Little Gods of Planegea

22 Jul, 2026

This month, Sean Holland at Sea of Stars is co-hosting the RPG Blog Carnival on the topic "Small Gods, Saints, and other minor divinities." You might remember that Holland also hosted a celestial topic back in February, that time on big gods, which I'm in favour of. The bigger, in fact, the better. I wrote about that in my response, "Gods Must Give: An RPG Blog Carnival Post." I came out quite hard against small gods, or at least ones dependent on mortal belief and worship, and I think my reasons were sound. However, I also acknowledged that there are several ways small gods can work, and in particular I made an exception for David Somerville's stonepunk Planegea setting, published with Atlas Games:

Maybe, in your games, archfey or elementals or primordial spirits or eldritch horrors are what personify those things that exceed mortal control. For example, in David Somerville's Planegea, all gods were once animals, plants, or objects that human awe divinized, but mortaldom seems so small and contingent in Planegea that I don't think that sense of mortals' contingency is lost. The Worldheart still dreams all of Planegea into existence, and she seems unassailable, while no one can defeat the Hounds of the Blind Heavens or survive breaking the Black Taboos they enforce. Dependent gods can be done, and done well.

As you might know, Atlas Games has now released the contents of The Star-Shaman's Song of Planegea (the SSSP) with an Open Gaming License,¹ and as I'm diligently working away on products for Planegea, I thought I would take part in this festival by providing some Planegean gods for your Mesolithic stonepunk games.

Substrata Gods

Though this post is mostly written for players of Planegea, I should still probably explain how little gods work in Planegea's Great Valley; the RPG Blog Carnival readers may, of course, not be familiar.

First, you need to know what a god is in the Great Valley. The star-shaman tells us this:

Before the great gods of classic fantasy—dwelling in Upper Planes, surrounded by hosts of celestials — the proto-gods of prehistory rule the lands where mortals dwell. These gods are not abstractions, nor the personified expression of universal forces. They are beasts, plants, places, or elements that have—through some combination of longevity, power, and reverence—acquired divine authority.

These gods are local, tied to their environments. They dwell in holy places called hallows. They draw magic from the surrounding region and glory from its inhabitants (p 292 of the SSSP).

In Planegea, there are four strata of gods. Mala Long-Song alone occupies the fourth and highest, able to see across the whole of the Great Valley. Four gods occupy the third strata, commanding great clans and bending other gods to their rule: the Brother Gods Unkillable Urhosh, Kho Many-Arms, and Glelh the Unblinking, and the fiendish Twr the Tyrant. Even first strata gods, though, can reach outside their hallows and influence the world, through spells, through the magic items they give to their followers, and the visitants (angels, fiends, and the like) they create. Below the first strata, though, are the substrata gods, about which the SSSP says the following:

There are some gods who are so minor that they hardly even qualify as divine—although they are tied to a hallow and have some godlike qualities. [...]

These lesser gods, though tiny compared to their kin, are nonetheless capable of growing into mightier powers over time, and should be carefully dealt with, lest their wrath be kindled against future generations. (p 296)

What follows are a few of these substrata gods I've made up for this post. Some are fiendish gods, appropriate to the Cult Riverlands or to Winterjaw. Others are neutrally aligned, and one is celestial, so you can put them anywhere in the Great Valley. Your players cannot likely slay Twr, but these little godlings should be within their grasp, even in the earlier tiers of the game.

Of course, though these are Planegean gods, there's no reason they cannot be tiny godlings or fiends in other 5e campaigns.

Elel, the Teeth Within

Elel (chaotic evil) was, to start with, a catching and pustulant illness that a clan could not shake during their seasonal residence in Winterjaw; though the disease was troublesome and miserable in such desperate circumstances, it had some benefit, in that none of hungry winter gods wanted anything to do with a clan that might be infected. Somehow, in this way, the plague became a winter godling itself: Elel, the Teeth Within.

Those caught in Elel's orbit find themselves captured by her infectious malice: envy for what others have and suspicion of outsiders. She delights in turning clans against outsiders and then, when there are no outsiders left for them to be jealous and wary of, to turn them against themselves. Her favourite tool is not magic nor might but an idea and a word that spreads like rot from person to person, corrupting them all. Her great pleasure is watching the ideas she spreads gnaw her victims from within, poisoning them with covetousness and distrust.

As a disease goddess, she must at all times have a host. In more wretched times, some poor beast is caught in her hallow, but at other times she takes a willing strategist or a hostage from any enemy clan. At the moment she is fortunate to have as her carrier and shaman a resplendent young godtouched woman, originally of the Bear Clan, named Henek-el (as a high shaman, with Persuasion +6, p 374 of the SSSP). Henek-el has little love for Elel, but is nonetheless fixated by the idea of expanding her – or their – territory in Winterjaw, and to help her achieve this end (and perhaps for other, baser, reasons) she is happy to foster competition for her favour and attention. A few envy her apparent power and wait for an opportunity to use their hidden knives. Elel for now prefers Henek-el for her beauty and cunning, but if her host should ever try to undermine her, Elel will encourage suitable replacements to fight to take her place.

Elel's domains are anything to do with violence, duplicity, and wounds. She is also a goddess of ideas, as she fosters understanding between people so that they might be more perfectly envious of each other. She creates dretches as her visitants, always three of them and playing them against each other. Use a stickymouth (pp 357-358 of the SSSP) as her base statblock, adjusted to be a substrata god as per the instructions on page 301 of the SSSP.²

Still Meqi, Quiet Nuqi, and Calm Oqi

The fate of a ghost monkey (p 235 of the SSSP) is a sad and terrible thing: made undead and driven from its troop for reasons it can never understand, the poor thing rages through the Venom Abyss and, perhaps, the Great Valley, overcome with sorrow and confusion. Its very howls bewilder those who hear them, spreading madness through clans and herds.

There is, however, a troop of ghost monkeys roosting peacefully in a stand of half-dead trees in the Great Valley. These creatures have been soothed by three ghost monkey godlings named Still Meqi, Quiet Nuqi, and Calm Oqi (all true neutral). Goddesses of consolation, they still grieve and wonder, but now do so calmly and with a spirit of charity toward others. Those who live among them are expected to do the same: they may cry, or complain, or lay in a stupor, or indulge overmuch in wine or smiledrink (see p 319 of the SSSP), but so long as they bring no harm to one another or attack the ghost monkeys, they are welcome. Those who cannot move on from the death of a beloved or find their spirits weighted often travel to the goddesses' shared hallow and stay there for a time. The goddesses will comfort them with song, touch, and acceptance, and offers brought to the deathless monkeys will sustain the visitors. However, Meqi, Nuqi, and Oqi have nothing to offer those who have come out the other side of grief, and so most eventually leave them, though many return from time to time to leave offerings of thanksgiving.

Based on the partly-scrubbed spellskin sanctum nearby, with the workings of abjurations and transmutations carved into deadfalls from the Venom Abyss, some suspect Meqi, Nuqi, and Oqi were deified by spellskins. Certainly abjuration is popular enough in nearby clans, who used to suffer badly from ghost monkeys before the goddesses appeared. Were three of the spirits caught in those half-naked trees and raised to godhood specifically to becalm their fellows? Whatever the cause, ghost monkeys are common but harmless in the region – unless, that is, the goddesses are riled up. They cannot stand those who deny their sorrow or the sorrow of their visitors, whether by trying to cheer them up with hope or jollity or by encouraging them in endurance and indifference. The goddess's shamans quickly warn such optimists and stoics that they must immediately stop; if they don't, the goddesses begin screaming in fury, and all their hosts of ghost monkeys revert to their former violent ways. Should anyone then raise a hand or blade against the spirits, the goddesses will retaliate. They calm themselves shortly after the offenders leave or die, but even then distressed ghost monkeys plague the region for days afterwards.

The goddess's domains include Life and anything else that concerns healing, consolation, and calm, as well as anything to do with grief, dying, darkness, undeath, and protection from the night. Their stat blocks are identical, except that most often they have different spells prepared. Though they are surrounded by 2d10+10 ghost monkeys at all times, these are not their visitants; Nuqi tends to conjure ancestors (p 371 of the SSSP), while Oqi prefers shadows and Meqi prefers a single spectre (all unaligned).

Humming Skikshi

In the Cult Riverlands, there is a bend of canyon in which the creek, however thin, pools a little. This dusty gorge buzzes at all times with the sound of flies. The sound of it is frustrating, in time infuriating, but no insect lands on those who enter the space. Only if they bend their hands or lips to the water does the swarm descend upon them, a furious godling made of biting flies. This happens very rarely, however, for Humming Skikshi's cult is always at hand to press wayward souls into their service or to sacrifice them to their horrible god.

As Riverlands idols go, Skikshi (lawful evil) is minor. He may not be long for this world. His cult is surprisingly strong for his weakness, however. Most idols' cults follow them only out of terror and need, but Skikshi's devotees mix these motives with their genuine awe, respect, and even love, despite his skittering, droning form. Skikshi has hit upon a mechanism for real fellow-feeling among his worshippers, or maybe he simply is the mechanism given shape. He is the violence of the mob, the effervescent fury of a people converging on a single victim (guilty only of thirsting for the same water for which they all thirsted) and killing them. He is also the peace such spontaneous rites afterwards create in the mob, now a community. Once he was simply the mass of flies that spawned in the corpses of his soon-to-be-cult's victims, but he became imbued with the awe of their brutal miracle. Now he lurks in the woven shrines the cult has hung throughout the gorge, emerging only to receive their adoration and feast on their victims.

Please-Gods, Humming Skikshi's half-ooze chief warlock (as a cult fanatic), is a veteran of idols' skirmishes and he has some understanding of how these things are done. Skikshi is the first idol he's ever actually wanted to serve, so he eagerly promotes the swarm's glory. The first opportunity he gets, Please-Gods will bring Skikshi divine ivory to eat. The only trouble is figuring out a way to kill another idol decisively, without getting the attention of its cult first. He suspects, though, that he might be able to rile another cult up into a mob to kill their own idol for him.

Humming Skikshi's domains are anything to do with blood sacrifice, but also anything to do with abundance shared by an ordered and peaceful community. He never conjures fiendish visitants more powerful than a lemure, of which he usually has twelve. Use a swarm of wasps as his base statblock, adjusted to be a substrata god.

Uvak the Refiner

Thrown up on the banks of one of the great rivers of the Great Valley is a Venom Abyss deadfall, and in its collapsed canopy perches a massive harpy eagle god named Uvak the Refiner (neutral good). There, lit by the sun in the day and ever-burning sconces at night, he is surrounded by two choirs of harpies, one remorseful and the other joyous. Both choirs welcome petitioners and speak to Uvak on their behalf. After all, many petitioners fear the great eagle, despite coming to him for aid: he looks stern, with a hooked beak and fierce eyes, and it is said that he has ways to draw the truth from people. Nearly every visitor has some truth they wish not to speak, for the miracle he is best known for working is redemption. Those cast out from their clan for terrible deeds and those who cannot stand themselves for their cowardice or selfishness seek Uvak the Refiner for aid, in the hopes that he can burn the flaws out of them.

In truth, while Uvak's visage is forbidding, his heart is kind. Once he has determined that the penitent's intentions are true, and that they have not come simply so they can atonement without doing the work of changing, he speaks with them gently in his clear, carrying voice. He and his harpies help earnest penitents understand why they behave the way that they do, and he sets them work to practice the virtues they need to learn. Often this involves woodwork and carving, the products of which are traded with the surrounding clans for any needed thing. If, however, a petitioner is not truly penitent, or if they're penitent but also so disordered that they won't do the work needed to build their virtues, then Uvak intervenes differently. Some he persuades, appealing to their vanity or pride or loneliness, and slowly working them over to the cause of compassion and self-discipline. Some he terrifies, if he must, though this rarely has helpful results. Those he cannot redeem any other way, however, he remakes through force.

Uvak is, when faced with a severe enough villain, quite willing to use magic to compel them. The feathered bird-women attending him use their song to thwart their escape, and he uses his divine music to make them seek his favour and face the consequences of their actions. In truth, these measures are less distasteful to him than the eagle-god would like. He tells himself this is an important duty, that there are no lengths to which he must not go for the sake of redeeming a mortal of the Great Valley. He cannot let the most depraved who cross his path walk free the way they are; after all, in the end, if he cannot save them, he must destroy them.

Uvak the Refiner's domains are Life and anything else that has to do with healing and non-violence. Furthermore, he is a god of refining fire and presides over light and the work of crafters. The 2d8+9 harpies attending him are his retinue, not his visitants; for the latter, he typically creates eight glimmers, one chorister, two notars, and one glimmer. Use an incubus/succubus as his base statblock, adjusted to be a substrata god.³

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