Short story idea for later

[soc_puppet]

Flyndon McFladden-Flavor* Denies His Deities For the Day

* Or some other highly alliterative name, probably staring with F or F-sounds. (Edit: Flendlemeyer? Hmm.)

Probable premise: Through a series of unlikely coincidences, Flyndon is the Chosen One of, like, seventeen different gods. Every single day is the religious observance of at least one of the deities he represents, and frequently more than one. Every once in a while, Flyndon takes a day for himself. (Usually the days that every single god has an observance.)

Comments

[alexseanchai]

define "Chosen One" please

and remind me to point you at researchy stuff, by which I mostly mean "intro to modern polytheisms for the new and/or aspiring practitioner" stuff

[soc_puppet]

He's basically a paladin sorta guy who goes out on quests to solve minor problems for his various gods or something? He's got a bit of a "traveling salesman" approach to taking care of the quests, since he has so many. He also does some minor preaching and miracle-working along the way, I think? IDK, I have a whole lot of details as yet undecided, the "denies his deities for the day" was one of those fully completed phrases that came to me when half-asleep. It's entirely likely that the deities in question are all very obscure and had to pool their resources to "pay for" a paladin in the first place.

One thing that's definitely decided is that it's a fantasy setting, with no gods based on existing deities to the best of my knowledge or abilities.

That would definitely be welcome! I'd been thinking that the fantasy setting and definitely-made-up gods would negate the need for as much research, but now I'm beginning to understand I thought it meant I wouldn't need any, and that is just a bad assumption to make ever. So thank you.

[alexseanchai]

👍🏻

I'm positive this can be as comedic as you want without being the least disrespectful, so 😺

may I link this at a few people? because I know I have more to rec you than most of Seeking, lots of Under the Ancient Oaks, and (with Distinct Ambivalence, which I don't have the cope to either explain or find a good explanation of) Galina Krasskova's Devotional Polytheism, but I am blanking on what all that more is

[soc_puppet]

Link away!

The more I think about this, the more I feel the need to develop exactly how all this nonsense happened to our Main Character, and what all his duties involve 😛

A few of the gods I've come up with so far:

* The god of a very specific breed of horse from a tiny valley somewhere, much revered by the people who raise them, but kinda funny looking and largely overlooked or deliberately ignored by outsiders. The horses actually have a very specific talent that's very useful to the locals, and could be elsewhere as well, if anyone actually stopped to pay attention. (What that talent is, I have yet to figure out.) This god is getting pretty much all the power they need from their people's prayers and offerings, but wants to show the glory of their horse breed to the world. Main Character has a horse of this breed that is granted specific godly powers on the regular, such as accelerated healing and extra speedy travel, so he can get to where he needs to go for various ceremonies and observances in short order (the main reason the group of gods 'recruited' this particular deity).

* The mostly-forgotten deity of an old herbal remedy that's been largely ousted by something new and shiny and more effective over the past few centuries, to the point where hardly anyone even remembers the old remedy in the first place, let alone uses it; this deity requires Main Character to drink at least one cup of their tea a day, and treats Main Character to a rant about how awful people are for forgetting them and how much better a product their tea is than the new product, and how smug that asshole in charge of the new product is/would be if they existed, their stuff tastes terrible anyway, did they even for a second think about flavor? Clearly not!

* An older goddess who has a fairly consistent stream of worshipers, and one of the more powerful of the gods who recruited MC, though that's not saying much. She's pretty happy with her lot in life, and signed on half to help her fellow struggling deities, and half for the lulz.

* The goddess of a new sewing technique or stitch (or something else small and practical that's used for just about everything) that is taking off in a particular village for its ease of use and quality, who found out pretty early on that a lot of gods of similar concepts have trouble maintaining themselves, and figured out that teaming up with the rest of these gods was probably her pest chance for longevity. She's pretty enthusiastic, but has a tendency to get a little overzealous when they get new places where she wants MC to demonstrate her technique for the locals.