View source for Gods of Arling Tor

The universe of [[Arling Tor]] is home to, among others, a somewhat more relevant pantheon of gods, who likely consider themselves to be incredibly important, and are widely worshipped on [[Cerris]], vaguely referenced in [[Ord]], and have varying levels of influence and control across the myriad other Torrian planes and planets beyond these realms.

On Cerris, people tend to refer to the pantheon as a whole as either '''the Twelve''' or '''the Nine''', depending on whether or not they're including the, shall we say, more 'negative' gods in what they wish to invoke. Of the Twelve, all are Originals (of the 'Original Family' supposedly born of the creation of the universe) aside from Kyrule (born a mortal elf) and [[Source:Sarathi#Pantheon|Vitoi]] (wandered in from another universe and just kind of made himself at home). Sonmi  is also arguably not one of the Originals; though there was a Sonmi born of the family, she was subsequently replaced by the [[White Reaper]], at the time an aspect of Kyrule, sort of, ish, even though this was technically before Kyrule even born.<ref>Nobody talks about this anyway, so it probably doesn't matter. Or does it?</ref> Because she maintained the name and position of the Original Sonmi when doing so, this detail is not widely known.<ref>Seriously nobody knows this outside the gods themselves. And even they don't seem to want to acknowledge it most of the time, might be they feel guilty after all now?</ref>

== The Twelve ==

{| class="wikitable sortable" style="width: 100%"
|-
! God
! Original Name
! Other names/aspects
! Domains
|-
||'''Alyre'''||Joy||Lara, Alynn, Bacquoi, The Lady of Cats||love, passion, dance, beauty, temptation, cats, beginnings
|-
||'''Azorres||Hope||The Light, Eiko, Adries||light, life, peace, redemption, martyrs, respite, perseverance, air
|-
||'''Brenn||Contentment||Brenna, Voi||culture, propriety, nobles, art, profit, intrigue, thieves, tea
|-
||'''Djieka||Luck||Cheekah, Dis||chaos, disorder, monotony, unreasonable expectation, chronic paranoia, luck
|-
||'''Kyrule||N/A||Kheris, Irin, Deathdealer, Keeper of Names||death<ref name="ves">Was originally the domain of Veshura, who got fed up with the other gods' bullshit and quit as the god of death. Eapherod subsequently picked up this domain, but then Kyrule killed her.</ref>, spirits<ref name="ves"/>, judgement<ref name="ves"/>, equilibrium, finality, time, dreams<ref name="eaph">Was Eapherod's domain, but Kyrule killed her.</ref>, nightmares<ref name="eaph"/>, lies<ref name="eaph"/>, masks<ref name="eaph"/>
|-
||'''Lyria||Renewal||Lepaedi||nature, cycles, growth, decomposition, forests, fertility, fountains
|-
||'''Neiryo||Change||Nausica, Kikein, Nessis, Augh, Raven, The Maelstrom, Lord of the Depths||water, oceans, pressure, storms, ancestors, wisdom, riddles, cleverness, discovery
|-
||'''Orin||Conflict||Lord of War||war, battle, valour, might, justice<ref name="lash">Was Lashaliss Azall's domain, but Eapherod killed her.</ref>, crusaders<ref name="lash"/>, righteous indignation<ref name="lash"/>, fire
|-
||'''Roshar||Steadiness||Belotzi, Stone God||earth, durability, stone, strength, solidity
|-
||'''Sonmi||Curiosity||Ghauran, Gurasis, Tymor, Zachri, White Reaper||destruction, tyranny, violence, cruelty, fury, hate, fear, revenge, madness<ref name="eaph"/>, insanity
|-
||'''Veshura||Death||Zeahne, Mishra, Öjra, The Void, The Ungodly Light||power, knowledge, magic, ambition, debts, undeath, eternities, darkness, weariness, absence
|-
||'''Vitoi||N/A||Hazz'ridan, The Loss||ultimate failure, frustration, dead ends, unfinished business, procrastination, paradoxes
|-
|}

While we've previously attempted to assign alignments according to what the general populace tend to believe, these weren't exactly accurate to the nature of the gods themselves, and just plain confusing to boot. For the most part, they're all fairly nice/neutral, aside from that one who really is just an outright dick. Some will certainly return the favour if you start something, however.

It is also worth noting that some of the gods' Original Names have kinda been passed around like hot potatoes over the entirety of their existence, which is to say very, very occasionally they might trade, aside from a few exceptional incidents:
* Sonmi, when the White Reaper became her, was cursed and forcibly renamed Torment by the other gods, just to punish her for the sheer audacity of a mortal daring to take the place of a god. Eventually they did finally work out how completely insane that was, though it really should not have taken them that long considering their sister Justice would have been heavily against it from the start. Oops.
* At some point Veshura got absolutely fed up with the other gods' expectations as to what Death should be and do, and just up and abdicated. This caused more than a few problems, before Eapherod (an interloper posing as a mortal) and Kyrule (an actual mortal at the time) finally hunted it down and took the name themselves. Which caused other problems, but at least the other gods didn't flip out this time and curse them too. Progress!
* When Lashaliss Azall was killed, her name of Justice was corrupted. Unclear how nobody seemed to notice this considering what an absolute gobshite Justice Orin turned out to be. They were all reeling a bit, though.
* Eapherod had already given Kyrule (her half of?) the Death name before he killed her, or that never would have even worked. Then he traded Death for Time with Sonmi, because she'd suggested this might be less painful? Where'd he get the Secrets name, though?!

These also weren't their ''only'' names, even from the start, and they would have just kept adding more as they appeared. Some of these smaller names would have really convoluted things, such as whoever was Lies, they probably got ''around''. When the Originals finally adopted less literal names, it might have just been because they ones they were had gotten too big.

Further confusion:
* Sonmi was never Time. Time was the name the White Reaper had plucked when she and the Originals had all first taken their Names, and thus she was able to keep it as well even when Sonmi was renamed. (How'd she get there in the first place? Maybe she went and plucked 'Temporal Paradoxes' in the future first, who knows.)
* Despite her masks, Sonmi/the White Reaper tends to be most commonly aligned with Azorres and Kyrule, and usually just has them do/take credit for anything public-facing in order to circumvent certain other details of her curse.
* Azorres and Kyrule somehow seem to have wound up with a number of roughly the same Names (inverted, but does that really mean anything with gods?) and ostensibly mostly have exactly the same goals, despite their followers' constantly clashing. Mostly it's an approach thing, but they do try to stress that both approaches are kind of needed anyway.
* It's not even clear how Vitoi took his Names, or if he did at all. Maybe he just showed up and the names instead crawled out of the pool and found him? How did he even get there? What even is he? Eh.
* While Veshura and Vitoi generally present as not overtly caring one way or the other about most such things, they're both pretty big on their own particular flavours of poetic justice. Possibly just because they find it absolutely hilarious. The problem is after Original Justice died, this usually winds up still being more just than the nonsense Orin tends to come up with.
* Orin is just an absolute dick, possibly because he took his sister's death really badly, or possibly because he was all along. Sometimes his injustices are so bad that even Kyrule winds up having to take matters into his own hands to ensure something even remotely resembling true justice occurs in the End. Even if it turns out to be reinstating whatever Veshura or Vitoi already came up with.

== Aspects and other gods ==

Other gods and spirits are also revered outside of the Twelve. Some are much smaller, either existing only locally, or with limited followers, and are not widely known, but many of these serve the Twelve themselves. Others, not so much, and may only have limited dealings with mortals themselves.

Those who serve the Twelve may exist as their own entities, or present themselves as various aspects and avatars, for reasons. Alyre, for instance, is widely regarded to include cats within her domains, but her aspect Lara is also revered as a goddess of cats specifically. Other smaller gods and spirits, including local guardian gods, will also present as distinct entities, but often fall under the umbrella of one or more of the twelve, and may be used interchangeably in some regions and religions. That nonsense that went down in Ord, on the other hand, is just something else entirely.

Other gods, such as Daru, the All-Father to the Original Family, may exist<ref>He totally exists, and is an even bigger dick than Orin, somehow.</ref> beyond this, but do not feature in any mortal religion due to having no dealings with them, because he kind of really despises them.

== Ord ==

Historically, Ordian religion has largely been based around the [[Chitiritas]] Ancestor spirits rather than any gods. When the elves migrated from the sister realm of Cerris in the [[Exodus]], they brought their religion, and their gods, with them, but an accord (known properly as '[[The Accords]]' to make it sound more important when historians and theologians mention it) was made with the locals to limit what these new gods could do to 'try to keep them from mucking too much up' or some such. Being elves, they didn't really care and were kind of fine with whatever, within reason.

Per the Accords, only Azorres, Kyrule, and Veshura are allowed to directly intervene in Ordian affairs. Despite this, none of them really do much in practice either:

* Azorres enjoys some popularity simply for being a 'generally good sort', whose domains translate fairly well into organised religion, but the religions themselves still tend to be more of an excuse to hold social events than anything truly meaningful.
* Veshura is sometimes subject to random cults, but does little to encourage it beyond occasionally showing up and humouring her cultists with at times rather ridiculous powers, typically right before the cult would have fallen apart naturally anyway.
* Kyrule mostly leaves Ord be on the religion-side and relegates managing matters of the dead to the [[Reapers]], unbound spirits originally created by the Ancestors to gather up other unwilling and lost spirits. Then that nonsense went down where he created two new aspects of Death:
*# The Chicken God: a distributed [[Classification of god-forms|god-form entity]] that mostly exists memetically within social media, that, due to an excess of undirected belief<ref>Is winding up with a Chicken God better or worse than an Oh God of hangovers? Who knows, but it would totally get the reference. It gets all the references. It probably speaks exclusively in references. Except when it doesn't. Because consistency is not what it's about.</ref>, may quite possibly be the most powerful divine being in all of Arling Tor. 
*# Sexy Kyrule: Kyrule, but sexy. Huge hit, instantly popular, when an avatar accidentally challenged the Chicken God to a duel, in a ring of jello, wearing their best bikinis, armed only with giant slabs of tofu... not realising she was still logged in on social media as Kyrule. And then had to go do it, just on principle.

This match was streamed everywhere. People were amazed. Awed. Inspired. Baffled. Disgusted. Very, very confused. Frankly just glad that this time, Kyrule randomly actually showing up in Ord isn't to stop another chicken-spawning fork-bomb, but something not so world-ending after all? Yeah, that also happened. Might be why he'd even had a social media login at this point to begin with?

Ord is weird.

== Notes and references ==

<references/> 

[[Category:Gods]]
[[Category:Let's randomly pretend this is an encyclopedia]]
[[Category:Arling Tor]]