Inspired by the movie version of Children of the Corn, which is alright... preferred In The Tall Grass as far as Stephen King adaptions set in fields of tall plants go... and also inspired by conversation with theisticgilthoniel on the GLOG discord:
1. The Lord of Drewfurk: A mummified corpse with limbs that branch like a tree's, interred in a shrine atop a mound surrounded by a moat in which multi-tailed lampreys swim. The corpse's many fingers and toes are tied with knots of cord, the patterns of which are cross-referenced with reams of scrolls to interpret the god's will. The primary directives of the Lord of Drewfurk involve rites of husbandry, of animals and men, producing mooncalves and other such prodigies. If the god is pleased with these spawn the ground will shake and treasures shall be revealed. If the god is displeased the ground will shake and structures shall collapse and people shall be maimed.
2. Numinous Offosa: A scintillant waterfall which springs from the rocks of a bluff. Birds fly into Offosa and are never seen again, though from time to time a reed basket carrying a teratoma floats out of the mist at its base, and these are swaddled and cared for as infants until they rot. No one in the area dares to eat fowl, and hunters surrender their catches of such to Offosa. So long as the waterfall is well-fed, it flows clean and plentiful. In times of crisis a sacrifice is dressed in a feathered costume and given to Offosa, and a little while after this a person in the prime of life and bearing some supernatural gift sails downstream in a reed boat.
3. Master Bhelstey: A flower-headed man, blind and deaf and mute, who must be led about by a young boy. This boy is meant to speak for Master Bhelstey (though it's an acceptable breach of duty for him to sneak in some of his own whims from time to time), and is the only one permitted to bleed Master Bhelstey for his sap, which brings verdant growth wherever it falls (anyone else who tries meets a terrible fate). One day, soon after beginning pubescence, this boy will become the next Master Bhelstey, and his interpreter will be chosen via tearing the petals from the husk of the old Master Bhelstey.
4. Our Lady Samaritana: A giant shed snakeskin kept in a temple in the family complex of the village headsman. Those who crawl through the length of Lady Samaritana will be reborn - their wounds smoothed over, their illnesses eased, their age sitting lighter upon them. They will also be that much more serpentine, commensurate to what was restored to them. Village elders wear long hooded robes so that outsiders are not alarmed by their appearance. When one has passed through Lady Samaritana enough times, they are fully transformed into snakes, and then milked of venom and decapitated. The blood and poison from this is then mixed with wine and shared about in a crystal bowl. Those who have served the village are believed to gain prosperity from the drink, while those who have betrayed the village will writhe and die in agony on the spot.
5. Sir Plowshare: A sword with a ten-feet-long blade, so rusty that not a speck of clean metal can be seen through it, the grip long since rotten away. The sword is paraded between households each new year in a joyful drunken festival. Those whose eyes and hands are anointed with rust from Sir Plowshare are not capable of violence, nor of suffering from witnessing or having participated in violence - this includes everyone permitted to reside in the village. When the village needs to be forcefully defended, a volunteer breaks their teeth upon Sir Plowshare and howling wields it against all foes, and afterwards they are cast out into the surrounding woods to survive off scraps and forage.
6. White-Lightning-Black-Thunder: An enormous dog of wrinkly aspect, buried up to its neck in a mountainside. The dog is worshiped by a clan of charcoal-burners, bandits, trappers, and hermits, who dance around it while fluting and tossing garlands of wildflowers over its ears. If one sneaks up on White-Lightning-Black-Thunder and plucks a hair from it, they will be able to curse anyone who then hears the god's howling (which can be heard anywhere on the mountain). This is easier said than done, and the god can tear an armoured man apart as a man tears apart a roasted chicken wrapped in tinfoil.
7. Grandmother Vine: A sprawling, kudzu-like growth. Those who consume the seeds of Grandmother Vine become progressively more imperceptible to those who have not while within her expanse, and increasingly less able to go without her seeds without suffering dreadful pangs. Those who've consumed many of her seeds over a long period ("deep in the green" as they're called) speak of a paradise invisible to all save those who've been most blessed by Grandmother Vine. No matter how she spreads, there are never enough seeds growing on the god to sate everyone.
8. The Mistress of Moo-Moon Manor: A horned woman who resides in a floating palace on a moon made of curdled cream which appears in the dreams of those who pray to her. Those who please the Mistress are allowed to reside with her in her palace, enjoying all manner of ease and luxuries while their bodies sleepwalk through the toil and drudgery of waking life. Those who displease her are cast out into insomniac reality, where they desperately care for the sleepwalkers in the hope of their banishment being rescinded.
9. Wolkuld: A giant, eyes a bleary white with flesh always shadowed, which can go about bodily or as a gentle breeze or tremendous gale. It is as a child, and if it is watching you it must be indulged by playing children's games with it or it will wax tantrumly. Wolkuld also hates and fears those who do not smile at it, and those who smile at it with a full set of teeth - those who live where it frequents remove their teeth in a pattern unique to each family. Few tell strangers the rules their god follows, as protection and as opportunity to loot what is left by their angered god.
10. The Calamitous Jade: A boulder of lavender jade, its upper half smooth and its lower half pitted, bound altogether in twists of red cow-hide - cast down from the heavens in storied days to crush a rampaging demon. The celestial spirit of the stone and the lingering dregs of the demon mingle and contend within it, lending gambler-wise blessings and curses to those who petition it, leaning one way or the other depending on obscure currents both empyrean and chthonic. The balance between the Jade's aspects is maintained by the god's husbands, each a sturdy man picked every eight years in a contest wherein they must smash a lesser stone before it. Bigamy, of course, being illegal in these parts, their noses are cut off and their foreheads branded with the mark of shame after the ceremony.
11. Ribokiyo, Father of the Forsaken: Somewhere up the mountains, along the road to nowhere (and to old ruins haunted by ghosts who've forgotten their human shapes) lies the village of Monkey Point. Its inhabitants make a living farming rice and yams from rubble-backed terraces, and sometimes selling amulets and supplies to fools seeking to plunder those old ruins. It's a hard living - they are well-acquainted with hunger and the white clay of mourning. In times of hunger in Monkey Point there is a tradition to give infants to the mountain, and to propitiate the spirits of these infants so that they do not turn their wrath on the people of the village.
But one year this propitiation failed and the infant-spirits possessed the body of a monkey, which grew huge and bled from the pores of its face, attracting a mask of flies. This possessed monkey sired itself on the wild boars, and carp, and deer of the mountain, allowing its possessing spirits to be reborn into pitiful half-lives.
Eventually, word of the beast's iniquity reached Owua temple, and a noble monkey came to seduce it and anchor it via land descent to the wolf-saint Amartza. The beast was enshrined as a wrathful guardian deity and fertility idol, the infant-spirits coming to reside in a bliss-realm within a gem set in its diadem. It remains as such to this day, awaiting the defilement to loose it from its binding.
12. The Idol of Urahank: A fragment of a marble statue, of an eye and its socket, carved in such detail that one can see the veins in its sclera, set in a crude frame of bent and grafted living trees. The fragment bears a fraction of the power of the god it once depicted, as well as the divine punishment levied upon them. Worshipers of the idols draw on this power to perform minor miracles of a scattered portfolio, an organ of theirs crumbling to dust in payment (a random organ, sometimes a fingernail and sometimes their brain), and segmented furies sometimes come to enact the ordained punishment upon the idol, only to be confused by its lack of recognizable organs, whereupon they can be plied with libations and turned onto another in the punished god's stead.
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