Polynesian Pantheon

### Known Aliases

The Akua, The Kahunas, Polynesian Deities, Hawaiian Deities, Māori Deities, Gods of Polynesia, Gods of Polynesian Peoples

### Identity

Public Identity
(Believed to be Mythical by Most Persons)

## Membership

### Current Members

Haumia, Hina, Hine-nui-te-pō, Kāne, Papatūānuku, Pele, Ranginui, Rehua, Rongo, Rūaumoko, Tamanuiterā, Tāne, Tangaroa, Tāwhirimātea, Tūmatauenga, Whiro...

## Cosmology: Hawaiki Kosmos

Mythical Polynesian cosmography includes the Heavens named Tekau Rangi, where the Atua lives; the Underworlds named Rarohenga, where many deceased souls live under the gods' governance; and over a thousand islands scattered over the central and southern Pacific Ocean, aka Polynesia.

### Hawaiki

The faraway island of Hawaiki (called by many similar names depending upon the culture) is the ancestral homeland of the Polynesians, both gods and mortals. Long ago, near the beginning of history, they left it and sailed in their canoes across the ocean, eventually finding and settling on the islands of Polynesia. It has since retreated into the mists of shared human memory, a shadowy shape somewhere far across the western sea where life was good and mortals walked alongside gods before leaving to make their fortune in the world.

Hawaiki is lost to mankind now that they have chosen the adventure of life in the world instead, but it still exists, hidden in the vast seas of an uncharted Terra Incognita. Anyone of divine heritage who travels by canoe into the Pacific Ocean (from any direction, although Scions of the Atua swear that to the west is always quicker) for a full day until there is no land nearby may see Hawaiki's fair shores appear in the distance.

Hawaiki is a pleasant paradise, although there is no technology or civilization here and any attempts to build such tend to break down and vanish back into nature within a few weeks. White-sanded beaches give way to large, rolling plains of waving green grasses, surrounding a tall, snow-capped mountain at the island's center, around which flows the single freshwater river Tohinga. A single moai, enormous and eternal at well over twelve meters tall, sits patiently at the top of the unnamed central mountain, allowing the Atua to travel back and forth between Hawaiki and Tekau Rangi at will. It is as pristine and deserted as any island that mankind never set foot on; its only inhabitants are animals and birds, closely resembling those that would have existed in the Polynesian islands thousands of years ago, before the interference of humanity drove them to adaptation or extinction.

There are no artifacts of Hawaiki's ancient inhabitants to be found here, but the Atua's Scions still clamor for the chance to visit it thanks to its unique connection to their divine parents, who long ago enchanted it to communicate the needs of their people to them while their populations still lived there. Anyone who speaks the name of one of the Atua while on or in the waters around Hawaiki immediately gains that deity's attention as if they had spoken in their presence, and anyone who formally prays to one of them or performed the appropriate rituals while here may even have their wish fulfilled, so as that act of devotion is empowered by the close connection of the island to the homes of the gods.

## Trivia and Notes

### Trivia

#### General

* The Atua smells of sea salt; accompanied by the calling of ocean birds and the rumbling of a volcano from far away.

### Notes

* "Atua" means "power, strength" or "god".