Oghma

Oghma is an Intermediate Deity of knowledge. He serves in allegiance to the Father, Dagda, in the Pagan pantheon. Known within Faerûn as an interloper god from another plane and world, ancient texts suggest he may have arrived from the world that Elysia exists within. Also known as The Lord of Knowledge, is the Patron of Bards, inspiration, invention, and knowledge. Oghma is the leader of the Deities of Knowledge and Invention.

Depiction
Oghma is often depicted with chains connecting his tongue to the ears of his followers - who are slaves to his eloquence. Seen as a stout man woth the cloak of a lion, whose mane and head sits upon his own, with stone and chisel in hand.

Worshippers
Those who worshiped Oghma included artists, bards, cartographers, inventors, loremasters, sages, scholars, scribes and wizards—archivists, a generalist cleric prestige class, might pray to him as well. They could be of any alignment, unlike most neutral gods. They often wore Oghma's symbol, a silver scroll on a chain, as a necklace

Description
Oghma is a cheerful and wise power whose ability to persuade others to his point of view he puts to endless use. He can be solemn and righteous, but he is more often quietly humorous and quick to smile. His one flaw may be his fondness for his own thoughts; he tends to implement rather convoluted plots that he has worked out first in his own mind rather than to take direct action.

Oghma's followers are those who seek knowledge and wish to spread it to the corners of Elysia. His worshipers typically include bards, wizards, seekers of knowledge, librarians, scribes, inventors, and cartographers.

Clergy & Culture
The clergy of Oghma all carry secondary jobs outside their religious duties. While in many smaller cities and towns these priests also take on the jobs of teachers, librarians, and scribes. In most communities the temple is a place of learning as well. Priests of Oghma refer to themselves as "Loremasters."

Priests of Oghma have traditionally been of two sorts: those who remain within the temples, monasteries, and abbeys, spending their lives in analysis, reading gathered tomes, and copying out texts and spells as requested and those who go out into the world to find the writings that fill the abbey libraries. There have always been conflicts between the overly fussy pedants among the cloistered and those who chafe under the petty rules and infighting they encounter within abbey walls and prefer to face the real world as one of the wayfaring. Most abbeys of Oghma support themselves by selling maps, scribework, and spell scrolls.

Wayfaring clergy are frequently sent armed with spell scrolls to trade and coin to purchase learned works and scrolls with, or make money by teaching, selling their own maps, writing poems, letters, songs, and lyrics for various patrons, and answering specific questions about the land from their accumulated store of knowledge. Their map copies are always of real maps. A member of Oghma's clergy may sell a map that she or he knows to err in some respects but to be the best available, but can never knowingly sell a false map or a copy of it.

An Oghmanyte is expected to publish at least one book and cause it to be delivered to at least three temples of the Wise God. Such books may be some sort of small chapbook, such as a collection of song lyrics overheard from observation of performing minstrels, or they may even be romantic fiction, so long as such works realistically portray an existing society or place in the Realms and so impart some true knowledge to the reader.

Priests of Oghma are paid to give advice and draw up contracts, and they may even work directly for rich merchants, giving advice and judging the reactions of opponents of their patron during tough negotiating sessions.

Earning & Losing Piety
You increase your piety score to Oghma when you expand the god’s influence in the world in a concrete way through acts such as these:


 * Seeking out scrolls and treasures of the ancients.
 * Learning and imparting of knowledge.
 * Maintaining records of history in tomes, songs or sonnet.
 * Drawing out maps of locations.
 * Aiding agreements with the production of binding contracts.

Your piety score to Oghma decreases if you diminish his influence in the world, contradict his ideals, or threaten the integrity of destiny through acts such as these:


 * Witholding knowledge and history from those who seek it, unless their intentions are malevolent.
 * Causing destruction or harm to ancient lands and structures.
 * Preaching falsehoods to protect the truth.
 * Manipulating creatures with false knowledge.