I'm quite happy with my New Pantheon series of posts. I said earlier that unlike most D&D settings, but exactly like most actual pagan religious practices, people rarely worship simply one god; they appeal to whichever of the gods is applicable to the problem that they're making their appeal about. They may have a particular favorite or patron or one that they identify with, but you don't just belong to "the Church of Thor" or whatever.
It is also true that gods in the real world were not gods of XYZ. Thor was not a God of Thunder. He was just Thor. Or, in Norse sources where we hear about him, if you want to be pedantic, Þórr, cognate with Donar (Old High German), Þunor (Old English), Thuner (Old Frisian), Thunar (Old Saxon) and which comes from a Proto-Norse form *Þonarr (from *Þunaraz) and/or as *Þunurr (from *Þunuraz) from an even earlier Proto-Germanic *Þunuraz or *Þunraz (which should look familiar!) which may be related in some way to Celtic Taranis, from earlier Tanarus or Toneros, which would be really intriguing, because getting such early proto-Germanic and early Celtic names being so similar means some kind of close association. Not that anyone doubts that given the prominence of the Nordic Bronze Age society in Northern Europe and early Celtic may have been present in the Urnfield cultures of the late Bronze Age, of course they knew each other. Both names also are related, presumably to the even earlier proto-Indo-European *Perkʷunos, which may have been originally *Diwós Putlós, or simply son of Dyēus. That would be like calling Thor Odinson, which the literature does, in fact, often do.
While many of those words are words later used for thunder, it's not clear that proto-Thor was a god of "thunder" and it's dubious that anyone believed that Thor had a particular affinity for thunder, merely that he was such a powerful warrior in the sky that when he struck (his name probably comes from an old reflex that meant "The Striker". Or possibly the completely unrelated Lord of Oaks) that it sounded like thunder. Over time, when they heard thunder, they'd say something like "there's Thor up there fighting the Midgard Serpent in the sky again" or whatever and much later editors, scholars and people who like things to be neat, pat and organized decided that Thor was a god of Thunder. To the ancient pagan Vikings, Thor was just this cool god who ran around fighting monsters, championing the cause of humanity, and possibly inadvertently causing rain, which was good for farmers, needless to say.
Now, D&D has given specific advice in the past (I think this comes from a 3e Dragon Magazine article, but I'm sure I've heard it elsewhere too) that they want you to be neat and pat and organized, make sure that you have gods that cover every domain, and every alignment, etc. This is because their goals are not to make a realistic pantheon, but rather to make a gameable selection of gods for clerics characters to pick from. I don't find that to be particularly compelling world-building, so I prefer—if I'm going to make a pantheon of pagan fantasy gods for my fantasy setting—to make them more realistic rather than merely gameable.
Anyway, from either perspective, I suspect that my list of gods and goddesses and monsters was never meant to be seen as "complete" and even as I finished it, I felt like there were a few blaring holes, as well as equally glaring lumps. I have too many associated with oceans, seas and water generally, for instance, making that particular "role" quite lumpy.
So I'll be adding to it over time. They'll be out of alphabetical order if I do so, but I'll re-order them for the website when I migrate them over. Meanwhile, here's an image of a "swashbuckler of the gods", one that I'll probably be adding, in a dark and light version. The all white one looked weird and wasn't really what I asked for, but I find it also strangely compelling in some way. Other than the fact that his sword is absurdly short.
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