Dead Gods Waiting to be Reborn: Ruined Shrines and the Syncretist Cleric in AD&D

The AD&D wilderness inhabitation tables have infected my mind. They have wormed their way in, forcing me to make sandboxes I may never use. Now that they've burrowed deep beneath the surface, living (rent free!) in my brain, so too have I begun to dig beneath the surface. I'm increasingly interested in analyzing and rationalizing the implications of these tables, picking apart the little oddities that likely exist only because Gary Gygax simply wasn't thinking that much about it.

But I am thinking a lot about it. And what if Gygax was, too? What if every idiosyncrasy in Appendix B actually has some implicit logic to it that the Dungeon Master is meant to intuit? Surely this was the intention of Gygax, who famously never over-explained anything in lengthy prose in any of his writings.

(At this point, this might as well be an AD&D Appendix B blog. If this sort of thing is not interesting to you, I promise to write about other stuff eventually.)

All this is to say that I've been thinking about ruins. Specifically, ruined shrines. Allow me to share, once again, that table which has been the source of so much of my consternation as of late:

2-in-100 (or 1-in-50) hexes contain a ruin (not including deserted castles, which I interpret as ruins). That's a ruin every 50 miles if you're using the suggested scale of 1-mile hexes (as I've explained before, I use a 6-mile hex because I like things to be more spread out - it makes getting around more challenging by slowing the pace of travel between locations, makes the movement rate math a little easier, and gives the locations more room to breathe). Of those 1-in-50 ruins, 25% are shrines - that's one ruined shrine per 200 hexes.

What's stranger still is that while there are ruined villages and cities as well as non-ruined villages and cities, there are no non-ruined shrines (nor are there non-ruined tombs or ruined dwellings, thorps, hamlets, or towns, but those are topics for another time). So, what happened? Why is every shrine a ruin?

The short answer is that every shrine is not a ruin - there are probably intact shrines in many settlements and within clerics' strongholds - but that every shrine found in the wilderness is ruined. For whatever reason, every religious group that sets out to establish a place of worship beyond the realm of "civilization" or outside the protection of castle walls is doomed to destruction. An AD&D sandbox is littered with monuments to dead gods.

Who is building these shrines? Clerics, probably. From the PHB:

This section goes on to clarify that clerics can begin constructing a proper religious stronghold at 9th-level, which must be dedicated to the cleric's deity (or deities! put a pin in that for later), at which point they can clear the surrounding territory and begin collecting revenue from trade, taxation, and tithes:

Therefore, the purpose of the "place of worship" (which includes a shrine) is for slightly lower-level clerics to begin attracting followers and men-at-arms in preparation for eventually building a stronghold.

That's not the only reason to construct a shrine. From the DMG:

Here, we see that a shrine is necessary for a cleric to research and create new spells. This doesn't quite square with my understanding of clerics. Is it within a cleric's power to create new spells? Is it not the deity who should be "creating" spells and bestowing them upon their faithful vessels? I'll come back to this.

There is one more mention of shrines in the DMG outside of the Appendices, in the section on turning undead, which may not be particularly relevant to this post but is worth mentioning as it pertains to the inherent power of the shrine - and why a(n Evil) cleric might want to construct one:

(Note that the excerpt from the PHB describes a place of worship not less than 2,000 square feet in floor space, which includes a shrine, whereas this excerpt from the PHB describes a shrine as being an area roughly 10" by 10", which is 100' by 100' in a dungeon and 300' by 300' outdoors.)

In summary, shrines are sources of power for clerics which are located within somewhat lesser versions of the strongholds they will eventually build. A shrine allows the cleric to research and "create" new spells, and bolsters the undead minions of Evil clerics against other clerics' attempts to turn them. A shrine is presumably built out into a place of worship to then attract followers, then eventually developed into a stronghold to control the surrounding lands and collect revenue. 

I think it is likely that the ruined "shrines" of AD&D's wilderness were in fact originally constructed as that middle classification - places of worship which once attracted followers and which house the shrine necessary for the research and "creation" of spells. Ruined castles are already accounted for in the inhabitation table and castle sub-tables, so we can rule that out as a possibility. I also imagine that "ruins" are intended to represent proper dungeons, which are otherwise unaccounted for in the inhabitation table. I do not feel that the 10" by 10" shrine described above fits that particular gameplay need, so I am ruling out that possibility as well.

Presupposing that the ruined "shrines" on the inhabitation table were in actuality once these places of worship lends them additional significance. The place of worship, after all, contains not just a shrine but also perhaps an altar and a chapel.

From the DMG's section on the manufacture of scrolls:

And the section on fabrication of other magic items:

Both the creation of scrolls and magic items is limited by the level of the character to varying degrees which I won't get into here. The point is that an 8th-level cleric would be capable of creating scrolls and magic items of some level of power, and that this is another reason why these ruined "shrines"/places of worship might exist.

5th-level clerics can also create holy water, which requires the use of a specially created basin:

We might presume that such a basin would also be housed in a place of worship, and thus, most likely would be present in our ruined "shrines".

Now that I've justified the existence of these ruins in the setting, let's talk implications.

Much like the deserted castles generated by the inhabitation table (both those totally deserted and those now home to monsters), these ruins present an opportunity for player character clerics. They are dungeons, yes, filled with monsters, tricks, traps, puzzles, and treasure like any other, but they aren't just another dungeon to be crawled and plundered.

If they can be secured against their dangers, these ruins can also be claimed and restored, likely for a fraction of the price of constructing them from scratch. They contain shrines, altars, basins, and maybe other features which are now dormant but which have the potential to be greatly useful to the cleric PC.

Only, these places of worship are (probably) not dedicated to the cleric's deity. You could have a monotheistic setting, sure, and even if you don't, likely some fraction of these ruins will be associated with the cleric's deity, but many more will not. The original inhabitants and their deity may have been Lawful, Chaotic, Good, or Evil, and that will inform the ruin's features and its utility to the cleric. A ruin once dedicated to the cleric's deity may need to be reclaimed. That of a rival deity may need to be consecrated (with some effort, as any undead present will be resistant to turning) or defiled (being Evil is fun too).

More interesting are those in the middle. The cleric could reclaim an allied deity's place of worship on behalf of the still-active church (a nice faction for your sandbox) and build bridges between faiths. The ruin could also be unfathomably ancient - that of a dead god waiting to be reawakened through piety. 

My last post described a cleric with a prayer book akin to the spellbook of a magic-user, a syncretist who incorporates the beliefs and rituals of adjacent faiths into their own practice, allowing them to engage in a precarious balancing act in which they are granted powers by multiple deities at once - but must simultaneously serve and please all of their patrons in order to continue to use and accumulate their divine magic.

The ruined places of worship in AD&D provide the cleric with another avenue by which to obtain such magic. I return once again to the power of shrines, and that bit about a shrine being needed to "create" new cleric spells. Within this framework, the shrine is necessary not to create but to discover new spells. The shrine is imbued with the deity's dormant power, and the library (assuming this is required of clerics and not just magic-users) are the dusty religious tomes, crumbling scrolls, and cracked tablets found within the ruin. 

The cleric can acquire new spells by forging relationships with living religions, learning their practices, and serving their cause, but they can also do so by restoring these sites of ancient worship, bringing dead gods back into the world. I think that's pretty neat!

Was this Gygax's intention? Probably not. He probably wasn't thinking that much about it. But, just because he wasn't, doesn't mean I can't! The AD&D DMG is loaded with detail. In the details there are plenty of answers for curious or confused DMs, but there are also questions. The tables in the appendices imply a setting, but not a clearly defined one. There is a lot of fun to be had in interpreting the vagaries into something more cohesive!