If you’re wondering on how you could go about establishing a pantheon and religion in your own Region, look no further!  This can be a daunting task to take on cold turkey, so let’s go over a few steps to ease the burden.

Step 1: Establish a Theme

Generally, when a GM goes about creating their own Region, they have a source or real location in mind; you might base a Region off of the United Kingdoms, the state of Washington, India, or even all of Africa.  If you’ve done this, take a look into the local myths, legends and fairy tales of that location.  These tales will serve as the basis of your pantheon and direct its tone and scope, as well as give you a bit of insight to what life was like for people in your target time period.

A location with a rich ancient mythology, like Greece or Italy, would likely have a Pantheon with its own set of politics and strict forms of worship.  Likewise, The Wild West in the post-Civil War era of the United States might have its fair of tall tales and local Legendaries, but unless you ventured into Native American territory, these beings likely wouldn’t be worshipped.

If your Region didn’t directly draw inspiration from an existing location on Earth, or is on a scale too large to handle this way (such as a solar system or the entire continent of Asia or Europe, where you’re going to have more than one faith and several prominent cultures), it still helps to do some research on some of the world’s countless Mythologies as a basis; it helps to familiarize yourself with some of the usual themes in the primary Gods and Goddesses, and the ways people worshipped and viewed them.

The key take away from this part of your world building is you should get a good scope of what identities your Legendaries will take on, how the people in your Region perceive them, and how closely the Legendaries interact with one another.  It would also give you some insight into how other faiths or cults were treated and perceived.

If you’re really stumped on where to start with researching Mythologies, here’s a few examples to get you started and on your way to finding one that’s right for you and your setting.

• East Asian Mythologies: Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Hindu, the Phillippines
• European Mythologies: Baltic, Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, Norse, Greek, Roman, Slavic
• Native American Mythologies: Aztec, Mayan, Inuit, Incan
• North African and Middle East Mythologies: Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Babylonian, Arabian
• Sub-Saharan Mythologies: Yoruba, Orisha, Voodoo


Step 2:  Set the Constellations

By now you should have at least a few deities in mind based on the Mythology you looked into, or at least have an idea for some common titles (A God of War, a Goddess of Fertility, etc.).  The next step would be choosing what Legendaries to map to each of these roles.  The good news here is…Game Freak made this pretty easy on you!  The majority of the Legendaries already have their own stories behind them just from the video games alone, and quite a few of them even have built in rivalries or subservient Pokémon species.  Often times the hardest part here is picking between two or three very fitting Pokémon, or deciding to change the Typing of one to better match a Myth.  For example, if we were working with Norse Mythology, it would be pretty easy to have Zekrom embody Thor, Reshiram for Loki, and Kyurem for Odin.

Now, what might get tricky is if you wanted to work with a larger number of Mythologies.  Taking our previous example, let’s say you also wanted to account for ancient Greece and Rome.  You look at Zeus and Jupiter, and want to have them coexist as separate entities, but being how closely these two Myths are connected it’s difficult to choose separate Pokémon for both of them.  To add even more trouble, you really wanted to use Zekrom for this, but you already used that for Thor!  What do you do here?

Well, you have a few options on how you could handle this.  The cleanest would be to just accept that there are several Zekroms in the world with similar roles in their respective Pantheons, but each looking over a different area in the world.  You could try to use other Legendaries as well, and apply Type Shifts to match as needed (such as using Zekrom for Thor, an Electric/Flying Lugia for Jupitor, and an Electric/Flying Ho-Oh for Zeus).  Another could be that you utilize the Outer God concept and choose Pokémon that aren’t typically considered Legendary for these positions.  Maybe Thor is just a Pikachu with a mighty mythical hammer, Zeus is a Pachurisu with infidelity issues, and Jupitor is an Emogla.

If you didn’t want to tie Pokémon directly to a mythical identity, but to create your own with its own roles, the process is still pretty easy because most Legendaries are identified this way.  Take a Fertility Goddess as an example; Mew is an obvious choice for this because she is portrayed as the progenitor of all Pokémon Species.  For a God of War, you have the Tao Trio, Lugia, the Mortality Duo, Victini, the Swords of Justice, the Birds and Beasts…I think you get the idea.  Choosing these should be pretty straight forward, and here’s a list of typical types of deities.  You might realize later I basically ripped this list from Wikipedia – and for good reason!  Wikipedia is a great place to start on researching existing Pantheons and learning of ones you’ve never heard of before.

• The King of Gods (Odin, Jupiter, Zeus, etc.)
• Celestial Gods (Moon, Sun, Sky, Time, Weather, Rain, Lightning, Thunder)
• Earthen Gods (Mother Nature, Ocean, Sea, Night)
• Gods of Humanity (Death, Mother, Father, Fate, Fertility, Love, Lust, Health, Hunting, Wisdom, Tricksters, War, Commerce)

Step 3: Polish the Effigies

Once you’ve got your Pantheon created, all that’s left is relating it back to your Region.  Figure out what towns you want to be the key holy places, what the favored God of a town is, and where they might actually reside in your Region.  Also start to think about how your characters will end up interacting with these beings, and where, how, and under what circumstances they will meet under.

Another thing to start to think on is how the bad guys are involved with your Gods.  Are they devout followers of your Gods, or heretics?  Do they want a favor from the Gods, or to exploit them into doing something for them?  Are they followers of another faith with their own Gods?  Are these contrasting Pantheons on good terms, even if their followers are not?  What if the bad guys are cultists looking to resurrect an ancient evil that the Gods themselves fear or maybe sealed away?  You got a lot to think on here, and there’s a lot of possibilities, but if you’ve done your homework in steps 1 and 2, this should be coming together pretty easily for you!