications to all of this are simple: no one travels by sea if they can avoid it.  Most ships are incapable deep water voyages, because most folks won't sail beyond sight of land for fear of Pelagia's madness.  The fact that the Creistine Empire managed to colonize another continent then becomes an even greater symbol of their might: but the truth is that it was Kalian ship building technology that made it all possible.  But I digress... and this is perhaps the subject of another post later on. :)