Religion plays an important part in Layonara’s societies. Across the world of Layonara, races pay homage to many deities with different rituals and customs. The deities mentioned here are the most widely known and influential. The world is filled with shrines to these deities, the number of temples if far less because of the cost and effort required for temples. The deities are divided into pantheons along racial lines. The race with which the religion originated or where it has the deepest support is indicated by its pantheon. However, this is an artificial division. It is possible for an individual to worship a deity from a different race’s pantheon and in some cases to actually be clergy of that deity. There are a few deities with a small amount of power, relatively unknown deities, that only grant limited spells or spells of limited power; these will have to be found in the game through roleplaying. There will be times when you may encounter individuals who follow deities that are not included in these pages.

Each deity has a set of mantras which define their core values, their personality, thoughts, desires, and actions. Mantras are paired, so if one adheres to a particular mantra, one will be opposed to the other, for example, chaotic and ordered. There are 18 mantra pairs.

One thing to keep in mind regarding these mantras and how they relate to a deity or character is how certain mantras would work in conjunction with others. For example, if you are cruel and selfish, then you would be sadistic. However, if you are cruel and selfless, then you would be masochistic. If you are ordered and active, then you would be the type of person to try to regulate others. However, if you are ordered and passive, you would be the kind of person to allow authority figures to regulate you. Chaos and active would be rebellious whereas chaos and passive would be flighty.

Note:
This system can be roughly conceptualized as an advancement upon the idea of alignment. Like alignment, mantras are intended as indicators of character (or deity) personalities and thus guides for role-playing a character in meaningful ways. Mantras, however, enable us to integrate such considerations into our game systems far more effectively than alignment. Thus, mantras go far beyond abstract representations of characters' (or deity's) outlook and ethics, or lack thereof.

The mantra system was conceived with the upcoming Layonara MMO in mind. It is not applicable for NWN, although it gives players insight into the core mantras of each deity.