Oh, this reminds me. While we’re on the topic of food and war and the random intersections of same. Anyone want a random bit of historical trivia?
The Livery Companies of London. The guilds, essentially. They all have mottos, right? You can see a list of them here on Wikipedia, and they’re all fascinating. Have a browse, it’s well worth it. But.
For some reason, and I deeply want to know what that reason is, because I’m sure it’s going to turn out to be very prosaic, but anyway …
The motto of the Worshipful Company of Cooks? Vulnerati non Victi. Wounded not conquered.
I would deeply love to know what historical event or wishful aspirations led to that combination of profession and motto. Heh.
Also, completely different bit of trivia, but Catholic saints and their collection of odd jobs? Various saints have become patrons of very odd professions, in several cases basically by word association?
My favourite is Saint Barbara, who is the patron saint of, among other things, artillery men, military engineers, miners, and anyone else who works with explosives. Why? Because when her father had her tortured for her faith and then executed her personally, on his way home from doing so, he was struck by lightning.
Basically Barbara hit the afterlife and immediately lobbed a lightning bolt back across. So people who much later down the line started working with things that go boom essentially went … you know what that lady would’ve liked? I bet she’d have loved this. Maybe she’ll look after me while I work with it.
Your gods can pick up jobs as they go. Not even always by choice, maybe they get landed with domains because, well, they’re close enough! Somebody’s gotta do it! Or there was just one incident, one historical incident, one thing they did, and they’re essentially never getting to live it down? Or maybe they adopted something because hey, actually they do appreciate it!
Maybe your god of war, one seeing his starving armies during a siege, got down and dirty and started working the ovens for a bit. Turned his miracles to bread for a night.
Or maybe there was an ambush from the rear, and the supply lines and camp were overrun, and the cooks fought an absolutely stunning holding action while the rest of the army got itself turned around, damn near dying in the process, and the war god immediately adopted them, these people are my people, did you see that, bread is my new holy symbol, nobody talk to me for a minute.
Life is messy. Sometimes shit happens, and suddenly a god has a whole new domain because of one thing that happened. Or they did a thing two thousand years ago, and then a new technology happened, and even though the mechanics had nothing to do with them, the ethos really fit, and people started praying to them about it, and they said why not? Sure I’ll take your boom cannons. I’m mostly the god of math, but I can get behind the odd explosion as well.
Some gods are very clear and very distinct, they do one job, they like what they like.
Other gods get handed whatever jobs are going because, well, somebody needs to do ‘em, and hey, looks like you’re up!
And some gods are like magpies and acquire bits of whatever shiny thing passes in their vague vicinity.
Glue a bit of everything together in your mythology, shake it vigorously for a couple of centuries, and see what bits of glue actually hold, I guess?
