Part 16 - ReligionWith so many new migrants, several of them are idle. I simply do not have the repetitive tasks like farmplots or mining/crafting to sustain such a workforce, so I split them up into military, mason crews and priests. (I enabled praying labor, nothing more)
Humans can build altars, and consecrate them to their gods. The worker will determine who that will be, so if you send an ardent worshipper of Tob, it will be Tobs altar. If the worker has no gods? It wont work.
I build a line of ~10 altars on the beachfront. I think wet sand and peat will be perfect for Tob, God of Muck. But when the option arose, I also consecrated altars to the other gods, so we do get a wild mix of rewards from them. Hopefully. If we pray enough. Now, all out atheistic friends out there ask themselves: But how do you pray? What do you do at an altar?
You can harvest souls of corpses. Wow, that came out worse than I imagined. Lets phrase it that way: If you have a lot of clutter on your map from dead goblins, kobolds and the like, bring them near the altar and free their souls, give them over to the loving caress of muck. Ehm, god. It will transform their bodies and leaves only souls. These wither away after time, so even if you dont want to use them for anything, its still great for cleanup on isle god.
You can use the souls for blessings which affect the entire fort for a month, or trade them away to succubi or warlocks, or give them to the elves, which use them for treesinging. Anyway, I digress. You can of course pray at the altar, or leave an offering of items. Offerings will increase your merit faster than praying, but of course they cost you items. Praying is for free. If you have some dedicated priests praying at the altars full time you should be fine.
Once you have some merit, the gods will work in their mysterious ways. Now... no one really knows what exactly they do. And even if they do something, there might be no feedback that it was actually gods way. When they smack down an invader with their might, yes, you will noticed. But most of the godlike interventions are subtle. Who really knows what a God of Muck will do?
Lets find out.
Hail Tob.