Corellon Carnivorous
Barry Strauss’ The Battle of Salamis: The Naval Encounter that Saved Greece -- and Western Civilization
, from 2004, is a compulsively readable book of popular history. It renders the events leading up to the pivotal naval battle in the second Persian invasion of Greece as a suspenseful narrative-no mean trick, given that you know how it comes out. For the first time I felt like I understood what trireme warfare was all about. Strauss rows clear of the dryly tactical by portraying the political context and maneuvering on both sides of the conflict.
Although it must be said that, in his brief account of the preceding Battle of Thermopylae, Strauss curiously omits any mention of the prevalence of orc and ogre forces on the Persian side.
Reading it made me want to add a couple of elements to the current D&D game. One, it made me want to get some large-scale conflict brewing as a backdrop to the PCs’ butt-kicking. Fortunately the pipe for this has already been laid, in at least two directions.
Secondly, I was struck by a detail in Strauss’ account of the role human sacrifice played for both forces. The Greeks are described as slaughtering captured enemies to Dionysus Carnivorous on the eve of battle. Now, we moderns tend to think of Dionysus as a much jollier and fluffier fellow than was the Greek conception of him. Perhaps influenced by Roman depictions, we picture him as the party hearty god and downplay the whole Bacchae ripping you limb from limb business.
Still, the term got me to thinking about ways to introduce moral ambiguity to the D&D gods. Our campaign, with its setting defined cooperatively and on the fly, uses historical deities like Amun-Ra, at least one original fantasy god, as well as the off-the-shelf TSR/WotC mythos. There are good reasons for the published versions to be morally clear-cut, but I like to increase the range of dramatic choices by muddying the waters. I’ll have to look out for opportunities to give the D&D gods darker aspects: say hello to Avandra Chaos-Bringer, Erathis Jailer, and Bahamut the Hungry.