![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
A quick Sunday idea
Jul. 24th, 2023 09:46 pmI'm reading Eckhart Frahm's Assyria - The Rise and Fall of the World's First Empire. It's a little farther back and further east than my usual realm of studies, but the Assyrians, in all their periods, were such a massive influence on cultures in every direction that I thought it worth my time to read at least a good survey of the topic. Plus, I got it for my birthday.
It's fascinating to see how power ebbed and flowed over the centuries, how different kings handled things, and how their neighbors dealt with a neighbor alternately on the ropes and overthrowing their rulers.
But one thing that struck me as a worldbuilder and game master was the practice of godnapping. Invading temples and stealing the sacred statues of the gods (and presumably all those lovely offerings) and bringing them back to Ashur or Nineveh or wherever the current capital was. As these statues were assumed to have divine properties equal to the Hebrew Holy of Holies in the Tabernacle of the Temple in Jerusalem, the taking of those icons could be devastating to the morale of a city.
To put this in context for a fantasy setting, just as the Hebrews saw the sanctity of the Tabernacle as vital to their relationship with YHWH, so would these Mesopotamian/Anatolian cities see their idols. It could be that these statues were the method through which the deities communicated with their priests and allowed their power to flow. Most fantasy systems have some check on the power of the gods in the material world to stop it from being a constant war in which humanity gets crushed like ants, after all.
So stealing the idol of Ishtar from the temple in Babylon could deny the goddess's benefits to the Babylonians, but might even give the Godnappers a chance to "adopt" the goddess into their pantheon! Bringing a consecrated statue and its accouterments back to your city, building a temple or sub-temple, or an extension to the temple of the same/similar deity of the same general portfolio, might draw the divine energy away from the original worshippers to your empire.
Bronze Age strategic bombing!
The adventure possibilities here should be clear. Stealing or recovering these statues or at least "decommissioning" them before they can be installed in an enemy temple. Of course, most of these statues were 4 or 5 meters tall and weighed several tons...
As we say, further events are left up to the Game Master.
It's fascinating to see how power ebbed and flowed over the centuries, how different kings handled things, and how their neighbors dealt with a neighbor alternately on the ropes and overthrowing their rulers.
But one thing that struck me as a worldbuilder and game master was the practice of godnapping. Invading temples and stealing the sacred statues of the gods (and presumably all those lovely offerings) and bringing them back to Ashur or Nineveh or wherever the current capital was. As these statues were assumed to have divine properties equal to the Hebrew Holy of Holies in the Tabernacle of the Temple in Jerusalem, the taking of those icons could be devastating to the morale of a city.
To put this in context for a fantasy setting, just as the Hebrews saw the sanctity of the Tabernacle as vital to their relationship with YHWH, so would these Mesopotamian/Anatolian cities see their idols. It could be that these statues were the method through which the deities communicated with their priests and allowed their power to flow. Most fantasy systems have some check on the power of the gods in the material world to stop it from being a constant war in which humanity gets crushed like ants, after all.
So stealing the idol of Ishtar from the temple in Babylon could deny the goddess's benefits to the Babylonians, but might even give the Godnappers a chance to "adopt" the goddess into their pantheon! Bringing a consecrated statue and its accouterments back to your city, building a temple or sub-temple, or an extension to the temple of the same/similar deity of the same general portfolio, might draw the divine energy away from the original worshippers to your empire.
Bronze Age strategic bombing!
The adventure possibilities here should be clear. Stealing or recovering these statues or at least "decommissioning" them before they can be installed in an enemy temple. Of course, most of these statues were 4 or 5 meters tall and weighed several tons...
As we say, further events are left up to the Game Master.