The Gods#

Gone, not forgotten

Three gods made most of what lives on Urd. Nobody has seen any of them since the War of Souls, and nobody alive ever saw more than their avatars. People still pray to them, swear by them and name the months after them. Whether your character believes in them is up to you.

Lythantos The first of the three: the binding that holds all things in existence, and the wheel of constants that all magic runs on. The Turning Wheel Ettephemone The mother: the beginning of every living thing, maker of the celestials and of most of the peoples of Urd, whose garden the world was. The Spark Dekkashraen The brother: the end of every made thing, maker of the infernals, and the one Urd named when Lythantos asked who killed his love. The Ending

The three#

Lythantos came first. His self split with the spark of life into two more, Dekkashraen and Ettephemone, and the three of them made nearly everything on Urd. People call Dekkashraen Lythantos’s brother, though the word was never quite right for what he is.

They are not people. Ettephemone is the Spark, the beginning of every living thing. Lythantos is the Turning Wheel, the binding that holds all things in existence, and the wheel of constants that magic runs on is his. Dekkashraen is the Ending. What they want, if they want anything, nobody on Urd has words for.

Where one of them comes close, the world bends. Near the Turning Wheel the constants slip: fire burns cold, a stone falls upward, an hour happens twice. Near the Spark everything grows at once, and the dead get up new and remember nothing. Near the Ending iron rusts in an hour, the young grow old and a city forgets its own name.

So the three never walked Urd. Each poured a sliver of itself into a shape the world could bear, an avatar, and it was the avatars who lived at Menus, loved, made Roahn, envied and went to war. A shape brings a self with it, and a self brings flaws. The jealousy the stories give Dekkashraen was his avatar’s, and the rage that ended the War of Souls was Lythantos’s. The peoples never learned to tell the avatars from the gods, and most still don’t.

None of the avatars has been seen since the War of Souls. Most people believe the gods are gone for good, and most of the rest believe they’re coming back, though nobody agrees about which of them, or when. The scholars say a god can’t go anywhere. Only its avatar can, and an avatar can be made again.

Lythantos#

The Turning Wheel. The first of the three: the binding that holds all things in existence, and the wheel of constants that all magic runs on.

Lythantos made the thirteen Ancients in his own image, and the dwarves say he made them where Jewall stands. He keeps the wheel of constants turning, and with it magic and the land itself. It’s argued that he was the strongest of the three, and that his magic is all that holds the world together.

His avatar fathered mankind. When Ettephemone’s avatar was lost, his went to war against his brother’s, and the king of his own city, Ritkus of Menes, opened its gates to the enemy. In his rage he reached out of the world and unmade his brother’s avatar and his own. The Everspark was the staff that held his avatar to Urd, and it broke with him. Nobody has seen him since.

Who prays

Mages, runescribes and the Exuvae honor him, and so do the warriors of Amari, who took up arms in his name when Ettephemone died. The Amari keep a prophecy that one will come to mark his return, and that it will be known by the fall of Kyra.

Month

Lythantos' Breath

Temple

The Hall of the Wheel in Crecia

Stands for

magic, balance, knowledge, the land, the Ancients

Ettephemone#

The Spark. The mother: the beginning of every living thing, maker of the celestials and of most of the peoples of Urd, whose garden the world was.

Ettephemone made the celestials, Mahro first among them, and most of the peoples of Urd after them. The world was her garden. Her avatar bore mankind with his, through their son Roahn.

Soon after, her avatar was gone. Most say Dekkashraen’s killed it out of jealousy. Some say it was only hurt, and is hiding until Urd is fit for it again. The Spark itself can’t die, which is why things are still born and still come back, and why her faithful wait for a new avatar rather than a resurrection. Without her, it’s said, Lythantos has no will to keep Urd from its own destruction, and when she returns there will be peace unending.

Who prays

Healers, priests and the poor pray to her more than to the other two. The Revnati hope openly for her return, and the Amari were her prophets and healers once. The last month of the year, Ettephemone's Return, is hers.

Month

Ettephemone's Return

Temple

The Temple of Mercy in Blithe

Stands for

life, rebirth, healing, mercy, time

Dekkashraen#

The Ending. The brother: the end of every made thing, maker of the infernals, and the one Urd named when Lythantos asked who killed his love.

Dekkashraen made the infernals. His avatar was jealous of his brother’s love for Ettephemone, and when she was lost Urd named him. The War of Souls was fought against him, and the kingdom of Narsis fought it on his side.

His avatar was unmade with his brother’s at the end of the war. Narsis, buried under a mountain, is home to the spawn he forsook, and in Moria the Shrine of Dekkashraen still stands, though Morians speak of it carefully, if at all.

Who prays

Hardly anyone admits to it. Necromancers and the desperate leave offerings, and the fifth month, the Dying Flower, when he's said to reign without rival, is a bad time to start anything.

Month

The Dying Flower

Temple

None anyone will admit to

Stands for

death, transcendence, war, forgetting, destruction

Those they made#

Roahn was the son of Lythantos and Ettephemone and the first of mankind, and the first man to have a child after his mother was lost. The sixth month, Roahn’s Becoming, is his.

Mahro was the first being Ettephemone ever made, and she ruled the other celestials with her mother’s kindness. She was the only one of them who kept the peace with the infernals, and it’s said she keeps rebirth going on Urd until her mother returns. Some sightings of Ettephemone are said to have been Mahro.

The thirteen Ancients were Lythantos’s, and held the secrets of all magic. He gave them the power to have children so that mankind would always keep the balance the three gods never managed. The Exuvae believe they’re the Ancients’ heirs, and want the bloodline back.

The celestials and infernals were Ettephemone’s and Dekkashraen’s. They vanished in the Breaking, afraid of the new age, and are spoken of now mostly in old prayers and older curses. The avaries and daemunai who walk Urd today are heroes who took up a god’s power, not their children.

A herald is a mortal one of the three once blessed. Heralds die like anyone, but their people remember them and in time pray to them. Common folk call them saints, and most of the small gods the provinces pray to are heralds of this kind. Goad was one of the first gnomes, a maker the Turning Wheel blessed at the anvil, and the gnomes have favored him over the three ever since. The anvil on his altar outside Tharsis is his.

Worship#

The avatars are gone, but their temples are not. Ettephemone’s is the Temple of Mercy in Blithe. Lythantos’s is the Hall of the Wheel in Crecia, where the Order of the Wheel keeps faith with all three; the Grand Temple of Esthar, where his avatar stood when Menes fell, is the older house. Dekkashraen has no temple anyone will admit to, though his followers find each other. Each temple is kept by a templar, and following a god starts with asking them.

Your first temple costs nothing. Leaving it for another god’s costs a hundred dover, and you start again from the lowest rank. From level 5 you can tithe: every 10 dover you give your own temple is a point of devotion, a little more from a priest. Devotion raises you through ten ranks, each with its own title in each temple. From the seventh rank up, someone of a higher rank in your temple has to approve you first, and once you hold the seventh you can approve others.

A temple looks after its own. You get back your health, stamina and willpower faster resting in your own temple, the more so the higher your rank, and anyone else rests there at half the rate. Each temple keeps a donation pit: send it something worth at least a dover from wherever you are, and anyone at the temple can take it out again. What goes in is worth nothing to a merchant after.

Anyone can make an offering to the three without a temple: leave something on the ground, or a body, and give it up. An item brings 1 to 5 vern, more for a valuable one, and a body 1 to 8, along with everything on it. Most offerings draw a sign, about 3 in 10 go unnoticed and still pay, and about 1 in 20 is blessed and pays double.

A herald’s shrine

A herald’s shrine, like Goad’s anvil outside Tharsis, takes prayers and offerings like any altar, but it has no templar, no devotion and no ranks.