Even More Old Time Religion: Gnosticism!

As far as I can think, gnosticism is untouched in the wonderful world of sword and sorcery. While you can do a search and find enough about gnosticism to choke a heretic, I'll go over a nutshell version for the post.

1. There is a remote divinity.
2. This divinity emanates the divine, creating other lesser divine beings.
3. A lesser god, called the demiurge by some (and by me), is the creator of the world and all matter. Depending on whom you talk to, it can be either
1. Well meaning but stupid.
2. Insane.
3. A tyrant jerk.

Now, this demiurge guy is probably gonna create himself some henchmen. Archons, they call 'em. They're basically angels/demons . . . servants of his will that set out to keep mankind in the dark.

     4.  The world, therefore, is the flawed product of a fake god and a sad replica of the true reality. Kinda like a painting compared to the real object. Maybe the fingerprinting of a five year old, say.
     5.  Some of the divine element (ooh, that's an idea...) fell to earth, lodged in us poor humans. That divine spark can be returned to the truly divine through a divine awakening.

I'm guessing that you've seen the Matrix. The Matrix is a pretty spot on piece of science fiction gnosticism.

The Really Real World is hidden, with the world everyone is familiar with is a construct.
The Machines are the demiurge.
The Agents are the Archons.

Neo is a gnostic hero, aware of both worlds and trying to show folks the way to regain the Truth and ditch their material world. Jesus could be said to be a gnostic hero.

Gnostic themes show up all over the place in Hollywood, not least of all The Matrix. Think about it. How many films have you seen that involve a big phony covering a greater truth? Artificial environments and the hero struggling against them? Pan's Labyrinth? Dark City?

I think these ideas can see a great deal of use within a campaign, or even as a central idea of a campaign. You could have all manners of factions who are basically after the same thing but using different methods . . . just like reality. Man, gnostic cults were awesome.

The cult of Pythagoras divided things between the material and the mathematical. The universe is mathematical harmony and the material world is merely an expression of ratios, geometry, etc. What if the Truth was mathematical? Imagine a number cosmology. The modrons come to mind.

The Ophites worshiped the serpent in the garden of Eden, normally seen as an evil entity, as a bringer of knowledge.

Cainites worshiped Cain, as well as Esau and the Sodomites. Indulgence in sin was key to salvation, since the body, being matter, is evil. One must throughly defile it through immoral activity.

Borborites were bizarre libertines, didn't acknowledge God as supreme (though they were into the Old and New Testament). They believed in 8 heavens, each ruled by a separate Archon. Their rituals were highly, highly sexualized, sometimes to the point of high creep factor.

The possibilities are endless. What is Truth in your world? Who/What is the False Creator? What roles do the Archons play, and what are they?  Going from that, imagine the different ways your gnostic style followers could seek the Truth of the Divine Spark and how they would all differ from one another.

Imagine the basic D&D cosmology using this system. Making the prime material plane slightly analogous to our world, consider that these gods would be worshiped as normal, but there are also dozens of heretical organizations that view them as pretenders to the throne.  I guess that's basically how 4e would do it, actually. The Primordials are the real gods, the known gods their flawed, perhaps accidental, creations. Hm.