It's been a long time since a goblin rogue, a merfolk cleric, a human knight and a dragonblood sorcerer first met, saved the small town of Stoneforge from a band of maurauding goblins, and learned that on Zendikar, everything is always out to kill you. I've been running the Pathfinders of Zendikar campaign for one and a half years now, and as it draws to a close, I find myself thinking of all the unexpected stuff has happened. Where once the continent of Tazeem was an untamed wilderness with only brief descriptions of notable places, a few characters from the card, and just three mentioned gods, it now has a fully fleshed out fortified town, three cities, and many interesting people and places.
At first I was very hesitant to add things to Zendikar that were not estabished lore. But in the case of gods, I had to, as the Pathfinder mechanics for clerics require their existance, and for them to each be tied to various domains and alignments. Needing a lawful neutral god, I created the death god Vaasgoth, and built his identity in a way that facilitated playing a vampire from the non-evil Clan Kalastria. Vampires on Zendikar imitate many aspects of undeath without actually being undead, and can survive perfectly well on the blood of animals, allowing them to choose not to hunt down humans and the other races for nourishment (though many of them do anyway). It was not really necessary, as we later discovered that playing as a vampire is hard on your allies, as your connection to the negative energy of death makes it difficult for healers to heal you. At any rate, Vaasgoth existed as a story hook. He was intended to be misremembered tales about the planeswalker Sorin Markov, and thus, not actually exist. A minor role if there ever was one.
It might seem strange to have a non-evil god of death, but Pathfinder had already gone down this route with their own death goddess. Pharasma is true neutral, sends the spirits of the dead off to their eternal reward (or punishment) without bias, and is adamant that dead things should remain dead, viewing undeath as a perversion of the natural order. Her followers hunt down the undead even more fanatically than paladins do. Vaasgoth is similar, but shifted towards the legalistic side, with a focus on enforcing the laws of mortality, and requiring those who walk close to death (like vampires) to act nobly, lawfully and ethically, lest they find this privilege taken away from them.
Vaasgoth ended up being not only the patron of Clan Kalastria, but also of the near-extinct Clan Sorn, a house I created on the spur of the moment to save a player character from death, now a house reborn after the marriage of Dragor Sorn to Tyri Kalastria. Vaasgoth then branched out into other races, being linked to the death-revering (but ultimately useful) Mul Daya elves led by the shaman Mira Sarith. And of course, hovering quietly in the background the whole time was Stoneforge's resident mistrusted ogre, Victor Creed, who turned out to be a rather pleasant and knowledgeable High Inquisitor of Vaasgoth, and eventually granted my players a boon that makes it harder for them to die. (Because I'm so good at killing players I need to give them extra resilience to stop it happening so much.)
And so, like the gods of Terry Prachett's Discworld, Vaasgoth exists because people believe in him. It was a thing that just happened because it needed to, but it turns out, it does have precedence in Magic, as the gods of Theros were revealed to work this way, and there are some hints that Amonkhet operates similarly. It also, usefully, gives me reason to divorce the only lore-mentioned gods - the merfolk deities Emeria, Ula and Cosi - from their origins as warped memories of the Eldazi Titans. They were based on them at first, but now they exist separately.
Vaasgoth's presence has spread rapidly due to in-game events, such as House Sorn and Creed uniting to build a temple in Stoneforge. The town, now heavily fortified after multiple attacks by giants and dragons, already had one to Emeria - meaning that it now has temples to two different lawful gods, an interesting development. One that will probably come up if people visit Stoneforge in my sequel campaign.
There is something to be said for having all of the mythology in place from the beginning. On the other hand, I think it is nice that my players have had a significant effect on the world in a way not directly related to killing a bunch of bad guys. House Sorn would still be a minor footnote in history without their actions, and Creed would not have had to reveal his true nature, making people look at ogres in a new light. The temple to Vaasgoth exists because of them, and their infuence spreads way beyond even this. Should they survive the final battle, they may very well show up as powerful allies (or even enemies) in future campaigns.
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