Attempt at the ICE Challenge - Inspiration needed!

[torstan]

Okay. Let's play with the ice temple idea a bit. Any thoughts on good features of an ice temple? Crevasses are a must. I'll also go for great icicles and ice pillars. An ice waterfall might make an appearance.

I'm starting to think about this as being a shrine at the end of an almost impossible hike through treacherous lands. So it is less a temple and more of a holy place.

What other icy fun can people think of? Also, how would a god of the bitter cold wish to be worshipped? A simple altar seems a bit bland and benign for such a being.

[Gamerprinter]

What other icy fun can people think of? Also, how would a god of the bitter cold wish to be worshipped? A simple altar seems a bit bland and benign for such a being.

Hey Torstan, how about a "crypt area" with corpses of holy men that are frozen in solid ice and viewable through the walls - the corpses could be standing or laying down as appropriate. Guardians could also be frozen in the walls near the entrance and would be magically thawed and reanimated to defend the holy site.

You could also create a the effect of a stained-glass image (in blues and whites) as sunlight pierces through the ice from above - I'd even place transparent shafts of light causing kaliedoscope effect on the floor coming from the direction of the sunlight.

Ice sculptures could serve as statuary - and if its an evil temple, frozen victims could serve as statuary...

Perhaps a cold fog could exist in a crevasse and seep out into the altar chamber, though that might obfuscate the floor too much.

If the Ice Temple was beneath a glacier accessable via a crevasse the entry tunnel to the altar could be misaligned along a "fault" or large crack in the ice since glaciers still move...

Thoughts?

GP

[Ascension]

I always think of ice gods as being stern, severe, and harsh thus demanding of worship that's more deed or performance based rather than outright fawning, bootlicking, or sacrifice based (as in animal or human sacrifice). I could see some value being placed upon gems and jewels, diamonds and sapphires rather than rubies and emeralds. Steel might be acceptable since it can be used to shape the ice and silver for its color. Of course wolves and bears would be totems or maybe go obscure and use walrus tusks and whale bones. It would almost have to be on a mountain to let the winds howl through and snow drifts to pile up...like an outdoor shrine with statues around some sort of courtyard with a raised dais at one end with an altar/throne on it or something like that (climb the mountain then climb some steps as symbology for climbing the mountain). Maybe have the dais on a cliffside so that the god could survey the world from atop his perch. I could ramble on with this some more but I just thought I'd pop out some brainstorming. Hope it helps ya some

[torstan]

Excellent thoughts there. I think the beings frozen in ice is a must. The light is going to be a very important factor in this as it will show the ice for what it is. Frozen blood should surround any sacrificial area. I like the idea of the howling winds as well - so possibly a shrine inside a mountain top glacier.

Frozen statuary sounds good too, and drifting mist and snow...

The more I think about this, the more I see that my standard approach of a black ink line followed by colour isn't going to work so well. An ice temple is going to look weird with strong black outlines. Perhaps I need to take a shot at a more painterly approach. Definitely something to investigate.

The concept of stained glass patterns from light thrown through a curtain of ice is lovely too. Well, this promises to be a challenge. Now if anyone has an ice temple coming up in their adventure, you can always slip in some requirements here and you might just get an ice temple to fit your needs!

Right, off to play with some sketches now in between figuring out dark matter annihilation in proto-halos.....

[Gamerprinter]

Perhaps start with a blue-ish gray background and draw with white lines instead of black, and work in your normal style that way...

GP

[Midgardsormr]

What if you put a large frozen creature under the floor, which is polished to a high degree of translucency? Ooh! And it's mortally wounded, but the god froze it there instantly to save its life and now it slumbers, awaiting some hero (or villain) to revive and heal it.

[TheElf]

Also, how would a god of the bitter cold wish to be worshipped? A simple altar seems a bit bland and benign for such a being.

I don't know the world / pantheon you have to base your ideas on, but there are plenty of ways a deity could end up representing cold / ice. For the rest of the ideas I assume we have complette freedom. Some of them are feared by people who don't like Ice... But as soon as you see creatures that favor cold and ice, you can see a different kind of deity.

Imagine a group of elves, who somehow lived on a plane of ice, and soon they had their own mythos, that could have a benign and good ice god. If they would find a permanent portal to a treacherous glacier in the material plane, how their temple would look like?

Lets go to something more specific. If they became natives to planes of ice, once this god/godess saved them in a war when their lands were scorched, and with the dinive help they adapted to the icy conditions.

So the locals now see them as strange icy elves, mostly warriors, who don't speak their language, and some conflicts with locals are possible (when locals started it). Yet the elves helped other locals.

How would these elves know their protector deity?
What would the locals think?