I would expect to encounter something strange and unique about the way a fantasy civilization would analyze the world and form its mythologies and beliefs . . . a new culture in a new world should be able to have its own connections. Sure, there will be combinations that are completely ridiculous, but I like it when something ridiculous happens in Dwarf Fortress, and I would rather put up a few mind boggling wtfs than limit DF's mythology system to something bland and predictable.
Agreed, for the most part. I'm a big fan of "random" WTF, but have a low tolerance for "stupid" WTF. But in future, when the embark window will give the particulars of the pantheon of each of the available civilizations, we will have forewarning of contradictory gods, and simply choose another civ.
I still think we should acknowledge that a lot of our mental connections are completely arbitrary . . . it comes down to whether you believe that the connections we make in western culture are absolute, or if a fantasy culture would develop new ones that seem strange and random to us.
Male vs. Female is anything but arbitrary, nor is Day/Night, Left/Right, Life/Death, Chaos/Order, Truth/Lies, Music/Silence, etc. I feel justified in saying that
any culture would make these associations, and acknowledge the fundamental conflict (and cooperation, in the case of true yin/yang pairs) inherent in each one.
There are also pairs that simply don't make sense for reasons
other than direct opposition. Sun/Caverns for instance, or Mountain/Ocean. Where do they meet? Would gods of such disparate domains be effectively
halved in power, due to only being able to access the spheres that match their current location?
A lot of Earth's mythology is, and by extension so should DF's be, poetic or allegorical in nature. So if, say there's a god of Fire and Water, there is meaning within that. The Fire-Water god might represent the power that can come through balance . . .
All right, say there's a single Fire-Water god. Will the Earth and Sky gods have to team up, or even
merge in order to
compete with balance this deity's power?
Not that I feel that the gods all
need to be balanced. If a pantheon includes deities with dominion over, say,
A) Fortresses and war,
B) Agriculture and trees,
C) Wealth and trade,
D) Fire and volcanoes,
E) Craft and thralldom, &
F) Misery and deformity,
it's pretty clear which god drew the short straw, and there's not necessarily anything wrong with that. There could be dozens of shrines to this god all over the sector of your fort devoted to giving your amputee veterans another shot at
very slowly getting their revenge on the goblins that took their limbs.
The god could represent inner struggle, adaptability, invention, power of nature, etc, rather than Fire and Water specifically.
Then the god's domain should include those spheres specifically, and not mess around with ANY of the "fundamental building blocks" of the universe.
There's also the question of whether or not gods are "real" in DF. If . . . the ancient dwarven ancestors beheld the world about them and concluded that there must be a persona that encompasses these powers, or is there actually a divine entity that has the power to ignite you with his right hand and drown you with his left. If gods are real, then heck, why would any combination be impossible?
That's a good question. It would seem likely that the gods depend upon their followers for existence, because AFAIK gods vanish when their civilization goes extinct. But there's ONE god who predates even the time before time, the god of beards, alcohol, anvils . . . and blood. It is Armok who determines the logical order (or lack thereof) of each pantheon.
I cannot see why a god of pregnancy would have to end up being female, the matter is basically 50/50 I think. Is your god a god of pregnancy because she gets pregnant herself or is he the impregnator, the god that makes it's followers pregnant; a phallic deity basically. As women do not get pregnant all on their own and it takes both genders to create a pregnancy, a male god of pregnancy makes as much sense as a female one.
Nitpicking time: It takes both genders to create a
conception, but once that's been done, the pregnancy itself is 100% female. Now, male
fertility gods are perfectly OK, there's certainly been more than enough precedent on that count, whether we're talking about the fertility of people, or animals, or the land itself. But as soon as you throw the word "pregnancy" in there, that immediately throws the needle over to female (or hermaphroditic at best). Portray a male god as being pregnant if you wish, but without a vagina that's going to get real awkward real quick. (And the god would want to be called "Loretta".)